Storm Lake (2021) - full transcript
Art Cullen and his family and colleagues at Iowa's Storm Lake Times, fight-at the local level-for the survival of their biweekly small-town newspaper
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I'm sorry, we're...
we're on deadline.
We're ready to put
it on the page,
so, yeah, I appreciate
that, thanks.
Mm-hmm, bye.
Dolores, this press release
is coming at you,
from the police,
about the building.
Tom, could you
come here a sec?Sure.
They added this
to the lede.
I think we've got
to tell the readers
what the hell is going
on here, okay?
The Times.
Mmm, we're on deadline
so I'll see if he's available.
Art, are you available for
Gary Lipshutz in Sioux City?
No.
He actually is a little
bit busy at the moment.
Could you maybe try
back this afternoon?
What time is it, 9:35?
Is the building
story done, Dolores?
I'm still doing it.
When that clock hits 10:00,
I'm gonna start going apeshit.
I get real uptight
about deadlines.
Every hour we're late,
it costs us a hundred bucks.
You know, get all amped up
twice a week.
Snapping at family
members, and you know,
it never works out
well later.
You know, Jesus, you've been
doing this for 40 years
and people still don't
know what time it is.
By today's standards
"The Storm Lake Times"
has cause to celebrate,
holding steady
in our annual report that
we published on Friday.
We've always operated
at the break-even point.
One year we post a small profit,
the next a small loss.
Seven dollars.
Through three decades
we have persevered
thanks primarily to your
support, our family of readers.
A lot of people
disagree with him,
but they sure
read the paper.
I think it gets people
to become more open-minded.
At least that's what I hope.
"The Storm Lake Times" weaves
the fabric of the community
in large ways and small.
We're working hard as ever
covering the City Council,
The School Board, Board of
Supervisors in the court house.
Do you feel comfortable
saying, uh,
if it's going
to trial or not?
Oh, we're going
to trial.
Okay.
Son Tom Cullen, our reporter,
lives the job.
Come on!
Come here.
My wife, Dolores Cullen,
is everywhere with Peach
the Newshound
and the Times-mobile.
This is Ice Out Day,
the day when all the ice melts.
My sister-in-law, Mary Cullen,
is hunting recipe features.
Isn't that pretty?
What are the health
benefits of cooking
low-salt?
A pretty good rule
is that an Iowa town
will be about as strong
as its newspaper and its banks.
And without strong local
journalism to tell
a community story, the fabric
of the place becomes frayed.
The news pages are the heart
of the newspaper,
and editorial pages
the soul.
My brother, fearless leader
John Cullen,
founded the newspaper
in 1990 with the belief
that honest reporting
would attract a crowd.
It has.
It's a great moment.
Thank you.
Thanks, again.
Tom, stand up.
Give me a hug.
Now we need to grow that crowd
to sustain our mission,
and again humbly
ask your support
as we did nearly
30 years ago.
Tom?
Police reports done?
They're done.
Thank you.
We will always try
to be worthy of it.
No, no, haven't
fed her, nothing.
All right.
I've been
completely negligent.
Oh, it's still
early.
In the old days of lead type,
editors would, uh,
lock up pages of lines of type.
They'd lock them up,
uh, in what we called a chase.
And if you were
wearing a long tie,
you could lock your tie into
the, uh, into the chase, so...
So editors
wore bow ties.
I don't have
enough butter.
You always
got lard.
Yeah.
You took
all the butter.
I took all
the butter, right.
The small Iowa town
of Storm Lake is where
some of the Democrats running
for president will be speaking.
It's the first major
multi-candidate event
of the campaign so far.
Part of the appeal is to be
onstage with the town's
Pulitzer Prize-winning
newspaper editor.
Art Cullen, the lanky
white-haired editor
of "The Storm Lake Times" walks
across a downtown street.
Plenty of Democrats
running for president
want to be seen with Art.
So it kind of tells me who
really cares about rural Iowa.
And if you ain't there,
you're square.
Welcome to all
of you to Storm Lake,
The City Beautiful,
and Buena Vista University.
I'm Art Cullen, editor
of "The Storm Lake Times."
And I'd like to introduce
our first guest.
And we're very thankful
that Senator Elizabeth Warren
from Massachusetts can be here.
Thank you, Senator.
Thank you.
Farm income is down
by half since 2013.
Yup.
What can we do to provide
immediate farm income relief
in what is quickly
becoming an emergency?
A generation ago,
37 cents out of every
food dollar went
into a farmer's pocket.
Today it's 15 cents.
And one of the
principal reasons for that
has been concentration
in agribusiness.
So I want to see enforcement
of our antitrust laws.
I've called for the breakup
of these agribusinesses.
Two-thirds of Iowa's
99 counties, all rural,
are declining
in population.
How can we ease
the transition of immigrants
into rural areas
to rejuvenate them?
I'm very proud of the story
of Storm Lake in many ways.
You all have shown the value
of the immigrant community.
I never thought before this
campaign that I would get
great Mexican food in Iowa,
but I have.
Take a couple of minutes and
just tell us why you're running
for president and what
your campaign's all about.
Well, first of all,
it is wonderful to be here.
And as you know,
I'm your senator next door.
I can see Iowa
from my porch.
What'd you think, Whitney?
Did you enjoy that?
The forum thing?Yeah.
Tom, you're going to write
a lead story on the forum
and then make, what,
a sidebar on Vilsack, or...
Yeah.
Or are you just
working him into...
Yeah.
Love the cowboy shirt.
Don't ask
where I got it.
Where'd you get it?Uh, just don't ask.
Uh...
Some dead guy, or...
Yeah, it was
an estate sale.
Yeah, okay, all right.
Well, anyway, uh,
Vilsack sidebar...Yeah.
And, uh, the forum
for the front.
Yep, yep.
Okay.
I have this, uh, listing
of when Ice Out Day
was since 1975.
We kind of fell off the wagon
and stopped keeping track
of Ice Out Day since 2012.
Now with all this talk about
climate, now there's
kind of like, oh, well, maybe
this is more interesting
than we used to think.
Some of these
were already signed.
Paying some bills today.
Gotta pay the garbage man
and the rug man and...
the printer man.
Hey, John?
All the
fun stuff.
Would you mind coming
over here a sec?
I'm just laying out
the front page here,
and of course the big story
for this issue is the forum
with the five
presidential candidates.
Each image needs
about the same weight
so no candidate can say,
you know, I wasn't fair to them.
It looks good
to me, yeah.Thank you.
John's taught me everything
I know about photography.
He taught me about
how to use pictures.
He taught me all about graphics.
And he's got a great eye.
How's that forum
story coming?
Good.
Just a sec.
Ice Out, two pictures
and a story, it's all done.
Okay then.
Oh, there they are.
I left Storm Lake.
I graduated from high school
here and left and shook
the shit off my boots
and never wanted
to look back.
But my brother John
started this newspaper,
so I came back because
I was sick of working
for corporate newspapers
without a soul.
And, uh, it was a great move.
We did that
presidential forum,
but that's not the reason
we get up in the morning.
Most people in Storm Lake
care a lot more about
whether garbage
is getting picked up
than whether, uh,
Elizabeth Warren is in town.
So when it comes to news,
our motto is if it didn't happen
in Buena Vista County,
it didn't happen.
We're about an hour
and a half drive
from the Minnesota border,
halfway between
Fort Dodge and Sioux City.
We are the county seat
of Buena Vista county.
I was born in 1957.
Storm Lake was a lily-white
Republican town.
And we had one Jewish family
and one Black person.
In the '90s immigrants populated
Storm Lake and turned it blue.
But the rest of the county
drowns out that Storm Lake vote.
And so it's very much like
a microcosm of the nation.
It's important to know
who had a baby
and who died
in a community of ten
to fifteen thousand people.
That's important
in this community,
to know who's getting
married and buried.
And it's important to know what
the city council is up to.
So I think it is important
to have real news.
I'm still old-fashioned enough
to believe in the wisdom
of Thomas Jefferson
and the First Amendment.
Maybe a quaint idea these days.
But the question is,
you know, how long does
a community support journalism?
And it appears to me that
whether it's Storm Lake
or Buffalo Center,
people aren't supporting
journalism like they did.
35 in and 23 out...
Okey-doke.
...for the Times.
The last I knew,
there were about
300 news deserts
in the United States.
And these are towns with twenty
or thirty thousand people
that are now without
a local news source.
You could say, well,
they can get their news
from the metro paper,
but these metro papers
don't cover those
communities anymore.
When I started out in this
business, there were newspapers
so fat you could
barely lift them.
Now there's
no newspaper at all.
You've got to have
a strong business model
to do good journalism.
The problem is that
the business model
is falling apart and, uh...
Uh, and also, rural
communities are a lot weaker
now than they used to be.
And that makes rural
newspapers weaker.
A lot of the mom and pop
stores that were
the basis of our
advertising are gone.
The small-town feed dealers
and businesses that catered
to farmers, which is our base
here, they're gone because,
the family farms are going,
and they're being taken over
by big corporate livestock
operations which either have
their own feed mills or they buy
direct from the manufacturer.
So they don't need Bob and
Sally's feed store anymore.
And Bob and
Sally's feed store
then doesn't need
"The Storm Lake Times."
So somehow we've
got to increase
the number of readers.
If you don't have readers,
you've got nothing.
But now people want
to get their news for free,
because apparently looking
at their breakfast on Facebook
is all the information
they need to live
as an informed
voter in America.
And that's not how you
sustain a democracy, you know?
You need people who can talk
about facts and deal in facts.
And that Iowa is getting
warmer and wetter
through the decades,
those are facts.
That's what we're here for.
And people have said, "Oh, well,
that's not worth a dollar."
Chelsea, right?
Yes.
Uh, I'm Tom Cullen
with the Times
at Storm Lake.
Hi.
And it's my understanding you
had some material for the media?
If you have your card,
I can email you and make
sure that we get you that
information that has
all the speakers
and their bios and...
Thank you so much,
really appreciate it.Yeah, you're welcome.
Joe Catera,
how's it going?
Okay, welcome, are you ready
to stand with me today?
Are you ready?
Let me know if you're ready
to work with me today,
because all about what
we're doing today is going
to be about how hard
we will work together
to move our issues forward.
Our farm and rural communities
are in crisis mode right now.
We're fed up
with multinational
corporations
extracting our wealth.
If you wonder why our cities
and towns are being
hollowed out, you know, when
you understand the largest
owner of beef, poultry,
and pork in this country
is a foreign corporation
extracting wealth,
taking opportunities
out of rural communities.
We need to protect
our natural resources.
Believe it or not, we're not
the last generation
that's going
to live on this land, you know,
so it's time for a change.
So thank you all very much
for coming, thank you.
Hi, Emmanuel.
This is Dolores Cullen
at "The Storm Lake Times."
Can you call me back
today so we can talk
about your, uh,
talent show experience?
Thank you, bye.
Emmanuel Trujillo,
the guy who tipped me off,
sent me a thing last night.
And so I looked it up online,
and he seems to be advancing
in this show called
"Tengo Talento, Mucho Talento."
And so I looked at the video...
This is a Storm Lake guy
who works at Tyson and...
It looks like they like him.
Well, hey, Emmanuel.
You work at Tyson, right?
I wanted to be able
to take a picture of you.
I thought it would be kind of
cool to, you know,
you'd just be in like the Tyson
parking lot or something.
Like, you know, by your car.
And then it would just be...
You can't have any picture
taken at Tyson?
That's okay.
Could I come to where you live?
Okay, muy bien.
Okay, bye.
This is really good for
our community when we have,
like, happy stories
about all types of people.
We're all about happy.
That's my...
That's my beat, Art.
You're on
the happy beat.
Yeah.
Hello.
Come in.
My name's Dolores.
And I am here
to see Emmanuel.
Yeah, he's coming.Okay, he's coming.
It's nice to meet you.Yeah!
I'm Elena.
Oh, great.
And then this
is your daughter.
Yeah.
Okay.
Hi!
You're a singing star.
Yep!
Congratulations
Thank you so much.
What do you think your
chances are of, uh,
going on beyond
the next round?
It's, uh, maybe a hundred... 100
more people.
A hundred... Oh!
Yeah, so the
competition is too hard.
A hundred more people will
be competing against you...
Yep, in that second time.
The second time.
So weren't you
really nervous?
Yeah, the first time.
Oh, really, really nervous.
And I had...You don't look nervous.
You look, you look...Oh, yeah.
kind of, like, excited.
And that's how you looked
when you were singing, too.
You looked very confident.
I'm okay, I'm okay.
Big smile.
Okay.
When I met Art, he was
at the, um, Algona paper.
And they were doing things
like this, uh, feature stories
about a family that had,
um, seventeen children.
And, uh, it appealed to me,
'cause I'm a visual person.
I'm an art major.
I wasn't really into politics
or anything like that,
but very interested in telling
stories in a creative way.
And so, to be involved
with them,
that was something
that I was interested in.
I didn't know that
I would become involved
in the enterprise eventually.
But, uh, I started
taking pictures.
And I was usually told
by Art that, you know,
if something is interesting,
go ahead and report it.
And this, uh, we were covering
how, uh, local people
were teaching English
to newcomers
who did not speak English.
And these were
Sudanese people.
And so I took the picture
of... of this woman,
and Art chose
to run it big like this.
And we did get an anonymous
letter by...
from someone who said, "Oh, why
is she on the front page?"
And it was really mean.
Um, and that this was
a long time ago.
I mean, there was
kind of blatant racism.
Uh, so then Julio Barroso was
featured, uh, back in 1996
as being a kid who helped
other kids learn English.
And there was a raid of
the meatpacking plant.
And then in the following issue
it was reported
that Julio is gone.
8-year-old deported
with parents.
Since we do these feature
stories, we get to know people,
but they're not just, like,
anonymous immigrants.
This is a kid that
we think is awesome and cute.
So then the next day
when we find out
that they were kicked out
of the U.S., uh, we cared.
And so then later
we were asking, you know,
whatever happened to Julio?
And that's where Tom started
doing this investigating,
and we actually found him
in Mexico
as a young adult today.
A little boy from 22 years ago
was top of mind last Thursday.
Julio Barroso.
In 1996, the world changed
for Julio,
then in second grade
at North School.
The immigration agents swooped
in on IBP, predecessor to Tyson,
and rounded up scores of
undocumented immigrants.
Barroso's family was among them.
Julio, now 30 years old, is
married and the father of three,
working in Guadalajara, Mexico
for one-tenth the $18 per hour
he could get in Storm Lake.
A dream is foreclosed.
In our lush, green town
of 15,000 or so...
we don't know
our exact population
because so many are immigrants.
Nestled among the row crops
and hog houses
at Northwest Iowa,
2,200 workers cut up pigs
and turkeys for Tyson.
300 others crack eggs
for liquid shipment
at Rembrandt Foods
15 miles north.
Hundreds more distill
ethanol from corn.
And those 3,000 or so...
maybe half undocumented,
who knows...
are worrying not just about jobs
but also about their lives
in Trump's America.
Even those with papers will tell
you they feel a little edgy.
Dreamers are our vitality,
our future.
They want to stay here
with family,
unlike so many of us who push
our children off to Chicago
or the Twin Cities.
And we all wish that Julio
would come home
to Storm Lake someday.
We need him and miss him.
We're going to suburban
Sulphur Springs, Iowa.
Providence Township.
The home of John Snyder.
Big John.
Plumber and farmer.
I'm mainly interested in,
when did he plant corn?
How did he cope
with the spring weather,
which was torrents of rain?
Wow.
This would be a picture like
we've never seen, John.
I mean, it's just barely
knee-high now.
We had one day
on May 4th...
For corn.
For planting, yeah.
And then we got
rained out...
until the 15th
and 16th of May.
We had two days.
We didn't get back in
until June 2nd.
Have you ever seen it this wet
in the spring before?
No. Never.
Not in my lifetime.
You know, I usually get out
end of April.
You're right.
And we're usually done
by May 10th.
What do you figure you get
knocked off in your yield?
What'd you get
last year... on corn?
Oh, probably 225.
Probably.
What would you guess
you'll get this year?
Take a wild-ass guess.
150.
I don't know.
If you say 150,
then everything
after that is better.
Yeah.Right?
Right.
That's gravy.
That's gravy on top
of your taters.
Hi, Peach.
I wasn't really interested
in doing the "Knee-High
by the Fourth of July" story
like we always did,
but this year the weather's
been so bizarre
that I thought
we really needed to do it, um,
because we've never seen
the corn like this before.
A guy farming today, you're
going to need, you know,
over a thousand acres
to support a family.
And a generation ago,
John could raise a family
on 350 to 500 acres
if he sustained himself
on the corn,
and then could make
some real money on hogs.
That all changed
in the 1990s, really,
when the pork industry was
vertically integrated,
where the packer owns the hogs,
and drove John
out of production.
You know, that's the game
for most people.
If you're going
to be in agriculture,
then you're working
for a company.
Let's say you break up the, uh,
vertical integration model.
Then where does that leave
our pork production system?
And where does it leave
these immigrants
who are working here
if you blow it all up?
And so I don't know.
I don't know.
Yeah! Whooo!
God bless the Irish.
Everybody make yourself
comfortable.
We're just glad to have, uh,
Senator Grassley here with us.
And I also want
to thank him
for being super supportive
of the water well industry.
And I'm really glad
to see him here.
When I am at your, uh,
city administrative building
or your local library
and you folks can't come
to my town meetings,
I try to go places because
you're working.
So I get a chance
to interact with people
that wouldn't otherwise
interact with me.
Now, what questions
do you have?
Anything is legitimate.
I've got one.
I'm not 100% political
follower of either party.
And so, I see how this country
is divided in half.
And I'll talk to one
political party and...
they might have
a good idea,
and the other one is going
to say, "I don't want it."
Even if it's good,
they don't want it.
Just they're going
to be the opposite.
And I see that
on both sides.
What's it going to take
to change that?
You could have asked
an easier question.
Um, first of all, there is
too much partisanship.
And it's worse now
than it's ever been.Yeah.
But, you know,
controversy makes news.
So if people are getting along,
it doesn't make news.
Thank you.
You're still doing
a good job.
Okay.
Next question.
As we know about Storm Lake,
it's heavily reliant
on immigration.
Uh, what's your
sense on that?
Um, what's...
what do you tell people
in Storm Lake
who are afraid?
I don't think you have
to be afraid
unless you're
violating the law.
But as a practical
matter, uh,
wasn't there a figure out
a couple of weeks ago
that there could be
100,000 people deported?Mm-hmm.
Well, think, 100,000
out of 11 million people...
Yeah.
So why would you have
to be very concerned?
I mean, if... say if you're
undocumented here in town...
and let's just be real,
there are undocumented
people here in town...
I would be very afraid if
Trump admits through tweet
that we're going to deport
tens of millions of people.
Well...Uh, and I understand
the news media debunked
a little bit of that.
We... I... I get your point.
We got people
in Congress
that think you line up
11 million people
and get them
out of the country.
That's not
the real world.
And I'm not telling
anybody that.Yeah. Okay.
The only thing you've heard me
say about legalization is
we can't take care
of that issue
until we convince the people
that we can secure the border.
And listen, you know how
many people on the right
would be irritated
with what I just told you...
that I'd even be
thinking about that?Yeah.
It is meaningful when
politicians want to have
a serious discussion with us.
It's all Dad ever wanted
when he started this thing.
Growing up here in Storm Lake
and being Art Cullen's
son was...
It was a bit
of a roller coaster.
I remember there were teachers
who would say,
"This is what Art Cullen thinks,
and he's wrong."
You always had to know
about the issues.
It was very difficult actually,
now that I look back at it.
I never put two and two together
as to why Dad would be
working on a Saturday.
Mom was always the one
who took care of us.
Okay, can you put
them in, Joe?
Now I realize you can't
necessarily go
to kids' baseball games
or take them on vacation
when there's a paper
to get out the next week.
There's a demand for excellence
if you're a Cullen.
You will not get away
with less than 110%.
Every one of Dad and John's kids
worked here.
And I'm the only one left.
But still at the same time,
there's this bond
that connects us all.
We all know that we gotta
stick together.
'Cause we're all
in the same leaky ship.
Tom, can you come here
a second, please?
That's a confusing
sentence.
And the prospect
of the newspaper
not being around terrifies me.
'Cause not only
is it a newspaper
which is, in my opinion,
the most important pillar
of the community.
It's the family.
You brought sunshine
with you.
Right? It's coming.
I've got to warn you, there's
a bunch of fans in here.
They're kind of... It might be
kind of a circus in there.
Thanks so much
for having us...
Well, thanks for coming.
We appreciate it.
Come on in,
everybody.
Thank you.
How are you doing?
Glad to meet you.
I'm John Cullen.
I'm Jim Cullen.
Nice to meet you.
Jim is my brother.
Uh, he's the editor
of the "Progressive
Populist"...
Uh-huh....out of Austin, Texas.
And we produce it here.
Nice.
Well, anyway,
welcome to Iowa.
Thank you.
And especially
to Storm Lake.
We've been talking
with, uh, people
a lot about rural America...Mm-hmm.
...and how we got kind of
flown over, uh...
...last time.
So we're real happy
you're here.
And we're hearing
that perhaps the campaigns
might not even play in Iowa,
Wisconsin, and Ohio
in the general election...
that we're going to get
flown over again.
Policy-wise...Right.
...rural America is
often talked about
kind of like a problem
we've got to solve.
Right. Right.
Our message ought to make
sense in rural America,
'cause the Democratic Party
grew out of the idea that...
that we're standing up for
the overlapping interests
between workers
and farmers.
It's kind of
an unusual community.
It's an immigrant
community.
But people here
are living in fear.
And they were living
in fear
during the two terms of the
Obama administration as well.
What kind of damage
has this wrought?
And we're not just talking
about immigrants.
We're just talking about
race relations in general.
Our city is growing,
finally.
Not by much,
but we're proud of...
To be... to even have
a positive number
is a big deal
for us, right?
If you net out the factor that
immigration played in that,
we'd be flat-line at best.
And so when the President says
we're full, I'm thinking...
Right....we're not full.
But the thing is, if we do not
resolve racial inequality
in our lifetime...
yours, anyway...
um, it could sink the American
project in our lifetime.
I think we're going
to have to go.
I'm sorry.Well, anyway...
Sorry to cut it
a little short.
Thank you very much.Same here.
Thanks for having us.
I hope you'll be back.I sure hope so.
Good to see
you again.
I hope you stop by again.I hope so.
Hey, did you sign our sign
of the Times?
Oh, no, I'll sign that.
Yeah, you gotta go
up top now.
Oh, man.
You're a lefty.
All the great ones,
you know?
Did you ever
pitch?
All right.
No, I got two left hands.
Oh.
We're headed out
to see Tom Lane,
who's running for city council.
And the reason why
I'm interested in this
is, Tom became interested
in city government,
uh, when they were about to
shut down Westview Trailer Park
and they were about to evict him
from his house.
And he took the leadership
role in that community
to stand up to the mayor
and the city council in Alta
to say that these are our homes
and we're staying.
Oh, man.These weigh about 12 pounds.
And they're a flat head
Dutch German cabbage.
How do you get something
to be 12 pounds?
All this stuff
is pure organic.
No chemicals.
And when did you move
to Westview again?
31 years ago.31 years ago.
I'll just say this,
it just...
it does look a lot better
than what it was.Yeah.
And it's my understanding that
you were behind all that...
Yeah....with your effort
at city council.
Is that the...
the culminating piece?Yeah.
I was reading
the... in the paper
that all these openings
were coming up.Yeah.
And all of a sudden
I decided, you know what,
I'm going to run
for city council.Mm-hmm.
How many signatures
did you need for that?
They said
it was ten,
but I got actually
15 of them.Okay.
My wife here, Tarla.
Grab some signs
out of the back end
of the pickup here.
Okay, if everybody's ready,
we're going to hit
the campaign trail.
All right.
What expertise
could you offer?
Really, my expertise...
I can walk in
a trailer house
and tell you
exactly right now
what's not kosher
and everything.Uh-huh.
Well, I've been underneath
every one of these
trailer houses.
Either checking
heat tapes or...Yeah.
...fixing a frozen pipe,
20 below zero,
wind blowing up
your... back end.Yeah.
Not just work on things,
but I'd help people, too.Yeah.
You know...Well, yeah.
Like, I've given them
vegetables and...
Yeah....everything.
And I used to go
to Sioux City and...
Yeah....and buy a truckload
of bread...
Oh, I didn't know that.
...and bring it
back here and...
and just hand it
out to people.
Wow.
Hi there.
Hi.
I'm going to put a sign out.
Is that all right?
That's totally fine.
Yep, go for it.
So has someone else
in your family
been Pork Queen,
Pork Princess?
No.My other daughter, she's our
Little Miss Fair Queen.
Oh, yeah.So she's...
Oh, okay.
Now it's coming
together for me.
I've seen the name...Yeah, and she was a...
...McCarthy....Little Miss too
when she was that age.
You guys have royalty
in your blood.
We do.
This is
Mrs. Hughes-Camp.
She's our second grade
teacher.
Hi.
Nice to meet you.
Do you guys know
what's in pig's feed?
Any guesses?
Calvin?
Corn.Yep, corn is one of them.
And then soybeans
is the other.
The piglets in this picture
are drinking milk
from their mother.
Look at their noses.
They are called snouts.
Can you make a sound
like a pig?
Okay, so the pig we're
going to bring in
is about three
or four weeks old.
You like
the diapered pig?
I haven't
seen that.
Here, let me get
around here.
You guys are...
We try to prevent,
uh, accidents.
Yeah, because I'm sure
it's happened before.
It's traumati...
Yeah, it has.
Turn him a little
more sideways, yeah.
Yeah.
You guys have
any questions?
Do you hand them out
to the market
when they're babies
and full-grown?
So they only go to market
when they're a big pig.
The pig has feed
all day long,
because we want them to grow
as much as possible
in a short amount of time.
Because that is what the pork
industry is all about.
We want to grow
the best product
with the least amount
of resources.
Art, when I write about
the pork producer's visit,
could I write "This little
piggy wears a diaper"?
Sure.Okay.
'Cause it seemed like
they were kind of, like,
covering up the diaper part.
And they'd wrapped him up
in a towel.
And I'm like,
gee, why cover that up?
I mean, this... why...
especially
in Albert City where...
I went there last night,
and it absolutely
reeked again.
It was so putrid
I almost gagged
from hog confinements.
And I was
at the post office
and a guy said hi
to me,
'cause I was delivering
the papers.
And I said, "Does it
really smell this bad
in town all the time?"
Because it smelled
so bad on Monday.
And he said, "Oh, no,
it's just harvest
and they're drying
a lot of corn."
And I'm like, no, this is
not the smell of drying corn.
This is hog shit.
Um, so anyway.
He has really
pretty eyes.
Okay, now recipes.
What are you thinking?
So I have lots.
Okay, so this pumpkin
bread recipe is,
um, from my grandma,
my mom's mom.
Oh!And it's delish.
The pea soup recipe,
um, we used to have pea soup
every Christmas...
Really?...with my grandpa.
'Cause it was one of
my grandpa's favorites, so.
Oh, nice. Well, we could
do all of them!
I don't care.
Whatever.
Are you okay with that?Yeah.
I mean, that's a bunch, but
it's... they're all good.
Sandy, hi.
This is John Cullen
at "The Storm Lake Times."
I need to check on a loan
payment from September 16th.
I need to know how much
was principal
and how much was interest.
All right, wish me luck.
Per paper, we try to get over
$3,000 worth of ads.
They keep the lights on.
And that can be hard.
Especially when
Art won the Pulitzer.
It actually got more difficult.
Because people in this town
can be very conservative.
And they didn't like
that he won.
So I actually had a big
backfire on me for a while.
Hey, Mike.
Holiday open house time.
Here's what we did
last year.
Okay.
I'm not for sure,
so we'll have to go over
that sort of percentages...
Yeah.
That's no problem.
Hey, Travis.Hey, how are you?
I have last year's ad
that we did.
Okay.We did the quarter
page in color.
We could even do like a couple
more pictures on there, too.
Okay, yeah.
This is what we did
last year.
It's a little smaller
than a quarter page
for a total of 100.
But it was for two times
in the paper in color.
Or we can go down
to the one-time one.
'Cause I know a lot
of people are going
to be in Friday's issue.
Friday's?Yeah, next Friday.
And it's a hundred?Yeah.
Or we can do...
we can go down to the 52
if you want to do just
once, that's fine.
Can I think about it?Yeah. Yeah.
When do you need it by?
I can always stop in
on Monday
or Tuesday
next week, too.
Running twice...
when would it run?
Wednesday and Friday?Yeah.
Let me think about it
just a minute...Yeah.
...and get a hold of you
Monday morning.Yeah.
Sounds good.
Hey, you have a good day.You too.
Tell Mary I said hi.
I think it looks good
for our newspaper
to have all the ads
from downtown in there,
'cause then you can see that,
like, the businesses
also support you.
You know, scratch our back,
scratch yours.
I mean, how else do you make
a small community survive?
Art and I have always liked,
uh, delivering papers.
You know, that's one of
the most important things
about journalism.
The... the best stories
in the world aren't any good
if you don't
get them out on the street
so people can read them.
You run into people
in the store,
"Oh, you got the new paper?"
Or maybe
they'll tell you off.
That's happened to me
a couple of times.
And that's good, too.
Art's definitely the voice of
the Democrats here in BV County.
We're largely Republican
in this area.
And I am more Republican.
So I like to read, though,
what he has to say about it
and think about it.
I kind of bypass over
the opinions most days.
Everybody's got one,
and usually they stink.
I'm more interested
in the local news
and what's
actually happening.
If we see something we don't
like or we find offensive,
it's easy to reach out to them
and let them know how we felt.
And they are
really good at,
you know, getting
back to you and...
and sit down and
discussing the issue at hand.
I think it's very helpful
that we know what's going on
in the community.
There are consequences for
everything we do.
And we feel that feedback
immediately.
You know, you guys
cover a lot.
You are big advocates for
all the Latino community.
With the struggles that all
the newspapers we have,
no matter what
language you are,
I was thinking that maybe
we try to do
something together,
you know, we can help
one each other.
Yeah.
So I was thinking
you guys can give me
your story in English.
I translate it, you know,
in... in Spanish.
And all the credit
is going to be
for...
for your paper.
So would the stories
that we do
in the Times go
into La Prensa then?
It will be...
Yes.
And I will...
So we can take stories
out of La Prensa?
You can take stories
out of La Prensa also.
I will translate those
stories in English for you.
Okay.
Cool.
So would we do the ad sales
or would you?
I was thinking no, you know,
you have advertising people.
One person.
Oh, you have one person.
Okay.
Yeah.
I just like the idea of
shared content... myself.
And I don't know
what appetite there is
among advertisers to go in
La Prensa Latino publications,
but I'm sure there is one.
If it will be 15,
20 years ago
probably we would not be
talking right now.
Right, yeah.Yeah.
Yeah. But it's
getting tough.
And it's sad,
because we are losing...
Yeah.
...the big foundation of
the small communities
that our newspapers...Yeah.
Because nobody else is going
to fight for the little person.
Nobody.
Nobody going to talk
about corruption.
Nobody going to
talk about the church;
about, you know,
the activity
that the community
get together,
no matter what
race we are...
Facebook don't
going to do that.
Yeah.
But it's sad.
It's sad that
it's taking over.
Some politicians
talk about fake news.
There it is,
the fake news.
Yeah.
Facebook.
We go to the,
you know, to the field.
Yeah.
We look the person
eye to eye.
We interact
with that person.
Yeah.
We have to live
next to them.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Well, it sounds like
a good possibility.
I'm, uh... But as I say,
I think, well, Art has to...
Sign off.Make the decision.
...sign off on this, uh...Mm-hmm.
Thank you so much.
Well, thanks
for stopping in.
No, thank you.
Thanks a lot, Lorena.Thank you.
I appreciate it.Yeah, thank you so much.
Could I have, uh, water too
when you have a minute?
So what's, uh,
this Lorena want to do?
She wants...She was in here
yesterday and asked...
Yeah.
...if we could share
content and ads.
She says that there's
a lot of potential
for us to sell ads
for her.
And if she's interested
in our content,
we can make a little
bit more money.
I don't see
why we can't do it.
It wouldn't hurt to have
a couple feet on the street.
Yeah.
And she said there's a good
appetite for our stories there.
It's just no one can
read them in English.
So it would be a way
to build readership.
Sounds good to me.Yeah.
Is there anything else
we could be doing with,
say, the website
or something like that?
I like the idea of,
like, Starbucks
selling Wall Street
Journal subscriptions.
Oh yeah, I saw that, yeah.
Like, why can't
we do that?
If you could pitch it
to a place where
as soon as you
log on to public Wi-Fi,
You'd promote it,
and it's free...
just one for day only.
I don't know that
we have enough critical mass
to make it work,
but who knows?
If it sells us a couple
of subscriptions...
Yeah....what the hell?
An idea that I raised before
is the idea of a podcast.
And then you would be
the star of it.
If we could do it
semi-regularly,
maybe once a month
or something.
Who's going to sell the
sponsorship for a podcast
that has a hundred
listeners?
I think this should be
about reporting and...
and I should stick
to writing columns
and editorials and...Okay.
And I don't understand
podcasts, necessarily.
And if I wanted to
get into radio,
I would have
gotten into radio.Yeah.
I understand
this whole...
If the podcast idea is like...
I'm not married to it.
No, no, I know.But...
I like the idea that you're
bringing things up,
but it's just that, uh,
we've got to concentrate
on circulation,
I think.
We're putting out
a good paper.
That's all I know.Yeah.
Ultimately that
will pay, right?
Yeah.
The lake is frozen
and snow-swept.
Men will squat
in fishing shacks
to take out their anger
on walleye and perch
while contemplating
the Christmas message.
It must be time to write
that holiday letter.
The kids are okay.
They're not kids.
They're adults able to ride
a bicycle solo.
You done good, Dolores.
Yet I wake up with a pit
in my stomach.
The Republic is under attack
from foes foreign and domestic.
The Constitution is under test.
A free press is in peril.
Here in a small Northwest Iowa
town full of churches,
you would like to
think better of ourselves.
We rush to our neighbor in need,
bring in his crops,
shovel his drive,
donate for his new kidney
at a pancake feed,
yet the Commander-in-Chief
thinks the law of the land
is something for someone else.
Anxiety is the word.
The corn wasn't that bad.
The rain
just wouldn't stop.
Tyson is building a new
feed mill for its turkeys,
a good sign for Storm Lake.
The refugee children in
our elementary holiday concert
are the Christmas story.
The divine finds us
despite the walls.
Christmas is the time
when we hope to perfect
the flaws of this world.
There remains more
warmth of sharing here
than shadows of fear.
The hope that we can be made
more perfect endures,
an antidote to anxiety.
I just got a first baby
of the year picture, Art.
They're Micronesian.
We usually make a big fuss
about the first baby.
It's a horizontal picture
with a cut line.
I've been up all night.
I'm not in
a good mood.
Let's get that story.
Okay.
Well, I guess
we'll just go without
heart medicine again
this month.
Our accountant says
we made about $2,000,
so...
Uh, a profit of $2,000 is
better than a loss of $2,000.
We're kind of
like farmers.
As long as we have
money in the bank
at the end of the year,
we're happy.
Squeaking by.
We're still keeping
ten employees fed.
And, uh, I don't,
uh, get paid now.
I'm on social security,
so I'm donating
my time to the cause.
The reason he's here is to
make sure we don't go broke.
Yeah.
And then we'll be
really screwed.
Here you go.
Welcome.
The purpose of this meeting
is to give you more information
about our dual language program
that we're proposing
to start in Fall of 2020.
So next fall.
There are some other dual
language programs in Iowa.
We will be the seventh
in the state.
We want this program
to look much like
what our demographics
look like in our school.
So we're going to run
a lottery system.
We're not sure how many
we'll have the first year,
but we're guessing that
this will catch on
and we'll get more
and more every year.
All right, are you ready?
Everybody's got
a thumbs up, right?
One, two, three.
Dual language!
Dual language!
What's going to happen
on Monday exactly?
How does
a caucus work?
Okay, uh, what a caucus is,
is people will gather
at community centers
and there'll be
collections of neighbors.
And there's expected to
be record turnout of like
250,000 or more on Monday
night across the state.
And they'll come into
these fire stations
and schoolhouses
at the precinct level
and they'll hear speeches
from precinct captains.
And then they'll say,
okay, now everybody
split into caucuses.
And so the Warren people
are going to caucus
over here in this corner
and the Bernie people
are going to caucus
over here in this corner.
And so everybody goes to
their respective place,
and then they
start counting heads.
And so you need
15% to be viable
to get a delegate out of
that precinct caucus.
And that's why it's
really not a primary.
It's a party-building
exercise.
This is where the delegate
selection process starts
for the Democratic
National Convention.
Whereas in a primary,
you know, you just
go in and vote.
I just put it on
the first page.
Okay, great.
Yeah, that's perfect.
And then, so I took out
Saturday morning.
Right.
And then the Monday
through Friday morning.
Yep, that's perfect.And that's everything
that was...
You did it just right.
Let's see if we
came out with 31 like
we're supposed to.
I've written several columns
over the last couple of months
explaining what we're going
to do with the TV listings.
We had to do something,
because with our insurance
and printing costs and
everything else going up,
we just...
we're looking for ways
to control expenses
without, uh,
cutting personnel costs,
which most newspapers
have done.
And we have run a TV section
since we started, that...
it was a 12-page tab that
had all these channels.
And we thought
that maybe, uh,
we wouldn't need to run
the TV Times anymore.
And, uh, our readers
told us, no, don't do that.
Uh, they still like
the printed version better.
So we asked our readers
to let us know
which channels
they wanted to keep.
And, uh, so we were
able to drop
from about 80 channels
down to 31.
We figured all told that
running this TV section
was costing us close
to $20,000 a year.
And this'll cut our expenses
by more than half.
I hope to satisfy
our customers that way.
I've been referred
to twice now...
once in "The New York Times"
and once in "The Boston Globe"...
as having a white
mop... of hair.
Like one of those
cotton floor mops.
Think that's what you're
being compared to, Art.
So that's a hint that
you need a haircut.
Yeah.
Hint to the world.
Is that it?
Well, okay then.
And so when we go out
to caucus,
I went to make sure
that everybody
brings at least
one person with them.
Do everything you can
to make sure
that the 2020 Iowa Caucus
has the largest
voter turnout
in the history of
the Iowa Caucus.
Thank you all very much.
I am here to speak to those who
are still making up your minds
to look you in the eye
and ask you to caucus for me.
We will continue to seek
to have a message that,
uh, reaches out
to everybody
and makes sure
everybody feels welcome.
We need those Yang ads.
Is the policy
victories worth
the personal foibles,
you know what I mean?
I mean, who's
determining what's...
Yeah.
You know?
Is it you, the press,
determining?
Sure.
Could be.
Or is it...
is it, you know,
actions that
he's actually done.
So no, I stand be...
behind him 100%.
Sure.
Nice to see you again.
Really what I'm after
here is what you're seeing
from voters, what
message seems to be
resonating the most.
So I'm going into
the small towns,
and they feel...
people feel so forgotten.
Especially farmers.
And they talk
about the tariffs.
And I think they want
a leader who has...
who has a strong
character.
Yeah.And who is going to
lead us into the future.
Literally hours away,
Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders
are basically tied at the top
of the national polls.
And a lot of the polling
on the air has them
potentially one, two...
although a little more middling
with Biden and some of
the other candidates.
But the sharp ideological
divide between the two
does mirror divisions
within the Democratic Party.
One is campaigning on
shaking things up.
The other is campaigning on
steadying the ship.
Tonight's results
could ultimately signal
where the Democratic
nomination is heading.
There we are.
Peach... Art's on TV.
It just feels
like a different energy.
I don't know how to
describe it.
Well, it's not akin
to anything,
but I think
it's closest to '04
when Howard Dean
had a lead.
John Kerry shot through
at the end.
And, uh, everybody was anxious
about electability.
And that's been the theme
this year.
We are so afraid of
screwing this up in Iowa.
And, uh... Uh, Art, am I being
too simplistic?
Wow, you are hungry.
It feels like...
Sanders feels like
he's got the most
identified ones,
as they like to
say out here.
You know, he had what,
half the caucus crowd, uh,
four years ago.
I'm not sure that
he'll end up on top.
Anybody who is sure
is too full of themselves.
Hello. How you doing?
Good. How are you?Who are you guys against?
Pete? Did you see him
here at BV?
We didn't.
Uh, we were working.
Oh, he had
a big crowd here.
Very impressive.Yeah.
Did you decide
just recently?
Yes.Yeah.
Who are you with tonight?
Yeah?
They've got a pretty good
table over there.
Absolutely.
When did you make up
your mind?
Pretty much when we got here.
It was...
Have fun.
Okay, we're going
to get started!
Hola, Hola.
Everyone have one?
Okay. Now we're going to have
the precinct captains...
which for every party
that's here
that wants
to represent themselves,
um, you guys will have
two minutes to talk.
Hi, my name is
Linda Torres.
I really think my uncle Bernie
can beat Trump.
A couple of months ago
my dad had passed,
and he was in
the hospital for a week.
And we didn't have any time
to grieve over my dad
because we were too busy
fighting insurance companies.
And I truly believe that my dad
would have still been alive
if we had Medicare for all,
and he could have been
covered in Iowa,
and as soon as he got into
that ER and been helped out
by doctors instead of
waiting and waiting,
he would have still been here,
watching us fight
for our country.
Please vote for Bernie Sanders
'cause he's gonna change
our lives forever.
Hi, everyone.
My name is Jean-Marco.
Thank you very much for
coming here today.
Um, I'm here to advocate
for Andrew Yang.
Anybody else?
Okay.
All together?Yeah.
One, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight,
nine, ten,
11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
16, 17, 18,
19, 20.
Whoo!Yay!
Oh, that was...
I was like...
We got 20.
What did Amy have?
Amy had 20.
Right at 20.
So Warren and Amy
each had 20.
And you were with Yang
and you ended up with...
Sanders.
But you would have gone
with Biden...
Yes....to make him viable.
Yes.
Had you made up
your mind a while ago?
Uh, no.
I was...
As far as
second option,
I was pretty un...
undecided until today.
How about on Yang,
though?
Oh, yeah, I've been decided
on him for... months now.
Okay.
So but you're not
really disappointed?
Or are you?
I'm very...
I'm super disappointed.
Oh, you are? Okay.
All right.
Super disappointed.
Bernie! Bernie! Bernie... Oh, my God.
This is insane.
I was not expecting this.
I thought
there would be groups
that would be
relatively even,
but I did not
expect, like,
that this would be
such a bloodbath.
You should have seen the army
of Latinos at Better Day.
Ooh, awesome.
Yeah, I'm going to send you
like 30-some pictures.
You looked
at the Register, Tom?
I have not looked at the...
I'm looking at the site
Troy Price sent me.
Initial reports out of BV...
Nothing yet.
Hi, Ron. This is Dolores
from the Times.
Can you call me back?
We're trying to figure out
how many people
you had at Methodist Manor.
Thanks, bye.
So Warren's winning in
Des Moines at these precincts?
She did just okay here.
That's to be expected.
Uh, Buttigieg
is killing Webster.
Uh, Warren...There'll be...
Yeah, Warren didn't even
make viability there.
Yeah.Whoa.
Yeah.
Bill! What's the news
in Dubuque?
Yeah, I'm waiting, too.
It's killing me.
That's why I called,
you know?
But it'll...
it sounds like
Bernie probably carried
Dubuque though, huh?
Thank you.
See ya. Bye.
So what we do know is
that we've been seeing
these pictures
from precinct sites
all over Iowa tonight
where Joe Biden in some of them
has not been viable.
Why is that important?
Because the Biden campaign
has been saying for a long time
that they believe they're
one of the few campaigns
that would be
viable across the state.
That yes, they may
not be as strong
in the more populated areas... That's right.
...like Des Moines
and Cedar Rapids, Davenport...
Who?Joe Biden... uh, not viable.
...run up the score
in more rural areas.
And I have to say, Brian,
we've been covering
just about every single
Biden event there is
over the last few months
here in Iowa.
Uh, a lot of the places we go,
the best dining option
is probably
a Casey's General Store.
So these are rural areas.
And so we should consider
that tonight...
All right, Mike Memoli
at Biden Headquarters
where they officially
know nothing.
What are you hearing?
We're all trying to figure out
here in New York
why we don't have any results
and where the hang-up may be.
I've never seen
anything like it.
Oh, hell, the...
Every election
is like this.
I can tell you the Iowa
Democratic Party now
isn't saying anything.
It's not 10:00 yet.
Yeah.
I think AP's got
a projection coming out.
In a, you know,
a general election,
you won't get the results
until midnight.
Yeah.
And yet nothing has been
reported...
It's not 10:00 yet.Yeah.
Has it ever been
in your experience...
No. Of course not.
Sometimes you won't get
the results till the next day.
Yeah.You know?
...further endearing Iowa
to the Democratic Party.
Jeez...
I know it's going to raise
more questions for sure.
Oh, that's...
What a load of crap.
I'll be curious about there's
the process questions.
Is this the way we should,
you know, nominate a President?
Iowa Democratic Party has
put a statement out.
Thank you, my dear.
Let's hear this.
We've experienced a delay
in the results
due to the fact that
the Iowa Democratic Party
is reporting out three
data sets for the first time.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.True enough.
But regardless, we've only got
the explanation.
We still don't have any digits.
Everybody's saying it's going
to kill the Iowa caucuses...
Yeah....this delay.
It shouldn't, but it...
but it will.
Great.Good night.
Hey, Tom, would you mind
taking a look at this?
Sure.
Hey, Tom, throw me
a pack of smokes,
'cause if you
kill me sooner,
you can own
the newspaper sooner.
Is that reading
all right to you?
Yeah, it was great.
It was better
than I could have done.
I really wasn't concentrating
on other precincts,
but I could just say
Bernie swept the Latino
vote in Storm Lake.
Yeah.
That is 100% true.
I'm just going to operate
as though we're not going
to see any results tonight.
I heard it's those
caucus cards
that are causing
all the problems.
They never had
them before.
Yeah.They just counted heads.
Yeah.
Well... how much longer
you going to stay here?
About another 15 minutes.
But I got my lede-in,
as it it's just about Linda.
Linda's rousing speech
about her dad dying
and how Bernie Sanders'
health care plan
probably would have
prevented it.
Well, it's too bad, 'cause
it really is a good process
where neighbors
get together
and actually speak
to each other.
Yeah.
I think.
That's my opinion.
But...Yeah.
These are just... What are...
We got the cashews in here?
Just...Yeah.
Take as many as you want.
I'm going to pick out
all the cashews.
I talked to Matthew Marroquin
at like midnight last night.
He gave me so many details
about the app for the...
Oh, the app did crash.Yeah.
Okay.
Tom, uh, Headline:
who won the caucuses,
question mark, not Iowa.
Yeah.
That's pretty much it.
Chances we ever get
a caucus again?
Zero.Apparently not.
Yeah.Oh well.
Like Dolores said, maybe they
should just leave us alone.
Doug.
Shot.
How about you?
Party's over.
It's not the process
that broke down.
It was the app.
You know, the main anxiety
in Iowa this year
is we're going
to screw this up somehow.
And we did.
It used to be, you know,
the results were always muddied
and fucked up, you know,
but... and we could
all live with it,
but with cable news, you just
can't live with that anymore.
Well, I better get
laying out pages.
All right, catch you later.
See ya.
Look at this picture.
This is democracy working.
But you know,
I'm not...
that's not to say
that we didn't have...
You know, we have
our problems, obviously.
But it's just kinda
too bad that...
that, uh, we can't be
more patient with democracy.
So it's been
a pretty stressful, uh,
stressful time.
Very stressful.
And you know, you... I've been
sitting here for two weeks.
It's gray and rainy and cold.
So you're locked
in the house
and you're thinking
we're losing money,
and there ain't a goddamn thing
you can do about it.
So it's really important
that we can figure out a way
not to go deep into debt while
saving the newspaper.
Our ads fell off a cliff just
like every other newspaper.
We, uh...
We... Our advertising
was down 50% in March.
We hope that comes back,
but, you know,
most of our advertisers
were mom-and-pop stores
who are really at risk.
John said, "Well, I've just
thought about
"just shutting it down
and walking away.
I'd just like to walk away
and go fishing."
And, uh, you know,
we've both worked very hard.
And, uh... And then just to see
it all, uh, blow up,
you just think, well, okay,
at least we got the building.
You know, we could sell that
to pay off our debt.
So... it doesn't make
a lot of sense
for us to go borrow money
when we could just walk away
from it now.
We're thinking about doing
a GoFundMe page
to seek donations,
uh, from anywhere.
At least buy us some oxygen
until this thing clears.
You know, it just seems
like a whole different realm,
a different reality.
For this last issue,
I interviewed business owners.
They were sharing
all kinds of things.
Like, the bait guy,
some people were stealing out
of his self-serve bait machine.
Yeah.
He threatened them, that he was
going to take the wheels
off their trailer
if they kept doing that
while they were out fishing.
So I thought of
a pretty good headline.
I thought "Angler Management."
No one's even talking about
testing at this point.
So we don't know
if the virus is even here.
Um, and all we can
say is, like,
we're just closing down
for precaution.
I call a hospital up to see
if anybody's been admitted yet
for symptoms that appear
similar to COVID-19
and, well, that goes nowhere.
If we do the right things here,
we'll be all right.
We were kind of
scolding local officials
for falling short on testing.
We're falling short
on equipment.
And we're falling short on
a clear and consistent message
from local, state,
and federal authorities.
All the meatpacking plants
around us we know
are all infected with COVID.
So we just know that there's
got to be hundreds of workers
in Storm Lake who are infected,
but they aren't testing,
and then not reporting
any cases.
How sickening it is to think
of forcing immigrant workers
who are afraid of deportation,
forcing them into a potentially
deadly workplace,
uh, without testing.
And, uh...
and to me, uh,
you know, there are...
there are blatant
forms of racism
and there are subtler
forms of racism,
but it's racism all the same.
Occasionally,
I go out to Tyson.
But, you know, all you could do
is speak to a spokesperson
in Arkansas.
I called them.
And first it starts with,
how many employees
have tested positive?
Does every employee have
sufficient PPE?
What are you doing
as far as sanitation?
That's just a constant,
constant drumbeat.
And they would get back to you
with these statements, like,
"We take this with the utmost
seriousness" and that's it.
From what I understand,
there's company-wide testing
now at Tyson Storm Lake.
The problem with this is
the state-delegated
testing responsibility
to the meatpacking plants.
So there's no way we can
credibly trace
the spread of the virus
in the last several months.
It's not clear to me why Tyson
or any other meat company
is now acting as a quasi-public
health agency
and is conducting testing
on behalf of the state of Iowa.
And then it becomes
unclear to me
who owns that information,
who controls
that information,
and how selective are they
in the release
of that information.
We were the first ones to
actually, like, come to press
and say a number of Tyson
employees tested positive.
And then there was this
dramatic spike of cases
in Storm Lake.
It was just, like,
unbelievable.
We're continuing to report on
the numbers as best we can,
but we never really know
the exact count on a given day.
And that's really incumbent
upon the state department
of public health
and the governor's office,
of course,
you know,
to enlighten us on that.
But, you know,
they haven't responded
to a single email of mine.
Now Storm Lake is
the hottest spot in Iowa
and one of the top ten
in the country.
They decided late last week
to shut down
the Tyson Pork Complex
for a few days at least
for cleaning
after these test results showed
that over 20% of the Tyson
Pork Plant roster had COVID.
Come on, Peach.
Where are you?
Hey. Come here.
There's room.
There's room.
"Dear Tom, when James Madison
wrote the First Amendment
"to the Constitution,
he had you in mind.
"The reporter is the cornerstone
of an informed electorate
and a functioning democracy."
So is it one
per house then?
Yeah. Yep.One of each per house.
"The best journalism is that
which builds communities.
You build your community by
publicizing good deeds done..."
Hey, guys.
"...by urging yourself and those
around you to do better..."
Tom!What?!
How are you?Good.
Doing good?
"...and by making certain
that your town's issues
are heard in Des Moines
and Washington."
"Tyranny prevails whenever
the press is not free.
Stand guard."
Where are you from
originally?
I was actually born
in Mexico, in Jalisco.Oh.
And then, my mother
and my two brothers,
we settled
in Storm Lake, Iowa.
I was one of
the first kids
when the ESL program
was getting started.
"Reporters hold
about as much regard
"as the world's oldest
profession.
"But we are not professionals.
"Nobody gives us license.
We draw it from
the Constitution."
None, I did not.
"All we have is
our own credibility,
"which is called into question
twice a week
in our circumstance."
So how's business? Uh...
Is it picking up any?
Yeah?
Yeah.
I don't know either.
Right on, sister.
"Readers decide our future,
not any branch of government."
Do you have
your press pass?
Yes, I do.
Make sure that you have
that displayed, okay?
Okay, will do.
"If you find writing is
a chore after a while,
"you're in the wrong business.
"The pay is lousy
and the hours can be terrible.
"But you can change the world
through journalism.
"That's the only good
reason to get into this trade.
"Because when you're
looking for a friend,
"remember that the dog
can't read.
"Love , Dad.
Is that story done yet?"
this program possible.
Support your local PBS station.
I'm sorry, we're...
we're on deadline.
We're ready to put
it on the page,
so, yeah, I appreciate
that, thanks.
Mm-hmm, bye.
Dolores, this press release
is coming at you,
from the police,
about the building.
Tom, could you
come here a sec?Sure.
They added this
to the lede.
I think we've got
to tell the readers
what the hell is going
on here, okay?
The Times.
Mmm, we're on deadline
so I'll see if he's available.
Art, are you available for
Gary Lipshutz in Sioux City?
No.
He actually is a little
bit busy at the moment.
Could you maybe try
back this afternoon?
What time is it, 9:35?
Is the building
story done, Dolores?
I'm still doing it.
When that clock hits 10:00,
I'm gonna start going apeshit.
I get real uptight
about deadlines.
Every hour we're late,
it costs us a hundred bucks.
You know, get all amped up
twice a week.
Snapping at family
members, and you know,
it never works out
well later.
You know, Jesus, you've been
doing this for 40 years
and people still don't
know what time it is.
By today's standards
"The Storm Lake Times"
has cause to celebrate,
holding steady
in our annual report that
we published on Friday.
We've always operated
at the break-even point.
One year we post a small profit,
the next a small loss.
Seven dollars.
Through three decades
we have persevered
thanks primarily to your
support, our family of readers.
A lot of people
disagree with him,
but they sure
read the paper.
I think it gets people
to become more open-minded.
At least that's what I hope.
"The Storm Lake Times" weaves
the fabric of the community
in large ways and small.
We're working hard as ever
covering the City Council,
The School Board, Board of
Supervisors in the court house.
Do you feel comfortable
saying, uh,
if it's going
to trial or not?
Oh, we're going
to trial.
Okay.
Son Tom Cullen, our reporter,
lives the job.
Come on!
Come here.
My wife, Dolores Cullen,
is everywhere with Peach
the Newshound
and the Times-mobile.
This is Ice Out Day,
the day when all the ice melts.
My sister-in-law, Mary Cullen,
is hunting recipe features.
Isn't that pretty?
What are the health
benefits of cooking
low-salt?
A pretty good rule
is that an Iowa town
will be about as strong
as its newspaper and its banks.
And without strong local
journalism to tell
a community story, the fabric
of the place becomes frayed.
The news pages are the heart
of the newspaper,
and editorial pages
the soul.
My brother, fearless leader
John Cullen,
founded the newspaper
in 1990 with the belief
that honest reporting
would attract a crowd.
It has.
It's a great moment.
Thank you.
Thanks, again.
Tom, stand up.
Give me a hug.
Now we need to grow that crowd
to sustain our mission,
and again humbly
ask your support
as we did nearly
30 years ago.
Tom?
Police reports done?
They're done.
Thank you.
We will always try
to be worthy of it.
No, no, haven't
fed her, nothing.
All right.
I've been
completely negligent.
Oh, it's still
early.
In the old days of lead type,
editors would, uh,
lock up pages of lines of type.
They'd lock them up,
uh, in what we called a chase.
And if you were
wearing a long tie,
you could lock your tie into
the, uh, into the chase, so...
So editors
wore bow ties.
I don't have
enough butter.
You always
got lard.
Yeah.
You took
all the butter.
I took all
the butter, right.
The small Iowa town
of Storm Lake is where
some of the Democrats running
for president will be speaking.
It's the first major
multi-candidate event
of the campaign so far.
Part of the appeal is to be
onstage with the town's
Pulitzer Prize-winning
newspaper editor.
Art Cullen, the lanky
white-haired editor
of "The Storm Lake Times" walks
across a downtown street.
Plenty of Democrats
running for president
want to be seen with Art.
So it kind of tells me who
really cares about rural Iowa.
And if you ain't there,
you're square.
Welcome to all
of you to Storm Lake,
The City Beautiful,
and Buena Vista University.
I'm Art Cullen, editor
of "The Storm Lake Times."
And I'd like to introduce
our first guest.
And we're very thankful
that Senator Elizabeth Warren
from Massachusetts can be here.
Thank you, Senator.
Thank you.
Farm income is down
by half since 2013.
Yup.
What can we do to provide
immediate farm income relief
in what is quickly
becoming an emergency?
A generation ago,
37 cents out of every
food dollar went
into a farmer's pocket.
Today it's 15 cents.
And one of the
principal reasons for that
has been concentration
in agribusiness.
So I want to see enforcement
of our antitrust laws.
I've called for the breakup
of these agribusinesses.
Two-thirds of Iowa's
99 counties, all rural,
are declining
in population.
How can we ease
the transition of immigrants
into rural areas
to rejuvenate them?
I'm very proud of the story
of Storm Lake in many ways.
You all have shown the value
of the immigrant community.
I never thought before this
campaign that I would get
great Mexican food in Iowa,
but I have.
Take a couple of minutes and
just tell us why you're running
for president and what
your campaign's all about.
Well, first of all,
it is wonderful to be here.
And as you know,
I'm your senator next door.
I can see Iowa
from my porch.
What'd you think, Whitney?
Did you enjoy that?
The forum thing?Yeah.
Tom, you're going to write
a lead story on the forum
and then make, what,
a sidebar on Vilsack, or...
Yeah.
Or are you just
working him into...
Yeah.
Love the cowboy shirt.
Don't ask
where I got it.
Where'd you get it?Uh, just don't ask.
Uh...
Some dead guy, or...
Yeah, it was
an estate sale.
Yeah, okay, all right.
Well, anyway, uh,
Vilsack sidebar...Yeah.
And, uh, the forum
for the front.
Yep, yep.
Okay.
I have this, uh, listing
of when Ice Out Day
was since 1975.
We kind of fell off the wagon
and stopped keeping track
of Ice Out Day since 2012.
Now with all this talk about
climate, now there's
kind of like, oh, well, maybe
this is more interesting
than we used to think.
Some of these
were already signed.
Paying some bills today.
Gotta pay the garbage man
and the rug man and...
the printer man.
Hey, John?
All the
fun stuff.
Would you mind coming
over here a sec?
I'm just laying out
the front page here,
and of course the big story
for this issue is the forum
with the five
presidential candidates.
Each image needs
about the same weight
so no candidate can say,
you know, I wasn't fair to them.
It looks good
to me, yeah.Thank you.
John's taught me everything
I know about photography.
He taught me about
how to use pictures.
He taught me all about graphics.
And he's got a great eye.
How's that forum
story coming?
Good.
Just a sec.
Ice Out, two pictures
and a story, it's all done.
Okay then.
Oh, there they are.
I left Storm Lake.
I graduated from high school
here and left and shook
the shit off my boots
and never wanted
to look back.
But my brother John
started this newspaper,
so I came back because
I was sick of working
for corporate newspapers
without a soul.
And, uh, it was a great move.
We did that
presidential forum,
but that's not the reason
we get up in the morning.
Most people in Storm Lake
care a lot more about
whether garbage
is getting picked up
than whether, uh,
Elizabeth Warren is in town.
So when it comes to news,
our motto is if it didn't happen
in Buena Vista County,
it didn't happen.
We're about an hour
and a half drive
from the Minnesota border,
halfway between
Fort Dodge and Sioux City.
We are the county seat
of Buena Vista county.
I was born in 1957.
Storm Lake was a lily-white
Republican town.
And we had one Jewish family
and one Black person.
In the '90s immigrants populated
Storm Lake and turned it blue.
But the rest of the county
drowns out that Storm Lake vote.
And so it's very much like
a microcosm of the nation.
It's important to know
who had a baby
and who died
in a community of ten
to fifteen thousand people.
That's important
in this community,
to know who's getting
married and buried.
And it's important to know what
the city council is up to.
So I think it is important
to have real news.
I'm still old-fashioned enough
to believe in the wisdom
of Thomas Jefferson
and the First Amendment.
Maybe a quaint idea these days.
But the question is,
you know, how long does
a community support journalism?
And it appears to me that
whether it's Storm Lake
or Buffalo Center,
people aren't supporting
journalism like they did.
35 in and 23 out...
Okey-doke.
...for the Times.
The last I knew,
there were about
300 news deserts
in the United States.
And these are towns with twenty
or thirty thousand people
that are now without
a local news source.
You could say, well,
they can get their news
from the metro paper,
but these metro papers
don't cover those
communities anymore.
When I started out in this
business, there were newspapers
so fat you could
barely lift them.
Now there's
no newspaper at all.
You've got to have
a strong business model
to do good journalism.
The problem is that
the business model
is falling apart and, uh...
Uh, and also, rural
communities are a lot weaker
now than they used to be.
And that makes rural
newspapers weaker.
A lot of the mom and pop
stores that were
the basis of our
advertising are gone.
The small-town feed dealers
and businesses that catered
to farmers, which is our base
here, they're gone because,
the family farms are going,
and they're being taken over
by big corporate livestock
operations which either have
their own feed mills or they buy
direct from the manufacturer.
So they don't need Bob and
Sally's feed store anymore.
And Bob and
Sally's feed store
then doesn't need
"The Storm Lake Times."
So somehow we've
got to increase
the number of readers.
If you don't have readers,
you've got nothing.
But now people want
to get their news for free,
because apparently looking
at their breakfast on Facebook
is all the information
they need to live
as an informed
voter in America.
And that's not how you
sustain a democracy, you know?
You need people who can talk
about facts and deal in facts.
And that Iowa is getting
warmer and wetter
through the decades,
those are facts.
That's what we're here for.
And people have said, "Oh, well,
that's not worth a dollar."
Chelsea, right?
Yes.
Uh, I'm Tom Cullen
with the Times
at Storm Lake.
Hi.
And it's my understanding you
had some material for the media?
If you have your card,
I can email you and make
sure that we get you that
information that has
all the speakers
and their bios and...
Thank you so much,
really appreciate it.Yeah, you're welcome.
Joe Catera,
how's it going?
Okay, welcome, are you ready
to stand with me today?
Are you ready?
Let me know if you're ready
to work with me today,
because all about what
we're doing today is going
to be about how hard
we will work together
to move our issues forward.
Our farm and rural communities
are in crisis mode right now.
We're fed up
with multinational
corporations
extracting our wealth.
If you wonder why our cities
and towns are being
hollowed out, you know, when
you understand the largest
owner of beef, poultry,
and pork in this country
is a foreign corporation
extracting wealth,
taking opportunities
out of rural communities.
We need to protect
our natural resources.
Believe it or not, we're not
the last generation
that's going
to live on this land, you know,
so it's time for a change.
So thank you all very much
for coming, thank you.
Hi, Emmanuel.
This is Dolores Cullen
at "The Storm Lake Times."
Can you call me back
today so we can talk
about your, uh,
talent show experience?
Thank you, bye.
Emmanuel Trujillo,
the guy who tipped me off,
sent me a thing last night.
And so I looked it up online,
and he seems to be advancing
in this show called
"Tengo Talento, Mucho Talento."
And so I looked at the video...
This is a Storm Lake guy
who works at Tyson and...
It looks like they like him.
Well, hey, Emmanuel.
You work at Tyson, right?
I wanted to be able
to take a picture of you.
I thought it would be kind of
cool to, you know,
you'd just be in like the Tyson
parking lot or something.
Like, you know, by your car.
And then it would just be...
You can't have any picture
taken at Tyson?
That's okay.
Could I come to where you live?
Okay, muy bien.
Okay, bye.
This is really good for
our community when we have,
like, happy stories
about all types of people.
We're all about happy.
That's my...
That's my beat, Art.
You're on
the happy beat.
Yeah.
Hello.
Come in.
My name's Dolores.
And I am here
to see Emmanuel.
Yeah, he's coming.Okay, he's coming.
It's nice to meet you.Yeah!
I'm Elena.
Oh, great.
And then this
is your daughter.
Yeah.
Okay.
Hi!
You're a singing star.
Yep!
Congratulations
Thank you so much.
What do you think your
chances are of, uh,
going on beyond
the next round?
It's, uh, maybe a hundred... 100
more people.
A hundred... Oh!
Yeah, so the
competition is too hard.
A hundred more people will
be competing against you...
Yep, in that second time.
The second time.
So weren't you
really nervous?
Yeah, the first time.
Oh, really, really nervous.
And I had...You don't look nervous.
You look, you look...Oh, yeah.
kind of, like, excited.
And that's how you looked
when you were singing, too.
You looked very confident.
I'm okay, I'm okay.
Big smile.
Okay.
When I met Art, he was
at the, um, Algona paper.
And they were doing things
like this, uh, feature stories
about a family that had,
um, seventeen children.
And, uh, it appealed to me,
'cause I'm a visual person.
I'm an art major.
I wasn't really into politics
or anything like that,
but very interested in telling
stories in a creative way.
And so, to be involved
with them,
that was something
that I was interested in.
I didn't know that
I would become involved
in the enterprise eventually.
But, uh, I started
taking pictures.
And I was usually told
by Art that, you know,
if something is interesting,
go ahead and report it.
And this, uh, we were covering
how, uh, local people
were teaching English
to newcomers
who did not speak English.
And these were
Sudanese people.
And so I took the picture
of... of this woman,
and Art chose
to run it big like this.
And we did get an anonymous
letter by...
from someone who said, "Oh, why
is she on the front page?"
And it was really mean.
Um, and that this was
a long time ago.
I mean, there was
kind of blatant racism.
Uh, so then Julio Barroso was
featured, uh, back in 1996
as being a kid who helped
other kids learn English.
And there was a raid of
the meatpacking plant.
And then in the following issue
it was reported
that Julio is gone.
8-year-old deported
with parents.
Since we do these feature
stories, we get to know people,
but they're not just, like,
anonymous immigrants.
This is a kid that
we think is awesome and cute.
So then the next day
when we find out
that they were kicked out
of the U.S., uh, we cared.
And so then later
we were asking, you know,
whatever happened to Julio?
And that's where Tom started
doing this investigating,
and we actually found him
in Mexico
as a young adult today.
A little boy from 22 years ago
was top of mind last Thursday.
Julio Barroso.
In 1996, the world changed
for Julio,
then in second grade
at North School.
The immigration agents swooped
in on IBP, predecessor to Tyson,
and rounded up scores of
undocumented immigrants.
Barroso's family was among them.
Julio, now 30 years old, is
married and the father of three,
working in Guadalajara, Mexico
for one-tenth the $18 per hour
he could get in Storm Lake.
A dream is foreclosed.
In our lush, green town
of 15,000 or so...
we don't know
our exact population
because so many are immigrants.
Nestled among the row crops
and hog houses
at Northwest Iowa,
2,200 workers cut up pigs
and turkeys for Tyson.
300 others crack eggs
for liquid shipment
at Rembrandt Foods
15 miles north.
Hundreds more distill
ethanol from corn.
And those 3,000 or so...
maybe half undocumented,
who knows...
are worrying not just about jobs
but also about their lives
in Trump's America.
Even those with papers will tell
you they feel a little edgy.
Dreamers are our vitality,
our future.
They want to stay here
with family,
unlike so many of us who push
our children off to Chicago
or the Twin Cities.
And we all wish that Julio
would come home
to Storm Lake someday.
We need him and miss him.
We're going to suburban
Sulphur Springs, Iowa.
Providence Township.
The home of John Snyder.
Big John.
Plumber and farmer.
I'm mainly interested in,
when did he plant corn?
How did he cope
with the spring weather,
which was torrents of rain?
Wow.
This would be a picture like
we've never seen, John.
I mean, it's just barely
knee-high now.
We had one day
on May 4th...
For corn.
For planting, yeah.
And then we got
rained out...
until the 15th
and 16th of May.
We had two days.
We didn't get back in
until June 2nd.
Have you ever seen it this wet
in the spring before?
No. Never.
Not in my lifetime.
You know, I usually get out
end of April.
You're right.
And we're usually done
by May 10th.
What do you figure you get
knocked off in your yield?
What'd you get
last year... on corn?
Oh, probably 225.
Probably.
What would you guess
you'll get this year?
Take a wild-ass guess.
150.
I don't know.
If you say 150,
then everything
after that is better.
Yeah.Right?
Right.
That's gravy.
That's gravy on top
of your taters.
Hi, Peach.
I wasn't really interested
in doing the "Knee-High
by the Fourth of July" story
like we always did,
but this year the weather's
been so bizarre
that I thought
we really needed to do it, um,
because we've never seen
the corn like this before.
A guy farming today, you're
going to need, you know,
over a thousand acres
to support a family.
And a generation ago,
John could raise a family
on 350 to 500 acres
if he sustained himself
on the corn,
and then could make
some real money on hogs.
That all changed
in the 1990s, really,
when the pork industry was
vertically integrated,
where the packer owns the hogs,
and drove John
out of production.
You know, that's the game
for most people.
If you're going
to be in agriculture,
then you're working
for a company.
Let's say you break up the, uh,
vertical integration model.
Then where does that leave
our pork production system?
And where does it leave
these immigrants
who are working here
if you blow it all up?
And so I don't know.
I don't know.
Yeah! Whooo!
God bless the Irish.
Everybody make yourself
comfortable.
We're just glad to have, uh,
Senator Grassley here with us.
And I also want
to thank him
for being super supportive
of the water well industry.
And I'm really glad
to see him here.
When I am at your, uh,
city administrative building
or your local library
and you folks can't come
to my town meetings,
I try to go places because
you're working.
So I get a chance
to interact with people
that wouldn't otherwise
interact with me.
Now, what questions
do you have?
Anything is legitimate.
I've got one.
I'm not 100% political
follower of either party.
And so, I see how this country
is divided in half.
And I'll talk to one
political party and...
they might have
a good idea,
and the other one is going
to say, "I don't want it."
Even if it's good,
they don't want it.
Just they're going
to be the opposite.
And I see that
on both sides.
What's it going to take
to change that?
You could have asked
an easier question.
Um, first of all, there is
too much partisanship.
And it's worse now
than it's ever been.Yeah.
But, you know,
controversy makes news.
So if people are getting along,
it doesn't make news.
Thank you.
You're still doing
a good job.
Okay.
Next question.
As we know about Storm Lake,
it's heavily reliant
on immigration.
Uh, what's your
sense on that?
Um, what's...
what do you tell people
in Storm Lake
who are afraid?
I don't think you have
to be afraid
unless you're
violating the law.
But as a practical
matter, uh,
wasn't there a figure out
a couple of weeks ago
that there could be
100,000 people deported?Mm-hmm.
Well, think, 100,000
out of 11 million people...
Yeah.
So why would you have
to be very concerned?
I mean, if... say if you're
undocumented here in town...
and let's just be real,
there are undocumented
people here in town...
I would be very afraid if
Trump admits through tweet
that we're going to deport
tens of millions of people.
Well...Uh, and I understand
the news media debunked
a little bit of that.
We... I... I get your point.
We got people
in Congress
that think you line up
11 million people
and get them
out of the country.
That's not
the real world.
And I'm not telling
anybody that.Yeah. Okay.
The only thing you've heard me
say about legalization is
we can't take care
of that issue
until we convince the people
that we can secure the border.
And listen, you know how
many people on the right
would be irritated
with what I just told you...
that I'd even be
thinking about that?Yeah.
It is meaningful when
politicians want to have
a serious discussion with us.
It's all Dad ever wanted
when he started this thing.
Growing up here in Storm Lake
and being Art Cullen's
son was...
It was a bit
of a roller coaster.
I remember there were teachers
who would say,
"This is what Art Cullen thinks,
and he's wrong."
You always had to know
about the issues.
It was very difficult actually,
now that I look back at it.
I never put two and two together
as to why Dad would be
working on a Saturday.
Mom was always the one
who took care of us.
Okay, can you put
them in, Joe?
Now I realize you can't
necessarily go
to kids' baseball games
or take them on vacation
when there's a paper
to get out the next week.
There's a demand for excellence
if you're a Cullen.
You will not get away
with less than 110%.
Every one of Dad and John's kids
worked here.
And I'm the only one left.
But still at the same time,
there's this bond
that connects us all.
We all know that we gotta
stick together.
'Cause we're all
in the same leaky ship.
Tom, can you come here
a second, please?
That's a confusing
sentence.
And the prospect
of the newspaper
not being around terrifies me.
'Cause not only
is it a newspaper
which is, in my opinion,
the most important pillar
of the community.
It's the family.
You brought sunshine
with you.
Right? It's coming.
I've got to warn you, there's
a bunch of fans in here.
They're kind of... It might be
kind of a circus in there.
Thanks so much
for having us...
Well, thanks for coming.
We appreciate it.
Come on in,
everybody.
Thank you.
How are you doing?
Glad to meet you.
I'm John Cullen.
I'm Jim Cullen.
Nice to meet you.
Jim is my brother.
Uh, he's the editor
of the "Progressive
Populist"...
Uh-huh....out of Austin, Texas.
And we produce it here.
Nice.
Well, anyway,
welcome to Iowa.
Thank you.
And especially
to Storm Lake.
We've been talking
with, uh, people
a lot about rural America...Mm-hmm.
...and how we got kind of
flown over, uh...
...last time.
So we're real happy
you're here.
And we're hearing
that perhaps the campaigns
might not even play in Iowa,
Wisconsin, and Ohio
in the general election...
that we're going to get
flown over again.
Policy-wise...Right.
...rural America is
often talked about
kind of like a problem
we've got to solve.
Right. Right.
Our message ought to make
sense in rural America,
'cause the Democratic Party
grew out of the idea that...
that we're standing up for
the overlapping interests
between workers
and farmers.
It's kind of
an unusual community.
It's an immigrant
community.
But people here
are living in fear.
And they were living
in fear
during the two terms of the
Obama administration as well.
What kind of damage
has this wrought?
And we're not just talking
about immigrants.
We're just talking about
race relations in general.
Our city is growing,
finally.
Not by much,
but we're proud of...
To be... to even have
a positive number
is a big deal
for us, right?
If you net out the factor that
immigration played in that,
we'd be flat-line at best.
And so when the President says
we're full, I'm thinking...
Right....we're not full.
But the thing is, if we do not
resolve racial inequality
in our lifetime...
yours, anyway...
um, it could sink the American
project in our lifetime.
I think we're going
to have to go.
I'm sorry.Well, anyway...
Sorry to cut it
a little short.
Thank you very much.Same here.
Thanks for having us.
I hope you'll be back.I sure hope so.
Good to see
you again.
I hope you stop by again.I hope so.
Hey, did you sign our sign
of the Times?
Oh, no, I'll sign that.
Yeah, you gotta go
up top now.
Oh, man.
You're a lefty.
All the great ones,
you know?
Did you ever
pitch?
All right.
No, I got two left hands.
Oh.
We're headed out
to see Tom Lane,
who's running for city council.
And the reason why
I'm interested in this
is, Tom became interested
in city government,
uh, when they were about to
shut down Westview Trailer Park
and they were about to evict him
from his house.
And he took the leadership
role in that community
to stand up to the mayor
and the city council in Alta
to say that these are our homes
and we're staying.
Oh, man.These weigh about 12 pounds.
And they're a flat head
Dutch German cabbage.
How do you get something
to be 12 pounds?
All this stuff
is pure organic.
No chemicals.
And when did you move
to Westview again?
31 years ago.31 years ago.
I'll just say this,
it just...
it does look a lot better
than what it was.Yeah.
And it's my understanding that
you were behind all that...
Yeah....with your effort
at city council.
Is that the...
the culminating piece?Yeah.
I was reading
the... in the paper
that all these openings
were coming up.Yeah.
And all of a sudden
I decided, you know what,
I'm going to run
for city council.Mm-hmm.
How many signatures
did you need for that?
They said
it was ten,
but I got actually
15 of them.Okay.
My wife here, Tarla.
Grab some signs
out of the back end
of the pickup here.
Okay, if everybody's ready,
we're going to hit
the campaign trail.
All right.
What expertise
could you offer?
Really, my expertise...
I can walk in
a trailer house
and tell you
exactly right now
what's not kosher
and everything.Uh-huh.
Well, I've been underneath
every one of these
trailer houses.
Either checking
heat tapes or...Yeah.
...fixing a frozen pipe,
20 below zero,
wind blowing up
your... back end.Yeah.
Not just work on things,
but I'd help people, too.Yeah.
You know...Well, yeah.
Like, I've given them
vegetables and...
Yeah....everything.
And I used to go
to Sioux City and...
Yeah....and buy a truckload
of bread...
Oh, I didn't know that.
...and bring it
back here and...
and just hand it
out to people.
Wow.
Hi there.
Hi.
I'm going to put a sign out.
Is that all right?
That's totally fine.
Yep, go for it.
So has someone else
in your family
been Pork Queen,
Pork Princess?
No.My other daughter, she's our
Little Miss Fair Queen.
Oh, yeah.So she's...
Oh, okay.
Now it's coming
together for me.
I've seen the name...Yeah, and she was a...
...McCarthy....Little Miss too
when she was that age.
You guys have royalty
in your blood.
We do.
This is
Mrs. Hughes-Camp.
She's our second grade
teacher.
Hi.
Nice to meet you.
Do you guys know
what's in pig's feed?
Any guesses?
Calvin?
Corn.Yep, corn is one of them.
And then soybeans
is the other.
The piglets in this picture
are drinking milk
from their mother.
Look at their noses.
They are called snouts.
Can you make a sound
like a pig?
Okay, so the pig we're
going to bring in
is about three
or four weeks old.
You like
the diapered pig?
I haven't
seen that.
Here, let me get
around here.
You guys are...
We try to prevent,
uh, accidents.
Yeah, because I'm sure
it's happened before.
It's traumati...
Yeah, it has.
Turn him a little
more sideways, yeah.
Yeah.
You guys have
any questions?
Do you hand them out
to the market
when they're babies
and full-grown?
So they only go to market
when they're a big pig.
The pig has feed
all day long,
because we want them to grow
as much as possible
in a short amount of time.
Because that is what the pork
industry is all about.
We want to grow
the best product
with the least amount
of resources.
Art, when I write about
the pork producer's visit,
could I write "This little
piggy wears a diaper"?
Sure.Okay.
'Cause it seemed like
they were kind of, like,
covering up the diaper part.
And they'd wrapped him up
in a towel.
And I'm like,
gee, why cover that up?
I mean, this... why...
especially
in Albert City where...
I went there last night,
and it absolutely
reeked again.
It was so putrid
I almost gagged
from hog confinements.
And I was
at the post office
and a guy said hi
to me,
'cause I was delivering
the papers.
And I said, "Does it
really smell this bad
in town all the time?"
Because it smelled
so bad on Monday.
And he said, "Oh, no,
it's just harvest
and they're drying
a lot of corn."
And I'm like, no, this is
not the smell of drying corn.
This is hog shit.
Um, so anyway.
He has really
pretty eyes.
Okay, now recipes.
What are you thinking?
So I have lots.
Okay, so this pumpkin
bread recipe is,
um, from my grandma,
my mom's mom.
Oh!And it's delish.
The pea soup recipe,
um, we used to have pea soup
every Christmas...
Really?...with my grandpa.
'Cause it was one of
my grandpa's favorites, so.
Oh, nice. Well, we could
do all of them!
I don't care.
Whatever.
Are you okay with that?Yeah.
I mean, that's a bunch, but
it's... they're all good.
Sandy, hi.
This is John Cullen
at "The Storm Lake Times."
I need to check on a loan
payment from September 16th.
I need to know how much
was principal
and how much was interest.
All right, wish me luck.
Per paper, we try to get over
$3,000 worth of ads.
They keep the lights on.
And that can be hard.
Especially when
Art won the Pulitzer.
It actually got more difficult.
Because people in this town
can be very conservative.
And they didn't like
that he won.
So I actually had a big
backfire on me for a while.
Hey, Mike.
Holiday open house time.
Here's what we did
last year.
Okay.
I'm not for sure,
so we'll have to go over
that sort of percentages...
Yeah.
That's no problem.
Hey, Travis.Hey, how are you?
I have last year's ad
that we did.
Okay.We did the quarter
page in color.
We could even do like a couple
more pictures on there, too.
Okay, yeah.
This is what we did
last year.
It's a little smaller
than a quarter page
for a total of 100.
But it was for two times
in the paper in color.
Or we can go down
to the one-time one.
'Cause I know a lot
of people are going
to be in Friday's issue.
Friday's?Yeah, next Friday.
And it's a hundred?Yeah.
Or we can do...
we can go down to the 52
if you want to do just
once, that's fine.
Can I think about it?Yeah. Yeah.
When do you need it by?
I can always stop in
on Monday
or Tuesday
next week, too.
Running twice...
when would it run?
Wednesday and Friday?Yeah.
Let me think about it
just a minute...Yeah.
...and get a hold of you
Monday morning.Yeah.
Sounds good.
Hey, you have a good day.You too.
Tell Mary I said hi.
I think it looks good
for our newspaper
to have all the ads
from downtown in there,
'cause then you can see that,
like, the businesses
also support you.
You know, scratch our back,
scratch yours.
I mean, how else do you make
a small community survive?
Art and I have always liked,
uh, delivering papers.
You know, that's one of
the most important things
about journalism.
The... the best stories
in the world aren't any good
if you don't
get them out on the street
so people can read them.
You run into people
in the store,
"Oh, you got the new paper?"
Or maybe
they'll tell you off.
That's happened to me
a couple of times.
And that's good, too.
Art's definitely the voice of
the Democrats here in BV County.
We're largely Republican
in this area.
And I am more Republican.
So I like to read, though,
what he has to say about it
and think about it.
I kind of bypass over
the opinions most days.
Everybody's got one,
and usually they stink.
I'm more interested
in the local news
and what's
actually happening.
If we see something we don't
like or we find offensive,
it's easy to reach out to them
and let them know how we felt.
And they are
really good at,
you know, getting
back to you and...
and sit down and
discussing the issue at hand.
I think it's very helpful
that we know what's going on
in the community.
There are consequences for
everything we do.
And we feel that feedback
immediately.
You know, you guys
cover a lot.
You are big advocates for
all the Latino community.
With the struggles that all
the newspapers we have,
no matter what
language you are,
I was thinking that maybe
we try to do
something together,
you know, we can help
one each other.
Yeah.
So I was thinking
you guys can give me
your story in English.
I translate it, you know,
in... in Spanish.
And all the credit
is going to be
for...
for your paper.
So would the stories
that we do
in the Times go
into La Prensa then?
It will be...
Yes.
And I will...
So we can take stories
out of La Prensa?
You can take stories
out of La Prensa also.
I will translate those
stories in English for you.
Okay.
Cool.
So would we do the ad sales
or would you?
I was thinking no, you know,
you have advertising people.
One person.
Oh, you have one person.
Okay.
Yeah.
I just like the idea of
shared content... myself.
And I don't know
what appetite there is
among advertisers to go in
La Prensa Latino publications,
but I'm sure there is one.
If it will be 15,
20 years ago
probably we would not be
talking right now.
Right, yeah.Yeah.
Yeah. But it's
getting tough.
And it's sad,
because we are losing...
Yeah.
...the big foundation of
the small communities
that our newspapers...Yeah.
Because nobody else is going
to fight for the little person.
Nobody.
Nobody going to talk
about corruption.
Nobody going to
talk about the church;
about, you know,
the activity
that the community
get together,
no matter what
race we are...
Facebook don't
going to do that.
Yeah.
But it's sad.
It's sad that
it's taking over.
Some politicians
talk about fake news.
There it is,
the fake news.
Yeah.
Facebook.
We go to the,
you know, to the field.
Yeah.
We look the person
eye to eye.
We interact
with that person.
Yeah.
We have to live
next to them.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Well, it sounds like
a good possibility.
I'm, uh... But as I say,
I think, well, Art has to...
Sign off.Make the decision.
...sign off on this, uh...Mm-hmm.
Thank you so much.
Well, thanks
for stopping in.
No, thank you.
Thanks a lot, Lorena.Thank you.
I appreciate it.Yeah, thank you so much.
Could I have, uh, water too
when you have a minute?
So what's, uh,
this Lorena want to do?
She wants...She was in here
yesterday and asked...
Yeah.
...if we could share
content and ads.
She says that there's
a lot of potential
for us to sell ads
for her.
And if she's interested
in our content,
we can make a little
bit more money.
I don't see
why we can't do it.
It wouldn't hurt to have
a couple feet on the street.
Yeah.
And she said there's a good
appetite for our stories there.
It's just no one can
read them in English.
So it would be a way
to build readership.
Sounds good to me.Yeah.
Is there anything else
we could be doing with,
say, the website
or something like that?
I like the idea of,
like, Starbucks
selling Wall Street
Journal subscriptions.
Oh yeah, I saw that, yeah.
Like, why can't
we do that?
If you could pitch it
to a place where
as soon as you
log on to public Wi-Fi,
You'd promote it,
and it's free...
just one for day only.
I don't know that
we have enough critical mass
to make it work,
but who knows?
If it sells us a couple
of subscriptions...
Yeah....what the hell?
An idea that I raised before
is the idea of a podcast.
And then you would be
the star of it.
If we could do it
semi-regularly,
maybe once a month
or something.
Who's going to sell the
sponsorship for a podcast
that has a hundred
listeners?
I think this should be
about reporting and...
and I should stick
to writing columns
and editorials and...Okay.
And I don't understand
podcasts, necessarily.
And if I wanted to
get into radio,
I would have
gotten into radio.Yeah.
I understand
this whole...
If the podcast idea is like...
I'm not married to it.
No, no, I know.But...
I like the idea that you're
bringing things up,
but it's just that, uh,
we've got to concentrate
on circulation,
I think.
We're putting out
a good paper.
That's all I know.Yeah.
Ultimately that
will pay, right?
Yeah.
The lake is frozen
and snow-swept.
Men will squat
in fishing shacks
to take out their anger
on walleye and perch
while contemplating
the Christmas message.
It must be time to write
that holiday letter.
The kids are okay.
They're not kids.
They're adults able to ride
a bicycle solo.
You done good, Dolores.
Yet I wake up with a pit
in my stomach.
The Republic is under attack
from foes foreign and domestic.
The Constitution is under test.
A free press is in peril.
Here in a small Northwest Iowa
town full of churches,
you would like to
think better of ourselves.
We rush to our neighbor in need,
bring in his crops,
shovel his drive,
donate for his new kidney
at a pancake feed,
yet the Commander-in-Chief
thinks the law of the land
is something for someone else.
Anxiety is the word.
The corn wasn't that bad.
The rain
just wouldn't stop.
Tyson is building a new
feed mill for its turkeys,
a good sign for Storm Lake.
The refugee children in
our elementary holiday concert
are the Christmas story.
The divine finds us
despite the walls.
Christmas is the time
when we hope to perfect
the flaws of this world.
There remains more
warmth of sharing here
than shadows of fear.
The hope that we can be made
more perfect endures,
an antidote to anxiety.
I just got a first baby
of the year picture, Art.
They're Micronesian.
We usually make a big fuss
about the first baby.
It's a horizontal picture
with a cut line.
I've been up all night.
I'm not in
a good mood.
Let's get that story.
Okay.
Well, I guess
we'll just go without
heart medicine again
this month.
Our accountant says
we made about $2,000,
so...
Uh, a profit of $2,000 is
better than a loss of $2,000.
We're kind of
like farmers.
As long as we have
money in the bank
at the end of the year,
we're happy.
Squeaking by.
We're still keeping
ten employees fed.
And, uh, I don't,
uh, get paid now.
I'm on social security,
so I'm donating
my time to the cause.
The reason he's here is to
make sure we don't go broke.
Yeah.
And then we'll be
really screwed.
Here you go.
Welcome.
The purpose of this meeting
is to give you more information
about our dual language program
that we're proposing
to start in Fall of 2020.
So next fall.
There are some other dual
language programs in Iowa.
We will be the seventh
in the state.
We want this program
to look much like
what our demographics
look like in our school.
So we're going to run
a lottery system.
We're not sure how many
we'll have the first year,
but we're guessing that
this will catch on
and we'll get more
and more every year.
All right, are you ready?
Everybody's got
a thumbs up, right?
One, two, three.
Dual language!
Dual language!
What's going to happen
on Monday exactly?
How does
a caucus work?
Okay, uh, what a caucus is,
is people will gather
at community centers
and there'll be
collections of neighbors.
And there's expected to
be record turnout of like
250,000 or more on Monday
night across the state.
And they'll come into
these fire stations
and schoolhouses
at the precinct level
and they'll hear speeches
from precinct captains.
And then they'll say,
okay, now everybody
split into caucuses.
And so the Warren people
are going to caucus
over here in this corner
and the Bernie people
are going to caucus
over here in this corner.
And so everybody goes to
their respective place,
and then they
start counting heads.
And so you need
15% to be viable
to get a delegate out of
that precinct caucus.
And that's why it's
really not a primary.
It's a party-building
exercise.
This is where the delegate
selection process starts
for the Democratic
National Convention.
Whereas in a primary,
you know, you just
go in and vote.
I just put it on
the first page.
Okay, great.
Yeah, that's perfect.
And then, so I took out
Saturday morning.
Right.
And then the Monday
through Friday morning.
Yep, that's perfect.And that's everything
that was...
You did it just right.
Let's see if we
came out with 31 like
we're supposed to.
I've written several columns
over the last couple of months
explaining what we're going
to do with the TV listings.
We had to do something,
because with our insurance
and printing costs and
everything else going up,
we just...
we're looking for ways
to control expenses
without, uh,
cutting personnel costs,
which most newspapers
have done.
And we have run a TV section
since we started, that...
it was a 12-page tab that
had all these channels.
And we thought
that maybe, uh,
we wouldn't need to run
the TV Times anymore.
And, uh, our readers
told us, no, don't do that.
Uh, they still like
the printed version better.
So we asked our readers
to let us know
which channels
they wanted to keep.
And, uh, so we were
able to drop
from about 80 channels
down to 31.
We figured all told that
running this TV section
was costing us close
to $20,000 a year.
And this'll cut our expenses
by more than half.
I hope to satisfy
our customers that way.
I've been referred
to twice now...
once in "The New York Times"
and once in "The Boston Globe"...
as having a white
mop... of hair.
Like one of those
cotton floor mops.
Think that's what you're
being compared to, Art.
So that's a hint that
you need a haircut.
Yeah.
Hint to the world.
Is that it?
Well, okay then.
And so when we go out
to caucus,
I went to make sure
that everybody
brings at least
one person with them.
Do everything you can
to make sure
that the 2020 Iowa Caucus
has the largest
voter turnout
in the history of
the Iowa Caucus.
Thank you all very much.
I am here to speak to those who
are still making up your minds
to look you in the eye
and ask you to caucus for me.
We will continue to seek
to have a message that,
uh, reaches out
to everybody
and makes sure
everybody feels welcome.
We need those Yang ads.
Is the policy
victories worth
the personal foibles,
you know what I mean?
I mean, who's
determining what's...
Yeah.
You know?
Is it you, the press,
determining?
Sure.
Could be.
Or is it...
is it, you know,
actions that
he's actually done.
So no, I stand be...
behind him 100%.
Sure.
Nice to see you again.
Really what I'm after
here is what you're seeing
from voters, what
message seems to be
resonating the most.
So I'm going into
the small towns,
and they feel...
people feel so forgotten.
Especially farmers.
And they talk
about the tariffs.
And I think they want
a leader who has...
who has a strong
character.
Yeah.And who is going to
lead us into the future.
Literally hours away,
Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders
are basically tied at the top
of the national polls.
And a lot of the polling
on the air has them
potentially one, two...
although a little more middling
with Biden and some of
the other candidates.
But the sharp ideological
divide between the two
does mirror divisions
within the Democratic Party.
One is campaigning on
shaking things up.
The other is campaigning on
steadying the ship.
Tonight's results
could ultimately signal
where the Democratic
nomination is heading.
There we are.
Peach... Art's on TV.
It just feels
like a different energy.
I don't know how to
describe it.
Well, it's not akin
to anything,
but I think
it's closest to '04
when Howard Dean
had a lead.
John Kerry shot through
at the end.
And, uh, everybody was anxious
about electability.
And that's been the theme
this year.
We are so afraid of
screwing this up in Iowa.
And, uh... Uh, Art, am I being
too simplistic?
Wow, you are hungry.
It feels like...
Sanders feels like
he's got the most
identified ones,
as they like to
say out here.
You know, he had what,
half the caucus crowd, uh,
four years ago.
I'm not sure that
he'll end up on top.
Anybody who is sure
is too full of themselves.
Hello. How you doing?
Good. How are you?Who are you guys against?
Pete? Did you see him
here at BV?
We didn't.
Uh, we were working.
Oh, he had
a big crowd here.
Very impressive.Yeah.
Did you decide
just recently?
Yes.Yeah.
Who are you with tonight?
Yeah?
They've got a pretty good
table over there.
Absolutely.
When did you make up
your mind?
Pretty much when we got here.
It was...
Have fun.
Okay, we're going
to get started!
Hola, Hola.
Everyone have one?
Okay. Now we're going to have
the precinct captains...
which for every party
that's here
that wants
to represent themselves,
um, you guys will have
two minutes to talk.
Hi, my name is
Linda Torres.
I really think my uncle Bernie
can beat Trump.
A couple of months ago
my dad had passed,
and he was in
the hospital for a week.
And we didn't have any time
to grieve over my dad
because we were too busy
fighting insurance companies.
And I truly believe that my dad
would have still been alive
if we had Medicare for all,
and he could have been
covered in Iowa,
and as soon as he got into
that ER and been helped out
by doctors instead of
waiting and waiting,
he would have still been here,
watching us fight
for our country.
Please vote for Bernie Sanders
'cause he's gonna change
our lives forever.
Hi, everyone.
My name is Jean-Marco.
Thank you very much for
coming here today.
Um, I'm here to advocate
for Andrew Yang.
Anybody else?
Okay.
All together?Yeah.
One, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight,
nine, ten,
11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
16, 17, 18,
19, 20.
Whoo!Yay!
Oh, that was...
I was like...
We got 20.
What did Amy have?
Amy had 20.
Right at 20.
So Warren and Amy
each had 20.
And you were with Yang
and you ended up with...
Sanders.
But you would have gone
with Biden...
Yes....to make him viable.
Yes.
Had you made up
your mind a while ago?
Uh, no.
I was...
As far as
second option,
I was pretty un...
undecided until today.
How about on Yang,
though?
Oh, yeah, I've been decided
on him for... months now.
Okay.
So but you're not
really disappointed?
Or are you?
I'm very...
I'm super disappointed.
Oh, you are? Okay.
All right.
Super disappointed.
Bernie! Bernie! Bernie... Oh, my God.
This is insane.
I was not expecting this.
I thought
there would be groups
that would be
relatively even,
but I did not
expect, like,
that this would be
such a bloodbath.
You should have seen the army
of Latinos at Better Day.
Ooh, awesome.
Yeah, I'm going to send you
like 30-some pictures.
You looked
at the Register, Tom?
I have not looked at the...
I'm looking at the site
Troy Price sent me.
Initial reports out of BV...
Nothing yet.
Hi, Ron. This is Dolores
from the Times.
Can you call me back?
We're trying to figure out
how many people
you had at Methodist Manor.
Thanks, bye.
So Warren's winning in
Des Moines at these precincts?
She did just okay here.
That's to be expected.
Uh, Buttigieg
is killing Webster.
Uh, Warren...There'll be...
Yeah, Warren didn't even
make viability there.
Yeah.Whoa.
Yeah.
Bill! What's the news
in Dubuque?
Yeah, I'm waiting, too.
It's killing me.
That's why I called,
you know?
But it'll...
it sounds like
Bernie probably carried
Dubuque though, huh?
Thank you.
See ya. Bye.
So what we do know is
that we've been seeing
these pictures
from precinct sites
all over Iowa tonight
where Joe Biden in some of them
has not been viable.
Why is that important?
Because the Biden campaign
has been saying for a long time
that they believe they're
one of the few campaigns
that would be
viable across the state.
That yes, they may
not be as strong
in the more populated areas... That's right.
...like Des Moines
and Cedar Rapids, Davenport...
Who?Joe Biden... uh, not viable.
...run up the score
in more rural areas.
And I have to say, Brian,
we've been covering
just about every single
Biden event there is
over the last few months
here in Iowa.
Uh, a lot of the places we go,
the best dining option
is probably
a Casey's General Store.
So these are rural areas.
And so we should consider
that tonight...
All right, Mike Memoli
at Biden Headquarters
where they officially
know nothing.
What are you hearing?
We're all trying to figure out
here in New York
why we don't have any results
and where the hang-up may be.
I've never seen
anything like it.
Oh, hell, the...
Every election
is like this.
I can tell you the Iowa
Democratic Party now
isn't saying anything.
It's not 10:00 yet.
Yeah.
I think AP's got
a projection coming out.
In a, you know,
a general election,
you won't get the results
until midnight.
Yeah.
And yet nothing has been
reported...
It's not 10:00 yet.Yeah.
Has it ever been
in your experience...
No. Of course not.
Sometimes you won't get
the results till the next day.
Yeah.You know?
...further endearing Iowa
to the Democratic Party.
Jeez...
I know it's going to raise
more questions for sure.
Oh, that's...
What a load of crap.
I'll be curious about there's
the process questions.
Is this the way we should,
you know, nominate a President?
Iowa Democratic Party has
put a statement out.
Thank you, my dear.
Let's hear this.
We've experienced a delay
in the results
due to the fact that
the Iowa Democratic Party
is reporting out three
data sets for the first time.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.True enough.
But regardless, we've only got
the explanation.
We still don't have any digits.
Everybody's saying it's going
to kill the Iowa caucuses...
Yeah....this delay.
It shouldn't, but it...
but it will.
Great.Good night.
Hey, Tom, would you mind
taking a look at this?
Sure.
Hey, Tom, throw me
a pack of smokes,
'cause if you
kill me sooner,
you can own
the newspaper sooner.
Is that reading
all right to you?
Yeah, it was great.
It was better
than I could have done.
I really wasn't concentrating
on other precincts,
but I could just say
Bernie swept the Latino
vote in Storm Lake.
Yeah.
That is 100% true.
I'm just going to operate
as though we're not going
to see any results tonight.
I heard it's those
caucus cards
that are causing
all the problems.
They never had
them before.
Yeah.They just counted heads.
Yeah.
Well... how much longer
you going to stay here?
About another 15 minutes.
But I got my lede-in,
as it it's just about Linda.
Linda's rousing speech
about her dad dying
and how Bernie Sanders'
health care plan
probably would have
prevented it.
Well, it's too bad, 'cause
it really is a good process
where neighbors
get together
and actually speak
to each other.
Yeah.
I think.
That's my opinion.
But...Yeah.
These are just... What are...
We got the cashews in here?
Just...Yeah.
Take as many as you want.
I'm going to pick out
all the cashews.
I talked to Matthew Marroquin
at like midnight last night.
He gave me so many details
about the app for the...
Oh, the app did crash.Yeah.
Okay.
Tom, uh, Headline:
who won the caucuses,
question mark, not Iowa.
Yeah.
That's pretty much it.
Chances we ever get
a caucus again?
Zero.Apparently not.
Yeah.Oh well.
Like Dolores said, maybe they
should just leave us alone.
Doug.
Shot.
How about you?
Party's over.
It's not the process
that broke down.
It was the app.
You know, the main anxiety
in Iowa this year
is we're going
to screw this up somehow.
And we did.
It used to be, you know,
the results were always muddied
and fucked up, you know,
but... and we could
all live with it,
but with cable news, you just
can't live with that anymore.
Well, I better get
laying out pages.
All right, catch you later.
See ya.
Look at this picture.
This is democracy working.
But you know,
I'm not...
that's not to say
that we didn't have...
You know, we have
our problems, obviously.
But it's just kinda
too bad that...
that, uh, we can't be
more patient with democracy.
So it's been
a pretty stressful, uh,
stressful time.
Very stressful.
And you know, you... I've been
sitting here for two weeks.
It's gray and rainy and cold.
So you're locked
in the house
and you're thinking
we're losing money,
and there ain't a goddamn thing
you can do about it.
So it's really important
that we can figure out a way
not to go deep into debt while
saving the newspaper.
Our ads fell off a cliff just
like every other newspaper.
We, uh...
We... Our advertising
was down 50% in March.
We hope that comes back,
but, you know,
most of our advertisers
were mom-and-pop stores
who are really at risk.
John said, "Well, I've just
thought about
"just shutting it down
and walking away.
I'd just like to walk away
and go fishing."
And, uh, you know,
we've both worked very hard.
And, uh... And then just to see
it all, uh, blow up,
you just think, well, okay,
at least we got the building.
You know, we could sell that
to pay off our debt.
So... it doesn't make
a lot of sense
for us to go borrow money
when we could just walk away
from it now.
We're thinking about doing
a GoFundMe page
to seek donations,
uh, from anywhere.
At least buy us some oxygen
until this thing clears.
You know, it just seems
like a whole different realm,
a different reality.
For this last issue,
I interviewed business owners.
They were sharing
all kinds of things.
Like, the bait guy,
some people were stealing out
of his self-serve bait machine.
Yeah.
He threatened them, that he was
going to take the wheels
off their trailer
if they kept doing that
while they were out fishing.
So I thought of
a pretty good headline.
I thought "Angler Management."
No one's even talking about
testing at this point.
So we don't know
if the virus is even here.
Um, and all we can
say is, like,
we're just closing down
for precaution.
I call a hospital up to see
if anybody's been admitted yet
for symptoms that appear
similar to COVID-19
and, well, that goes nowhere.
If we do the right things here,
we'll be all right.
We were kind of
scolding local officials
for falling short on testing.
We're falling short
on equipment.
And we're falling short on
a clear and consistent message
from local, state,
and federal authorities.
All the meatpacking plants
around us we know
are all infected with COVID.
So we just know that there's
got to be hundreds of workers
in Storm Lake who are infected,
but they aren't testing,
and then not reporting
any cases.
How sickening it is to think
of forcing immigrant workers
who are afraid of deportation,
forcing them into a potentially
deadly workplace,
uh, without testing.
And, uh...
and to me, uh,
you know, there are...
there are blatant
forms of racism
and there are subtler
forms of racism,
but it's racism all the same.
Occasionally,
I go out to Tyson.
But, you know, all you could do
is speak to a spokesperson
in Arkansas.
I called them.
And first it starts with,
how many employees
have tested positive?
Does every employee have
sufficient PPE?
What are you doing
as far as sanitation?
That's just a constant,
constant drumbeat.
And they would get back to you
with these statements, like,
"We take this with the utmost
seriousness" and that's it.
From what I understand,
there's company-wide testing
now at Tyson Storm Lake.
The problem with this is
the state-delegated
testing responsibility
to the meatpacking plants.
So there's no way we can
credibly trace
the spread of the virus
in the last several months.
It's not clear to me why Tyson
or any other meat company
is now acting as a quasi-public
health agency
and is conducting testing
on behalf of the state of Iowa.
And then it becomes
unclear to me
who owns that information,
who controls
that information,
and how selective are they
in the release
of that information.
We were the first ones to
actually, like, come to press
and say a number of Tyson
employees tested positive.
And then there was this
dramatic spike of cases
in Storm Lake.
It was just, like,
unbelievable.
We're continuing to report on
the numbers as best we can,
but we never really know
the exact count on a given day.
And that's really incumbent
upon the state department
of public health
and the governor's office,
of course,
you know,
to enlighten us on that.
But, you know,
they haven't responded
to a single email of mine.
Now Storm Lake is
the hottest spot in Iowa
and one of the top ten
in the country.
They decided late last week
to shut down
the Tyson Pork Complex
for a few days at least
for cleaning
after these test results showed
that over 20% of the Tyson
Pork Plant roster had COVID.
Come on, Peach.
Where are you?
Hey. Come here.
There's room.
There's room.
"Dear Tom, when James Madison
wrote the First Amendment
"to the Constitution,
he had you in mind.
"The reporter is the cornerstone
of an informed electorate
and a functioning democracy."
So is it one
per house then?
Yeah. Yep.One of each per house.
"The best journalism is that
which builds communities.
You build your community by
publicizing good deeds done..."
Hey, guys.
"...by urging yourself and those
around you to do better..."
Tom!What?!
How are you?Good.
Doing good?
"...and by making certain
that your town's issues
are heard in Des Moines
and Washington."
"Tyranny prevails whenever
the press is not free.
Stand guard."
Where are you from
originally?
I was actually born
in Mexico, in Jalisco.Oh.
And then, my mother
and my two brothers,
we settled
in Storm Lake, Iowa.
I was one of
the first kids
when the ESL program
was getting started.
"Reporters hold
about as much regard
"as the world's oldest
profession.
"But we are not professionals.
"Nobody gives us license.
We draw it from
the Constitution."
None, I did not.
"All we have is
our own credibility,
"which is called into question
twice a week
in our circumstance."
So how's business? Uh...
Is it picking up any?
Yeah?
Yeah.
I don't know either.
Right on, sister.
"Readers decide our future,
not any branch of government."
Do you have
your press pass?
Yes, I do.
Make sure that you have
that displayed, okay?
Okay, will do.
"If you find writing is
a chore after a while,
"you're in the wrong business.
"The pay is lousy
and the hours can be terrible.
"But you can change the world
through journalism.
"That's the only good
reason to get into this trade.
"Because when you're
looking for a friend,
"remember that the dog
can't read.
"Love , Dad.
Is that story done yet?"