Storm Lake
Subtitle: a chronicle of change, resilience, and hope from a heartland newspaper
By: Art Cullen
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 317
ISBN-13: 9780525558873
Copyright date: 2018
Subjects: American newspapers; Storm Lake times; Journalism; History
Description: "From a 2017 Pulitzer-winning newspaperman, an unsentimental ode to America's heartland as seen in small-town Iowa--a story of reinvention and resilience, environmental and economic struggle, and surprising diversity and hope. When The Storm Lake Times, a tiny Iowa twice-weekly, won a Pulitzer Prize for taking on big corporate agri-industry for poisoning the local rivers and lake, it was a coup on many counts: a strike for the well being of a rural community; a triumph for that endangered species, a family-run rural news weekly; and a salute to the special talents of a fierce and formidable native son, Art Cullen. In this candid and timely book, Cullen describes how the rural prairies have changed dramatically over his career, as seen from the vantage point of a farming and meatpacking town of 15,000 in Northwest Iowa. Politics, agriculture, the environment, and immigration are all themes in Storm Lake, a chronicle of a resilient newspaper, as much a survivor as its town. Storm Lake's people are the book's heart: the family that swam the Mekong River to find Storm Lake; the Latina with a baby who wonders if she'll be deported from the only home she has known; the farmer who watches markets in real time and tries to manage within a relentless agriculture supply chain that seeks efficiency for cheaper pork, prepared foods, and ethanol. Storm Lake may be a community in flux, occasionally in crisis (farming isn't for the faint hearted), but one that's not disappearing--in fact, its population is growing with immigrants from Laos, Mexico, and elsewhere. Thirty languages are now spoken there, and soccer is more popular than football"--
Table of contents: title: The first question : why?; title: The next question : why not?; title: "And ye shall have dominion over the land"; title: Bringing home the bacon; title: Lessons for life; title: A tornado and an implosion; title: Lust at first sight; title: The newspaper is the family; title: State slogan : a place to grow; title: A purple hybrid; title: The young men from Jalisco; title: Saving a prairie pothole; title: A challenge to industrial agriculture; title: We can't go on like this; title: Via Dolorosa; title: A place to call home; title: "We won!"; title: We wish to remain what we are; title: Where is that song coming from?.