It’s not the kind of story you see every day on the front page of a small-town weekly newspaper in South Dakota.
But it is the kind of story that Jeremy Waltner thinks is important enough to put there, right on the cover of his Freeman Courier.
Or I should say Freeman’s Freeman Courier, because like so many successful small-town newspapers, the Courier belongs to Freeman and the surrounding area as much as it belongs to its editor and publisher.
That belonging means that a variety of voices in the community should be heard and a variety of stories should be told, which is how Dr. Shakil Hafiz and his wife Sadaf Cassim — wrapped in Palestinian and American flags — ended up on the cover of the Courier.
They are not smiling, because the subject of their story — the war between Israel and Hamas and its devastating impacts on the people of Gaza and the West Bank — is no smiling matter. It’s a human tragedy of monumental proportions, and one that the Muslim husband and wife believe is widely misunderstood in South Dakota and across the United States.
They sat down with Waltner, a friend who lives a couple of blocks away in Freeman, to share their frustration and try to open a public discussion they hope can produce a better understanding of the Middle East conflict.
“We were just communicating friend to friend, and they expressed some concerns and some heavy hearts about how this conflict in the Middle East was being portrayed,” Waltner said in a phone interview. “I said their voice was very important and should be shared. And they jumped at the chance.”
Possible negative reaction never a deal breaker
Waltner knew he was likely to make some readers in the town of 1,300 uncomfortable or even angry with the stories.
“I knew because of the community we live in and the area, there would be some people who, upon seeing a portrait of an Islam couple expressing sorrow on the front page, would not appreciate it and that I might lose some readers and some subscribers,” Waltner said. “But that is no reason not to do it. I knew it might not sit well with everybody, but it was never close to being a deal breaker for me.”
The possibility of a negative public reaction wasn’t a deal breaker for Dr. Hafiz and his wife, either. As Muslims with a deep faith in God and an expectation of accountability in the afterlife, they felt a powerful obligation to speak out.
“As Muslims, we believe we are going to be questioned for everything on the day of judgment,” Hafiz said by phone. “Here we have the blessings of security and peace, water, electricity, a roof over our heads, things like that. Here we are living in our comfortable world when people on the other side of the world are suffering and being tested so much. If we do not speak out about this, we are going to be held accountable.
“Our position is whatever we can do to raise awareness, it’s the least we can do,” he said.
Hafiz acknowledges that the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel was “wrong and reprehensible and an act of terror.” But he also condemns what he considers to be an excessive response from Israel that has killed thousands of Palestinians, many of them children, who were not connected to the attack by Hamas.
What further frustrates and angers Hafiz is that the Israeli response seems to be supported unconditionally by the U.S. government, South Dakota’s three-person congressional delegation and most non-Muslim citizens across the country. Hafiz told Waltner that with the excessive counterattack and a blockade of food, water, medicine and other essentials into Gaza, Israel had “grossly transgressed what is acceptable.”
A more complicated story than some news consumers know
He also criticized the way the mainstream news media has covered the war, which he believes has been lopsided in supportive coverage of Israel. And he said it’s crucial for people to expand the sources of their news and be more discerning in considering the long history of the Middle East conflict and the effects of Israeli settlements and displacement of Palestinians.
All of which, again, is not typical front-page news for a small-town weekly in South Dakota. But Hafiz wasn’t surprised that Waltner was willing to write and run the story.
“The main credit goes to people like Jeremy who provide the platform and choose to be unbiased about this,” Hafiz said.
After the first story, Waltner followed up this week with another one, digging deeper into the issue. And prior to publishing either story, Waltner ran an exchange between Hafiz and Sen. John Thune over the issue. So, Courier readers got to read Thune’s defense of Israel and condemnation of Hamas and also of Iran for supporting the terrorism across the Middle East. But they also got to read responses from Hafiz.
Waltner said the initial responses to the first story were largely positive.
“I’m sure there is some negativity coming my way, but right after the story was published I was at a local basketball game and several people came up to me and said how much they appreciated that story,” he said.
That doesn’t mean the coverage won’t cost him some readers. It could. But he said he couldn’t let that dictate his coverage on an issue of such importance. It helps, he said, that people of the Freeman area generally are well educated and tend to be open minded and fair in considering issues.
Seeing the world through a larger lens
Part of that could come from the strong presence of the Mennonite community and its connections to Mennonite global mission work and the Mennonite Disaster Service, which responds to disasters across North America.
“And there are other congregations — such as the strong Lutheran presence in town — that would hold some of the same views and see the world through the larger lens,” Waltner said.
Dr. Hafiz said he and his family have seen and felt those positive influences since they moved to Freeman in 2015 and he began work there as a family practice physician.
“A lot of the Mennonites here have traveled a lot,” Hafiz said. “There are even people who have lived and done relief work in Bangladesh, the country my parents were born and raised in. So it’s kind of mind boggling that here you have rural farmers who speak the (Bangla) language."
Hafiz and Cassim grew up in Chicago, so the move to a town of 1,300 out on the eastern South Dakota prairie was a big change. But he told Waltner that they often feel better understood and more accepted in Freeman than they did back in the big city.
Like Waltner, Hafiz said the few responses he has received from the stories so far have been positive. He said he feels well accepted and liked by the community, as does Cassim, who works as a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home and hopes to attend medical school.
“We didn’t try to stand up for the other side of the story for the sake of getting famous,” Hafiz said. “We are doing this because, unfortunately, there is a blinded support and a selective acknowledgment of the human rights violations that are occurring.”
Not surprised that Waltner opened the discussion
If nothing else, he said, the stories and exchanges in the Courier open a conversation that needs to be had. And newspapers are and should be all about conversations, even and maybe especially when they’re difficult.
It’s not a surprise that Waltner opened this one, said Dave Bordewyk, executive director of the South Dakota NewsMedia Association in Brookings, which represents state newspapers and digital news outlets.
“This in many ways typifies the work that Jeremy does consistently at the Courier. I have such great admiration and appreciation for his work,” Bordewyk said. “For the editor of a small-town paper, it can be very difficult to step out of that comfort zone in a small community to write about sensitive issues.”
All of this is nothing new to the 47-year-old Waltner, a second-generation publisher at the Courier who started working for his dad, Tim, when he was 12 years old. Jeremy and his wife, Stacey (parents of a son and daughter who attend high school in Freeman), bought the Courier in 2016 and Tim, who was known throughout his career as a successful innovator in weekly newspapers, retired in 2020.
These are challenging times for newspapers, including those in small towns. And the economic crunch during the last few years forced Jeremy Waltner to impose painful cost-saving measures, including reducing staff.
Now it is down to Waltner and a full-time advertising manager, and Waltner had to make a substantial hike in online and print subscription rates to maintain the quality of the paper. He said most subscribers have been willing to pay the higher cost.
Bordewyk said that’s a testament to the work Tim Waltner did during his years as publisher and the continuing work that Jeremy does. And it carries over into the news columns and sometimes the coverage of sensitive and controversial issues.
Do it right and readers won’t desert paper
“It’s a perfect example of the trust that he and his father have earned there,” Bordewyk said. “The community, the readers, while they may not agree with everything that’s in the paper, the way that Jeremy goes about editing that newspaper, week in and week out, has built that respect and trust within the community, so that he can deal with those subjects and people won’t boycott the paper because of it.
“If you’re doing it the right way, the readers won’t run away,” Bordewyk said. “They’ll respect you for it.”
Waltner believes that’s true. And he continues to work to make the paper as representative of and accountable to the community as possible, even when it’s hard, even when it’s controversial. Maybe especially then.
“I don't know what the future of the print product looks like, but my plan is to continue telling the story of my community in one way, shape or form for the rest of my career,” Waltner said. “As Stacey said to me not long ago, ‘I can't imagine you doing anything else.’’
Dr. Hafiz says Waltner and the Freeman Courier are essential to the community.
“I hope and pray that his publication is very successful, and that whatever doors that close because of this there are others that will open,” he said.
I hope so, too. We need newspapers like the Courier and newspeople like Waltner, who work to make sure that all of the many diverse voices of their communities can be heard.
