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Local Coverage
With its abandoned factories and appalling poverty, Newburgh is like many other faded
industrial towns. Two reporters talked with residents in this upstate New York city, then
shared what they’d learned by offering readers their point of view. Photo by Jeff Goulding.
of a son who she lost to Newburgh’s
endemic violence. In the end, we gave
more weight to her words than to those
we heard inside of city hall.
We also relied on our expertise.
One of us, a seasoned street reporter,
came to understand the history and
contemporary dynamics of Newburgh
as well as anyone who has lived there
and concluded the city’s core problem
was entrenched poverty among its
black residents. The other, who holds
a master’s degree in urban planning,
was encouraged to analyze the city’s
economy and assess the effects of urban
renewal. In a city as remote and
small as Newburgh, no outside experts,
professors or think tanks had studied
its poverty economy or mental health
issues. Living as close as they do to these
problems, we weren’t surprised that no
inside experts emerged, either. So we
had to study the city ourselves.
“The Promised Land,” a magazinestyle
essay about the self-perpetuating
cycle of urban poverty, conveyed voices
of those hard streets, alongside our
big picture analysis of how things got
to be the way they are today. At the
end, it included a series of next-step
recommendations, written mostly by
our publisher, Moss.
Reaction by readers—including residents
of Newburgh—was mixed. A few
praised our work as “brilliant.” More
wrote it off as “The Record picking on
Newburgh” again—a common theme in
the paper’s relationship with the city.
It served to galvanize opinion around
our chief recommendation—that the
vacant urban renewal land be used to
build a community college then under
discussion—but moved it in the
opposite direction. The city’s leaders
launched a campaign to put the college
someplace else. Most of our recommendations
were casually ignored, though
some have been taken up by other
groups. Under the grind of deadlines
and the rush of new priorities, any
push by us to keep the pressure on
got lost in the haze.
Our colleagues’ reaction was mixed
as well. A reporter at another paper
wrote to ask one of us if he was aiming
to become a columnist. When one of
us interviewed for a job at bigger, more
traditional papers, editors’ comments
about the series went from “genius” to
wondering how this buttoned-down
business reporter had strayed so far
off the reservation.
Back in our own newsroom, Levine
liked what we’d done. He used our series
as a prime example of the direction
he thought newsrooms should move
in if they were going to stay relevant to
readers. At the Record he believed in
freeing up reporters to call it like they
see it by trusting in their experience
and analysis. He wanted them to write
stories that stood for something and
to say things no one else would. He
articulated these values in an interview
with the Columbia Journalism Review a
few months after “The Promised Land”
appeared in our paper.
At our newspaper, “The Promised
Land” was really a last hurrah for
Levine’s local news approach. Shortly
after the series ran, Moss, the publisher
who had given Levine so much leash,
retired. Within a year, Levine was dead,
killed by a heart attack at the age of 54.
Soon after, Rupert Murdoch launched
his bid to buy Dow Jones and, when
his bid succeeded, he indicated plans
to sell off its Ottaway community
newspaper group, of which the Record
is one. Uncertainty pervaded our
newsroom, followed by a predictable
exodus of reporters, many of whom
were believers in Levine’s ideas. One
of us embarked for a new newspaper
job in St. Louis.
If there’s a lasting legacy, it might
be that our words—the voice we became
accustomed to using—have been
absorbed into Newburgh’s struggle.
Two years later, in the offices of several
nonprofit agencies, pages from “The
Promised Land” are taped to walls and
desks. This fall, the city was engaged in a
hard-fought, three-way race for mayor,
and poverty was a central issue. At
least one candidate included excerpts
from our series in campaign literature.
What’s certain is that the issues and
ideas this very different and challenging
newspaper series raised are now
part of Newburgh’s conversation. As
our editor would have reminded us,
“That’s the point.”
John Doherty is a bureau reporter at
The Times Herald-Record in Middletown,
New York. Tim Logan covers
the telecommunications and airline
industries for the business desk at
the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
12 Nieman Reports / Winter 2007