An honest-to-goodness community paper

Reprinted with permission from the Rochester Post-Bulletin — August 27, 2005

By Anne A. Jambora

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Wow. Some community media assignment this turned out to be.

When the World Press Institute sent us off to our respective community media assignments a week ago, I was expecting something along the lines of a cow or two mooing and wandering aimlessly in newsrooms, of reporters and editors in tattered jeans and plaids and boots, of yellowed papers stacked in one corner.

Instead, I was greeted at the Post-Bulletin by electronically controlled glass doors that shut promptly to keep the cool city breeze out, and just outside the editorial room, I heard the familiar soft sound of the computers' keyboards rhythmically tapping away word upon word as editors and reporters cram to put to bed the day's issue. iMacs and G3s, mostly, but they were enough to jolt me into the realization that, well, I was probably not in Kansas anymore.

What belied the rigid high-tech atmosphere, however, was the warm welcome from the receptionist whose genuine smile could never be replicated by anyone who has been calloused by tough city life. Indeed I was, oddly enough, truly within the premises of an honest-to-goodness community paper.

Where I come from, community papers cater to a very small niche market — certainly not one with a 50,000 circulation. A thousand or two should be decent.

A few years after finishing my bachelor's degree in mass communications, I forayed into a community paper with a couple of friends.

An idealistic young businessman, who was a friend of a friend, took it upon himself to challenge the age-old existing local paper that, according to him, was merely churning out press releases from the government.

So off we naively marched with romanticized ideals of changing a society reeling dizzily in our heads. The rented, windowless one-story edifice of an office was a humble 15 square meters. And the archaic air conditioner heaved heavily as it struggled to keep the room temperature in the 80s that, on a lucky day, could slide down to the 70s. A smattering of generic dot matrix PCs and one Windows-operated computer were neatly aligned on one side.

The illustrator, another friend, worked as the layout artist and IT "whiz" at the same time. There were three reporters, all friends or friends of a friend, one editor-in-chief — yet another good friend -- and one owner/publisher. And that's about it.

The paper had a modest circulation of about 300 or less and tried very hard to come out on a regular weekly basis. In a small city where one person monopolized the source of printed information, it should not have been a surprise to learn that the same person also owned the city's only printing press at that time.

Hence the newsprint that carried our foolhardy passions, our earnest adolescent analysis — political and non-political — all six pages of them, was often painfully delayed at the press and eagerly awaited by, yes, friends of friends of friends of friends.

Unlike in the United States, community papers in the Philippines have to compete directly with national dailies. While they provide local color and flavor to an otherwise Manila-centered news coverage that every national daily provides, they can only go as far as their advertising revenues allow them to go.

For what is the value of advertising when you're in a small town whose residents rely mostly on word-of-mouth for event updates or turn to the radio as their most credible source of information?

A good number of community papers in my country do not earn much, if they do at all. Yet they continue to thrive in the name of the pursuit of truth. Not one of them dreams of earning big bucks, nor do they seek fame and glory. They are a team of dedicated journalists, with generous hearts that bleed for their country.

The community paper I worked for unfortunately had to shut down its operations, and we went our separate ways. My former editor is now a deskperson at a bigger community paper in a larger city. The rest, I haven't a clue.

I do know, however, that without that fleeting experience in my life I would not be where I am today, which simply means I would not have been a journalist.

Community papers are excellent breeding grounds for young journalists. Local news will never be given its much-deserved space without a community paper. Rochester is lucky to have one.

Anne A. Jambora is a reporter for the Philippine Daily Inquirer in Makati City, Philippines. She has been visiting Rochester this week as part of the World Press Institute international journalists program. She participated in a public forum in Rochester Thursday night, sponsored by the Post-Bulletin.