You’ve probably heard by now about the police raid on the Marion County Record, a weekly newspaper in central Kansas. As it happens, that is the newspaper where my career started.
I wrote about today for the Kansas City Star:
I do want you to know about the Marion County Record, though.
It’s one of those small town newspapers that serves as both the backbone of its community, and of the journalism profession at large. I wasn’t the only young reporter to get my start there: Bill — a member of the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame and a KU alum who had the Jayhawk fight song played at his funeral — regularly hosted summer interns from the university, sending them back out into the world after a few months of doing everything: Taking pictures, writing features, covering city council meetings, you name it. It was an immersive education.
Sometimes, the paper threw elbows. Bill once told me about coming into work to find a bullet hole in his office window.
Small town journalism is a delicate balance, though. Everybody knows everybody. You can’t hide from the people you write about. When the paper ran a rather prominent correction about an error I’d made, I was razzed on the streets of Marion for a solid week.
Still, you don’t expect a police raid for doing journalism. And you don’t expect a police raid on your 98-year-old mother’s home for doing journalism. That happened to Bill’s wife, Joan on Friday.
On Saturday, she died.
I’m so stunned and angry right now.
OMG
I had a long phone conversation a few months ago with Deb Gruver, one of the reporters at the heart of the story. It's tragic that, since that time, the confusion and corruption in Marion County has only grown worse.