Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper Audiobook (Free)

‘A reminder that even the tiniest newspapers can hold the most powerful among us accountable.’ –The NY Times Publication Review

“[The Surprise Lake Times has an] unwavering commitment to elevating the community… Not the enemy from the people but a tone of voice for the people.” –Beto O’Rourke, Democratic Presidential Applicant, via Instagram

From a Pulitzer-winning newspaperman, an unsentimental ode to America’s heartland–a story of reinvention and resilience, environmental and economic struggle, about Surprise Lake: A Chronicle of Transformation, Resilience, and Wish from a Heartland Newspaper and surprising diversity and hope.

When The Surprise Lake Times, a tiny Iowa twice-weekly, earned a Pulitzer Prize when planning on taking on big corporate agri-industry for poisoning the neighborhood rivers and lake, it had been a coup on many matters: a strike for the wellness of the rural community; and a triumph for your endangered types, a family-run rural news weekly.

Within this candid and timely book, Cullen describes the way the heartland offers changed dramatically over his career, as seen through the vantage point of a farming and meatpacking city of 15,000 in Northwest Iowa. Politics, agriculture, the surroundings, and immigration are themes in Storm Lake, a chronicle of a resilient newspapers, as much a survivor as its city.

Iowa takes on an outsize part in nation-wide politics. Iowa introduced Barack Obama and voted bigly for Donald Trump. Is the state leaning blue, reddish colored, or crimson in the lead-up to 2020? Could it be a bellwether for America? A nostalgic mirage in the Music Man, or a harbinger of America’s potential? Cullen’s answer is definitely complicated and honest–but with optimism and the stubbornness that is still the state’s, and his, prominent quality.