On the day he walked out of jail in 2000 after he was held in contempt for protecting a source, Tim Crews had a few words for the judge.

“It’s fine that the judge found me in contempt,” he said, “because the feeling is absolutely mutual.”

Crews, the crusty editor of the Sacramento Valley Mirror in Willows, died Nov. 12, 2020, after a long hospital stay. He was 77. He made more than a few enemies among local officials who thought the public’s business ought to be private. But he never backed down, even when the Tehama County judge thought it more important to reveal a source than to tell readers about a CHP officer charged with stealing a gun.

His determination to tell the story and willingness to go to jail for five days brought response from across the country, and even from abroad.

Among others, support came at the time from the California Newspapers Publishers Association, the Chronicle Publishing Co. (then owners of the San Francisco Chronicle), the Los Angeles Times, Knight Ridder Inc. and the California First Amendment Coalition — and from Paris-based Reporters Without Borders.

Crews was a “true crusader and ink-stained iconoclast who exemplified ‘comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable,’ “ said Karl Olson, a San Francisco attorney who specializes in First Amendment law.

Crews reflected a nearly extinct small-town style of journalism, a sometimes combative, always committed approach to delivering the news, good and bad, to his community.

His death produced an outpouring of reader condolences on the paper’s Facebook page.

“A true legend of Journalism,” one wrote. “There were plenty of times I rolled my eyes at how far he took some issues, but very few journalists remain who are willing to dig so deep into stories, especially the local ones that affect our community.”

A Willows resident has set up a GoFundMe account “so that Tim’s widow and the rest of the Mirror staff can focus for now on just getting the paper out without worrying about the bills. If they don’t report it, who will?”

Who will, indeed? Crews’ style of journalism had one creed: The readers come first.

“He’s the founder, publisher, editor and owner,” Daniel Funke wrote in 2017 on the Poynter.org website. “He reports, takes photos and sells ads. The newspaper is so small that he even helps deliver copies when it prints twice a week.

“And you wouldn’t know it by his blank email signature or no-nonsense tone, but Crews is also a controversial, bulldog investigator. He’s used open records to expose wrongdoing by public officials, penned countless editorials about various misdeeds and published long-form investigations about local government. But what people think of the plucky 73-year-old varies widely, from a noble bastion of watchdog journalism to a scandalous rabble-rouser who’s up to no good.”

Crews, who grew up in Washington state, started the newspaper in 1989 after his writing career took him across the West and overseas. According to Poynter, he got his start in journalism after stints with a logging company, a steel mill and in commercial fishing.

“His biggest priority was his newspaper,” Mirror copy editor Larry Judkins told the Associated Press. “It was basically his baby.”