Economic pressures -- fuel prices, food costs, inflation and a bear market -- are dipping into charitable donations. An Associated Press story, published last week in The Salem News and elsewhere, cited a survey by the philanthropic group Giving USA that found a number of nonprofit groups are bracing for a drop in contributions this year.

Nonprofit groups are a force in U.S. politics. They may not fly a campaign's colors or mention a candidate by name, but "soft money" organizations clearly take sides and throw around their weight and money.

Despite journalism's many modern tools, shoe leather and determination are irreplaceable for digging out a story. And they are readily available to anyone, no matter the size of the news operation.

Janelle Stecklein and The Herald-Banner in Greenville, Texas, proved as much in February, with a lengthy story about a woman accused of drunk driving at the wheel of her boyfriend's patrol car before she crashed the cruiser into a tree.

You would like to get going on a public service project. You would like more initiative -- and fewer meetings, press conferences and pre-packaged news -- in your newspaper and on your Web site. You just don't have the time, people or money.

It is the refrain of so many editors pressed to take care of all of the "must covers" while planning for yet another special section or magazine with a shrinking newsroom.

Yet enterprise -- defined broadly as stories initiated in house, and more traditionally as watchdog reporting -- is elemental to community journalism. A newspaper without it is like a rock and roll band without a drummer.

The president of a farm and seed company 20 miles east of Waterloo was Iowa's top beneficiary of federal farm subsidies in 2005. He collected $665,405 that year, most of it in corn and soybean subsidies.

Over a three-year span he and Iowa's other farmers got more than $3.7 billion from crop programs -- or about 1 in 10 of all subsidies in the United States.