- Welcome to Independent Lens .
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
Protecting one's hometown is a big task.
Doing it while trying to preserve
the integrity of your family-owned newspaper
is even more of a challenge.
This is the story of tonight's film, Storm Lake .
Right smack dab in the middle of America's heartland
is the town of Storm Lake, Iowa.
Like many small towns that depend on farming,
Storm Lake has seen its share of changes
over the last few decades,
specifically the arrival of big agriculture.
One Storm Lake resident,
63-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning local journalist
Art Cullen,
is the owner of the local newspaper Storm Lake Times.
Cullen does everything in his power,
along with the help of his family,
to bring his 3,000 readers the news.
Besides reporting on stories crucial to the community,
he writes editorials where he does not pull any punches.
The Cullen family manages to do all this
on a shoestring budget
as they try to keep their paper up and running.
Storm Lake is directed by Jerry Risius and Beth Levison.
The Award-winning Brooklyn-based Risius
grew up on a pig farm
just an hour north of Storm Lake ,
allowing him to bring a local perspective to his story.
He also has over twenty years of documentary filmmaking
and cinematography experience.
Beth Levison is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning director.
Her film Women in Blue explored gender issues and corruption
in the Minneapolis Police Department
and premiered on Independent Lens earlier this year.
Now sit back and join me
on a small screen road trip to Iowa.
Storm Lake starts now on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.