“The grain elevator exploded on a cool April morning in 1987, six years before I was born. My father was testing a clay sample in a lab two miles away when suddenly the dial jumped. He ran outside, thinking that a car had smashed into the building. My mother, doing yard work at home, assumed that the nearby ammunition plant was testing a new explosive … For the people of southeastern Iowa, knowing that The Hawk Eye was investigating this fiasco was a source of comfort. The paper’s reliable attention made us feel like our little part of Iowa mattered and that we did, too. This is what The Hawk Eye gave us. Back then, we took it for granted.” Elaine Godfrey in The Atlantic: What We Lost When Gannett Came to Town. “We don’t often talk about how a paper’s collapse makes people feel: less connected, more alone.”