Belated Tribute to Tom Gish

Several readers of KSN&C prefer to lurk in the background - not commenting on stories for fear of politicizing certain events - caring deeply about education reform, but reflecting privately. One such valued confidant is former OEA honcho, Penney Sanders, who has been out of town consulting and returned recently to learn of the passing of Mountain Eagle Publisher Tom Gish.

This from Penney Sanders:

The death of Tom Gish marks the passing of one of the legends in KY newspapers.

Furthermore, Tom was one of the champions of education reform in KY. Tom served, with distinction, on the reconstituted state board.

It was Tom's crusading for administrative and systemic reform that helped bring about so much change and reform that was a hallmark of the early years. Tom truly believed that every child deserved the best education, regardless of where that child attended school in KY. He was one of a kind. If only we had more people committed to his vision of quality education for all.

Thanks Penney.

This from NPR: Audio:

He had one of the smallest newspapers in the country, but Tom Gish had big impact. Some people say Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty began with stories in the Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky.

Family and friends gathered Monday in eastern Kentucky to bury Gish. He died Friday at 82 after suffering heart ailments and kidney failure.

Gish and his wife, Pat, turned a pleasant, chatty and inoffensive weekly into a journalistic crusade. When the Gishes bought The Mountain Eagle in 1956, its masthead declared it "A Friendly Non-Partisan Weekly Newspaper." Under the Gishes, the slogan became "The Mountain Eagle. It Screams."

'It Still Screams'

"Later it was 'It Still Screams,' after they burned it down," recalls Steve Cawood, an attorney in Pineville, Ky., who knew Gish for 40 years.

In 1974, a firebombing burned the presses, files, archives and offices of Gish's newspaper. The new slogan was an act of defiance.

"It expresses a determination to scream out from the local level to Frankfort, to Washington, to the people of the country that this is something that needs to be addressed, and this is something we're not going to stop shouting about," Cawood says.

The shouting included investigative stories about poverty, illiteracy, strip-mining damage, unsafe coal mines, unresponsive school boards, corrupt public officials and ineffective federal programs. And boy did those stories tick people off.

"He just stepped on so many toes that some people felt like they needed to get rid of him," says Carroll Smith, a coal miner and former Letcher County, Ky., executive. "They tried burning him out, and I don't think they missed an issue of the paper. They printed it anyway."

The firebombing followed stories about police mistreatment of young people. After other stories, Gish and his reporters were barred from public meetings, businesses withheld advertising and Gish was threatened — many times.

Global Attention

The Gishes started out as reporters sharing a dream of owning a small newspaper. They later wrote that they were surprised by what they discovered.

"We didn't know that one of every two mountain adults couldn't read or write," the Gishes noted in an article quoted by the Lexington Herald-Leader. "We didn't know that tens of thousands of families had been plunged into the extremes of poverty."

The Mountain Eagle's exposes attracted global attention. Reporters from the biggest newspapers and networks made pilgrimages to little Whitesburg to get briefed on Appalachian issues. They followed up on stories The Mountain Eagle published. They also asked Gish why he was so stubborn.

"Too many people in rural journalism have courage, but burn out. Or get caught in some economic circumstance that forces them to sell out or give up," explains Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. "(The Gishes) persevered. And they set an inspirational standard for everyone in community journalism and journalism as a whole."

Financial Troubles

The perseverance was hard financially. At one point, boycotts kept the paper down to four tabloid pages. Sometimes, the whole family pitched in, five kids and all, to get the paper out.

In 1969, CBS News reporter Charles Kuralt asked Gish why he simply didn't leave the threats and boycotts behind, and get out of Whitesburg. Gish chuckled at the question and said this: "That would amount to a kind of surrendering that I just can't do."

On Monday, with the patriarch gone and Pat retired, the couple's son Ben runs The Mountain Eagle. The Gish name remains on the masthead. And Tom Gish leaves behind a little newspaper that still screams.

This from the Rural Blog:

"The Mountain Eagle’s reach to legislators and the national and international press corps shaped legislation ranging from food stamps, Head Start, Title I of the education act, Black Lung compensation, mine safety legislation, strip-mining legislation, housing assistance, to name only a few – all incubated in a weekly newspaper," wrote former Eagle reporter Jim Brancsome. His remarks were read at today's funeral by David Hawpe, editorial director of The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, who said Tom and Pat Gish "gave me the foundation for much of the work I've done as a journalist." For an Associated Press story on the funeral, click
here.

Another former Eagle reporter, Bill Bishop, wrote on his Daily Yonder yesterday: "Tom and Pat wrote some of the first stories about the poverty that came with the post-war depression in the coalfields. Other reporters followed the Eagle’s reporting. They would read a story in the Whitesburg paper and then trek down to Eastern Kentucky to see things for themselves. Invariably they’d wind up in Whitesburg and following Tom on a personally guided tour of the region. The War on Poverty began with stories coming from Eastern Kentucky. In reality, Lyndon Johnson’s attention to the nation’s poorest people was directed by reporting done by Tom and Pat Gish."