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Community and "local" reporting

Wallie Funk's work and legacy raises important questions about the nature, role and significance of "local" reporting and community newspapers. As an independent newspaper owner, editor and journalist, Funk reported on nearby people, places and events while also seeking to bring news from the national and even international stage to his readers. Funk's body of work illustrates the degree to which seemingly local news stories or photographic images may transcend geographic boundaries. His images capture and remind audiences of the shared nature of human experience, and in several instances (such as the Penn Cove orca capture in 1970, or the Mt. St. Helens eruption in 1980), Funk documented aspects of local news that have attracted national and international attention and study. 

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June and Bob Fader, co-owners and editors of the Concrete Herald, 1972. 

As president of the Washington Newspaper Publisher’s Association (1971-1972), Wallie Funk visited the offices of around 120 independently-owned, community newspapers operating throughout the state. Funk would later be recipient of the WNPA’s prestigious John L. Fournier Memorial Award, and serve on the WNPA Board of Directors.

 

 

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Image of Mt. St. Helens, April 1980.

Funk captured this image from a four passenger Cessna plane. He wrote of what he witnessed,  “... it was as if the whole world for one cataclysmic moment had been put on self destruct. On the other hand, it was like a front row seat to the beginning of creation.”

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Young boy with birdcage, undated. 

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Homecoming at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, February 25, 1980.