Storm Lake and the Mission of NPR Fan Girl
The documentary is both a harrowing and hopeful depiction for the future of community news, and inspired me to kick off NPR Fan Girl sooner than I anticipated.
I returned to a movie theater for the first time in 20 months last night for the Denver Film Festival screening of Storm Lake. Set in a northwest Iowa town from where the documentary’s name is derived, Storm Lake follows Art Cullen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist and the owner/editor of The Storm Lake Times, a local newspaper where several of his family members are also employed as journalists.
Director/DP Jerry Risius, a native Iowan himself, and co-director and producer Beth Levison, began filming in the spring of 2019 before Covid-19 was a glimmer in anyone’s eye. In the before times, we see a portrait of a paper that serves as a microcosm for the crisis facing community journalism in America today. Print costs are high, circulation is declining, and in a good month, the paper breaks even, but usually nothing more. The paper’s digital publication is up and running, but for a legacy paper whose print circulation was once daily (now twice a week), the transition is anything but easy.
Concluding the film in the earlier months of 2021, it seems that the pandemic merely exacerbated and expedited the storm that was already brewing over community journalism nationwide, bringing an industry teetering on the brink of collapse into even more dire straits. Between March 2020 - October 2021, 90 newspapers across the United States closed, and papers will continue to close even as the pandemic — one day, we hope — is brought to an end, or at the very least brought under control.
Though the outlook for community journalism across the US is bleak, Storm Lake offers a dash of hope. Between the PPP loan, a successful GoFundMe campaign, a significant private donation, and the creation of the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation, The Storm Lake Times is doing well. Rather than worrying if they’ll make it to the next month, Art, his family, and the rest of the Times staff continues to inform, educate, and connect the community members of Storm Lake, a diverse meatpacking town in America’s heartland.
At film festivals, I tend to favor documentary screenings over narrative ones; the telling of real stories leaves me feeling inspired and hungry to further my craft and make a difference. Storm Lake tells a story that resonates with me deeply, encapsulating the raison d’être for NPR Fan Girl. Community matters. Journalism matters. Communities suffer without journalism because democracy suffers without journalism. Journalism is also an art, and art enriches all of our lives. Through this publication, I hope to highlight and provide financial support (however small) to all sorts of journalistic pursuits, from local papers to nonprofit digital outlets, because we can’t live without journalism. I hope you’ll consider being a contributing member of NPR Fan Girl so that you too can play a part in sustaining journalism around the country and maybe even the world.
I’m still working out the details, but I know I will funnel monthly membership fees into the pockets of various publications, radio stations, and organizations supporting journalism and journalists. Until NPR Fan Girl publishes regularly, I will donate 100% of any membership money I earn to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation, the organization helping sustain The Storm Lake Times and four other northwest Iowa news publications. If you’re not ready or interested in becoming a paid monthly subscriber of NPR Fan Girl, maybe you’ll go directly to the source and give what you can to the foundation.
Further Reading / Listening
Storm Lake: Change, Resilience, and Hope in America’s Heartland (Bookshop.org / Libro.fm)
Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy (Bookshop.org / Libro.fm)
Journalism: Why It Matters (Bookshop.org)