A History of The Sedona Observer
The Renaissance of Public Service Journalism
By Catherine J. Rourke
I had tales of lost lives, lost spouses, lost limbs, lost savings, lost homes, lost dreams and lost hope. The stories simply had to be reported. With no paper willing to print them or do them ethical justice, I would have to publish them myself. The time had come for local media to uphold Freedom of the Press and storm the Bastille of words for the public interest. But, first, I would have to revive journalism in a way that would not only capture readers’ attention and stir their hearts, but also restore a sacred trust in their media – with Truth and a good old-fashioned 18th-century style front page, void of ads and littered with peppery discourse, to awaken sleeping residents much like our forefathers’ “intelligence” system long ago to send an alarm that the British were coming.
During my many years as an editor and journalist for various local print media, I was struck by the wide scope of vital issues we never covered. Understaffed newsrooms with inexperienced reporters, already overwhelmed by multiple beats and story agendas, remained unable to pursue any in-depth investigative reporting on issues sorely in need of a professional journalistic microscope.
Residents from the surrounding Verde Valley communities constantly complained during civic meetings about the lack of quality regional journalism. They expressed disappointment over shallow reporting, zero coverage of their neighborhoods and constant failure to get their letters published. In an area with more than 70,000 residents, the main weekly paper’s circulation was only 7,000, sounding a journalism siren of citizen disgruntlement, dissatisfaction and distrust.
In just a short time, undocumented immigrant workers had descended on the city, pushing locals out of a competitive workforce. Highway expansion threatened to destroy the last vestiges of small-town character. Tourism dropped sharply after 9/11, closing many small businesses. Drought, wildfire and rampant development struck fear in the hearts of many conservationists. And some of the highest housing prices in the nation triggered a severe lack of affordable housing, forcing many working families to leave the area. Labor shortages contradicted high unemployment rates, and real estate values began to plummet in the highest priced housing market in the state.
Environment, development, tourism and immigration – stories on Sedona’s woes abounded in papers as far away as New York City, but local journalism produced few in-depth reports of our own, for our own. While chronic social issues plagued regional communities, they remained ignored by newsroom management that indicated little interest and no payroll for investigative journalism. The obsession with advertising profits created a constant staff turnover while proposals for stories about key issues met with ongoing neglect. One publisher said: “I’m not printing papers here; I’m printing money. Your material won’t generate any revenue. It will scare off my advertisers.”
"Divine Discontent"
A rumbling stirred in my writing belly that Ralph Waldo Emerson would call “divine discontent.” As a local news editor, I was primarily regurgitating canned copy and press releases. This was not why I had become a journalist. The profession had seemingly become infected with a dangerous virus that, much like a computer, threatened to corrupt the entire system unless we could download a new program to protect the hard drive.
It would have been easier to relocate to Los Angeles or San Francisco – cities with large papers that already have investigative reporters or large staffs to cover more beats and issues. But I had traded them long ago in favor of pursuing community journalism. We desperately needed the flavor of socially responsible journalism I was trained to deliver – right here. So I quit.
As an eclectic area with every walk of life, from savvy, retired CEOs and symphonic orchestra conductors to famous artists, immigrant day laborers and even working poor families, Sedona and its surrounding communities deserved better than school lunch menus and dreary police blotters. I knew in my heart that the interactive opportunities of digital journalism represented the very elixir the region needed to bring these residents together in solution-oriented public discourse. A city that also served as an international Mecca for 4.5 million annual tourists seeking fine art, natural beauty and spirituality also warranted higher-caliber journalism. And its two counties’ vast geographic proportions required interactive digital media to serve the diverse communities divided by many miles, mountains and mounting dilemmas.
Health care reform: the catalyst for media change
By 2005, while working as a freelance social reform columnist, it occurred to me that there was no coverage about local health care issues. Were any seniors losing their homes or going bankrupt due to medical costs? Was there any truth to nurses’ allegations of patient neglect at a local medical facility? What silence needed to be broken?
So I began checking out leads, interviewing nurses and patients and researching physician lawsuits for an investigative report called “Prescription for Profit?” to examine the quagmire of allegations. While one publisher liked the story, he killed it for fear of losing medical ads – a mainstay of the most area newspapers’ revenues.
This represented the third paper that had rejected my request to conduct a proper investigation, all for the same reason: “We might upset them and lose their advertising.” By 2007, when the nurses’ complaints reached epidemic proportions, I knew there was no turning back.
I put out several e-mail calls across the community for health care reports from doctors, medical staff, patients and residents. The phone and e-mail lines became flooded with responses, and someone sent my e-mail to “SiCKO” filmmaker Michael Moore who wrote to say he couldn’t wait to read the article.
Unreported stories
I had tales of lost lives, lost spouses, lost limbs, lost savings, lost homes, lost dreams and lost hope. The stories simply had to be reported. With no paper willing to print them or do them ethical justice, I would have to publish them myself. The time had come for local media to uphold Freedom of the Press and storm the Bastille of words for the public interest. But, first, I would have to revive journalism in a way that would not only capture readers’ attention and stir their hearts, but also restore a sacred trust in their media – with Truth and a good old-fashioned 18th-century style front page, void of ads and littered with peppery discourse, to awaken sleeping residents much like our forefathers’ “intelligence” system long ago to send an alarm that the British were coming.
Digital media offered the ideal solution. The Internet had become the No. 2 source of news in America. But would it work in rural Arizona? Would locals bother logging onto a Web site to read in-depth stories? It was an experiment worth trying.
As soon as word spread across the community that I was preparing a Web site to post “unreported news stories,” I was besieged with calls and e-mails to cover issues that “no other paper will touch…” Would I do a story about the trees they were tearing down to expand the highway? Would I cover the untold story about developers proposing a multiple-story parking garage in the sanctity of Oak Creek Canyon? Would I consider an article about nurses getting fired for trying to start a union in Flagstaff? Would I write about the new citizens’ water group in Prescott?
Stories poured in across the region, from Flagstaff to Prescott. I instantly saw the need and proceeded to fill it, armed solely with 30 years of award-winning writing and editing experience, a passion for the truth and a commitment to social justice.
18th century principles, 21st century technology
What started as a digital news experiment devoted to local health care reports exploded almost overnight into a full-blown newspaper with an op-ed page and a blog, plus entire pages devoted to labor and health care – topics no local press would dare to touch. With this kind of content, advertising remained out of the question. So I did it as an out-of-pocket experiment with no salary, writing most of the content in a solo effort with a small handful of artists, such as cartoonists and videographers, donating their talent.
I spent three months researching 18th century news archives to determine how to mesh journalism’s roots with modern media. How could I make it innovative? By doing everything that modern digital media was not. The Observer would open to a striking actual front page, with the historic look and feel of an 18th century paper, instead of the typical uninspiring billboard menu of stories. It would feature an interactive Code of Ethics page, where readers could view our journalistic standards and hold us accountable to walk our talk.
Why not capture the essence of 18th century newspapers – free of display ads and loaded with literary fire – to hearken an era of Freedom of the Press? Why not transform the monotony of 21st century media with the bold flavor of 18th century journalism, mimicking the antique look of old newsprint and laced with peppery narration?
From capital to principle
By blending the beauty and glory of journalism’s founding principles with the interactive power and wonder of 21st century technology – an open source digital platform embedded with live video streams, podcasts and blogs - the Observer could offer local communities the finest journalism possible, the best of the old and new, to embody transformation on every level – for community, society, democracy.
Best of all, the Observer could emancipate journalism from an advertiser-driven business commodity based on profit and restore it to a service-driven practice as a nonprofit community asset based on principle.
Journalism, it seemed, shared much in common with medicine: both needed restoration as healing practices committed to their ethics instead of operating as a commodities obsessed with currency.
Blind faith
I researched, planned, wrote, edited, photographed…. 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 3 months nonstop…learning new open source software and layout skills to design an exciting and completely new media as an experimental GIFT from a journalist for the love of her trade and her community.
Uncertain if anyone would even care to read it, I decided to follow my gut and create it in blind faith, bucking the trend for news briefs and sound bites in an attention-deficit culture. Instead, I would daringly present long literary treatises, much like the Founding Fathers in the early presses, to cultivate deeper awareness and exposure of the issues as an alternative to the erosion of reflection.
Thus The Sedona Observer was born in October 2007, offering readers rich narrative stories about their neighbors, and neighborhoods and the issues that engage them instead of shallow news. Initially distributed to about 800 households, it spread like a wildfire. Hungry for journalism similar to the American diet - high in caffeine, salt, and fat – readers devoured its content like a thick juicy steak, eager to sink their teeth into a hearty alternative to the usual mundane carrot stick and stale dry cracker.
Most forwarded it, in turn, to all their contacts, with excited letters pouring in from all over the state and the nation, creating a viral marketing campaign and affirming that much of America, not just Sedona, was disgruntled with the decaffeinated, homogenized blandness of modern journalism. They wanted the truth, sprinkled with some spice.
A major journalism void had been filled – without advertising and therefore without threat to existing media. Some papers responded to our call for media unity. Links were exchanged; community collaborations formed; and media professionals far and wide stepped up to donate their talent for a good cause.
With additional support and partnerships underway, The Sedona Observer is reaching out to touch regional communities, engaging them in a democratic public process and reclaiming journalism itself. We have the talent and the technology to “be the change we wish to see,” not just in the world but in our own little corner of the neighborhood, drilling deep into the very core of the issues to expose a bedrock of truth for societal transformation.
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