Small town Alabama daily carefully covers Roy Moore controversy - Entrepreneur Generations

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Covering the controversial can often be a minefield for small community papers, but the Opelika-Auburn News is thoughtfully navigating coverage of Roy Moore's campaign, Margaret Sullivan reports for The Washington Post. The BH Media Group-owned daily, which boasts 12 newsroom employees and a circulation of 12,000, lies about halfway between Montgomery and Atlanta, on the far eastern side of Alabama. Editor Troy Turner is well aware of the fraught nature of the topic.

The states's top three papers, all owned by Alabama Media Group, published the same anti-Moore editorial last month, but Turner told Sullivan "I would have bullet holes in my windows" if he ran such a piece. And it's not just the public Turner must be mindful of: his own staff has mixed opinions about Moore, who is accused of sexual misconduct against teenage girls.

Turner published a nuanced editorial last month in which he called for Moore to withdraw from the Senate race. It wasn't because the accusations against him were necessarily accurate, Turner wrote, but because he believed Moore could not be an effective senator with so much controversy hanging over his head. Withdrawing would enable the state's Republican Party to find a more credible candidate before the special election on Dec. 12.

The Opelika-Auburn News' publisher, Rex Maynor, said Turner's editorial was "one of the strongest stances the paper has taken." And Sullivan notes that there were "some ticked-off readers, but no bullet holes." The paper isn't just making its own editorial voice heard: Turner is using the paper's Facebook page to facilitate discussion among readers.

It's important to be "strategic crusaders" when editorializing about such contentious issues, Turner told Sullivan. "At the big papers, they don’t go into the coffee shops and churches with their readers like we do."




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