Too often, it seems, when we ponder the term “community journalism,” we lapse into thinking of reporting on county fair farm animal competition or an outbreak of burglaries in the neighborhood.

However, the term always should include the kind of reporting and commentary that earns journalists the greatest prize their craft delivers for excellence.

So it is that the Palestine Herald-Press, a small East Texas newspaper, has won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. The award goes specifically to Jeffrey Gerritt, editor of the Herald-Press, who looked critically at a rash of deaths of inmates in the county jail.

The award makes me proud for Gerritt and for the work done far from major media markets by community journalists who work for small-town publications such as the Herald-Press.

Granted, Gerritt joins a long list of community journalists who do their job with dedication to their craft and who honor that craft with excellence.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2017/04/small-town-paper-makes-it-big-time/

I once worked for a newspaper, the Amarillo Globe-News, that won the Pulitzer for Meritorious Public Service in 1961 for the reporting of the late editor Tommy Thompson, who exposed corruption throughout county government. That prize, of course, pre-dated my time at the newspaper, but the paper’s legacy included that proud accomplishment.

Jeffrey Gerritt continues to further the cause of community journalism. As the Pulitzer board noted, Gerritt was awarded “For editorials that exposed how pre-trial inmates died horrific deaths in a small Texas county jail — reflecting a rising trend across the state — and courageously took on the local sheriff and judicial establishment, which tried to cover up these needless tragedies.”

That is how you deliver top-tier journalism to the community you serve.