I just want to start out by saying thank you: Your support for the Handbasket has officially made it a Substack Bestseller, and more importantly, has solidified my faith in my skills as a journalist. I’m so glad you’re here.
It’s been unbelievable to watch how a newspaper with a circulation of just 4,000 readers has captured the attention of the nation after being raided by police.
Perhaps you hadn’t heard of Marion, Kansas, before this weekend, but chances are you have now: The Marion County Record and the home of its owners were raided Friday morning after a local judge granted a search warrant. One of the owners—98-year-old Joan Meyer—has since died. And now media outlets all over the country are rallying to support the paper and, perhaps more importantly, the First Amendment.
In a story posted to the Marion County Record’s site Saturday evening, Eric Meyer announced his mother had passed away from being, “stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief after illegal police raids on her home.” When I spoke with Meyer mere hours prior, he’d described the toll it was taking on his mother, who was waiting for a Meals on Wheels delivery when the cops showed up.
“My mother got very, very, very, very upset about this and about that time her lunch did arrive, and she never did eat it yesterday,” Meyer told me via phone Saturday morning. “She refused to eat it. In fact, she refused to eat anything. She refused to go to bed last night. She sat up all night. She was very upset about this. They came into her home. She did nothing wrong.”
The family connections to journalism—and to this small town paper in particular—run deep, with Eric’s late father beginning work there as a reporter in 1948. When the paper’s editor died in the sixties, Bill Meyer took over and ran it until it was put up for sale in the ‘90s. Nearing retirement and fearing what would happen if a big newspaper chain took over, Bill and Eric decided to take a leap.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to LEFT SUBSTACK—FIND ME AT THEHANDBASKET.CO to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.