- The best journalism is that which builds communities.

- This is Dolores Cullen at The Storm Lake Times.

- It's important to know who had a baby and who died.

- We've always operated at the breakeven point.

Seven dollars.

People aren't supporting journalism like they did.

Somehow we've got to increase the number of readers.

When I started out in this business, there were newspapers so fat you could barely lift 'em.

Now there's no newspaper at all.

- The newspaper not being around terrifies me.

- I think it's very helpful that we know what's going on in the community.

- "Storm Lake," now only on Independent Lens.

- [vocalizing] ♪ ♪ [keys clacking] - 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.

- Mm-hmm.

- Come here a sec.

- Sure.

- I added this to the lede.

I think we gotta tell the readers what the hell's going on here.

Okay.

Thank you.

- No problem.

[phone rings] - The Times.

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 ape [bleep].

I get real uptight about deadlines.

Every hour we're late it costs us a hundred bucks.

♪ ♪ You know, I get all amped up twice a week.

[laughs] Snapping at family members and, you know, 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.

[light music] ♪ ♪ 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 breakeven point.

One year we post a small profit, the next a small loss.

Seven dollars.

Through three decades, we've 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 and the courthouse.

- You feel comfortable saying 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 in The Times-mobile.

- This is Ice Out Day, the day when all the ice melts.

- My sister-in-law, Mary Cullen, who's 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 page is 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.

[cheers and applause] - It's a great moment.

- Thanks.

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.

[wind chimes clanking] - No.

No, haven't fed her, nothing.

I've been completely negligent.

- Well, it's still early.

- In the old days of lead type, editors would lock up pages, the lines of type, they'd lock them up in what we called a chase.

And if you were wearing a long tie, you could lock your tie into the end of the chase.

So, so editors wore bow ties.

- Oh, geez, am I gonna have enough butter?

- You always got lard.

- Yeah, you took all the butter.

- I took all the butter.

Right.

female announcer: 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 on stage with the town's Pulitzer Prize- winning newspaper editor.

male announcer: 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.

[applause] Welcome to all of you to Storm Lake, The City Beautiful, and the Buena Vista University.

I'm Mark 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.

[cheers and applause] Thank you, Senator, thank you.

Farm income is down by half.

- Yep.

- Since 2013.

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 wanna 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.

Y'all have shown the value of the immigrant community.

I never thought, before this campaign, that I would get great Mexican food n Iowa but I have.

[laughter] - Take a couple 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.

[laughter] - What'd you think, Whitney?

Did you enjoy that, the forum thing?

- Yeah.

- Tom, you're gonna write a lede 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.

- [laughs] Don't ask where I got it.

- Where'd you get it?

- Uh, just don't ask.

- Some dead guy or-- - Yeah, it was an estate sale.

- Yeah, okay, all right.

Anyway, Vilsack sidebar.

- Yeah.

- The forum for the front.

- Yep.

- Okay.

- I have this 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 drug 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 'em.

- Looks good to me.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

- 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 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 [bleep] 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 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 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 10 to 15,000 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 the 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.

- Okie doke.

- For The Times.

♪ ♪ The last I knew, there were about 300 news deserts in the United States.

And these are towns with 20 or 30,000 people that are now without a local news source.

You can 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.

We've got to have a strong business model to do good journalism.

The problem is is that the business model is falling apart.

And, 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 cater 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 manufacturers 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 got nothing.

But now people wanna 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 are saying, "Oh well that's not worth $1."

♪ ♪ - Chelsea, right?

- Yes.

- I'm Tom Cullen with The Times in Storm Lake.

- Hi.

- Hi, 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.

- Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

- Yeah, you're welcome.

- Doug Kochera, how's it going?

- Hey, welcome.

Are you ready to stand with me today?

[cheering] - I don't know if you're ready to work with me today because all about what we're doing today is gonna be about how hard we will work together to move our issues forward.

Our farmer 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 gonna live on this land, you know, so it's time for a change.

So thank you all very much for coming.

Thank you.

[cheers and applause] - Hi, Emmanuel.

This is Dolores Cullen at The Storm Lake Times.

Can you call me back today so we can talk about your 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.

- [singing in Spanish] - This is a Storm Lake guy, works at Tyson.

And it looks like they like him.

[singing continues] 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 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 a 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.

- Hi.

- Hello.

- How are you?

Come in.

- My name is Dolores, and I am here to see Emmanuel.

- Yeah, he's coming.

- Okay.

He's coming.

- 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 going on beyond the next round?

- It's maybe 100.

- 100?

- 100 more people.

- Oh.

- Yeah.

So that competition is too hard.

- 100 more people will be competing against you.

- Yep.

In the 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.

- Oh, yeah.

- You look kind of like excited and that's how you looked when you were singing too, you looked very confident.

[both laugh] - I'm okay, I'm okay.

- Big smile.

Okay.

When I met Art, he was at the Algona paper.

And they were doing things like this, feature stories about a family that had 17 children.

And 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 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-- that we were covering how local people were teaching English to newcomers who did not speak English.

And these were Sudanese people.

And so I took the picture of this woman and Art chose to run it big like this.

And we did get an anonymous letter, but from someone who said, "Oh, why is she on the front page?"

And it was really mean.

And this was a long time ago.

I mean, there was kind of blatant racism.

So then Julio Barroso was featured back in 1996, as being a kid who helped other kids learn English.

And then there was a raid of the meatpacking plant.

And then in a following issue, it was reported that Julio is gone.

Eight-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.

And so then the next day when we find out that they were kicked out of the US, 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 1/10 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 of 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 wanna 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 till the 15th and 16th of May.

Had two days.

- Yeah.

- We didn't get back in until June 2nd.

- Have you ever seen this wet in the spring before?

- No, never.

Not in my lifetime.

You know, I usually get out end of April.

- Right.

- And we're usually done by May 10th.

- What do you figure you'd get knocked off in your yield?

What did 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.

You say 150, then everything after that's better.

- Yeah - Right?

- [laughs] Right.

- That's gravy.

It's gravy on top of your taters.

- Hey, 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 has been so bizarre that I thought I really needed to do it, 'cause we've never seen the corn like this before.

A guy farming today, you're gonna need, you know, over 1,000 acres to support a family.

And a generation ago, John could raise a family on 350 to 500 acres.

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 gonna be in agriculture, then you're working for a company.

And let's say you break up the 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.

[marching band music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ In our quest for the Irish.

♪ ♪ - Everybody, make yourselves comfortable.

We're just glad to have Senator Grassley here with us.

And I also wanna thank him for being super supportive of the water well industry, and really glad to see him here.

- When I am at your city administrative building or you're at 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 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 gonna say, "I don't want it."

Even if it's good.

They don't want it.

Just they're gonna be the opposite.

And I see that on both sides.

What's it gonna take to change that?

- You couldn't ask an easier question?

[laughter] 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.

What's your sense on that?

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, wasn't there a figure out a couple weeks ago that there could be 100,000 people deported.

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 the Trump admits through tweet that we're gonna deport tens of millions of people.

- Well-- - 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 can line up 11 million people and get 'em out of the country, that's not the real world.

And I'm not telling anybody that.

- Yeah.

Okay.

You've never heard me say that.

- No.

- 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.

Ding!

[both scream] - Okay, keep putting 'em in, Joe.

- Now that 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 on the same leaky ship.

- Tom, could 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--I--in my opinion, the most important pillar of the community-- it's the family.

- You brought sunshine with you, right?

It's comin'.

I gotta warn you, there's a bunch of fans in here.

They're kind of-- might be kind of a circus.

- Thank you so much for having us.

- Well thanks for coming.

We appreciate it.

Come on in, everybody.

- Thank you.

- Nice to meet you, I'm John Cullen.

- John it's nice to meet you.

- I'm Jim Cullen.

- Pleased to meet you.

- Jim is my brother.

He's the editor of The Progressive Populist, out of Austin, Texas, and we produce it here.

Well, anyway, welcome to Iowa.

- Thank you.

- And especially to Storm Lake.

We've been talking with people a lot about rural America and how we got kind of flown over--[laughs] 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 gonna get flown over again.

- Policy wise.

- Right.

- Rural Americans often talked about kind of like a problem we've gotta solve.

- Right.

[laughs] Right.

- Our message ought to make sense in rural America.

- Right.

- Cause Democratic Party grew out of the idea 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's growing.

Finally, not by much, but we're proud to be, to even have positive numbers, big deal for us, right?

If you net out the factor that immigration played in that we'd be flatline, 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, it could sink the American project in our lifetime.

- I think we're gonna 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.

- Yeah.

- 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 gotta sign that.

- Yeah, you gotta go up top now.

- Oh, man.

- You're a lefty.

- All the great ones, yeah.

- You ever pitch?

- All right.

No, I got two left hands.

- Oh.

[laughter] [light music] ♪ ♪ - We're headed out to see Tom Lane who is running for city council.

And the reason why I'm interested in this is Tom became interested in city government 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 flathead Dutch German cabbage.

- How do you get something to be 12 pounds?

- All this stuff is pure organic, no chemicals.

- So 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 culminating piece?

- Yeah, I was reading in the paper that all these openings were coming up.

And all of a sudden, I decided, you know what?

I'm gonna run for city council.

- How many signatures did you need for that?

- They said only 10, but I got actually 15 of them.

- Okay.

- My wife here, Tarla, grabbed some signs on the back in the pick-up here.

Today if everybody's ready, we're gonna hit the campaign trail.

- All right.

What expertise can you offer?

- Really, my expertise, I can walk in a trailer house and tell you exactly right now what's not kosher in there and everything.

I've been underneath every one of these trailer houses.

- Underneath?

- Either checking heat tapes... - Yeah.

- Or fixing a frozen pipe.

20 below zero.

- Yeah.

- Wind blowing up your back end.

I just work on things.

But I've helped people too, you know.

- Yeah, well yeah.

- Like, I've given them vegetables and-- - Yeah.

- Everything--I used to go to Sioux City and-- - Yeah.

- And buy a truckload of bread.

- I didn't know that.

- And bring it back here and and just hand it out to people.

- Wow.

- Hi, there.

- Hey.

- I'm gonna put a sign out, is that all right?

- That's totally fine.

Go for it.

♪ ♪ - So has someone else in your family been Pork Queen, Pork Princess?

- Yeah, - My other daughter, she's our Little Miss fair queen.

- Oh, yeah.

- So she's been-- - Oh, okay, now it's coming together for me.

- Yes.

- I've seen the name.

- Yeah and she was a Little Miss too when she was that age.

- You guys have royalty in your blood.

- We do.

This is Mrs. Heuscamp.

She's our second-grade teacher.

- Hi.

Nice to meet you.

Do you guys know what's in pigs feed?

Any guesses?

- Mud.

- No.

- They like playing in mud.

- Calvin?

- Corn.

- Ooh!

- Yep, corn is one of 'em.

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?

[all snorting] - Okay, so the pig we're gonna bring in is about three or four weeks old.

[pig squealing] You like the diapered pig?

- I haven't seen that.

Here, let me get around here.

[laughter] You guys are-- - We try to prevent accidents.

- Yeah, because I'm sure it's happened before.

- It's traumatizing.

Yeah, it has.

- Turn him a little more sideways.

Yeah.

[squealing] - 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.

That is what the pork industry is all about.

We wanna grow the best product with the least amount of resources.

- Art, when I write about the pork producers 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 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 as 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 [bleep].

So anyway.

He has really pretty eyes.

- Okay, now recipes.

- Okay, so I have lots.

Okay, so this pumpkin bread.

- Okay, super.

- Recipe is from my grandma, my mom's mom.

- Ooh.

- And it's delish.

- That's great.

- The pea soup recipe-- 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 'em.

- 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.

And I'm not for sure so we'll have to go over that sort of the percentages.

- Yeah, that's not a 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 can even do, like, a couple more pictures on there, too.

- Okay.

Yeah.

- This is what we did last year, it is 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 gonna be in Friday's issue.

- Friday's?

- Yeah.

Next Friday.

- And it's 100?

- 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?

- Well I can always stop in on Monday or Tuesday next week, too.

- Running twice when-- 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.

- Thank you.

I will.

Bye bye.

- I'll see you later.

I think it looks good for our newspaper to have all the ads from downtown on 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 delivering papers.

You know, that's one of the most important things about journalism, the best stories in the world aren't any good if you don't get them out on the street so people can read 'em.

You run into people in the store, "Oh, you got the new paper."

Or maybe they'll tell you off.

That's happened me a couple 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 all what he has to say about it and think about it.

- Gotta 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 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 a big advocate for all the Latino community with the struggles that all the newspaper we have, no matter what language you are.

I was thinking that maybe we try to do something together.

You know, we can help each other.

- Yeah.

- So I was thinking you guys can give me your story in English, I translate it, you know, in Spanish and all the credits going to be 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 on, 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.

- It will be 15, 20 years ago, probably we will not be talking right now.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, but it's getting tough.

And he said, cause we are losing the weak foundation of the small communities that are newspapers.

- Yeah, 'cause nobody else is gonna fight for the little person.

- Nobody.

Nobody's going to talk about corruption.

Nobody's going to talk about the church, about, you know, the activity that the community get together no matter what race we are.

Facebook's not going to do that.

- Yeah.

- But it's sad.

It's sad that it's taking over.

Some politicians talk about fake news.

They release 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 'em.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

- Well, it sounds like a good possibility.

I'm--but as I say, I think well, Art has to-- - Sign off.

- Sign off on this.

- Thank you so much.

- Well, thanks for stopping in.

- No, thank you.

- Thanks, Lorena.

- Thank you.

- We appreciate it.

- Yeah, thank you so much.

- Could I have a water, too, when you have a minute.

- So what's this Lorena wanna do?

- She wants-- - She was in here yesterday and asked me-- - To share content and ads.

She says that there's a lot of potential for us to sell ads.

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 of feet on the street.

- Yeah.

And she said there's a good appetite for our stories there.

It's just no one can read 'em in English.

So it'll 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 get, like, a daily complimentary access to stormlake.com, you promote it and it's free just for one day only.

- I don't know that we have enough critical mass to make it work, but who knows.

- It sells us a couple subscriptions, what the hell?

- Yeah.

- An idea that I raised before is an 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 gonna sell the sponsorship for a podcast that has 100 listeners?

I think it should be about reporting.

And I should stick to writing columns and editorials.

- 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, I know.

- But-- - I like the idea that you're bringing things up.

It's just that we gotta 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, we 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's 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 in 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.

[sighs] [bleep] - Well, I guess we'll just go without heart medicine again this month.

[laughs] Our accountant says we made about $2,000, so-- 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 10 employees fed and I don't 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.

- [laughs] Yeah.

And then he'll be really screwed.

- Here you go.

[both speaking Spanish] - 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.

- [speaking Spanish] - 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 will 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?

Raise those thumbs up, right?

One, two, three, dual language.

all: Dual language.

- Okay.

- What's gonna happen on Monday exactly?

How does the caucus work?

- Okay, 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 school houses 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 gonna caucus over here in this corner and the Bernie people are gonna caucus over here in this corner and so everybody goes to their respective place and then they start counting heads.

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.

- Oh, you were able to fit the banner there?

- I just put 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.

- That's everything that was there.

- You did it just right.

See if we came out with 31 like we're supposed to.

I've written several columns over the last couple months explaining what we're gonna do with the TV listings.

We had to do something because with our insurance and printing costs and everything else going up, we just, were looking for ways to control expenses without cutting personnel costs, which most newspapers have done.

And we have run a TV section since we started that was a 12-page tab that had all these channels.

And we thought that maybe we wouldn't need to run the TV times anymore.

And our readers told us, "no, don't do that."

They still like the printed version better.

So we asked our readers to let us know which channels they wanted to keep.

And so we were able to drop from about 80 channels down to 31.

We figured all tolled, that running this TV section was costing us close to $20,000 a year.

And this will cut our expenses by more than half and 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.

I 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?

Okay, then.

♪ ♪ - And so when we go out to caucus, I wanna 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 caucuses.

Thank you all, very much.

[cheers and applause] - I'm 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 reaches out to everybody and make sure everybody feels welcome.

[cheers and applause] - We need those Yang ads.

[laughter] - 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.

- Or is it, is it, you know, actions that he's actually done?

So, no, I stand behind him 100%.

- 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.

- Okay.

- Not what we have now.

announcer: ...literally out today.

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are basically tied at the top of the national polls, and a lot of the polling out here 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.

Katy Tur, our columnist.

- There we are.

Peach, Art's on TV.

- Art, 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 everybody was anxious about electability.

And that's been the theme this year.

We're so afraid of screwing this up in Iowa and-- - Whoa, you are hungry.

- 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 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 are you doing?

- Good, how are you?

- Who do you guys-- - Buttigieg.

- Pete?

Did you see him here at BV?

- We didn't.

- 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.

- [laughs] - Have fun.

[indistinct chatter] - Okay, we are gonna get started.

- Hola, hola.

[speaking Spanish] Everyone have one?

Okay, now we're gonna have the precinct captains, which for every party that's here that wants to represent themselves, 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 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 the 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.

[applause] - Hi, everyone.

My name is John Marco.

Thank you very much for coming here today.

I'm here to advocate for Andrew Yang.

- Anybody else?

Okay.

All together.

all: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.

- Whoo!

Yay!

- Oh, that was-- - Whoo, it is.

Whoo.

- 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?

- No, I was, as far as second option I was pretty undecided until today.

- How about on Yang though?

Were you--had you-- - Oh, yeah, I've been decided on him for months now.

- Okay.

So--but you're not really disappointed.

- I'm super disappointed.

- Oh, you are?

Okay.

All right.

- Super disappointed.

- Oh, my God.

This is insane.

all: [chanting] Bernie!

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 gonna send you, like, 30 some pictures.

- Did you look 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.

- Buttigieg is killing Webster.

Warren--yeah.

Warren didn't even make my 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 sounds like Bernie probably carried Dubuque though, huh?

Thank you.

See ya.

Bye.

announcer: 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.

- No.

announcer: That yes, they may not be as strong in the more populated areas.

- That's right.

announcer: Like Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport.

- Who?

- Joe Biden--not viable.

announcer: Run up the score in more rural areas, but 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, 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.

announcer: All right, Mike Memoli at Biden headquarters, where they officially know nothing.

- What are you hearing?

announcer: 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.

announcer: I've never seen anything like it.

- Oh, hell, every election is like this.

announcer: I can tell you the Iowa Democratic Party now isn't saying anything.

- It's not 10 o'clock yet.

- Yep.

announcer: What are the issues?

- I think AP's got a projection coming out.

- And you know, general election, you won't get the results until midnight.

- Yeah.

announcer: And yet nothing has been reported.

- It's not 10 o'clock yet.

- Yeah.

Has it ever been in your experience?

- No, of course not.

Sometimes you won't get the results 'til the next day.

- Yeah.

announcer: Iowa Democratic Party, further enduring Iowa to the Democratic Party.

- Jeez.

announcer: Well, I know it's gonna raise more questions for sure.

- Joe, that's-- what a load of crap.

announcer: I'll be curious about there's the process questions-- is this the way we should, you know, nominate a president?

announcer: Iowa Democratic Party has put a statement out-- thank you, my dear.

- Let's hear this.

announcer: 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 right.

Yeah.

- True enough.

announcer: But regardless, we've only got the explanation, we still don't have any digits.

- Everybody's saying it's gonna kill the Iowa caucuses.

- Yeah.

- This delay.

It shouldn't but it will.

Great.

- Good night.

- Hey, Tom, would you mind taking a look at this, see what you think?

- Sure.

Sure.

- Hey, Tom, throw me a pack of smokes so that if you kill me sooner, you can own the newspapers sooner.

Is that reading all right to you?

- Yeah, it was great.

It was better than what 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 gonna operate as though we're not gonna 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're gonna stay here?

- About 15 minutes.

But I got my lede-in is 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 whatever-- we got cashews in here?

Just.

- Yeah.

Take as many as you want.

- Pick out all the cashews.

Okay, then.

- See you.

- Talked to Mathew Marroquin, like, midnight last night.

He gave me so many details about the app.

- Oh, the app did crash?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- Tom, headline: "Who Won the Caucuses?

Not Iowa."

- Yeah.

That's pretty much it.

- Chances we ever gonna caucus again?

- Zero.

- Apparently not.

- Yeah.

Oh, well.

- Like Dolores said, maybe they should just leave us alone.

[phone buzzing] 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 gonna screw this up somehow.

And we did.

[laughs] It used to be, you know, the results are always muddied and [bleep] 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 kind of too bad that, that we can't be more patient with democracy.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - It's been pretty stressful.

Stressful time.

Very stressful.

And you know, 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 just thinking we're losing money.

And there ain't a damn 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--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, walking away, I'd just like to walk away and go fishing.

And you know, we've both worked very hard.

And--and then just to see how it all 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.

[clock ticking] [tense music] We're thinking about doing a GoFundMe page to seek donations from anywhere.

At least buy us some oxygen until this thing clears.

- You know, it's 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.

And he threatened them that he was gonna 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.

And all we can say is, like, we're just closing down for precaution.

I call the hospital to see if anybody has 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 without testing.

And, and to me, you know, there are, there are blatant forms of racism and there are subtler forms of racism, but it's racism all the same.

♪ ♪ - I occasionally go out to Tyson, but you know, all you can 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.

That's really incumbent upon the State Department of Public Health and the governor's office, of course, 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, one of the top 10 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?

Here.

Okay.

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.

- One of each per house?

- Yep.

- "The best journalism is that which builds communities.

You build your community by publicizing good deeds done."

- Hi, 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."

- [speaking Spanish] - 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.

- Okay.

- All we have is our own credibility which is called into question twice a week in our circumstance.

So how's business?

Is it picking up any?

- Yeah?

- Yeah, I don't know, either.

- Right on, sister.

[both laugh] - Si se puede!

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, (you'd better check that out.)

Dad.

PS: Is that story done yet?

♪ ♪ - Coming this season to Independent Lens... - We live in a beautiful area, an amazing area.

We have beautiful families.

Nobody wants to admit all the horrible things that have happened.

- When they brought these children here... [train whistle blows] They took everything away from them.

- "Kill the Indian in him and save the man."

- "I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, then I lost my spirit."

- Who you are isn't right.

Let's take that savage nature away from you.

- The white man wanted you to learn his way.

100%.

- Our chiefs at the time, they were doing it as a way to bring that hope back to our people.

And I don't think they ever thought they were sending their children off to die.

I want everybody to know what happened to our children in those boarding schools.

- I walked in that cemetery where they were buried, and then I could feel the pain and that heavy heart.

- They buried them back in the 1800s.

They've been here too long.

It's time for them to go home.

- I was like, why didn't anybody bring these kids home?

- So, like, we had failed.

Something wasn't done right.

- It was like the Army was just digging in their heels.

All their arguments were, you know, "No, no, no."

- It's up to us to either find the truth ourselves or continue to pressure the government to bring that truth forward.

My dad would say, "You need to go and you need to carry this on--in a way, finish it," he said.

- We're not waiting no longer for anybody to come save us.

We're gonna save ourselves.

- Independent Lens, available now with PBS Passport, your home for documentaries.

- There are secrets; we need to find out what the secrets are.

- Your home for docuseries.

Stream the best of PBS.

- People look at donuts as being a sweet treat.

To us, it's more than that.

- Anywhere.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪