Conversations with Garrett Lane and Fred Fluker, whose roots in rural Alabama community newspaper efforts inspired their careers in journalism and media — and a shared hopefulness about journalism being produced by the PACERS Network today. What drives “regular citizens” to start newspapers from scratch in their own hometowns? What can media professionals learn from these citizen journalists? And what do we need to do to ensure these labor-of-love newspapers stick around long-term in our communities?

Conversations with Jean Mosley and Cameron Brooks of Tallapoosa County, Alabama, one-time partners in publication of the Camp Hill Chronicle. Community newspapers don’t just bring their readers together; often, they bring together staffers from vastly different ages, races, and backgrounds. Case in point: For two years, Brooks, a high school student, helped put together the Camp Hill Chronicle with Mosley, a retired librarian and the paper’s octogenarian publisher.

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Conversations with scholars George Daniels (University of Alabama) and Nan Fairley (Auburn University) about today's media climate and the state of citizen journalism. Thank goodness that not all newspapers are dead. Community-minded newspapers are often the only journalism outlets covering local stories and local issues. They’re also the only outlets “rendering lives in full” — documenting the lives of neighbors from birth announcements and graduations to marriages and obituaries.

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A conversation with Mary and Freddie Howard of Monroe County, Alabama, publishers of The Beatrice Legacy. Here in Beatrice, as Mary Howard notes, Black people still mostly live on one side of the railroad tracks; White people on the other. Can a community newspaper successfully serve as a bridge between oft-divided townspeople?

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