>>There's this great line from Walter Lippman that a free press is not a luxury but a vital and organic necessity of a great society, a true democracy, that sums up what community journalism is truly about in all these small newspapers on the blue >>It's intense.

It's umm... if people realized how much we work and cared, they'd be amazed, I thinkthat a small town of 10,000 people, how much this little newspaper cares.

I consider us the best small town newspaper in America.

>>It would have been easy to just put out a little friendly community newspaper but I didn't think that that's what this community needed.

I think probably what you need is the decision that no matter what the pressures are put on you, maybe even threats, that you're goingto do your job anyway >>They have inner-city problems that you won't see in a lot of small towns.

I mean, I listen to the scanner, I see all the crime stuff, I read the police reports, I... you can't just act like this is just like any other small town because I've been in other small towns and I haven't seethe level of crime and we have the highest, you know people, we write a drug overdose story and they go well, this is like anywhere.

Well, we have the highest drug overdose rate in the country, how can you say it's like anywhere?

We have the highest, you know, it's not like anywhere else.

>>From day one, you know, Kevin sat in this chair, I was right over there, Here's how it goes.

Everyone you talk to is going to lie to you, except for me, like you have to trust me on everything, which is a bizarre thing to say and it's a total leap of faith but you take it, you kindof go down the rabbit hole and you realize after three months, six months, how true that is and howtrue it's just like you kind of start to see through the guys with the politics and the... just the... the brute realities of... of how things work here.

>>We've been reading newspapers in our country for over 300 years.

But the crinkle of paper is disappearing.

People are getting their news on backlit computer screens.

The digital age is transforming journalism.

>>But in Espanola, New Mexico, they still get the news the old fashioned way.

Folks around here say you either love it or you hate it but everybody reads it.

The Rio Grande Sun sells out every week.

>>There are about 7500 newspapers in the United Sates and the astonishing fact is that 97% of those newspapers are defined as small papers, circulations 50,000 and under, and of those, thousands are little weeklies that you've never heard of in what people call the boonies, or the middle of nowhere,which in fact is the center of somebody else's universe.

There's an expression one of my buddies has at a small paper nearby.

He says, "We may be small town, but we'll never be small time."

>>I probably knew early on that I'd eventually have my own paper because every newspaperman believeshe's going to have his own his own paper eventually.

I was one of those.

>>Bob Trapp and his wife Ruth were both young reporters when they started the sun over a half-century ago.

They had a dream, some borrowed money, and a printing press shipped in pieces from Chicago.

>>When you do newspapering in the way my Dad did newspapering it makes it even tougher because you're not going to get the help of the business community if you're criticizing them and that's the way we operate.

>>It's the most important paper in America for the last half century probably as far as a prototype of a small, independent, locally-owned, courageous voice for a community.

It really is symbolic and representative of the best of what journalism used to be.

>>It's the best weekly in the United States, absolutely, because it tells it like it is, it has no political affiliation whatsoever.

It just tells exactly what's happening for everybody to make their own conclusions.

>>We don't just cover the boy scouts and all the happy little things that are going on here.

We try to cover... we try to be a public watchdog.

We cover crime, we cover, you know, talk to politicians.

We look at documents.

We put a lot of stock in open records laws and public meetings laws that you know, other newspapers don't even talk about but become the foundation of a democracy.

>>You've got to have an editorial leadership in which somebody is saying, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

It's a journalism that says to very small places, we're going to hold a mirror up to this community, maybe the mirror is a little cracked, but we're going to try to show you yourselves.

My wife and I still make this run just to keep us outof trouble.

>>It used to be the newsboys would sell the morning Sun.

They'd call out get your paper here!

To people on the run.

Some boys would take the paper route and bring it to your door.

But soon there may not be a morning paper anymore.

No, soon there may not be a morning paper anymore.

>>Hey, what's up bro'?

>>What's up with the paper, man?

>>Yeah, you want a paper?

>>Yeah, what's happening.

>>What's the mitote now?

>>All kinds of stuff.

>>All kinds of bull?

>>Yeah.

>>The sun's main beat is Espanola,a city of 10,000 people in the upper Rio Grande valley, the land the Spanish called rio arriba.

>>But the sun covers all of Rio Arriba county, the small towns and villages, scattered over a vast, starkly beautiful land of mountains and river valleys.

>>This is the ancestral home of Pueblo Indians.

And it's the end of the Camino Real, the road that brought the conquistadors to what was once old Mexico.

>>You can feel the roots of the... the Spanish here and of the Indians.

I mean, living history is a cliche but it's not here, it's real.

of tradition here which is just astounding.

You get beneath the crime, you get beneath all these social problems and substance abuse problems and there is a culture that is so deep and still so alive.

>>The demographics are...Espanola is predominantly Hispanic, it's about 85% Hispanic, it's a community with a very deep and rich culture.

It's essentially a tri-cultural community of Native American, Spanish, and Anglo.

In terms of the Spanish, the arrival of the Spanish, we all know that goes back to 1598, over 400 years ago.

>>Espanola is sort of the last outpost of normal American civilization.

And after you got there, yougot into the old Spanish culture-old families.

There'd be a penitente morada back there on the hill, you know.

>>The only place in my whole career where I've ever been ordered to leave a bar.

We'd come there on a story and here comes the bouncer and he said You're with the New Mexican, aren't you?

And I said, Yeah, I'm with the New Mexican.

He said, We don't allow you guys in here.

We're not going to serve you, never going to serve a drink to anybody that's got anything to do with the New Mexican.

I had to leave.

He let me pay for the drink I'd already had though.

>>We've got people who know when this newspaper is going to be here and they'll be waiting for it.

They look forward to it.

>>There's times I drive all over Espanola looking for it, can't find it and have to go back later, which is frustrating cause I'm really anxious to read it each Wednesday.

>>Hey, Mary, I could use some help!

>>The heart of our circulation is what we're doing today, taking papers to newsstands and what's happening back at the shop right now is they're getting ready for kids on the street selling papers.

Sostreet vendors and stands are the bulk of our circulation.

>>I love the paper.

And I love the fact that it's also sold on the street.

I love Wednesdays going through Espanola because I just like the fact that people are participating and selling it in such a personal way.

The Rio Grande Sun is such a great paper because it tells us everything that is going on, locally and stuff.

Like when Wednesdays come around I get so anxious because it's like I want togo and buy it so you go to every little corner finding a vendor that's selling the paper.

And you know, for me that's like a big old thrill because if I don't find it I tell my husband Alfred, I didn't find the paper, be sure you pick it up in the morning.

>>Community newspapers have weathered the new media environment far better than their big city cousins.

Many, like The Sun, are thriving.

People read The Sun because its focus is its community, and community journalism is about reporting the local news, the news that's both vital about a place and essential to a democracy.

Every Wednesday, in the so-called low-rider capital of the world, there aretraffic jams to buy The Sun.

In a county of 40,000, it's estimated that 35,000 people read it.

And it's mailed to subscribers around the world.

>>I didn't say who I was, I just went out there as a, one of our vendors, and every Wednesday for 2 hours, I just sold the paper.

But it was enough to make me feel good about what I was doing, that they could not wait to get the paper.

I had people that didn't look like they had a dollar to their names scrambling around in their car to give me their last 50 cents so they could have this newspaper.Just all kinds of people wanting to buy this newspaper.

It was inspiring.

>>Well, we're 5 in our family.

We've been selling the paper for 21 years.

>>And on Wednesdays, we all pretty much all get together as a group and stand around and sell paperstil about 8-8:30 at night.

>>I was selling this paper on the street when I was a little girl.

There were six of us at home and everybody sold The Sun at one time or another.

It was 10 cents a paper.

If they'd accept the job, I would tell them that if you can get a news story in Rio Arriba county, no matter where you go, you'll be able to get a news story because you're going to learn how to do it here because it's a tough... tough area, tough community for a young reporter to break into.

We assure them that what they report and what they dig up, if it is legitimate news, that the publisher, the editor, will not kill it because of an economic or an advertiser's pressure, or anyone else.

>>All the resumes I get, there's always a paragraph in there about I can edit, I can video and I can edit video and I can post and I can blog and I can do all this stuff for your website and I always tell them don't care, don't care, don't care.

Can you write?

Can you go out and ask hard questions?

Can you get around someone who says no and go find someone in thenext cubicle who will say yes?

Can you do that, can you come back and can you write a sentence and good God, some of them can't write a sentence.

There's people graduating college that cannot write news.

There's people graduating college who can't write.

>> I love to watch when you see a kid go to a paper like The Sun-and they realize, oh my gosh, I cando my best work right here, I will do my best work, and the community deserves my best work right here because here's a community that not only is in need, but here's a community that trusts my newspaper.

>>It's like pretty interesting, like the whole place is just stories to me.

Like down here when I think of 31 Mile Road I always think of that one grandma that was murdered a couple years ago back in 2005 that they've never solved the murder of.

That crime is just probably going always be unsolved.

A grandma gets murdered in cold blood and they'll never solve it probably.

>>In 1999, the sun broke the national story that Rio Arriba County had the highest per capita heroinoverdose rate of any place in the country.

Over a decade later it still does.

>>All these are, look at how they're all new, they're all new.

All these are all my friends that have passed away recently.

Like all from drugs or like the one that shot himself.

She got into an accident, he shot himself, Kevin over there, not this one but the next one... and all the other ones overdoses more or less.

>> It's basically, these aren't people just smoking marijuana or getting high occasionally, these people are just doing scientific experiments with their bodies.

You look at the toxicology reports andthey've got heroin, cocaine, alcohol, four different kinds of prescription drugs in them, I mean that's like committing suicide or something.

And if this place is so wonderful, which I think it is, then why are these people all trying to kill themselves?

I don't think anybody's really kind of got to the heart of that.

>> Maybe drugs is, instead of becoming a problem, has become a way of life here, I don't know.

But it got their attention and there were attempts made to improve the situation but it's something thatIthink is, I'm not sure there's a solution to it.

>> In spite of millions in federal and state aid, there's been no cure for the epidemic of drug and alcohol use, no solution for the related crime and violence.

>> Add in the stories about government ineptitude, political shenanigans, failing schools, and it's continuing front page news for the Sun and an embarrassment for many in the community.

>> First of all, I've never read the Rio Grande Sun.

I did not want an entity, no matter whether is was a paper or outside entity to keep my focus on what really needed to happen because, you know, any paper, if you see any type of program or whatever, can try to sway your decision-making processes and I didn't want any type of entity persuading me exactly what my direction and what I needed to happen, my goals and my direction.

>> I think The Rio Grande Sun invariably picks the headline before they write the story and so they make the story fit the headline.

It's just unfortunate.

I think The Rio Grande Sun is a negative anddistorted reflection of the community.

>> There are cheerleading newspapers and there are chamber of commerce type newspapers, and then there are fearless newspapers.

I think the best editors, publishers, owners are ones who keep that journalist's moral compass, if you will, pointed on true north, and they know that the newspaper comes first.

>> Like the other day, Tuesday night at 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock, a kid in a nice truck, nice tennis shoes that were probably worth more than my whole wardrobe allegedly dies of a drug overdose up in the hills right outside of town.

I mean, there's something messed up when that's just accepted and that's a normal... that's page 2 news.

It could have been deeper in our newspapers just because it's kindof a semi-regular event.

I mean, that's depressing.

You know that's just a fact of life here.

You know there's good and bad to everything but if you don't want to address these problems that's pretty brutal.

>> Could I have 6 papers please?

OK, and here's three dollars.

You want to count it?

>> Jeanette, did you get to the Rio Grande Sun?

>> Yeah, I sure did.

>> What's the headlines?

>> Okay, this is the May 14th, 2009 issue and the headlines are Jail's Drugs Programs Spun Out of Control and I kind of like to read that one in a minute but the others are Deputy Robs Pharmacy.

>>Because of the nature of the community - I find for folks who have been using here for any length of time, there's just too many reminders for them-it sets off too many cravings.

I had one gentlemanwho had been clean for 6 years, he'd been on methadone on and off and he said he saw somebody he used to buy heroin from and he said he just went into withdrawal right there in the car-full blown sweats, cramping-the whole 9 yards.

I wanted to do some community reporting and looking around the state at the papers that were hiring Espanola caught my eye because of the public health issues up here.Espanola's pretty famous for the drug problem and its high overdose rates and other public health issues.

>>I knew there was a drug problem.

The brutality, the violence came as...

I think I was a little naive about how big a problem that is up here.

>> Why don't we read the first side of... >> OK, the caption says Rio Arriba has spent thousands of dollars on powerful and controversial antipsychotic drugs for inmates, and this is, Joe, the first of a two-part series.

The Rio Arriba county jail spent more than $140,000 over five years to keep inmates sedated with dangerous and addictive psychiatric drugs, according to the Rio Grande Sun investigation.

We found a little bit of everything.

We found that there's a psychiatrist who is the... whose contract got yanked with the jail, or got pulled from the jail in August 2008 had been prescribing thousands ofdoses of this drug and other drugs such as psychiatric drugs, especially Zanax, to prisoners and what we found wasthat they were using these to sedate the prisoners and a lot of times to make them, as multiple people said, zombies in the jail.

>> The guy who was the county reporter here before me, his name was Matt Van Buren and he ended up at the Taos paper, he had done an interesting little story in 2008 about how many pharmaceuticals were being thrown away at the county jail up in Tierra Amarilla.

And When I read that paper and looked back through his file, his notes on it, I kept seeing there seemed to be a disproportionate number of Seroquel prescriptions so it made me think there was something up with Seroquel at the jail.

Did some literature searching to see what the FDA-approved uses of Seroquel were and they were for heavy-duty mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

So I asked the warden about it and Ifiled some open records requests to look at their pharmacy billing records.

>> The interesting explanation the doctor had given, the psychiatrist had given, was that he was treating, the thing he was treating was post-traumatic stress syndrome and that's a syndrome that most people would associate with combat.

It's almost a condemnation of the county and the culture that it's so violent that he has to treat this with this powerful drug.

>> The thing that stood out when you look at the billing records is that there was a dramatic increase through time in how much Seroquel was being prescribed.

In December of 2007 the Rio Arriba CountyJail had ordered 88 separate times they had ordered Seroquel and a year later, after that doctor was no longer seeing inmates, the number of Seroquel prescriptions in the jail, I love newspapers because I started in newspapers.

I like this newspaper.

It's scrappy.

It has balls.

They clearly take on the governmental organizations wherever they can.

They print budgets, they hold people accountable for spending taxpayers' money on junkets.

There is still in this newspaper a flavor of old newspapering, which I love.

And you know, they're not afraid of outrageous headlines and of blaring it across the front page.

>>On the back of Bob Trapp's business cards are the words of Benjamin Franklin: Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.

The words are taken seriously.

>> When you come around here, these are all rocks that came through the front window-that one hit upthere somewhere.

Whoever threw that one had an arm because it came through that window down there.

That's about 20 or 30 feet.

Then these are all also from the same collection.

And those all came through a window.

Fortunately 90% hit a wall.

They keep trying-but as they break, I put in Lexan.

>> The rocks haven't stopped the paper from leading the fight in New Mexico for open records and open meetings.

It's filed and won multiple lawsuits in the process.

>> The rocks haven't stopped the paper from leading the fight in New Mexico for open records and open meetings.

It's filed and won multiple lawsuits in the process.

>> You know, once upon a time that's what we did.

Reporters went out, gathered information, came back and wrote it.

Now, today, reporters, and it doesn't matter what beat, reporters go out, they ask questions, they're stonewalled, they ask for documents, they're stonewalled more, they come back andsay what do we do.

If lawyers can't solve it, we file a suit.

But it's a take-no-prisoners attitudebecause you can't let one organization get away with it because they know if they did once, they can again.

>> No one goes to a City Council meeting unless they've got a complaint.

So it's up to a newspaper to tell a community what's going on with City Council.

The same goes for the School Board.

It's sort of the paper of record.

It tells what happened here 50 years ago that no one will know or remember but they can always go back to the newspaper and that newspaper is a record of what happened 50 yearsago or in some cases a hundred years ago.

There are some papers that are a hundred years old.

A community without a newspaper is sort of like a community without a library, you've got to have it.

>> We try to focus on our local teams and especially ones that are doing well.

And it's a great way for us to write about things, write about towns that we have trouble covering.

Since Dulce is so faraway it's really hard for us to cover it effectively.

But it's a little easier if we just cover thesports games and stuff like that.

And people like it cause they get to see their cousin or brother or sister and their name in the paper and their picture in the paper.

And that's kind of the idea is, with the sports, we try to get as many names and kids in the paper.

It's a great way to do it.

>> So he's going out on any weekend, he's going to two or three games and maybe driving, his mileagesheet at the end of the month is ridiculous.

It's maybe like 800 miles or something like that.

>> The gym will probably be pretty packed tonight.

This is a big rivalry between Los Alamos and Espanola.

Has been for years.

On a cold winter's night it's kind of nice to go into a big gym, you see all your neighbors, you know, get together and socialize,you know, it's a big social event and I think that's one of the reasons basketball became so popular up here in northern New Mexico was the fact that it's played primarily in the winter when there's not as, you know, not as many chores, you know, you don't have to move cattle and harvest crops and cut hay and all that stuff.

You know what I mean?

>> I take notes, I take pictures and I cover the game, talk to the coaches, it's important to know how the teams are doing, something a little bit about their history.

>> I know.

Yeah, I was looking for Donovan.

I had him here.

Ah, here he is.

Yeah, Donovan, seems to me a big difference in this game tonight was you guys were just knocking down your threes.

I think you hit five.

Did you guys feel like it was going to be your perimeter game tonight that really did well or was that just the way it came out.

>> Whatever came to us.

>> Yeah, yeah, did you feel good?

>> Yeah, I felt real good tonight.

I don't know.

Just on.

>> Huh?

>> Felt real smooth.

>> Felt real smooth, oh, okay.

>> There he is.

>> Hey, coach, How are you doing, man?

>> Good, thank you.

Just great, man.

>> I thought that was a really dominating victory.

What did you think?

>> I just respect Los Alamos.

I mean, I respect Los Alamos, I respect Capital.

Every team that I step out there, you know, there's a lot of respect there.

There's a bunch of good ball clubs out there,I think two quad A's, fabulous district, you know, it's wonderful to... for preparation for the state tournament.

>> Oh, okay.

>> You know, Rio Arriba County is the size of Connecticut, you know, and I cover all of Rio Arriba County so last week, for instance, I went to Dulce one night which is what, a 240-mile round trip, I went to Questa on Friday night.

That's a 120-mile round trip.

I went to Ojo Caliente, went down to Santa Fe, and then went to a game here at the high school.

Now, that's a little... that's like five games last week.

That's a little too many.

The editor actually doesn't like me to go to that many games because he's worried I'm going to burn myself out, which is a possibility.

I am 60 years old.

I'mnot a spring chicken anymore, so.

>> Arsonists target home of coach's mother.

It was sad because the mother's 83 years old and wheelchair bound and from what I read, they don't think whoever did it realized someone was in the house atthe time because there was a game going on and usually all the family, whoever is in his family, are at the game that he's coaching.

Of course, the mother wasn't there.

But they got her out so, let'ssee what they found-they said arsonists- I don't know if they have an idea of who it is.

>> They didn't like the fact that we were publishing the police blotter and someone... we were asked, how come you're publishing the police blotter?

And they say, that's not good news.

And I'd say, well, for twothings, you need to know what's going on in your courts.

And you need to know what's going on in the community.

And whether you like it or not, and people, when they say you don't publish good news, I invite them, say, come on in and sit down.

We'll go through the newspaper and you tell me what should haven't been published.

No one ever took me up on it.

>> All right, NPR's here.

They're doing a documentary on the blotter.

So I think they're going to goup there and talk to you.

National Public Radio.

>>"The police blotter in the Rio Grande Sun has a following.

A website dedicated to police blotters from newspapers across the country often features choice items from Espanola and Jay Leno once quoted the report of a woman who smuggled heroin in a burrito to her boyfriend in the local jail.

>> I started out the first five, six years in journalism in newspapers and I started at a small daily outside of Dallas and I was the cops and fire reporter and so I compiled the police blotter for the Garland Daily News day after day after day and became enamored of the way that it gives you a window into human nature and human frailty and broken families and the humor of the human condition.

>> A Valley Superette employee said an intoxicated man was trying to hit customers.

He was determined to be the same person who was giving people a hard time at Hacienda Home Repair.

He also threatened to cut the officer's legs off and was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and public affray.>> What the hell is that?

And this happened at 1:57 pm on a Monday.

I mean if you look at the time and the day sometimes, it's amazing how many people are getting drunk or stoned and doing stupid things in the middle of a weekday.

And it has nothing to do with good journalism.

It's just something that happens in the community and here it is.

>> This is the watchdog function of the community press.

That if you do something, you will be in the police blotter.

And I know publishers will tell their children if you screw up, you're gonna be in the police blotter-you're not insulated just cause you're my kid.

>> He was called the foremost drunk?

>> By the police department.

His name came out in the blotter as... well, here, I'll read one to you.

Let's see.

I'm sorry, Monday, May 30th... 1:55pm, a caller reported Espanola's quote, foremost drunk, closed quote, was intoxicated at the window of the Club Tropicana and refusing to leave.

Policetook Espanola's foremost drunk from Lowe's Super Save, where he was panhandling, to the jail for detox.

Then the very next day, Sunday June 4th at 5:29pm, a caller reported Espanola's foremost drunk was panhandling at Lowe's Super Save.

He seems to be... he was hanging out at Lowe's Super Save.

Police went, police went to the scene, but this time he wasn't drunk.

So, he actually made, he made theblotter for not being drunk.

>> Now, I've got to ask you, what about the lady who was flashing at Walgreen's for $2 a pop?

>> I can't find that.

[laughing] >> What did she actually do for what amount of money?

>> She'd lift up her tank top, so it had to be the summer, I assume.

She'd lift up her tank top for a couple of dollars.

So... >> And she did this habitually for months, years?

>> Months, yeah.

>> And what happened to her?

>> I don't know but she hasn't been in the blotter for a long time so I'm assuming she's... either dead or moved on.

>> I read newspaper everywhere I go because I love newspapers.

And this police blotter doesn't havean equal that I've seen.

>> You know, there's just something so lyrical about the news here, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that there's a lot of people, you know, a lot of families that have been here for a long time and a lot of themes that keep repeating.

And The Sun, through all the fights that it's had for access, has such great access to what's going on in the public eye here that they have an ability to tell these stories that you don't see hardly anywhere else.

You know, and they affect a small number of people and reach a relatively small number of people but the stories themselves are just operatic, almost.

>> That's what you're here for-its not about winning awards-its being the best newspaper we can every week.

>>We want them to go out and look for stuff.

We don't want them to just cover a beat, you know, go door to door and say, any news today?

Any news today, or what happened this week?

But we're going to go out and do stories that are important in the community.

>> Down here below, we've already finished this story.

This is a story about a kid that police say accidentally shot himself last year and we did an investigation and found out there was a fourth person in the car where he allegedly got shot, where he got shot.

The police never interviewed, didn't even know this person existed and we found them.

And we kind of went back and through all the evidence, went back through the investigation and talked to everybody involved and kind of asked them what happened, so that's the story here with a picture.

>> They have a good staff of investigative reporters.

They seem to dig and dig and they don't stop digging til they get the facts.

>> We sat in this very room, Kevin was here, I was over there, he says, here's what you're going to do.

You're going to drive up to Gallina and talk to the school people and talk to regular people.

And I'm like, well, I don't really know exactly what that means.

I've never even seen this town of Gallina, what the hell are you talking about?

He goes up here on the white board and draws me a map of,you know, here's what you do, you go to Abiquiu dam, you turn left and you follow it around and you're in this little town in the middle of nowhere.

If you see the post office, you're there.

>> Lou Mattei had just joined the Sun-in press lingo, a cub reporter.

>> The village of Gallina is 60 miles west of Espanola, across a mountain pass.

It's an unlikely setting for what would be the largest embezzlement case in New Mexico history.

>> Yeah, second day on the job, I'd been in New Mexico for about a week tops and my assignment was to go up to Gallina and get the story on Kathy Borrego.

We had gotten information from the Sheriff's Department, which started an investigation into the embezzlement at that time.

I came up here and actually on that day filed a request for all the checks that had been paid to her over the course of about 10 years.

That ended up being a big old lawsuit for those checks.

>> I ended up just going through the phonebook of like, Gallina phone numbers and Abiquiu phone numbers and people that would probably at least be familiar with the story.

I met a few pretty good sources just over the phone that way, people you just start having a conversation with.

>> I'm just wondering, I guess you guys are investigating an old McCurdy's teacher for... >> I think the school district's budget was something like 7 million dollars in a given fiscal year-so you look at her embezzlement, which they're now saying is closer to 4 million dollars.

That's well over half of an entire school year's budget that she walked away with, which is kind of interesting.

>> It's been awhile since I looked at the enrollment.

I'm not sure exactly what the numbers are but it's a, I think it's in just the hundreds, a couple hundred kids.

And this is where she worked up over here.

>> Basically, from that door down there to this door.

Well, underneath the bleachers to the basketball stadium, so like above us, you go down and there a basketball court.

And right in here, just filled with paperwork boxes and junk like this, like old partitions and stuff like that too.

Just like general storage.

That's where all the records are kept.

>> I spent hours going through like stacks of checks in there.

Mountains of paperwork.

It explains, helps explain how easy it was to get away with it-you got a stack this high of records and maybe like this many are questionable.

Can't parse through the whole thing.

Explains why nobody caught it >> I was in there for a meeting, actually, just a couple of months into the story probably and was talking with a few parents who said that the day that she pleads guilty or gets sentenced or whatever, that the whole town would be up in arms, ready I guess, to take some kind of retaliation against Kathy, like as soon as it was proven that this happened-all the folks from up in Gallina or Coyote would raid her house in Abiquiu, whatever they had to do to just run her out of town.

And of course that never happened because 2 days before she was sentenced, she killed herself, so >> And this was a pretty good example too of where the paper in a lot of ways was doing things differently and arguably better than the DA or the Sheriff's office.

It was a really good example of us being able to step in and say we we're going to at least fight to get copies of these checks and to look through these records on our own and see what it turns up.

>> the most widely read thing in the newspaper.

Many people, I've seen them,they'll open the newspaper, they'll skip the front page, they'll skip the editorial page, they'll open it to the obits.

To find out about someone's life, even if you don't know who they are or who they were, it's a fascinating little novella.

It's like a little opera in print.

>> Efren (Nerf) Martinez of Cordova.

I sure did know him-he was my student.

>> Oh, really?

Only 49 years old.

Do you want me to read it?

>>yes >>A resident of Cordova, went with the Lord surrounded by his loving family on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009.

Efren lost his thirteen and a half year battle from a coma as a result of an electrical accident while working for Los Alamos National Laboratory.

>> Did you he had been injured?

>> Yeah, I, see I, Efren was one of the smartest kids in his class.

>> He was a really brilliant boy.

>>That was so sad.

>> Very sad.

>> He never came out of the coma?

>> Never.

>> Oh.

>> Usually, on a typical paper, the boss is not the one who does the obits.

I myself typeset all of them and Mr. Trapp, the publisher, proofs them- so two of the big bosses here do these obituaries, and mainly it's because we care to get them correct and we want our customers to be satisfied with them.

>> On a typical week, I'll have anywhere between 10 and 20 obituaries, so it is a time-consuming task.

It's one of the most read sections of our newspaper and so, you can imagine, people, when they find a mistake, they sure don't like it.

Some people will write it and it doesn't make sense grammatically or it just sounds off.

Early in my career, I learned to leave them the way they are because that's how people want them and if you try and do them a favor and correct the grammar, it's not always appreciated.

So we run them exactly the way they submit it to us.

>>I didn't start the Arts Section.

When I took it over, it was usually a couple of pages and it was black and white.

And it was stuck in with the obits, which, when I took it over, I thought, Oh my God.

It's with the obits.

>> There is beauty in this landscape.

A proud artistic tradition among it's people.

And every week the art's guy writes about it.

Not just a column, but a whole section.

>> This one, I just think is incredible.

This is what I wanted to do.

>> I just think that's incredible.

The red is hand-painted in gouache.

>> But these are three different stones.

>>Douglas Johnson, he's an artist that's been in New Mexico for probably 40 or 50 years.

He's most well-known now for his gouache paintings.

They're small, they're incredibly detailed.

He's really knowledgeable about Southwest history.

The project that he's working on now is Coronado's trek up fromMexico until he stopped in Kansas and he's doing a whole series of paintings for, I think it's a series of 2 or three books on that expedition.

>> The basic premise, when they started the Arts Section was featuring Valley artists or Rio Arriba artists.

It's unusual for a paper our size to have a dedicated arts section.

And it's a stand-alone section now.

I don't have the obits any longer, which is sort of nice.

And I don't have the classifieds.

So it's actually an arts section on it's own, which for me, that's fun.

>> The Sun plays a role providing information to the community but that information is not necessarily accurate.

>> The Rio Grande Sun, I think they're probably, as far as I'm concerned, they put too much negativism into the paper, especially when it comes to things like these politics and such.

But overall, on a scale from 1-10, I'd probably give 'em a 7.

Ten being high, onebeing low.

>> A lot of it is, could be considered mudslinging I guess, but maybe that's cause there's a lot of mud to throw around here.

(laughs).

>> We cover the elections for one, because most people like to read about politics down here.

For a small community-this community loves politics.

>> The main point is to talk to voters.

We want to be able to interpret the results at the end of the day, talk to people about why they voted for who they voted for, what the issues are, are they happy with the Council, that sort of thing.

Um, and other than that, we watch for irregularities, we watch to make sure people aren't getting disenfranchised.

And I haven't really had a problem today.

So, we're kind of poll watcher/reporter today.

>> My editor wanted me to come out and ask some people who were going in to vote how they felt but I thought I'd ask you guys too, you know, since you're here.

>> What we uncovered in the last 2006 election was that people were bribing people for votes, right?

And, um, they did this by offering people beer and wood.

(laughs).

I mean, that's how low it gets and that's how petty it can get is that people are being bribed with like, not even money, you know what I mean?

Like a hot dog and things like that.

>> You do have certain political families that are powerful and they turn out their family members, they turn out the same supporters, so it does tend to favor dynasties.

>> So all day long I'm putting out all the pages that are not election-related.

I'm copy editing them, asking these guys follow-up questions, putting it together on the computer.

We're going to save three or four pages for election coverage.

And what these guys are doing, they're going out, going to the election booths and every couple of hours coming back here and typing whatever notes they had into sentences that will flow together as a story once we know who won the election, basically.

>> One interesting thing when you go out to talk to people is that they think that the Trapps have total control over this newsroom and that whoever they choose politically is who we give favorable coverage to but the honest-to-God truth and the reality is they have little no input to what I decide,or what the news team decides to cover for the election.

>> My Name is George Morse, I work for the Rio Grande Sun.

>> Oh, I see your face in the paper all the time!

>> Oh, well, thank you, thank you.

>> Yes indeed.

>> Are you, uh... >> I'm an election official.

I'm sorry, I'm not a voter.

>> You can't...oh, well, I could ask you: how has the election been going?

Is that an OK question toask you?

>> As a reporter I like that it gives me the freedom to do really whatever I want to do, I mean it'sgot an investigative focus so they really strongly encourage us to do as much investigative work as possible, so it's a great place to learn.

I like that it's a family-owned paper, that we don't have to worry about getting bought out by a larger company and having our editor fired.

The Trapps have been here for 50 years and they're staying here.

And they're really committed to maintaining that small town focus, they're really dedicated totelling the stories in Rio Arriba County that nobody else tells.

>> If you talk to these guys-all of the reporters and certainly Kevin, the editor, they see journalism as being that, that journalism is about scrutinizing power asymmetries power disparities and whether they're being abused.

So the, like I was saying before, the paper is loved or hated.

It's loved by a lot of the people out there.

It's lovedby very few of the politicos in town because they've all been scrutinized in ways that make them uncomfortable.

>> Bob just taught me everything I know-everything I have continued to use in life.

I actually left here and went to work for Jack Anderson in Washington, who was supposedly the greatest investigativereporter in America at the time, and I got there, and with all due respect to Jack, who I also havegreat regard for, he couldn't hold a candle to Bob Trapp-and he had a thousand newspapers I was writing for.

And I kept thinking what would this country be like if Bob Trapp had a column in a thousand newspapers in the United States.

>> There's something about paper-there's something about the transportability-the hold and fold, if you will.

I think for quite some time, ink on paper is going to be around.

At the same time, I think publishers have got to be exploring ways to monetize the on-line newspaper.

>> They put the news on MTV, The twitter and they tweet.

The blog is now the focus Of the new reporters beat.

The boys don't call out Get your paper!

Like they did before.

And soon there may not be a morning paper anymore.

No, soon there may not be a morning paper anymore.

>> I don't put time, effort, or money into the web.

It's just a no-win situation.

I may be the last tadpole in the drying puddle in five or six years and I'll still be sitting here saying the web's a waste of time, it's not the future.

>> Our bread and butter had been, and to this day, through all the recession, through all the electronic changes and the new gizmos that come along, our bread and butter is still print journalism.

>> A lot of it is advertisers have changed their outlook on how they're going to reach the public.

Some are going to the internet.

I don't know how that works.

I don't see how it will affect small newspapers like mine, I don't ever see where people from Espanola are going to get their news about Espanola off the internet.

>>If you ask a really good community newspaper publisher what's the purpose of the newspaper other than being a business, it is to serve to community.

And that's a real difference between community newspapers and major metro big-city papers.

To serve the community, and there are many ways in which a community newspaper serves.

And one of those ways, and the most important way is that nothing will go unreported, that public officials are accountable, not just to the taxpayers, but to the readers, andthe greater society as well.

>> A friend of mine sent that as a gift and I said, yeah, they like to trash the Espanola, it's probably good for one thing, it's good for toilet paper.

So this guy makes this toilet paper roll and sends it to me.

But when I'm interviewing my person, I make sure he sits right there and I sit right here.

So he has to look at it directly every time he interviews me.

(laughs).

>> I think that we've done a good job of keeping the public informed on what's going on in our area, good and bad.

So I guess that I don't know if we affect a democracy or, I think we do a job of making sure democracy survives, I guess.

A community ought to have a guardian angel newspaper looking over it, tapping it on the shoulder when it's screwingup, giving it some editorial advice now and then At least letting the working class people know what's going on, if they're getting screwed somehow or other as most of them are usually, one way or another some place, have a newspaper that digs into things and tells them that's wrong,