A GoFundMe campaign raised $31,145 to sustain the enterprise.Ĭomparatively, the Times was lucky. Sales were so dismal last year that the Storm Lake Times resorted to crowdfunding to keep the paper in print and its reporters on the beat. Advertising manager Mary Cullen explains in the documentary that conservative business owners fumed when her brother-in-law was honored for his progressive pugilism on the opinion page. Winning the 2017 Pulitzer for editorial writing led to a book deal, speaking engagements and a national platform, but it didn’t make Cullen a celebrity in Storm Lake. If Art Cullen is a prophet crying in the wilderness, the adage about prophets going without honor in their hometown rings true. The communities they covered are now news deserts, bereft of both the watchdog reporting that makes crooked politicians shudder and the positive publicity that makes civic boosters beam with pride.
newspapers have shuttered in the last 15 years, according to journalism professor Penelope Muse Abernathy’s research. “Our ads fell off a cliff, just like every other newspaper,” says Art’s brother, publisher and co-owner John Cullen, who chose to forgo his paycheck when he became eligible to receive Social Security benefits. Print advertising plummeted as businesses shifted their focus online, where Facebook, Google and Amazon gobble up nearly 70 percent of digital ad dollars. Its struggles mirror those playing out in small newsrooms from the heartland to the coasts. Three years after winning a Pulitzer Prize, the Storm Lake Times was fighting for survival. “But how long does a community support journalism? Because now people want to get their news for free, and people are saying, ‘Oh well, that’s not worth a dollar.’ And that’s not how you sustain a democracy.” “Most people in Storm Lake care about community,” Cullen says in the film. Through directors Beth Levison and Jerry Risius’ lens, the twice-weekly Iowa paper is a microcosm of American print media.
The Storm Lake Times’ editor and co-owner is battling the spread of news deserts, the ominous name given to communities without local newspapers to expose corruption at city hall and cover high school football rivalries under the Friday night lights.Ĭullen and his family newspaper - five of its 10 employees are related - are profiled in the documentary “Storm Lake,” which premiered Monday on PBS after generating buzz on the film festival circuit. Art Cullen is determined to beat back the tumbleweeds. It swallows small towns, suburbs and the wide expanses of farmland in between. Claiming territory like a conquering army, a vast desert is on the march.
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