Culture Prairie Pop
Art’s Point of View A new documentary zooms in on the Cullens, Storm Lake’s intrepid family of journalists. BY KEMBREW MCLEOD
A
rt Cullen’s storied career in journalism began when he was a young man stumbling his way through school. “I flunked accounting,” he said, “and realized the only requirement to get into the journalism program at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul was the ability to type 25 words per minute. It was 1975, post-Watergate. Woodward and Bernstein inspired me.” Forty-two years later, he joined the ranks of his heroes when he won a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing after unearthing a conspiracy between Big Agriculture and local county officials in Northern Iowa. Art’s family newspaper, The Storm Lake Times, was founded in 1990 by his older brother John, who is now semi-retired and does the books. The two brothers are joined by John’s wife Mary, the food columnist, and Art’s wife Dolores, a photographer and culture reporter, and their son Tom works as the lead reporter. In sum, the Cullens comprise half of The Storm Lake Times’ 10-person staff. “I try to remember that John and Dolores are really the bosses,” Art told me. “I try not to be hard on Tom but often fail.” The Cullen family is a team united around the goal of cranking out a community newspaper every Tuesday and Thursday that their neighbors will want to read, and each member plays a key role in accomplishing their mission. Dolores works the human interest beat, taking photos and writing profiles of everyday people, like an Iowa Pork Producers “Pork Queen” who visited a second grade class with a piglet in hand. (“It’s really important for us to make sure that [pigs] have everything that they need so they can grow fastly and efficiently,” the young Pork Queen explained to students. “That’s what the pork industry is all about.”) Art is the paper’s driving force, and his shock of wavy white hair gives off a Mark Twain vibe that complements the newspaper man’s sharp intelligence, livewire energy and biting wit. As a liberal voice in a conservative district, he is used to stirring up controversy and getting on people’s nerves—which only means that he’s doing his job correctly. “No dissent is not interesting,” Art said. “I read The Wall Street Journal editorials because they are diametrically opposed to my point of 34 September 2021 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV298
Dana Telsrow / Little Village
view. I find that interesting. Ultimately, I hope that an honest point of view is salable.” The Storm Lake Times eventually attracted the attention of Jerry Risius, a North Iowan filmmaker who grew up on a hog farm in Buffalo Center, graduated from the University of Iowa and now teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. “Art is compelling in many ways,” Risius said, “but it is his pursuit of the truth with a local boy’s connection to the community that makes him so compelling. He is relentless in his pursuits of local issues so that the town of Storm Lake is informed and can make decisions about their community based on his and his family’s
Storm Lake Opening Night Screening and Conversation, FilmScene at the Chauncey, Friday, Sept. 17, 7 p.m., $7—11
reporting.” After reading about the Pulitzer in The New York Times, he emailed The Storm Lake Times and followed up with a phone call asking if he could hang around for a few days and shoot in their office. “Of course, we agreed,” Art said. “He used that to tease an experienced producer, Beth
