Caroline Titus was happy with her niche in print -- until she found herself with a big national story and no other way to report it

Caroline Titus was home after covering a high school basketball game in Ferndale, CA, on Jan. 9, 2010, when she felt a huge, violent shaking all around her.

"There was no doubt in my mind what was happening," she said.

It was a 6.5 magnitude earthquake that occurred off the coast of Northern California, 27 miles from Ferndale, which sits along the coast, less than 100 miles south of the Oregon.

"We're used to earthquakes, but it always goes through your mind, `is this the big one?' We were overdue," Titus said.

Titus immediately ran outside.
She checked on her kids and her neighbors. Assured they were OK, she went to work, doing what she does best--covering the event.

Titus is the owner, publisher, editor, chief reporter and photographer, ad director, production manager and custodian of the 1,500-paid circulation weekly Ferndale Enterprise.

"I just did what I always do; I started taking pictures and talking to people," she said.

In April 1992, three high-magnitude earthquakes struck the area around Ferndale within 18 hours of each other, measuring 7.2, 6.5 and 6.7, according to the U.S. Geological Survey .

"Those really caused a lot of destruction," Titus said. "In the latest earthquake, Eureka got most of the damage; our town was just a mess."

Eureka is the seat of Humbolt County , and is located about 12 miles north of Ferndale.

The community newspaper world lives by a peculiar type of Murphy's law. If a big news story can break, it will break--the day after the paper comes out.

A Thursday publication schedule and a Saturday afternoon 6.5 earthquake posed a unique problem for Titus. In many markets, the Internet has leveled the playing field among news outlets competing to cover breaking news. Although the Ferndale Enterprise has a web site and an online presence, Titus doesn't post news online and she believes she doesn't need to.

"I work hard--so hard at gathering content, and I don't want to give it away for free," Titus said. "My advertisers are content with our printed edition.
My subscription income has always been a substantial part of my revenue, and I know I couldn't make up the difference by local online advertising. Plus my readers seem to like holding a hard copy in their hands."

Before anyone starts believing Titus to be selfish, consider that in the hours after the earthquake shook Ferndale and the surrounding county to its core, she tried her mightiest to get the word out to other newspapers across the country , and this is not a new practice for her.

"I have covered lots of disasters in my career, and all kinds of stories. Once I finished gathering news, I have always given a phone call to other news outlets offering to help and to provide information," she said. "I went online to various newspaper web sites and I was not able to easily find phone numbers to call reporters. I couldn't believe that I was standing there with all of this information and I couldn't get it out to the public."

Journalism is part of Titus' DNA, and she's passed the gene along to her daughter, a journalism major at Stanford University .

"She informed me I was not thinking in 2010 technology ," Titus said. "My daughter said, `Mom, put it on Twitter,' " Titus said.

Titus has long held a sarcastic view to social media and its many tools. Although she does have a Twitter account, she has never taken it seriously .

"I have always thought Twitter was ridiculous," Titus said.

She can't figure out why people would want to read about the mundane activities of total strangers; what they eat for breakfast, their cat's litter box habits, what they are watching on TV and what time they go to bed.

"I don't care," she said, emphasizing that she always felt Twitter was mostly useless until Jan. 9, 2010.

"I have had to eat those words," Titus said, ruefully .

Succumbing to her daughter's urging, she logged into her Twitter account.

"So I sent out a Tweet to all of my 11 followers," she said, laughing.

But her Tweets about the earthquake went far beyond her 11 followers. In fact, they went viral. Photos and accounts of the destruction in Ferndale began showing up all over the Internet and in newspapers all over the country and many media outlets embraced her and her ingenuity .

"I was surprised when people said `great journalism; great job.'" Titus said. "I don't think it's so exceptional or great.
Taking photos and writing accurate captions is my job. Great journalism means dealing with your community critics, covering difficult, sensitive stories well, doing a good job writing complicated stories so your readers can understand the issues."

For the record, Titus is now up to more than 200 followers on Twitter, including this reporter, who became the 212th follower of @FrndEnterprise.

"I have come to realize Twitter is a great tool for something like this (earthquake coverage)," Titus said. "For breaking news, no doubt; it's the way to go."

But on a day-to-day basis, she's still not sold on Twitter or other social networking tools. In her mind, nothing can replace gumFerndale, CA Ferndale lies about 100 miles from the Oregon border and 280 miles from the state capital of Sacramento.

shoe reporting, getting out, and meeting with people face to face, which is the best type of social networking, after all.

Titus spent the early part of her journalism career in broadcast.

"I began writing for The Enterprise when I moved to Ferndale in 1991. She was named managing editor in 1996 and bought the paper in 1998.

The Ferndale Enterprise, started in 1878, has the distinction of being the longest running newspaper under a single flag in Humboldt County , CA.

The newspaper has racked up 19 state and national newspaper awards since Titus began editing the paper, which brings her great pride.

Another source of pride is "the gains we have made in our community insisting that our local government do its business in the open and with plenty of light," she said. "I am proud of the impact The Enterprise has in our community . The Enterprise has been an integral part of Ferndale for more than 130 years. I'm proud of keeping The Enterprise tradition going and ensuring that it stays viable and healthy , hopefully for years to come."

The Enterprise is also a testimony to the fact that devoting substantial resources toward public service journalism doesn't necessarily have to break the bank.

When she took over the paper in 1998, it was bleeding profusely and in danger of shutting down. In short order, good business practices provided a tourniquet, the bleeding stopped, and the newspaper became profitable.

"We're doing well, and had the best year ever last year," she said. "I know big journalism is what everyone's shooting for (in their careers), but community jour- nalism is where you can really make a dif- ference." The Enterprise garnered its first national attention last year for its coverage of a financial scandal at the Humboldt Creamery in which the longtime chief executive officer ended up being charged with fraud, and the business was sold under a bankruptcy proceeding. This marked the only news coverage The Enterprise has ever posted online and is a testimony to dogged reporting by a one-person news operation, with a single stringer to help with some of the reporting.

"While we don't have a reporting staff, we covered every angle we possibly could, and earned recognition from a local media critic for our coverage," Titus said. "The story is of such importance locally and has enough interest nationally that we realized the public service aspect of putting our stories online.
We have garnered new subscriptions because of our decision and commendations from outside of the county ."

Lest anyone consider Titus a media dinosaur for her refusal to put her newspaper online, and reluctant use of social media, consider that she has a weekly podcast.

"We have a local radio station in town that I visit each week after I complete the issue. I give listeners a preview of the next day's paper," she said.

The station sets up a podcast for listeners and Titus posts a link to the podcast on her web site.

"It's a win-win for both of us. The station gets local news, and The Enterprise gets regional exposure," Titus said.

When the day comes that Titus is ready to fully embrace technology and add "webmaster" to the many elements of her job description, it's not hard to imagine she'll be successful at that, too. After all, her venture into the Twitterverse has put her on the map.

The "Lost Remote" web site, which examines how technology is revolutionizing the coverage of local news, gave The Enterprise glowing reviews for its earthquake coverage through Twitter.

Contributing writer Cory Bergman, new product developer for msnbc.com posted about local reporting on the Northern California earthquake: "There was one traditional media outlet that was way ahead of everyone else.
The Ferndale Enterprise, a very small paper with a history stretching back to 1878, is publishing up-to-the-minute news on Twitter. Keep in mind, this is a paper in a dairy farming town of 1,300.
So small a paper, it doesn't even publish news on its Web site. But minutes after the quake, the Enterprise began tweeting news and photos of the damage (which appeared on major sites such as msnbc. com and latimes.com).

Then the aftershocks began. "Whoa ... that was a good one ... aftershock ... hang on," explained one Tweet, followed moments later by , "Fire whistle in Ferndale just went off ... hang on." And the Enterprise published quotes, too. In the end, the Ferndale Enterprise, one of the smallest papers in the country , provided the best coverage of all."

Note: The California Newspaper Publishers Association contributed to this report. © Teri Saylor 2010 TERI SAYLOR is a journalist living in Raleigh, NC. She edits VYPE, a local magazine covering high school sports and practices freelance writing through her firm, Open Water Communications. Say hello to Teri at terisaylor@hotmail.com.