We've long admired Reed Anfinson, the editor of the Swift County Monitor. Tim Sullivan's story for the Associated Press prompted us to subscribe to Benson's local newspaper.
Bluestem Prairie hopes you too will subscribe to a local newspaper, especially if your paper is locally owned.
Sullivan reports in In one small prairie town, two warring visions of America:
The newspaper hit the front porches of the wind-scarred prairie town on a Thursday afternoon: Coronavirus numbers were spiking in western Minnesota.
“Covid-19 cases straining rural clinics, hospitals, staff,” read the front-page headline. Vaccinate to protect yourselves, health officials urged.
But ask around Benson, stroll its three-block business district, and some would tell a different story: The Swift County Monitor-News, the tiny newspaper that’s reported the news here since 1886, is not telling the truth. The vaccine is untested, they say, dangerous. And some will go further: People, they’ll tell you, are being killed by COVID-19 vaccinations.
One little town. Three thousand people. Two starkly different realities.
It’s another measure of how America’s divisions don’t just play out on cable television.
It has seeped into the American fabric, all the way to Benson’s 12th Street, where two neighbors -- each in his own well-kept, century-old home -- can live in different worlds.
In one house is Reed Anfinson, publisher, editor, photographer and reporter for the Monitor-News. Most weeks, he writes every story on the paper’s front page.
While his editorials lean left, he works hard to report the news straight. But in an America of competing visions, some here say he has taken sides.
Nowhere in the Monitor-News, for example, will you find reports that local people are dying because they’ve been inoculated.
“There are no alternative facts,” Anfinson says. “There is just the truth.”
But whose truth?
His neighbor, Jason Wolter, is a thoughtful, broad-shouldered Lutheran pastor who reads widely and measures his words carefully. He also suspects Democrats are using the coronavirus pandemic as a political tool, doubts President Joe Biden was legitimately elected and is certain that COVID-19 vaccines kill people.
He hasn’t seen the death certificates and hasn’t contacted health authorities, but he’s sure the vaccine deaths occurred: “I just know that I’m doing their funerals.”
He’s also certain that information “will never make it into the newspaper.”
Wolter’s frustration boils over during a late breakfast in a town cafe. Seated with a reporter, he starts talking as if Anfinson is there.
“You’re lying to people,” he says. “You flat-out lie about things.” . .
Anfinson, for his part, doesn’t want to talk about Wolter, at least not directly. He’s watched Benson’s fragile web of community fray too much.
Instead, he talks proudly about the Monitor-News: how it prints letters to the editor that are harshly critical of it; how he reports the truth even if it costs him.
His newspaper should bind people together, he says.
Instead, he says, America and Benson are growing angrier.
Read the entire article at the Associated Press. And check out the Swift County Monitor.
Photo: Reed Anfinson, publisher of The Swift County Monitor-News, left, is stands for a portrait with his wife and business partner, Shelly, at the paper's office in Benson, Minn., Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021. When it comes to politics, she's not who you'd expect to be married to the man often tagged as Benson's best-known liberal. She's a deeply patriotic, pro-life Republican. She is often torn between support for Reed and worries over subscriber loss. (AP Photo/David Goldman).
If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 600 Maple Street, Summit SD 57266) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post.
Or you can contribute via this link to paypal; use email [email protected] as recipient.
I'm on Venmo for those who prefer to use this service: @Sally-Sorensen-6
Comments