The Story of Journalism part 3: Nothing Is Small

Last week, there was an assignment in my communication class where we had to watch and discuss a documentary. The name is Storm Lake. It is a story about a local newspaper, the Storm Lake Times, on how they made an impact on the community at that place, how they covered every single event in the town, how they conducted several interviews with the Democratic candidates for president in 2019, and how they won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017 which belonged to Art Cullen, the editor and the co-founder of the Storm Lake Times, for "editorials fueled by tenacious reporting, impressive expertise and engaging writing that successfully challenged powerful corporate agricultural interests in Iowa" in the Editorial Editing category. The documentary also focused on the difficulty the Storm Lake Times endured, especially financially. It is easy to understand because, nowadays, few newspapers still exist. They could not compete with other news organizations like the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, AP, Reuters, and many more. They are big and national news. They had all the support of big corporations. Besides, with the growing technologies, everyone can download a news app on their phone and get news updates within a day. They don't even have to wait until the next day to get the news from yesterday. Cullen said in the documentary that people want to get the news for free and prefer to get on Facebook to get news instead.

Source: The Storm Lake Times Pilot main website/Screenshot

Meanwhile, local newspapers or small-town newspapers are not that lucky. They had to hustle in two ways to keep themselves alive in the journalism industry. One is the support from the local businesses when they place an ad for their business in the newspapers. That money they paid will keep the newspapers alive. Two are the loyal readers in the community, who always read their newspapers every day, both print and online, and they're ready to pay for a monthly subscription to get news. There is a dark prediction for the future. Print journalism will be gone. Of course, it will happen because the previous generations, like our grandparents or parents, who don't know how to use modern technologies to read news and prefer print newspapers to read every day, will go away. Until then, news organizations will temporarily shut down their print editions to move to only online reading. It is sad, but it's true.

As I shared in the first post, I subscribed to the Orange County Register, a local newspaper in my area. They paid $25 for four weeks to receive its print newspaper every morning, exactly like my grandpa. I barely read the OCR news online because I want to keep it for the next days when I read the print newspaper. Another reason is that I read the Washington Post, which I praised as the most trusted newspaper ever in reporting news in America and internationally. Also, my dream is to be a reporter for the Washington Post.

The stack of The Orange County Register at my house.

There are three reasons why I subscribe for the OCR.

• One is that I am like my grandpa, who loves reading newspapers every morning. Just imagine. You wake up every morning after finishing personal hygiene; then, you go outside and pick up the daily newspaper at your door. After that, you make yourself a cup of coffee, and a nice breakfast, sit down with the newspaper in your hands, and enjoy your breakfast and reading the news. Oh my God, it is the best of the best. Of course, you don't need to read print newspapers. You can read the news on your iPad or iPhone from a news app. But I realize I love having an actual print newspaper on my hands. I am like an old man. However, many people the same age as I love to do the same thing.

• Two is that I hunt for news. I am a staff writer for my school newspaper, the Daily Titan, at Cal State Fullerton. Our job is to find news and report it. Sometimes, the editors will assign us a story to cover, but we mostly have to find the stories ourselves. It must relate to the CSUF campus or within Orange County. The Daily Titan is a newspaper run by students. Even though it is a school newspaper, surprisingly, it has many readers nationwide. The newspaper still publishes one print edition each week, free for everyone. Besides that, we publish online every Tuesday and Wednesday. What I like the most about the Daily Titan is the chance they give us to grow and improve our writing and reporting skills so that when we get into a news organization, we will understand what to do. My editors said that we HAVE to read the news to get what is happening around us. We also have to find news on the campus, like events or issues. Understanding that, I began to read the ORC to see if there was worthy news to report from the view of a student. However, the news we cover must relate to the CSUF campus and how it can affect the school. It is selective.

• Three is that I want to support the local newspaper. The OCR is under the management of Southern California News Group, which owns twelve newspapers in Southern California. I cannot subscribe to all three newspapers to support journalism. But my subscription can help a local newspaper like the OCR to get more motivation to report and keep journalism alive in that area. I understand that the salary of a journalist is a little. According to Intuit Mint, a journalist makes between $23,000 to $143,500 depending on the education, skills, experience, employer, and location. The average salary is $64,000. Then, why do they still want to choose to be a journalist? As a future journalist, I believe it is their passion for journalism. Journalism may not be a good career choice, but the belief in real news and the power of journalism has helped students like me want to get themselves into this industry. It doesn't have to be a newspaper. Journalism has been too diverse recently. Radio, television, podcast, blogs, or vlog. Everyone can be a freelance journalist if they put themselves out there and hunt for news.

I have a huge respect for local and small-town newspapers. Those are the true journalist, I'm telling you. In Storm Lake documentary, Art Cullen was sick and tired of working for big news corp and created his newspaper with his brothers in Storm Lake town, where they grew up. It is emotional to me because I can their wants to have a newspaper for their small town, to help their small town to have its voice, to add the voice into their small town, and to connect communities. The power of local and small-town newspapers is more significant than you thought. The Storm Lake Times is an example. They continue beyond local news. They reached further to the national news when covering the Iowa caucus, the Democratic candidates, and COVID-19. They know this industry will not bring them many benefits, but they are happy because at least they can do something for their community and town and satisfy their passion for journalism.

I am in my senior year. Soon, I will graduate. I am now an intern at Voice of America, the Vietnamese division, and a staff writer at the Daily Titan. Yes, I love to work for big news organizations, and as I shared above, my goal is to be a reporter for the Washington Post. But then I realized something. To reach a big thing, I must begin with a small thing. I decided that after graduating, I would work for a local newspaper or, if I had a chance, move to a small town of nowhere in America to work for them, even if it is for free and I still need to work an unrelated job to raise myself. I will accept. I want to have a good base for my future. And I love the passion of local and small-town newspapers.

I want to dedicate this post to every local and small-town newspaper. I want to recognize their effort to bring the voice to their towns. See you in the next post!