Sept. 25, 2006

By MAX JONES
(Terre Haute, Ind.) Tribune Star editor

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Historically, Terre Haute, Ind., has suffered from an inferiority complex.

Its people have long seemed resigned to the notion that nothing much good or interesting happens here, despite substantial evidence to the contrary.

In the late spring and summer of 2005, the Tribune-Star, a 27,000 daily newspaper in west-central Indiana, began compiling a who's who and what's what of our community in hopes of demonstrating why it should have a better self-image and project it to others.

What resulted was "Terre Haute's Top 40," an epic, eight-week series featuring the people, places and things about the community that help make it the unique, colorful place it is. A year later, the series continues to resonate within the community.

The series launched on Monday, Aug. 1, 2005. A preview of the series was published the Sunday before.

The series ran under a logo, usually anchoring the bottom of Page One, Monday through Friday until the end of September. We did not reveal our selections in advance, giving the series an element of mystery and intrigue as it proceeded.

Among the features were pieces about favorite sons Eugene V. Debs, the labor leader; Theodore Dreiser, the 20th century novelist; Tony Hulman, savior of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Indianapolis 500 auto race; and Larry Bird, the Indiana State University grad who became a pro basketball icon. The favorite daughters had their day in the sun, too, including features about Mother Theodore Guerin, foundress of the Sisters of Providence and St. Mary-of-the-Woods College. (Mother Guerin will become only the eighth American to be canonized a saint later this year in Rome.)

Local landmarks and products were also featured prominently.

We settled on 40 for our list primarily because we wanted diverse segments of the community to be represented and were satisfied that everything on our list deserved to be there. In fact, we had to make some hard choices. Some selections, such as a popular music store that had catered to the college crowd for almost 40 years, sparked controversy.

We thought the series would be popular, but we did not anticipate the degree of anticipation and interest the project garnered from readers. Feedback was heavy, and as the series concluded, we invited readers to comment further, even encouraging them to make suggestions on those features of the community they felt were left out. We published their feedback in a special feedback feature a short time later.

A year later, the positive feedback continues. The series is being used as part of the curriculum of a class at Indiana State University. Local high school teachers routinely ask permission to use portions of the series in their classes.

The entire series now holds a permanent spot on our Web site under the "Special Reports" list, at the bottom of the home page, for anyone to reference at any time. It is an excellent glimpse into the city and its colorful personality, both past and present.

This project represents a substantial effort on the part of a community newspaper to get readers thinking differently about their city and to promote a greater willingness of people to carry a more positive self-image. It proved to be a great readership tool that sparked significant buzz around the newspaper over a prolonged period.