Independence in Idaho

Most newspapers in the mountain West are as stolid as the Rockies, reflecting the area's high respect for authority and stability and its opposition to rapid change. Idaho's papers are generally no exception, but one small weekly in Boise, with a circulation of only 3,500, speaks with a surprisingly loud and sassy voice. The Intermountain Observer prints four-letter words, opposes the war in Viet Nam, supports sex education and, even in a hunting-happy state, urges strict gun laws. A model of reasoned protest, it also assails shoddy meat inspection, inhumane prison conditions, inadequate school budgets and sheriffs bent on censorship.

A tabloid, the Observer is exceptional because of two talented journalists who prefer roots in a relatively small community to the bustle of metropolitan journalism. Editor Sam Day, 42, worked for Associated Press and three other newspapers before settling in Boise in 1964. Associate Editor Perry Swisher, 45, is a former Salt Lake City Tribune correspondent who ran unsuccessfully for Governor, and still teaches math and English on an Indian reservation. Both believe that editing a regional weekly can be liberating rather than stifling. "We're not geldings--journalists don't have to be disinterested," says Swisher. Day adds: "We do not have to play footsie with businessmen on Main Street."

Cannibalism. Day and Swisher crusade with gusto. To attack capital punishment, Day wrote a three-part series on one of the most revolting crimes in Idaho's recent history: the fatal stabbing of a woman in 1956 by a man who bit off and swallowed one of his victim's nipples. Day's report demonstrated that the killing was a sudden, drunken act, not a premeditated murder, and that the state had executed the man in emotional reaction to the cannibalism. To convey the degrading atmosphere of Idaho prisons, the Observer found an imprisoned newspaperman who confessed that he used morphine and other drugs "to escape the reality" of prison life, or he would "surely go mad." He added: "There aren't any girls here, but there are some boy-girls, and while I've never had the occasion to think about having a relationship with such a person, I am contemplating one."

The Observer came to the aid of an embattled Lutheran pastor after rumors spread that his church's youth-recreation center had been organized by Communists. Reporter Alice Dieter traced the rumors to the fact that police had found in the center a copy of the Realist, a satirical Greenwich Village magazine, as well as a reprint of a speech given by an official of Students for a Democratic Society and distributed by the American Friends Service Committee. A local detective had decided that such material sounded subversive.

The Observer's punch and thoughtfulness has brought it a readership well beyond the borders of Idaho -- it has subscribers in 41 states, including many politicians in Washington. In a praiseful article, the Columbia Journalism Review noted that the Observer "comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable." Afflicting the comfortable produces advertising cancellations as well as press-association awards; last year the paper lost $4,000 on a gross income of $51 ,000. It would be out of business if it were not subsidized by its owner, Boise Valley Broadcasters, which operates radio and television station KBOI.

The feisty Observer has plenty of critics, mostly officials it has attacked. Republican Governor Don Samuelson, with whom Day disagrees on almost everything, claims that the paper tries to "get people emotionally disturbed rather than present facts." Sheriff Paul Bright, who has been assailed by the Observer for efforts to close such movies as I, a Woman and Candy, vainly sought a warrant to arrest Day when the paper published some four-letter words used by S.D.S. Founder Tom Hayden at the University of Idaho, even though the speech was also televised. The prosecuting attorney ruled that the one incident showed no pattern of obscenity but warned that Day should not use such words again. Day, naturally, makes no such promise. "We don't mind risking the paper when we think an issue is important," he says.

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