I Sent a Reporter to Warroad. We Returned Together for a ‘Whip’ Around Town.

So there we were on a cold October morning, and the mayor wasn’t in at “The Shed,” leaving me and Richard with a couple of hours to kill before we were due at the high school to speak to students and residents about journalism. Richard drove me to what had been the newsroom of the Pioneer, now an Aflac insurance office owned and managed by Rebecca Colden, the Pioneer’s former owner, publisher and editor.

We found Rebecca standing at her desk, and her pastor at the front door with his keys in hand, about to leave after a visit. She and Richard hugged hello; it was clear the two had grown close during his reporting trip. She had been through something traumatic and he had served as her witness.

For an editor based in New York, this was a rare chance to behold a reporter in his element. Richard and I are members of the same generation, but in that moment I felt like a parent beaming with pride. Wherever we went, there were people who had read his article, people who appreciated how it had been framed. He had told a difficult story, and he had done so with a lot of care and sensitivity.

Like that of many journalists at The New York Times, my career includes several years in a much smaller newsroom. For about a decade, I saw up close the vital role a local newspaper plays in its community. It connects and informs residents. It shapes and leads conversations.

At Warroad High School that afternoon, I asked students whether they had felt the Pioneer’s absence. Most said they had not. They are young and not in the habit of reading newspapers. They said they get their news on Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram. Still, several inquisitive students wondered aloud about the future of journalism in their town. Who would write about their teams? Who would keep them updated if they moved away?

A new publication called The Warroad Advocate launched a free 13-week trial over the summer, but it retreated when it could not attract enough advertisers. Students asked whether they might play a role in creating something altogether different, like student journalists have done elsewhere around the country. Maybe an online publication that would continue where the Pioneer left off — something distinct and digital that would unite the town’s roughly 1,700 residents.

Town officials want that, too. A few weeks after our visit, Mani Harren, the project manager for Warroad Community Development, championed the idea of a new publication in an impassioned blog post, adding that the town “lacks a ‘voice’ to keep this community connected.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/21/reader-center/warroad-pioneer-reporting.html?emc=rss&partner=rss