State-Journal.com - Weekly editors know the price of courage

Anyone who’s been around the newspaper business knows one of the toughest jobs is that of the weekly. Those who run them often report and write the stories, sell ads, haul the pages off for printing, maintain the books and oversee circulation. Sure, bigger ones have personnel for advertising and circulation. But the small weekly publisher wears many hats.
The job gets tougher in dealing with news that can anger a close neighbor or choir mate at church, always a prospect in small towns. It’s no surprise that many weeklies are filled with bland social news and other pleasantries about family or school happenings or solemn pronouncements from the chamber that pass as news. Weeklies of this ilk leave weighty and controversial matters alone.
But the burden of publishing increases for the weekly that does take them on. Crusading or advocating this or that cause has its risks, particularly when the editorial knife slices a powerful politician or prominent advertiser. The history of weeklies is filled with stories of publishers who faced an advertising boycott for reporting news or promoting a cause that alienated the local power brokers.
Violence can erupt when an issue gets really hot. Reports of fisticuffs, gunshots, bombs and arson dot the archives of weekly newspapers that pursued stories taking on a small-town establishment when money, a political career or other items dear to its heart were on the line.
Two of the nation’s best weeklies were in the spotlight a few days ago in Kentucky. The Canadian Record, published in Canadian, Texas it’s in the Panhandle won the Tom And Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism.
The Gishes are practically legends in Eastern Kentucky where their Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg took on the powers that be on hot-button issues such as strip mining, government secrecy and corrupt politicians in the face of death threats and arson, to mention a couple. No one’s surprised there’s a national award in light of they’ve done with the Mountain Eagle ("It Screams") and survived doing it.
The Canadian Record stands tall in the Gishes’ shadow. The Ezzell family publishes it. Ben, a co-publisher with his wife, died in 1993. He made his mark for fearlessness and character early. A mayoral candidate, upset with an Ezzell editorial, beat him up. Ezzell was hospitalized with a concussion, among other injuries. The publisher took it all with humor, though, contending at the time the aspiring but hot-headed politician was trying to express "a legitimate editorial opinion the best way he knew how" with his fists.
The test of integrity stemmed from news The Canadian was fixing to run of a dispute between the school board and a banker to whom Ezzell was indebted and who tried to kill the story. Ezzell faced a crossroad: "Either I would run the paper or the bank would," Ezzell wrote long after the incident. "… I owed money to the bank ... but not my soul." Ezzell published the story. The banker later joined him in an effort to salvage the town’s economy after a major employer left.
Then there was Vietnam. Ezzell editorially opposed the war "I’m ashamed of what my country …" when that was not popular generally in the nation and particularly in gun-toting, flag-waving Texas. It steamed some locals including a businessman who organized an advertising boycott. Ezzell offered to let him promote it with a free ad, such was his sense of fair play.
But The Canadian Record’s opposition to the war became a more serious matter a year later when after another editorial, someone fired nearly 20 shots from a pellet gun into the newspaper, which Ezzell promptly characterized as another expression of opinion. It wasn’t long before someone tossed more "opinion" into Ezzell’s yard where it exploded.
Ezzell’s widow, Nancy, and daughter, Laurie Ezzell Brown, today carry on the family’s practice of uncompromising journalism. They were on hand to accept the annual Gish award earlier this month from the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at a ceremony in Lexington.
Somewhere Ben Ezzell must be smiling. Every New Year’s Day the Ezzell paper carried its chief operating principle: "We believe in the freedom of the press. We are grateful for it. We will defend it to the limit of our ability." The Canadian Record under his daughter and widow have exposed a drug-addicted prosecutor, took on corporate hog farmers, fought water pollution and saved 1,000 Panhandle trees from a state chainsaw.
The Gishes are smiling, too.