HENDERSON, N.C. -- In the grand tradition of small-town newspapers, The Daily Dispatch operates right in the middle of downtown Henderson, North Carolina, where you’re free to barge in, march up to the editor’s desk and announce your fury that the wrong crossword puzzle appears on page A8.

The entire news staff consists of two reporters, one editor and a Lab-pitbull mix named Scoot, who sometimes barks and howls her way through an interview with a football coach or the mayor.

The City Hall reporter, Tyler Davis, stands 6-foot-9 and lives in an apartment over the newsroom, while sports reporter Graham Noble occupies a nearby house where the rent came half-price — possibly because the double-wide trailer next door had partially burned down.

Together, this scrappy trio is keeping local news thriving in a gritty Vance County ex-mill town, so much so that their recent story about a barber shop’s anniversary drew 935 reactions on Facebook — impressive statistics anywhere.

And rather than lament the slow death of local news, all three staffers collected awards this year at the N.C. Press Association banquet, where Davis and Noble introduced themselves to anybody with a pulse, pressing a fresh copy of the Dispatch in their hands.

“We’re still here,” said Davis, 28, reflecting in the newsroom. “As long as we can pay the rent.”

“We’re bringing paper back,” said Noble, 24, proudly holding a print edition. “Paper is so back.”

Smaller is better

Any journalist who started small — this one especially — knows the romance of newspapers in towns the size of Henderson: just 14,000 people in all, an environment so familiar that you bump into the sheriff at the grocery store.

“He knew my name!” said Noble, recalling this exact experience. “I was like, ‘I’m never renewing my tags.”

Often, Davis is the only reporter present at City Hall meetings, keeping a one-man watch on the government’s doings. Needless to say, the mayor knows his name.

“She blocked my phone,” he said. “That was fun to find out.”

Pikeville native Gene Roberts, who collected a wagon-load of Pulitzers and edited The New York Times, famously started out at writing for the Goldsboro News-Argus, penning a column called “Rambling in Rural Wayne.” He professed a career-long hiring preference for veterans of small-town papers because they do anything and everything over and over.

On any Saturday, Noble might cover one high school soccer practice and two football games, all while snapping pictures and juggling a Q&A story for local candidates in the upcoming election.

“I wrote three stories,” he said, pointing to the latest Dispatch. “I didn’t make the fold, but it’s OK.”

“I wrote four this time,” said Davis. “That’s a statistical anomaly.”

But the most irresistible lure of the hyper-local journalism practiced by the Dispatch is the ability to fix problems immediately, whether the potholes in the parking lot at Sunrise Biscuits or the cracked basketball court at historic Chestnut Street Park — a renovation project the paper’s reporters made happen both with words and with muscle, digging fence-pole holes before the grand reopening.

All the while, the usual pitfalls of reporting — rankling the occasional good old boy, getting called a communist — happen in an environment so intimate that when somebody gets ticked off, they don’t have to send an email. They corner you on the sidewalk.

“It’s about holding up a mirror to the best of the community,” said editor Gary Band. “We’ve been called The Daily Disgrace. You’ve got to go out there and hold your head high, smile and do it all again.”

Still playing ball

Long ago, I took my first newspaper job in rural Maryland, where I rented a trailer on a Perdue chicken farm to immerse myself in the local culture. Every Monday night, I ran three blocks from City Hall to my desk in the 10 minutes before deadline, chain-smoking over my editor’s screams.

I collected a million stories in those days: riding on a skipjack in the Chesapeake Bay, canoeing through the tidal marshes at midnight, following a dozen environmental activists into a swamp so they could hunt a marsh-destroying animal called a nutria — which I would later cook over a grill.

I made no money, and I didn’t much care. It was, as Baltimore newsman H.L. Mencken once declared, the life of kings.

It warms my heart to see that life still being lived so avidly.

“It’s like the AAA ballplayer,” Noble said. “If you’re not selling insurance, you’re winning. You’re still playing ball.”

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