Last week, thanks to an invite from Whitley County Public Health Director Marcy Rein, I had the opportunity to attend the 2024 Al Smith Awards Dinner at Embassy Suites in Lexington. Rein was attending as a guest of Heather Bush, dean of the University of Kentucky’s College of Public Health, and I was asked to tag along as a local media representative.
The dinner was delicious, and getting to hear from the evening’s guests of honor was both humbling and inspiring. The recipient of this year’s Al Smith Award for Public Service was Bobbie Foust, who has contributed to the Eddyville Herald-Ledger, the Paducah Sun, the Calvert City Lake News, the Benton Tribune-Courier, the Marshall County Messenger and the Calvert City Valley Sun during her long and illustrious journalistic career. She continues to write newspaper articles in semi-retirement at the age of 90.
Eric Meyer of the Marion County Record in Marion, Kan. Was honored next with the Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism. You may recall seeing national news stories about the Record’s offices, and Meyer’s own home, being raided by local police after the paper had begun investigating the local police chief. I cannot do the story justice here, so I will instead just encourage you to look it up online and read about it for yourself, but suffice it to say that this recognition was very well-deserved.
As a side note, Meyer made mention at the beginning of his presentation that Marion County in Kansas borders the home county of one of the greatest Kentucky sports legends of all time – Coach Adolph Rupp (of Harvey County).
The evening’s keynote address was delivered by Campbell Robertson, a native of Alabama who is currently working as the Mid-Atlantic Bureau Chief for the New York Times. Robertson was in Pennsylvania recently, working on a story about the rapid suburbanization of rural areas when the attempted assassination attempt of former President Trump happened just one county over.
That was an interesting story, but I found some of Robertson’s other, more personal comments to be very enlightening. I will share some of what he had to say here…
“I think we’re in a pretty dangerous time in the country right now. There has been a lot written about the lack of trust in American institutions, the press included. What really worries me is what people do put their trust in in its place. There is nothing that will get people to trust you in the short term more than telling them what they want to hear. There has never been a time when there are more places and outlets that are eagerly telling people what they want to hear.”
“We have a little machine that we carry around in our pockets that is really, really good at that. It not only tells you what you want to hear, it tells you that you are more right than you even thought, and that the people you disagree with aren’t just wrong – they are bad, horrible people. Let’s be honest. There are many politicians who are really hip to that game, and have weaponized it to great success.”
Robertson went on to talk about the dangers of choosing to never interact and engage with people who think or feel differently about things. He truthfully pointed out how easy it has become in our modern world to go for very long periods of time only conversing with like-minded individuals.
“I think that is really, really dangerous,” Robertson said.
I agree.
Congratulations to Foust and Meyer on their awards, thanks to Robertson for his address, and thank you again to Marcy Rein for her invitation to attend this year’s Al Smith Awards Dinner.
