“Crusading” newspapers a la the screaming headline variety of the early 20th Century have fallen by the wayside.
To be a crusader in any life facet takes a certain amount of courage and, in most cases, a dash of derring-do. That most assuredly applies to newspapers that take the plunge into the swirling waters of need, controversy, right and wrong plus the ragged and often hidden shoals of financial interest.
However, most community newspapers today have found ways to negotiate the often-murky waters and steer a course for themselves and their area into a peaceful, placid stream from which a community can draw to quench all sorts of thirsts.
There are the easy things that everyone supports — schools, any activities and organizations for uplifting kids, United Way, Cancer Society, charity hospitals, events to care for and feed the elderly, an almost endless list.
Community newspapers support worthwhile, wholesome undertakings that are generally non-sectarian.
There is one question I always ask about any given issue: Is it the best thing for a significant majority of the people it affects?
All too often, well-meaning but ill-informed elected officials will attempt some program in which there is a hidden benefit for some special interest group.
Spending public funds to benefit special interests, particularly without a public benefit that far outweighs the special interest, is absolutely taboo.
Any undertaking that will raise taxes is going to face automatic opposition.
Many years ago three neighboring towns with two separate school districts voted to consolidate the school districts into one. Our ownership acquired the newspaper after the consolidation, but within two years of a much-needed bond issue. One of the two merged districts school buildings was dilapidated and some actually bad enough to be condemned. The district with the better-conditioned schools had a significant number of people who opposed the bond issue because most of it would go to the “other old district” and that appeared unfair.
Our newspaper quickly did a comprehensive feature story series, complete with revealing photos, of the condition of the schools to be replaced or repaired. Then, a week prior to the vote, we ran an editorial endorsing the bond issue.
I fielded some very angry phone calls but one took the cake. A woman who split her residence time between our area and Hollywood (where she allegedly directed movies), called and told me she’d see that I was hanged from highest tree in the county. I was 25 years old and that unnerved me a tad, but I told her to get a strong rope and bring an army. Brash, huh?
Another time, a county commissioner told his cousin (who told me) he was going to “whup my ass,” but that he “prayed about it and Jesus told him not to.”
The late Rigby Owen Sr. bought the Conroe Courier in the early 1950s and kept it until he and his sons, Steve and Rigby Jr., sold it in 1971. In the early days, Montgomery County was a free-range county, meaning cows could roam freely and there were few fences on ranches. With the backing of the Courier, a new range law, doing away with “free range” was passed, but not before some “brave” soul(s), in the stealth of darkness, left a truckload of cow manure on the downtown sidewalk in front of the newspaper office.
Nineteen shots from a pellet gun pierced the plate glass windows and door of The Canadian Record when the late Ben Ezzell wrote a 1971 expose’ of the secretive John Birch Society. Ben also suffered a concussion in a fight with a mayoral candidate in 1955.
As my hero Ben put it: “Someone’s always saying they’re going to whup the editor’s ass.” So, he wrote a book about his experiences titled, what else, “The Editor’s Ass.”
Ben’s daughter, Laurie Ezzell Brown, is a chip off the old block and writes thoughtful and to-the-point editorials on vital issues in Canadian. Five years ago, The Record and the Ezzell family were honored as winners of the Gish Award for Courage, Tenacity and Integrity in Community Journalism, a national award.
Never particularly rewarding financially, small town newspapers can at least say they don’t fear ass whuppin’s and will continue to stand tall for their communities.
Oh, and they run letters to the editor that are contrary to the newspaper’s opinion and stance on an issue.
Unafraid, incorruptible and fair.
Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor-publisher of more than 50 years experience. Webb worked all over Texas during those 50 years.
