The July assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump was more than front-page news for the Butler Eagle. It was local news. It happened in the Eagle’s community, and its reporters were at the scene, traumatized along with their neighbors.
“On July 13, the divide that had silently been poisoning Butler County painfully surfaced with a lone gunman’s rifle,” said Tracy Leturgey, Butler Eagle assignment editor, during the Eagle’s winning Pitch Day presentation at LMA Fest in September. Pitch Day was the culmination of the six months of curriculum completed by the 12 news organizations in the Pennsylvania cohort of the LMA Lab for Journalism Funding.
“As shots were fired, a mother and a father told their children to crouch down. A young man hunched over in the grass. Behind him, a woman started to cry,” described Leturgey during her presentation.
The Butler Eagle team had been considering creating a journalism project to address the deep political divide in Butler County, Pennsylvania, “a red-leaning northern suburb of blue-leaning Pittsburgh,” according to the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association. “Then, after the July 13 assassination attempt of Republican presidential nominee and former president Donald Trump, in their own hometown, that idea took on an entirely new sense of urgency.”
How the Butler Eagle responded is a lesson for any local newsroom looking to build and strengthen community.
“The aftermath of that assassination attempt made it really obvious to us that a refusal to listen to each other’s ideas has threatened the fabric of our community,” Leturgey said.
“‘Civics and Civility’ is a journalism project that we believe can bridge divides in Butler County, addressing a lack of civility and a misunderstanding of civics along the way,” Leturgey explained while describing the project later.
As it happened, the Butler Eagle was in the first statewide cohort of the LMA Lab for Journalism Funding in partnership with the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, with support from PNA Foundation, Knight Foundation, and Lenfest Institute.
“The lab encouraged our team to envision how our newsroom could make an even greater impact through our journalism and how to make that work sustainable by seeking funding around our plans,” said Leturgey.
And what happens in a program becomes part of the program, some say. “I believe in my heart of hearts that we were meant to be in this lab to learn, to grow, to identify a problem before we even knew we were going to be in the middle of that problem. It was meant to be,” said Butler Eagle Publisher Tammy Schuey.
The community listening tour: Where it all began
“Community listening was so important that company leaders went out and listened. Everyone came in with their own idea of the story we needed to tell, but when we went and listened to the community, we all came back with similar ideas,” Leturgey said.
Throughout the listening conversations, the team put takeaways on sticky notes on a whiteboard. When they organized them, three themes emerged: division, poverty and substance abuse, and perception.
As various departments got involved, their controller was the person who pulled over her car one day and stopped the well-known local man who walks everywhere — who describes himself as “not homeless, but at-risk” — so they could understand what was going on at the ground level in their city.
“This is what I love about having a team approach,” said Schuey. “It was great to see her more engaged with the news project and have ownership of the project.”
In the dozens of discussions they had, they all heard descriptions of the deep divide within the region. “It was stopping people from working together to better the community,” said Leturgey.
After the assassination attempt, the team then clearly knew that division would be their project focus.
Dynamic response: ‘Help our community heal’
Schuey, two Eagle reporters and two photographers were at the rally when the shooting occurred.
“In being there, one of the things that stuck in my head was that I knew as the newspaper we had to figure out what our part was to help our community heal,” said Schuey. “No matter what side of the aisle you’re on, our community experienced trauma that day. There were 15,000 people there that watched as a man died and a former president was shot. We are the community newspaper that needs to help guide those conversations one hundred percent. You feel a sense of responsibility.”
Pennsylvania lab cohort members offered support and resources to help the Butler Eagle, including news coverage collaborations and connecting the team to other newspapers nationwide that had experienced shootings and trauma. “Being in this lab was meant to help us get through one of the most historic things that has ever happened in Butler County,” said Schuey.
What’s next for the Butler Eagle team
After receiving its first $20,000 grant from the PNA Foundation as a lab Pitch Day winner, the Butler Eagle team plans to hit the ground running. A cross-departmental team has already met and determined its next priorities:
Measuring Impact: “If we’re going to measure our impact, we’ve got to document where we are now,” Schuey said.
Listening Conversations with Funders: They have two immediate meetings scheduled with local funders to ask for advice, not money right away. Through those conversations, their goal is to understand the fundraising landscape and create a list of potential local funders so they can start reaching out.
The fundraising goal for their project is $1.4 million over three years. “The cost to get it wrong is too high,” said Leturgey on Pitch Day. “Help us meet the moment to bridge the divide in our county and in our country.”