Publishers react to Spokesman-Review’s nonprofit course – served with beer – at News Industry Mega Conference

ORLANDO, Fla. – Newspaper executives took some of the first sips of an exclusive beer brewed by No-Li Brewhouse in partnership with The Spokesman-Review, an early case served at the News Industry Mega-Conference on Tuesday.

Attendees drank the hazy IPA, named 1AB after the First Amendment, as they listened to a behind-the-curtain look at Northwest Passages book club events from Spokesman-Review Executive Editor Rob Curley. For the past six years, the live interviews have served as a vehicle to bring Spokanites together in consideration and conversation while also giving them a tangible relationship with their local newspaper, Curley told his day-drinking audience.

Spokesman-Review staff are often at Northwest Passages events in their various capacities: covering the event, watching it on their own time, or interviewing the featured guest. It’s good to have attendees see the people behind the bylines they read, Curley said.

“The interviewer is one of either our reporters, editors or columnists, because we want the people who come to the events to see an act of journalism happen in front of them,” Curley said.

It’s that relationship, fostered in part through Northwest Passages, that America’s Newspapers CEO Dean Ridings said other publications could learn from and implement in their own communities. Ridings is working with Curley to create a “playbook” to make this happen. It’s good for business and for people, he said.

“The way that you engage with the community is fundamentally the most important thing that you’re doing,” Ridings said. “Whether a newspaper is for profit, not for profit, a hybrid or completely setting the model like you are doing now, you’ve got to have engagement. You’ve got to listen to your community. You’ve got to respond to your community. And I feel like you all are doing it off the charts.”

Though now exclusive to Spokane, Northwest Passages events are “hitting the road” and may soon be in other states. Leonard Woolsey, publisher for the Galveston County Daily News in Texas, thinks the event would fit right at home on his island community after he attended a Northwest Passages in Spokane featuring author and rancher Craig Johnson.

“I stood up and turned around and looked backward, and what I saw were hundreds of people who shared a love for community and literature, and they were our readers; they were our people,” Woolsey said. “It was like, ‘This is a thread that pulls people together.’ ”