AP global enterprise reporter Tim Sullivan and his colleague, photographer David Goldman, produced a widely read and highly praised portrait of America divided against itself, focusing on the editor/publisher of a weekly newspaper and his disgruntled readers in the small prairie town of Benson, Minnesota. Sullivan’s reporting found small and midsized papers across the country facing worrying losses of conservative subscribers who believe in an alternate America, a place where vaccines are dangerous and the government is plotting against its own people.
At sunrise, a customer carries a box of baked goods from a bakery in Benson, Minn., Dec. 1, 2021. The town of some 3,000 people is a vivid example of how the nation’s divisions don't just play out on cable television. In Benson, as elsewhere, two neighbors can live side-by-side in comfortable homes but with starkly different visions of America.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Reed Anfinson, publisher and editor of The Swift County Monitor-News, works in the weekly newspaper’s office before sunrise in Benson, Minn., Dec. 1, 2021.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Reed Anfinson, publisher and editor of the weekly Swift County Monitor-News, poses for a photo in the paper's office in Benson, Minn., Nov. 29, 2021. Many weeks Anfinson writes every story on the front page.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Reed Anfinson, publisher and editor of The Swift County Monitor-News, right, talks with his wife and business partner, Shelly, at the paper’s office in Benson, Minn., Dec. 1, 2021. Politically, Shelly is not the person many would expect to be married to the man often tagged as Benson’s best-known liberal. She's a pro-life Republican, often torn between support for Reed and worries over loss of conservative subscribers.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Reed Anfinson, right, who is often tagged as the liberal publisher of the weekly newspaper, meets up at a Benson, Minn., bar with, from left, John Zosel, Mick Abner and Bill Harrison, part of a weekly gathering made up mostly of local Republicans, Nov. 30, 2021.
AP Photo / David Goldman
A pressman pulls a freshly printed copy of the The Swift County Monitor-News, circulation about 2,000 weekly, off the conveyer belt at Quinco Press in Lowry, Minn., Nov. 30, 2021.
AP Photo / David Goldman
John Fragodt, sports director for the weekly Swift County Monitor-News, carries copies of the latest edition to be delivered in Benson, Minn., Nov. 30, 2021. Across the U.S., many smaller newspapers, already facing economic decline, have cut back or completely stopped running editorials, trying to hold onto conservative readers who increasingly see the papers as part of a fake news universe.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Reed Anfinson, publisher/editor of the weekly Swift County Monitor-News, works before office hours in Benson, Minn., Nov. 30, 2021. Lots of people disagree with his politics. He deals with the occasional veiled threat, and sometimes, he grudgingly worries about his safety.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Surrounded by family photos, Jason Wolter puts up Christmas decorations at his home in Benson, Minn., Nov. 29, 2021. Wolter, a Lutheran pastor whose home library includes everything from Sophocles to “The Grapes of Wrath,” is a careful reader, in his own way. He’s wary of conservative news sites like Breitbart, believing it shapes its reporting to please conservative readers. Instead, he finds his news further from the beaten path, such as Gab, a Twitter-like social media platform that has become home to many on America’s far right.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Tracy Wolter cooks dinner in her kitchen next door to the home of her neighbor, Reed Anfinson, publisher for the weekly newspaper, in Benson, Minn., Nov. 29, 2021. Despite deep political divisions, and in the custom of small-town Minnesota, the Anfinson and Wolter families get along, at least outwardly. They wave when they see each other. When one family is out of town, the other will sometimes watch their neighbor’s home.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Jason Wolter right, pastor of St. Mark's Lutheran Church, sits next to his wife, Tracy, at their home in Benson, Minn., Nov. 29, 2021. Wolter doubts President Joe Biden was legitimately elected and is certain that COVID-19 vaccines kill people. He hasn't seen the death certificates and hasn't contacted health authorities, but he's sure the vaccine deaths occurred: “I just know that I’m doing their funerals.” He's also certain that such information “will never make it into the newspaper.”
AP Photo / David Goldman
Jason Wolter, pastor of St. Mark's Lutheran Church, poses for a photo in the church’s sanctuary in Benson, Minn., Dec. 1, 2021. Wolter suspects Democrats are using the coronavirus pandemic as a political tool, and referring to the local Swift County Monitor-News, he says, “You’re lying to people, You flat-out lie about things.”
AP Photo / David Goldman
Jason Wolter, pastor of St. Mark's Lutheran Church, sits at the window next to his wife, Tracy, as their son Zeb, 9, walks through their home in Benson, Minn., Nov. 29, 2021.
AP Photo / David Goldman
A worker cleans a marquee at a theater under renovation in Benson, Minn., Nov. 29, 2021. Many area farms and businesses have been owned by the same families for decades — through the droughts of the 1930s, through the thriving years around World War II, to the population decline that began in the 1950s.
AP Photo / David Goldman
T-shirts are displayed in a store in Benson, Minn., Nov. 29, 2021.
AP Photo / David Goldman
The sun rises over tracks running through Benson, Minn., Dec. 1, 2021.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Al Saunders stands on his farm in Benson, Minn., Nov. 30, 2021. “In rural Minnesota we still have a work ethic, and I’ll call them Christian values, and that's not reflected in our local newspaper,” said Saunders who graduated from Benson High School a couple of years after the publisher of The Swift County Monitor-News.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Al Saunders stands beneath a Trump campaign sign in his farm’s tool shed in Benson, Minn., Dec. 1, 2021. Donald Trump’s professed love of America resonated in an area where new approaches to teaching U.S. history, with an increased focus on race, were confounding. In a county where Obama won with 55% of the vote in 2008, Trump won with 64% percent in 2020. “We’ve seen a shift here in Swift County,” said Saunders. “But you won’t see that in the newspaper.”
AP Photo / David Goldman
Al Saunders walks out of his farm’s tool shed in Benson, Minn., Dec. 1, 2021. His family settled on part of this sprawling farm more than a century ago.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Al Saunders drives by a controlled burn on his farm in Benson, Minn., Nov. 30, 2021. The editorials on farm subsidies and the occasional praise for Democratic politicians in his local newspaper, The Swift County Monitor-News, leave him fuming. “Trash gets thrown at you so many times and eventually you just give up.”
AP Photo / David Goldman
Sullivan reached out to Reed Anfinson, publisher, editor, photographer and reporter of The Swift County Monitor-News, and also to Anfinson’s critics — such as the local Republican Party. Eventually Sullivan was introduced to Jason Wolter, who lives next door to Anfinson and believes vaccines are killing people. Sullivan spent weeks traveling to western Minnesota, meeting repeatedly with both men and many others, including a deeply conservative farmer. Goldman joined Sullivan, providing rich, evocative photos of this place and its people.
The package, with a presentation built by immersive storytelling producer Dario Lopez, was among the AP’s most-viewed stories of the week and led metrics for reader engagement. It also drew wide praise: Politico’s Playbook said it was “a lyrical and disturbing story about America coming apart at the granular level.” NPR’s Minneapolis political newsletter promoted it as its first suggested read, and the St. Paul Pioneer Press called it “our top read this morning.”