Tom Gish

Tom Gish
Occupation	Newspaper reporter and editor
Alma mater	University of Kentucky
Notable works	The Mountain Eagle
Notable awards	Zenger Award, 1974 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award, 1983 Environmental Policy Institute's Recognition for Coverage of Coalfields Issues, 1987 Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award, 2002
Spouse	Pat Gish

Tom Gish (January 28, 1926 – November 21, 2008) was an American newspaper reporter and editor, best known for his work as the owner and co-editor of The Mountain Eagle weekly newspaper alongside his wife, Pat Gish, in Whitesburg, the county seat of Letcher County, Kentucky, where his paper was the first in the eastern part of the state to challenge the damage caused to the environment resulting from strip mining.

Gish was a native of Seco, a coal camp near Whitesburg. He met his wife Pat while the two attended the University of Kentucky, where they both worked on The Kentucky Kernel, the school's student publication. Before purchasing the newspaper in 1956, Gish was the bureau chief in Frankfort, Kentucky for United Press International. His wife had been a reporter for The Lexington Leader (which later merged to become the Lexington Herald-Leader).

After purchasing the newspaper, the motto was changed from "A Friendly Non-Partisan Weekly Newspaper Published Every Thursday" to "It Screams".

For a period of time, the newspaper's reporters were banned from attending school board and fiscal court meetings. Their efforts to ensure that they could attend and keep those meetings available to the public and press led to passage of Kentucky's open meeting and open records legislation.

An August 1974 firebombing destroyed $17,000 worth of the newspaper's equipment, doing only light structural damage to its facility, yet the local police department placed a condemnation order on the building. A police officer paid to have the building burnt down, after the paper had published articles criticizing treatment of youths by the local police force. Gish said that he had discovered that a coal company had funded the money to pay for the arson. The paper was published the next week, this time with the motto "It Still Screams". After several years of publishing under the masthead of "It Still Screams", the Mountain Eagle returned to its motto of "It Screams", which still remains in use.

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