The biggest of stories came to the small city of Butler. AP showed how its newspaper met the moment

By David Bauder, Matt Slocum and Joe Frederick

Media reporter David Bauder of the Trends+Culture unit thought a unique angle for the weekend after the Trump shooting would be to explore how Butler’s local newspaper — like so many, struggling in a jumbled journalism economy — responded when the world’s biggest story unfolded in its backyard.

Photographer Matt Slocum and video journalist Joe Frederick got access to the newspaper’s journalists, managers and presses and spent an afternoon doing interviews there and in town. The resulting story revealed not only the news organization’s professionalism but the emotional toll the story was taking on young staffers. One was moved to tears as she recounted how the crowd turned on her after the shooting. But, she said, the story taught her that in being a journalist, she had made the right choice.
All three formats traveled to Butler, thanks to the Democracy grant, to spend time at the newspaper and in town together; this joined-up approach enabled them to interlock strong human stories and look at the American local news industry as a whole.
Particularly noteworthy was how this story managed the “ladder of abstraction” and represented a strong crossover story that could appeal to multiple audiences — those looking for political news, local news, media news and simply a human story about the faces behind the journalism. Led by media reporting veteran Bauder, the story offered a compelling on-the-ground tale that also linked it up with the struggles that newspapers and local news are having in this decade’s information economy.

For taking a collaborative multi-format approach to storytelling that looked through the lens of local journalism, David Bauder, Matt Slocum and Joe Frederick win this week’s Best of AP — Second Winner.

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