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For The Record

Director

Heather Courtney

Producer

Paul Stekler

Editors

Karen Skloss, Heather Courtney, Karl Stieg

Consulting Editor

Co-Editor

Assistant Editor

Cinematographer

Heather Courtney

Additional Cinematography

Music

Sound

Narration

Contact

In a small Texas Panhandle town, which has survived oil busts, devastating wildfires, and a diminishing population, a few things have remained constant – cowboys, high school football, conservative voters, and the family-owned weekly newspaper, The Canadian Record. Despite Editor Laurie Brown’s liberal editorials in one of the most conservative counties in the country, The Record is loved and relied on by the community. But now, an already bad economy made much worse by the global pandemic is bad news for a paper that gets 90% of its revenue from advertising. For The Record is a verite documentary following the life of Laurie, her town, and her newspaper, as she fights to keep it alive. “My parents started this paper in 1947. I don’t want to close the doors. But there have been weeks when I wasn’t sure we were gonna be able to keep going when I was publishing a newspaper that was costing me more than I was making.” With each day, The Canadian Record grows closer to being one of the 2,200 newspapers in the US that have closed since 2005. Out of the 3,000-plus US counties, only half have a local print newspaper.

BreakingtheNews_H.Courtney

Heather Courtney

Producer, Widow Champion

Heather is an Emmy-winning filmmaker and a Guggenheim, Sundance, and Fulbright fellow. Her film WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM won an Emmy (POV), an Independent Spirit Award, and a SXSW Jury Award. Her recent feature documentary, BREAKING THE NEWS, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2023, won the David Carr Award for Truth in Filmmaking at the Montclair Film Fest, and had its broadcast and streaming premiere on PBS’ Independent Lens in February 2024. Her latest short documentary, FOR THE RECORD, about an editor trying to save her family’s newspaper in rural Texas, premiered at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and has screened at DC/DOX, New Orleans Film Fest, and the Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival, among others. The film had its streaming and broadcast premiere on PBS Reel South in May 2024.

Her earlier films include the Ford-funded feature doc THE UNAFRAID, which was broadcast on the national PBS series America ReFramed; LETTERS FROM THE OTHER SIDE (supported by a Fulbright, premiered at Slamdance Film Festival, and aired on PBS); and LOS TRABAJADORES (IDA Award, SXSW Audience Award, and Indie Lens broadcast).

Prior to receiving her MFA in Film, Heather spent eight years writing and photographing for the United Nations and several relief agencies, including in the Rwandan refugee camps after the 1994 genocide there. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their recently adopted 8-year-old pit bull, but is from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and is proud to call herself a Yooper.

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