Panhandle town, which has survived oil busts, devastating wildfires, and a diminishing population, a few things have remained constant – cowboys, high school football, conservative voters, and the family-owned weekly newspaper, The Canadian Record. Despite Editor Laurie Brown’s liberal editorials in one of the most conservative counties in the country, The Record is loved and relied on by the community. But now, an already bad economy made much worse by the global pandemic is bad news for a paper that gets 90% of its revenue from advertising. For The Record is a verite documentary following the life of Laurie, her town, and her newspaper, as she fights to keep it alive. “My parents started this paper in 1947. I don’t want to close the doors. But there have been weeks when I wasn’t sure we were gonna be able to keep going when I was publishing a newspaper that was costing me more than I was making.” With each day, The Canadian Record grows closer to being one of the 2,200 newspapers in the US that have closed since 2005. Out of the 3,000-plus US counties, only half have a local print newspaper.

United States | 2023 | 36 minutes 
Director: Heather Courtney
Producer: Paul Stekler
Editors: Karen Skloss, Heather Courtney, Karl Stieg
Cinematographer: Heather Courtney