BY MARK CURNUTTE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
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Volunteer Estel Sizemore unloads copies of The Appalachian Connection to drop off at Clayton's Auto Sales and Service.
(Tony Jones photos)
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Five stacks of 100 newspapers crowd lawn chairs in the back of Estel Sizemore's maroon Ford Aerostar.
He cuts the plastic binding with a pocket knife. Beside him, two cars ease toward the stop sign at Elberon and Bassett in Price Hill. He takes some two dozen papers from the stack and slides a yellow advertising rate card into the top copy.
He walks through the lot of Clayton's Auto Sales & Service and approaches owners Belinda and Rodney Clayton.
"Hi, this is a little Appalachian newspaper we got started," Mr. Sizemore says after handing them the paper and rate card. "It has little articles about what's going on in the neighborhood. I'd like to leave these here, so your people can take 'em. It's free. And if you want to put your business in there . . ."
Five months after its first issue was published, the grassroots monthly newspaper The Appalachian Connection continues to grow. One distribution point, one potential advertiser and one reader at a time.
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WHO IS AN APPALACHIAN?
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Local Appalachian advocates maintain that if you say, "This is my homeland," or "This is the home of my ancestors," about the mountains in the eastern United States, you are Appalachian.
The government defines Appalachia as 399 counties in a belt that runs from southern New York state and through parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama before ending in Mississippi.
If you, your parents or grandparents were born in one of those counties, you are an Appalachian.
In the eight-county Tristate, only Clermont County in Ohio is designated Appalachia. Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties in Northern Kentucky are not.
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Labors of love
The survival of the 5,000-circulation paper depends on labors of love like Mr. Sizemore's. Without volunteers, the paper wouldn't have gotten off the ground and become, today, what local advocates believe is the nation's only urban Appalachian newspaper.
About 24 percent of Hamilton County's residents are either first- or second-generation Appalachians. In the region's core -- Cincinnati, Newport and Covington -- about a third of residents have Appalachian ancestors.
One of them, Rodney Clayton, likes what he sees after thumbing through the eight-page tabloid.
"Little things like this are better for advertising," he says to Mr. Sizemore. "You'll be hearing from us."
Mr. Sizemore, 67, a retired factory worker, is no stranger to most of the business owners he calls on. The Hyden, Ky., native is a well-known literacy advocate; he didn't learn to read until he was in his late 50s and still attends classes. He's also involved in the East Price Hill Improvement Association and annual clean-up days at city parks in the neighborhood.
On a recent sunny Thursday morning, he put his reputation behind the fledgling newspaper. Before lunch, he placed more than 400 copies in 17 businesses on Warsaw Avenue and near St. Lawrence Church.
"I walk the streets for the neighborhood. I walk the streets for literacy," Mr. Sizemore says between stops. "And I walk the streets for anything to help Appalachian people."
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Michael Maloney is managing editor of The Appalachian Connection.
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Mr. Sizemore was asked to establish a distribution route in Price Hill by Pauletta Hansel. She is assistant director of the Urban Appalachian Council and one of 15 Appalachian community leaders who organized the paper.
She had responded to a call by Michael Maloney, Connection's managing editor and co-founder in 1974 of the Urban Appalachian Council. Mr. Maloney had been asked by a local publisher, Worley Rodehaver, to form a volunteer stable of writers to fill the pages of an Appalachian paper.
Mr. Rodehaver is owner of Media Associates of Mount Auburn, which publishes three other local neighborhood newspapers: The Uptown News (neighborhoods near the University of Cincinnati), The Northsider and The Metro Edition (an insert into the previous two papers).
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HOW TO GET THE PAPER |
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The Appalachian Connection -- "By and for People with an Appalachian Heritage" -- is published toward the end of each month by Media Associates of Mount Auburn.
It is free and distributed in several Cincinnati neighborhoods with concentrations of Appalachian population. For information, contact editor Michael Maloney, 784-0682, or publisher Worley Rodehaver, 241-7539.
To have a one-year subscription of the newspaper delivered, send $20 to Media Associates, P.O. Box 19241, Cincinnati 45219-0241.
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Recognizing culture
Appalachian Connection follows in the council's original mission.
"People have a right to express their culture and not be marginalized because of their culture," says Mr. Maloney of Mount Auburn. "It's a movement for recognition of our culture and for justice. And sociology says there has to be a means of communication between members of a movement."
Connection is primarily an arts-and-culture publication at this point. Its first five issues included one editorial. It was written by Mr. Maloney and carried the headline, "Public education in Cincinnati failing Appalachian students."
The majority of news columns are filled by stories advancing cultural events, reviews of cultural performances, poetry and personal essays.
"I really like the direction," Richard Hague says. An English teacher at Purcell-Marian High School, he is one of Connection's most accomplished contributing writers. His most recent book, Milltown Natural (Bottom Dog Press; $10.95), is a collection of essays about Steubenville, Ohio.
The paper "brings news about a culture that doesn't get journalized," he says.
Still, Mr. Maloney says, "We've got too much stuff in the paper of college level. I think we can, in time, get more in on the sixth- and seventh-grade reading level."
He also cites the need for journalists who can write editorials and someone to compile a calendar of events.
"My job is and has been to create space for other people," adds Mr. Maloney, a community organizer who works part-time with Catholic Social Services in Brown County and the Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Ohio He also teaches Appalachian studies at the University of Cincinnati and at Chatfield College in Brown County.
Attracting volunteers
Early issues have brought volunteers forward. One reader is creating a Web site for The Appalachian Connection. Heading into its sixth issue, the paper also has a new editor, Steve Whitaker, a former journalist in eastern Kentucky and current University of Cincinnati student. Mr. Maloney was editor for the first five issues before Mr. Whitaker came on board.
The front-page story in the July issue was that Cincinnati State Technical and Community College courses will be offered beginning in September at Lower Price Hill Community School.
Two issues featured stories about the Urban Appalachian Council's oral history and theater project for youth. The "Lower Price Hill Story Project" involved 15 neighborhood youths who interviewed residents in an effort to dispel negative stereotypes about growing up Appalachian.
Each issue also features listings of social service and educational services.
The need exists, says Anthony Coyne, owner of Junker's Tavern in Northside and an Appalachian Connection advertiser.
"It's a good paper," says Mr. Coyne, 42, whose maternal grandparents came to Cincinnati from the Maysville, Ky., area. "Unfortunately, in my experience, a lot of the people the paper is for don't read it. They can't read, or they don't read very well, and they only read when they have to."
To that end, the newspaper is finding a purpose beyond its stated goal of providing a forum for Appalachian news and culture. Adult students, many of them Appalachians, received copies Thursdaywhen classes started at Nativity Literacy Center in Price Hill.
"I think it will be absolutely motivational for the Appalachians in the class," says Mr. Sizemore, who also helps teach the classes with his wife, Pat Sizemore.
Battling illiteracy
Functional illiteracy rates for 1990 were higher than the national average (20 percent) in some Cincinnati neighborhoods with Appalachian census tracts, according to the report "The Social Areas of Cincinnati: An Analysis of Social Needs (1997).
But the rate of functional illiteracy, defined as adults 25 and older with less than an eighth-grade education, dropped in these neighborhoods between 1980 and 1990.
About 1 in 5 American adults have difficulty signing their names, locating the time of a meeting on a form or reading road signs.
Ms. Hansel thinks the paper will help with adult literacy efforts. "Any time you present something of direct relevance to struggling adult readers, it can't help but be motivational. (But) we all, even those of us who are avid readers, will want to read these things," she says. "Several of the poems published (in Appalachian Connection) are by students and graduates of adult literacy courses."
Regardless of reading level, readers -- especially Appalachians -- will benefit, Mr. Maloney says.
"One of the driving forces behind the paper is for first-generation Appalachians to remember and record what we've experienced," he says. "We need to pass that heritage on to future generations."
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