A digest of events, trends, issues, ideas and journalism from and about rural America, from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based at the University of Kentucky.
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New Englander Catherine Grow took on group of industrious beavers who had completely stopped the brook in her yard with a massive, beaverly lodge. "Twig by twig, branch by branch they slowed, then virtually stopped, the fast-flowing water. By mid-autumn, they'd built a significant structure, creating behind it a deep, clear pool that caused water to overflow the banks of the brook and into neighbors' fields. Upon breaching the barrier, our neighbor found a canoe oar among the debris and gladly took it home," Grow writes for the Christian Science Monitor. Grow made several attempts to dismantle the lodge. (Photo by Newscom)
Yet, the beavers kept building "higher and sturdier. ... The beavers had become a problem," writes Grow. The beaver occupation went through the winter, causing power outages, water outages, and stripped forests. The town's road crew came with a front loader and dismantled the beaver lodge, assuming the critters would move. They did move, but only to the adjacent mill pond where the lodge grew so big state officials had to set traps to get rid of them. "By early summer, the millpond was covered with algae: a solid, chartreuse mass unbroken by a single ripple of movement. The brook ran unobstructed; saplings and brush re-grew in the nearby woods. I stared wistfully at the mound that had once housed such industrious – if destructive – interlopers, as their dwelling increasingly became obscured by the steady creep of lush, green foliage. It was quiet on the waterways. Too quiet." She eventually found her industrious friends a little further upstream. (Read more)
West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin announced Wednesday the state Department of Environmental Protection had filed suit in federal court against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to try and stop EPA's crackdown on mountaintop removal coal mining. Manchin, a Democrat who is running for the Senate seat formerly held by Robert Byrd, "said the suit is aimed at stopping the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 'attempts to destroy the coal-mining industry and our way of life,'" Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette reports.
"The state has worked as hard as it could to resolve these issues with EPA without resorting to litigation," Manchin told reporters. "It's a shame when you have to take action against your own government, but sometimes it has to be done." The 52-page lawsuit "targets EPA's tougher reviews of Clean Water Act permits for mining operations and the federal agency's new water quality guidance aimed at reducing pollution from coal-mining sites," Ward writes. The lawsuit alleges EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson wrongly implemented the new policies without first seeking necessary public comment.
"With these actions, EPA and the Corps have demonstrated a brazen disrespect for the notice-and-comment rule making that forms the backbone of proper regulatory action by giving the states and interested parties an opportunity to comment upon proposed rules before implementation," the suit states. EPA responded in a statement that state officials "have not engaged in a meaningful discussion of sustainable mining practices that will create jobs while protecting the waters that Appalachian communities depend on for drinking, swimming and fishing." (Read more)
In May we reportedU.S. Department of Agriculture scientists were pointing to the combination of a fungus and family of viruses as the probable cause for the devestating Colony Collapse Disorder affecting bee populations across the country. Now additional research from Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana has identified the fungus tag-teaming with a virus that researchers believe causes CCD, Kirk Johnson of The New York Times reports. The report was published in the online science journal PLoS One.
Researchers said their joint effort may be "the first time that the defense machinery of the post-Sept. 11 Homeland Security Department and academia have teamed up to address a problem that both sides say they might never have solved on their own," Johnson writes. Scientists led by Jerry Bromenshenk of the University of Montana in Missoula had previously worked for the military in bee-releated research, including a way to use honeybees in detecting land mines. "Together we could look at things nobody else was looking at," Colin Henderson, an associate professor at the University of Montana’s College of Technology and a member of Dr. Bromenshenk’s "Bee Alert" team, told Johnson.
Bromensenk's team, working with the Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, concludes in the paper "the virus-fungus one-two punch was found in every killed colony the group studied," Johnson writes. "Neither agent alone seems able to devastate; together, the research suggests, they are 100 percent fatal." Still further research is needed to determing how the fungus and virus interact. "It’s chicken and egg in a sense — we don’t know which came first," Dr. Bromenshenk said of the virus-fungus combo — "nor is it clear, he added, whether one malady weakens the bees enough to be finished off by the second, or whether they somehow compound the other’s destructive power," Johnson writes. "They’re co-factors, that’s all we can say at the moment," he said. "They’re both present in all these collapsed colonies." (Read more)
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland earlier this week announced a plan for one of the country's largest solar arrays to be built on reclaimed strip-mine land in southeastern Ohio. "Construction of the 239,400-panel solar array, called Turning Point Solar, would start in early 2012 adjacent to The Wilds nature conservancy in Muskingum and Noble counties and be completed by the end of 2014," Mark Niquette of The Columbus Dispatch reports. Two companies based in Spain, Isofoton and Prius Energy S.L., would open manufacturing operations in Ohio to make the solar panels and trackers for the array as part of the project. (Dispatch map)
"Columbus-based American Electric Power has agreed to invest $20 million and signed a memorandum of understanding with the project's developers yesterday to negotiate an agreement to buy the electricity produced by the array for 20 years," Niquette writes. Estimates project the creation of 300 permanent manufacturing jobs, 300 jobs for construction of the array and 10 jobs to operate it. "One of the largest solar farms in the nation is going to be built here in Ohio, with solar panels and solar trackers made in Ohio, built by Ohioans with the know-how taught in Ohio colleges," Strickland said.
The total cost of the project is estimated at $250 million, and officials said it "will require a federal loan guarantee or other financing, as well as tax incentives and other aid," Niquette writes. "All of these things are in motion," David Wilhelm, a partner in New Harvest Ventures, part of a joint venture developing the array and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told Niquette. "None of them are certain as we speak here today, but we are confident on all scores." Sam Randazzo, a Columbus lawyer who represents a coalition of major industrial energy users, was less optimistic about the plan. "There have been a lot of these kinds of announcements, more of them around election time, and most of them never turn into anything," he said. (Read more)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has objected to 11 Eastern Kentucky water discharge permits associated with surface mining, saying they fail to protect waterways from further degradation. "The letters from the EPA office in Atlanta to the Kentucky Division of Water detailed the state’s own assessment of poor water quality and said state regulators did not conduct analyses to determine whether the proposed discharges from new surface mining would likely violate state water quality standards," James Bruggers of the Courier-Journal reports.
R. Bruce Scott, commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection, told Bruggers EPA's action marked the first time in 20 years the agency made such a move in Kentucky. Scott added that EPA's objection "sets up the potential for the federal government to take over the issuing of those permits and any future permits," Bruggers writes. An EPA spokeswoman did not immediately respond for comment. (Read more)
Wind power is key to transitioning U.S. electricity to renewable sources, but those living near wind farms don't always agree. The latest example of that conflict comes from Vinalhaven, Me., a small town on an island in Penobscot Bay. "Art Lindgren and his wife, Cheryl, celebrated the arrival of three giant wind turbines late last year. That was before they were turned on," Tom Zeller Jr. of The New York Times reports. "In the first 10 minutes, our jaws dropped to the ground," Art Lindgren said. "Nobody in the area could believe it. They were so loud." (Times photo by Matt McInnis)
The Lindgrens and their neighbors are "among a small but growing number of families and homeowners across the country who say they have learned the hard way that wind power — a clean alternative to electricity from fossil fuels — is not without emissions of its own," Zeller writes. Complaints about wind turbines have also surfaced in Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Massachusetts. "The quality of life that we came here for was quiet," Cheryl Lindgren told Zeller. "You don’t live in a place where you have to take an hour-and-15-minute ferry ride to live next to an industrial park. And that’s where we are right now."
Complaints about the turbines range "from routine claims that they ruin the look of pastoral landscapes to more elaborate allegations that they have direct physiological impacts like rapid heart beat, nausea and blurred vision caused by the ultra-low-frequency sound and vibrations from the machines," Zeller writes. A panel of doctors and acoustic professionals assembled by the American Wind Energy Association concluded "there is no evidence that the audible or sub-audible sounds emitted by wind turbines have any direct adverse physiological effects."
About a dozen of the 250 wind farms that went online in the last two years have generated significant noise complaints, Jim Cummings, founder of the Acoustic Ecology Institute, told Zeller. Research suggests communities already accustomed to ambient noise are less likely to have an issue with turbine noise. Even in Vinalhaven not everyone has a problem with the noise. Zeller notes, "Deckhands running the ferry sport turbine pins on their hats, and bumper stickers seen on the island declare 'Spin, Baby, Spin.'" (Read more)
Texas governor and re-election candidate Rick Perry has refused to meet with any of the editorial boards of newspapers across Texas. Perry told Jay Root of The Associated Press, "It was a calculated decision, but you know the world is really changing, I mean, the way people get their information, who they listen to, etc. Put it all on the balance beam and the balance was toward not doing the editorial boards." (Photo of Rick Perry, by Laura Skelding, Austin American-Statesman)
Editorial boards have "responded to Perry's snub with fury, accusing him of doing a disservice to voters by refusing to submit to unscripted questioning," writes Root. The Texas Press Association and the Texas Daily Newspaper Association issued a joint statement: "Governor Rick Perry’s refusal to meet with editorial boards or debate his opponent says a lot more about him than the state of the newspaper industry. He’s made a cynical campaign calculation to duck the hard questions he knows he would face in these settings. That’s not fair to millions of Texans that want to gather as much information as possible before making tough decisions at the ballot box that affect their families and communities. Whether Governor Perry wants to acknowledge it or not, newspapers, either in print or online editions, remain a major news source for Texans. The more than 500 community and metro newspapers in Texas remain relevant and are still the original source of information seen by Texans online and on the airwaves."
At least one other candidate has refused to meet with editorial writers. Florida GOP gubernatorial nominee Rick Scott shunned editorial boards in the primary and has yet to schedule any meetings as he faces Democrat Alex Sink, according to the AP report. One Republican strategist calls the meeting between candidate and editorial board the "second most stressful thing a campaign has to go through," behind debate preparation. (Read more)
The Interior Department on Tuesday approved two California solar energy projects, which would be the first constructed on public lands. The move is "aimed at shifting the type of energy development on federal property in the years to come," Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson of The Washington Post report. The department approved two projects in the Californian desert -- the Imperial Valley and Chevron Lucerne Valley solar projects -- which could supply energy four hundreds of thousands of homes. Neither project will go online for at least a year.
"We have opened up a new chapter on renewable energy on our public lands in America," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters in a conference call, adding that when it came to producing energy on federal lands, "the president asked me to change the game." The projects still face hurdles, including a multibillion-dollar transmission line that would cross sensitive habitats needed for the Imperial Valley project. Jim Lyons, senior director for renewable energy at advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, called the Imperial Valley project "far from ideal" but added that, "viewed as a pilot project, we can live with it." (Read more)
If Republicans gain control of Congress in the upcoming election it would signal the end of cap-and-trade legislation, said minority leader John Boehner of Ohio. "This election is going to be a referendum on their job-killing policies, one of which is cap and trade," Boehner said in an interview with Fox News. President Obama "himself has appeared to acknowledge the diminished likelihood for a 2011 debate on a broad cap-and-trade system for limiting U.S. emissions," Elana Schor of Environment & Energy Daily reports.
"There'll be no tax increases; there'll be no cap and trade," Boehner said of a Republican-controlled Senate. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Obama said while climate change would be one of his top priorities next year, "we may end up having to do it in chunks." Not every Republican agreed that winning election results for Republicans means an end to energy legislation. "Several GOP senators predicted recently that a more evenly divided Congress could pave the way for consensus next year on smaller-scale environmental measures, such as a renewable electricity standard or incentives for alternative fuel vehicles," Schor writes. (Read more, subscription required)
Last week we reported several regional rural teaching corps could serve as the model for a national program. Now, a leading rural education advocate says momentum for such a program is growing. "The non-profit Rural School and Community Trust has been having exploratory talks with faculty and administrators at seven universities that have an interest in enhancing rural teacher preparation programs and in being part of an invigorated national effort, said Gary Funk, director of the new Ozarks Teacher Corps in Missouri," Mary Schulken of Education Week reports on the Rural Education blog.
Funk, who also serves on the board of the Rural School and Community Trust, told Schulken the Trust would like to hear from other institutions or philanthropic organizations about this effort. "What we need is a movement that serves as a national catalyst for building regional infrastructure that, in turn, supports and drives local action," Funk said. Rural education advocates "see a national rural teacher corps emerging as a coalition of regional efforts, built upon strong working relationships between philanthropic organizations, public schools, and teacher education programs," Schulken writes.
Funk said he doesn't envision federal funding for the program, but the Department of Education could help by spotlighting programs that successfully provide good rural teachers. "The beauty of the Teacher Corps concept is its ability to address rural capital flight by building local philanthropic assets, rural brain drain by proactively recruiting the best and brightest and preparing them to be rural 'activists' and teacher/leaders, and teaching effectiveness by immersing participants in place-based education activities and developing a supportive peer network," Funk told Schulken. Funk said the Trust would ideally like to first focus on the most economically challenged rural regions, including the Mississippi Delta, the Appalachian corridor, the South, southern Texas and New Mexico, and the Great Plains states. (Read more)
A lack of access to abortion clinics and outspoken opposition to the procedure in rural America may be pushing rural women to dangerous alternatives. In the Rio Grande Valley, "Items said to be abortifacients —including pills, teas and shots — are well-known to be cheap and accessible just across the bridge" in Mexico, Laura Tillman reports for the Daily Yonder. "Misoprostol, a pill that makes up half of the two-drug combination prescribed for medical abortions in the United States, is easy to purchase over the counter in Mexico because of its effectiveness in treating ulcers. When used alone and taken correctly, it will produce a miscarriage between 80 and 85 percent of the time."
The closest abortion clinic is in Harlingen, Texas, 30 miles from the border. "That might not sound like much, but without a car it is difficult to make the trip discreetly," Tillman writes. Access isn't the only barrier for rural women seeking abortions; local opinions often act as another deterrent. "Widespread opposition to abortion in the Rio Grande Valley may not be obvious at first: it is not discussed in polite conversation," Tillman writes. "But spend a little time here and the bumper stickers that cry out from cars, the messages that dot billboards on the expressway and the rhetoric inside many churches resoundingly confirm an antiabortion message."
"In fact, abortion is so stigmatized, many women don't even realize it is legal," Tillman writes. Many women along the U.S.-Mexico border appear to be turning to Mexican drugs as an alternative to abortion but whether their actions represent "a broader trend is difficult to say, given the lack of data and the underground nature of self-induced abortions," Tillman writes. In Texas, Medicaid doesn't cover abortion except in cases of rape, incest or life endangerment, meaning costs can run between $450 to over $900. Comparatively, Misoprostol costs costs between $87 and $167 at a Mexican pharmacy.
"What we're dealing with now is thirty-five years of women being very publicly shamed by antichoice protesters," Gloria Feldt, former president of Planned Parenthood, told Tillman. "Underground abortion is one of the consequences." If used incorrectly, Misoprostol can cause the uterus to rupture and bring about internal bleeding. "Logically, you should go to a clinic," one woman who used Misoprostol told Tillman. "If you have the money, you should. It's safer. But the whole thing of being in a clinic like that is, it traumatizes people, too. Really, the more private thing and the more convenient thing to do would be to just take the pill." (Read more)
Journalists must redouble their efforts to fight growing secrecy, the new president of the Society of Professional Journalists told the organization's convention as it wrapped up last night in Las Vegas.
"We are under attack, from the smallest communities to the federal government," Hagit Limor, left, a reporter for Cincinnati's WCPO-TV, told the crowd at her installation banquet. She quoted a report from Freedom of Information Committee Chairman David Cuillier, saying that in many communities "We have the equivalent of a police state."
Cuillier, right, a journalism professor at the University of Arizona, made an "Access Across America" tour to 33 states this spring and summer, funded by SPJ's Sigma Delta Chi Foundation. It won him two awards and much recognition at the convention. In his report he cited cases of "no access to jail logs, arrest reports, 911 logs, incident reports or scanner traffic," but said the biggest FOI problem "isn’t that government is denying record requests. The problem is that not enough journalists are submitting record requests. Small news organizations need much more training in access. In some newsrooms the reporters didn’t know they could ask for public records."
Limor, whose father survived the Buchenwald concentration camp and saw her sworn in as president, said the Holocaust wasn't reported for years though governments knew about it. "Ask him why we have to fight for press rights, for access to government records," she said. "We are part of something that is bigger than all of us, that depends on all of us." For her remarks, go here. For more on the convention and SPJ see http://www.spj.org/.
Basic training for police officers is taking a hit because of the financial problems of local cities who must pay for it, reports Kevin Johnson for USA Today. Washington-based think tank Police Executive Research Forum says nearly 70% of police agencies cut back or eliminated training programs this year as part of local government budget reductions, according to a survey this fall of 608 agencies.
Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan told Johnson that his department's entire in-service training program was shuttered for a year, beginning in June 2009. Jordan faced cutting training or laying off staff. According to Jordan, the training cut was a "no-brainer. ... We needed to keep people on the street and saw the cuts to training as a bridge to better times."
The cost of cutting or eliminating training may be felt later. "When you pull away the support beams of a building, it doesn't fall down immediately," Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, told Johnson. "But eventually, it's going to have an impact." (Read more)
When results of the census are finally tabulated, rural legislators are likely to feel the greatest change, reports David Harrison for Stateline.org. Early census data released last week show that "the recession has not stopped a century-long movement of people out of rural areas and into cities and suburbs, a trend that will have significant impact in next year’s redistricting debates," writes Harrison. "The rural districts get geographically bigger as more and more population has to be absorbed in the urban and suburban districts," Gary Moncrief, a political scientist at Boise State University in Idaho, said to Harrison.
As the U.S. population has grown, all legislators, urban, suburban and rural, are going to represent more people, writes Harrison. That will affect everything from the cost of campaigns to legislators’ workloads and travel time. In anticipation of the changes from re-districting, some states are already making changes. In Alaska, a constitutional amendment will ask the state's voters to increase the size of the state legislature adding two state senators and four House members. (Read more)
Last week we reported on the Appalachia Rising protest in Washington, D. C., and now one of the organizers of that event is gaining national attention. Bo Webb, 61 of Peachtree, W.V., "first heard about mountaintop removal soon after retiring in 2001 as a machine shop owner in Cleveland to move to Clay's Branch hollow in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia," Peter Slavin of The Los Angeles Times reports. Webb's activism against mountaintop removal began with an open letter to President Obama about conditions near his home and eventually lead him to the environmental group Coal River Mountain Watch. (Photo of Bo Webb, by Ben Droz, Appalachia Rising)
Webb videotaped the effects of blasting from a Massey Energy mine near his home, "took the tape to Washington, and showed it to the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement," Slavin writes. "Back home, three federal officials drove out and went up the mountain with him, and made state blasting personnel join them." State regulators issued citations to Massey, including two for blasting, and told the company it would have to abide by special restrictions if it were to blast in the area again. Massey has since avoided the area.
Webb's "relentless fight to save the mountains, communities, culture and people of Appalachia has inspired me more than I can ever describe," coal field activist Wendy Johnston told Slavin. Webb claims coal mining near his home is also contributing to elevated cancer levels among Coal River Valley residents, though mining groups were quick to note there is no proof mining causes cancer. "Webb remains undeterred, and he believes it's now or never to end mountaintop removal," Slavin writes. Webb doubts Obama will be re-elected and thinks any successor will be much less sympathetic to his cause. "We've got two years to end this," he told Slavin. (Read more)
Several states legalization of medical marijuana has been a boon to an unlikely group of companies: local newspapers. "In states like Colorado, California and Montana where use of the drug for health purposes is legal, newspapers — particularly alternative weeklies — have rushed to woo marijuana providers," Jeremy W. Peters of The New York Times reports. "Many of these enterprises are flush with cash and eager to get the word out about their fledgling businesses." The benefit has also gone to daily newspapers including The Denver Post and The Bozeman Daily Chronicle in Montana.
"My point of view is, for the moment at least, it’s legal," said Stephanie Pressly, publisher of The Daily Chronicle, adding that the paper generates about $7,500 a month in advertising from medical marijuana businesses. "The joke around here is that it’s a budding business." Medical marijuana advertising money helped The Colorado Springs Independent hire a new reporter and promote three staff members to full time. The paper also added a column called CannaBiz, which follows news from the industry across the country, and is written by the new marijuana beat writer. (Photo of Independent's pullout supplement "ReLeaf")
Many states have allowed legal allowances for medical marijuana for almost a decade, but an Obama administration decision to not prosecute users and suppliers of the drug as long as they complied with state laws "freed more people to market and sell it as a medical product," Peters writes. Some in the industry feel the medical marijuana advertising bubble is about to burst. The Montana legislature is expected to take up proposals to strictly regulate the drugs' use leaving The Missoula Independent, where medical marijuana advertising makes up 10 percent of the paper's revenue, fearful of a bust. "It’s been stressful for us for several years," Matt Gibson, president of The Independent, told Peters. "There’s no question that they’ve been good for our business. And we’re worried about 2011, if the state revises the statute, which it appears is all but certain." (Read more)
The local food movement is catching on at Iowa schools, and advocates say rural districts are the ones catching onto the movement most quickly. East Elementary School in Independence, Iowa, has 13 raised-bed gardens and has become the symbol of a "small but budding local-food movement in Iowa schools," Reid Forgrave of the Des Moines Register reports. "In the past few years, this northeast Iowa district has cooked more lunch items from scratch with healthier ingredients, invited farmers to classrooms to explain where food comes from, and built gardens where students plant and harvest food used in lunches."
Obtaining local food for school districts can be easier in theory than practice. Andrea Geary, the local-food program manager with the University of Northern Iowa's Buy Fresh, Buy Local program, told Forgrave the transition from government-subsidized commodity foods to local products is easiest for small rural school districts. "They know they want healthier food, they know they want local food, they know they're not happy with the current broken food system," Geary told Forgrave. "But they don't know where to go." The Iowa Farm to School program now has 11 chapters.
In Independence, custodians "converted old bleachers into raised-bed gardens, filled with dirt from nearby wetlands," Forgrave writes. "A Farm to School coordinator developed a network of local growers." The school district, which became Iowa's first Farm to School chapter three years ago, purchased 30 pounds of local strawberries for yogurt parfaits during the first year of the program, but demand had increased so much by the second year the district purchased 300 pounds.
On the same morning that Forgrave observed first-graders digging for potatoes, "a local orchard owner visited third-graders, explained how an orchard works, showed them how to peel the fruit and let them sample Cortland apples," Forgrave writes. Food services director Kelly Crossley explained, "We could put fruits and vegetables in front of them until the cows come home, but until we reinforce it in the classroom and with parents, they're not going to touch it." (Read more)
This year hasn't been kind to seed-giant Monsanto, which has seen its stock drop about 42 percent since the beginning of the year. "The giant of agricultural biotechnology has been buffeted by setbacks this year that have prompted analysts to question whether its winning streak from creating ever more expensive genetically engineered crops is coming to an end," Andrew Pollack of The New York Times reports. The company's stock, which peaked at $145 a share in mid 2008, closed at $47.77 a share on Monday.
Dropping stock prices haven't been the only problem for Monsanto as the company faces disappointing returns from a couple of new products. Last week the company learned its newest product, "SmartStax corn, which contains an unprecedented eight inserted genes, was providing yields no higher than the company’s less expensive corn that contains only three foreign genes," Pollack writes. "Monsanto has already been forced to sharply cut prices on SmartStax and on its newest soybean seeds, called Roundup Ready 2 Yield, as sales fell below projections." The company also faces an antitrust investigation from the Justice Department and growing reports of Roundup resistant weeds.
Additionally, sales of Monsanto’s Roundup are down this year under an onslaught of low-priced generics made in China, Pollack reports. "My personal view is that they overplayed their hand," William R. Young, managing director of ChemSpeak and a consultant to investors in the chemical industry, said of Monsanto. "They are going to have to demonstrate to the farmer the advantage of their products."
Brett D. Begemann, Monsanto's executive vice president for seeds and traits, said the company is already making changes under the advice of farmers, including changing the pricing formula for the company's newer products. "Technologically, they are still the market leader," Laurence Alexander, an analyst at Jefferies & Company, told Pollack. "The main issue going forward is do they get paid for the technology they deliver. The jury is still out on that one. It’s going to take a year or two of data to reassure people." (Read more)
The leading organization for U.S. community newspapers announced today that it would create "a marketing council of newspaper executives" to spread the word that "real newspapers are not dead." The National Newspaper Association, a lobby for weeklies and small dailies, formulated the plan at its 125th anniversary convention in Omaha, which concluded Saturday.
While NNA didn't say so, available data and anecdotal evidence show that community papers have suffered much less from the Great Recession and the Internet than their metropolitan counterparts. Its new president, Liz Parker of Recorder Newspapers Inc. in Stirling, N.J., acknowledged the lingering effects of the recesssion and the changes being wrought by the exponential expansion of digital media.
"We are not blogs, but we have blogs. We are not websites, but we have websites. We are whole, real newspapers in print and other media and we continue to serve,” Parker said in a press release. "Readers are changing. Markets are changing. But local journalism is as much needed as ever. We are the ones who provide the glue that holds our communities together. We are the trusted voice."
Parker, right, is a second-generation community publisher who said she met her husband “covering meetings and murders against each other” while working for competing dailies on the Jersey Shore. She succeeds Cheryl Kaechele, at left in photo, a Michigan publisher on whose watch NNA decided to put its staff at the University of Missouri under the supervision of Washington lawyer-lobbyist Tonda Rush, a longtime attorney and employee of the association. The other national officers are Vice President Reed Anfinson, publisher of the Swift County Monitor-News in Benson, Minn., who had been treasurer, and Treasurer Merle Baranczyk, publisher of the Salida Mountain Mail in Colorado. For a list of regional directors, other officers and other NNA news, click here.
Kathleen Parker, Pulitzer prize winner and a widely syndicated columnist, has joined former New York governor Eliot Spitzer as co-host of a talk show starting tonight on CNN, "Parker Spitzer." Parker told Keach Hagey of Politico.com that she grew up in "smallish town" Winter Haven, Fla., and has spent most of her life in the South. She describes her most recent move from Camden, S.C., to New York City as coming to "the humongous city," and the bureaucracy required for high-density living as "a fresh sort of hell."
Parker originally planned to become a Spanish professor, but after graduate school she started a career as a reporter at the now-defunct Charleston Evening Post. Subsequent jobs at the Florida Times-Union, the Birmingham Post-Herald and The Mercury News in San Jose took her all over the country. Her columnist career began at The Orlando Sentinel writing a column called "Women," as a counterpoint to a column called, "Men." She moved on to politics and public policy but in 2008 published a book, Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care.
"Not only did I move from a small town in South Carolina via a relatively quiet neighborhood in Washington, I also left a solo writing operation to join CNN, an international organization with layers upon layers of human management,” she wrote in her Sept. 29 column. "Not that I'm complaining. Just sayin'." (Read more)
As ethanol producers fight to preserve their government subsidies, they are trying to present a united front after infighting within the industry emerged during the summer. "Representatives of groups representing the ethanol industry and corn growers have been meeting weekly, including several times at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, or talking by phone to resolve differences and strategize how to save the biofuel's federal subsidy," Phillip Brasher of The Des Moines Register reports. The industry "is kind of a dysfunctional family at the moment," David Nelson, longtime board member of the National Corn Growers Association and the Renewable Fuels Association, told Brasher.
The industry split emerged when "Growth Energy proposed to phase out the 45-cent-per-gallon tax credit and use the money to build ethanol pipelines and retrofit service stations to sell higher ethanol blends," Brasher writes. Groups including the RFA opposed Growth's plan, "saying that the subsidy is still needed and that there wasn't time for Congress to deal with the Growth Energy proposal," Brasher writes. The subsidy is scheduled to expire at year's end unless renewed by Congress.
"Growth Energy is now calling for an extension of the subsidy," Brasher writes. "But some of the subsidy's critics have used the original proposal as ammunition." Darrin Ihnen, outgoing president of the Corn Growers, told Brasher all the Growth Energy proposal did was "confuse the message." He explained, "What (Growth Energy) said is that we don't need the tax credit anymore, if we get market access," Ihnen said, referring to the need for ethanol pumps. "The media really didn't pick up on that part of the message." (Read more)
A variety of motivations brought around 35,000 people to Farm Aid 25 in Milwaukee last week, but all the crowd "seemed to leave with a sense of pride in their country and an overflowing love and for the traditional family farmer," University of Kentucky student Alexandria Sardam reports. The concert, started in 1985 by Willie Nelson, featured Neil Young (photo by Sardam), Kenny Chesney, Norah Jones and many other artists, and attracted farm families and supporters from all over the nation.
"I think that it’s so important that we reach an understanding as a society that if we want a healthy future and healthy planet and healthy children then we have to think globally but act locally," said musician Dave Matthews, who has been a Farm Aid board member and performer since 2001. Matthews owns Maple Hill Farm, an organic farm that is a contributor to the Best of What’s Around Community Supported Agriculture Program located near Charlottesville, Va. Young left the crowd with a strategy for helping U.S. farmers: "Look at the label," he said. "Don't buy from other countries. Buy American." (Read more)
"Combining music and activism, Farm Aid has carved out an interesting history," Karen Herzog and Bill Glauber of the Milwaulkee Journal Sentinel report. "It began as a musical plea to save the family farm in America and morphed into a platform for the good-food movement and sustainable agriculture, starring family farms." Carolyn Mugar, Farm Aid's executive director, explained the event is based on a simple truth: "Supporting family farmers and family farm-centered food systems can jump-start a fragile economy, improve public health and create a cleaner environment for future generations," the reporters write. (Read more)
We've been following Tennessee's steps toward allowing guns in bars, most recently here, but the Volunteer State isn't the only one moving in that direction. "Tennessee is one of four states, along with Arizona, Georgia and Virginia, that recently enacted laws explicitly allowing loaded guns in bars," Malcolm Gay reports for The New York Times. "The new measures in Tennessee and the three other states come after two landmark Supreme Court rulings that citizens have an individual right — not just in connection with a well-regulated militia — to keep a loaded handgun for home defense." (Times photo by Josh Anderson)
In addition to the four states allowing guns in bars, 18 other states allow guns in restaurants that serve alcohol. "The new laws have also brought to light the status of 20 other states — New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts among them — that do not address the question, appearing by default to allow those with permits to carry guns into establishments that serve alcohol, according to the Legal Community Against Violence, a nonprofit group that promotes gun control and tracks state gun laws," Gay writes. Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, explains, "A lot of states for a long time have not felt the need to say you could or couldn't do it. There weren't as many conceal-carry permits out there, so it wasn't really an issue."
Now, he said, "the attitude from the gun lobby is that they should be able to take their guns wherever they want," Helmke told Gay. "In the last year, they’re starting to move toward needing no permit at all." Under Tennessee's law, gun permit holders are not supposed to actually drink alcohol while carrying their weapons. Critics of the laws say "The provision is no guarantee of safety, pointing to a recent shooting in Virginia where a customer who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon shot himself in the leg while drinking beer at a restaurant," Gay writes. (Read more)
A new issue brief from the nonprofit public-policy group New America says states need to incorporate information from early-childhood programs like Head Start to better analyze childhood progress over time. In the brief, "Many Missing Pieces: The Difficult Task of Linking Early Childhood Data and School-Based Data Systems," New America's Early Education Initiative says states are "still a long way from collecting early-childhood data (birth to age 8) that can inform teachers and parents about needed changes in instruction, improve learning opportunities in each year of a child's educational journey,and guide policy decisions related to early childhood programs."
In the past five years the federal government has invested roughly $515 million to help states expand longitudinal data systems to collect data across the full span of a child's educational experience, including $250 million from the stimulus package, New America reports. The stimulus money requires states to link early-childhood programs with the traditional K-12 system. "A growing number of states now have the ability to collect and use information on individual children attending state funded pre-kindergarten programs," New America writes. "But state's education departments are less likely to be capturing data on children who attend Head Start, the federal government's pre-K program for children in poverty."
The report argues early childhood data are essential to multiple stakeholders. "Teachers need longitudinal data on students in their classroom from their previous years of school to help them target their instruction and identify students who need additional help as early as possible. Researchers need data on how students have progressed over time to analyze the effectiveness of programs. State and local policymakers need data to determine where future investments should be made. State officials need data to evaluate how well teacher preparation programs equip teachers of young children with the knowledge and skills they need to be effective." (Read more)
If granted by the federal government, a petition by Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen would make state-controlled sections of the scenic Cumberland Mountains northwest of Knoxville (state photo by Byron Jorjorian) off limits to surface coal mining.
"At issue is Northern Cumberland ridgeland that the state owns or holds easements on but that others own the mineral rights to," Anne Paine of The Tennessean reports. "The ridges and 600 feet on either side would be declared 'unsuitable for mining' under the request made to the federal Office of Surface Mining." The area in question lies on either side of Interstate 75 north of Knoxville, in the stretch where the northbound lanes first run southeast after running southwest along the top of Pine Mountain. (PDF map of the area)
"These lands are managed by the state of Tennessee for hunting, hiking, wildlife viewing and other outdoor recreational activities," Bredesen said in an announcement. "This petition asks the federal government to help us prevent mining on these ridgelines to protect their important cultural, recreational and scientific resources." Bredesen contends surface mining would be "inconsistent with uses specified in the Wildlife Management Area and Conservation Easement, including hunting and recreation, depriving future generations of these special resources."
Coal groups were quick to condemn the proposal, saying it was a violation of property rights. "The state could only afford that land because they only bought the property surface rights," Chuck Laine, president of the Tennessee Mining Association, told Paine. "They didn’t buy the mineral rights." Laine said his organization had not reviewed the entire petition yet, but the group is "strongly opposed to this." Coal could still be mined below the ridgelines, but Laine said that wasn't enough. "We’ve got coal up there," he said. "If you can’t mine it up there you can’t mine it." (Read more)
Bredesen leaves office at the end of the year, so the petition could become an issue in this year's race for governor between Democrat Mike McWherter, son of former Gov. Ned Ray McWherter, and Republican Bill Haslam, mayor of Knoxville, which lies between the Great Smoky Mountains (which have no coal) and the Cumberlands. Haslam generally opposes mountaintop-removal mining but has also said he doesn't want to discourage coal mining in Tennessee.
With one month left before the election, it's time for all news media to help voters sort through the blizzard of misleading and sometimes outright false television and radio commercials, which seem to be heavier than ever this year. UPDATE: The Washington Postsays so.
This task has long been done by major newspapers, but they do less of it these days. A few TV stations do it, but their reports come and go quickly and are not prominently placed or well promoted. It's time, long past time, for smaller newspapers to join the fray. Many if not most of their readers don't read metropolitan papers, and weekly papers carry little news about statewide races, so their readers are more dependent on TV, which inundates them with ads but offers little substantive coverage or analysis.
It is possible to serve readers, listeners and viewers without spending a lot of time researching the issues, because two reliable, national organizations are doing a good job of it and are reliable sources of information for anyone to cite. Check out FactCheck.org and Politifact.com. Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and is run by Brooks Jackson, a former reporter for CNN and The Wall Street Journal. Politicfact, which won a Pulitzer Prize last year, is a service of the St. Petersburg Times but like FactCheck looks at ads in many states. And even if those ads aren't in your state, they are probably making some of the misleading claims being made in your state. (Image from Politifact)
FactCheck's latest posting looks at ads being run in several states by American Crossroads, the group founded by former George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove. The ads "attack Democrats running for Senate seats in Colorado, Illinois, Ohio, Nevada, Missouri and New Hampshire," Viveca Novak writes. "The ads contain a number of misleading and false claims," including one in Ohio that says the economic stimulus didn't create jobs. It did fail to keep unemployment below 8 percent, as President Obama said it would. Politifact analyzes not just ads, but politicians' statements, and its latest post, by Angie Drobnic Holan, says Obama exaggerated his record on his campaign promises in a "friendly interview" with Rolling Stone.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has ordered Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., a company drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation, to build a $11.8 million pipeline to deliver water to 18 rural residences whose household wells are contaminated by natural gas, Andrew Maykuth reports for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The disagreement between residents of Dimock Township and the drilling company are so volatile that company crews travel with uniformed escorts after a Dimock resident drew a handgun on a company employee. Cabot chief executive officer Dan O. Dinges responded that the state has "taken the position that the only acceptable solution to water-supply issues in the area is a wasteful and environmentally disruptive community pipeline," reports Maykuth. Dinges also said "his company was willing to drill new state-of-the-art water wells for residents, or to install in-house water-treatment systems that are commonly used in other areas where well water becomes contaminated," the Inquirer reports. "But the residents, who have sued Cabot, objected to those solutions because they do not trust any water from their aquifer." The conflict is escalating just as the Pennsylvania legislature is engaged in a fierce debate about establishing a production tax on natural gas. (Read more)
Rural schools are hoping to recruit local students to return home after college to releive teacher shortages. "Unable to compete with the higher salaries and greater social opportunities found in big cities and suburban districts, a growing number of rural school systems are turning to familiar faces to teach their students," Alan Scher Zagier of The Associated Press reports. "They know teachers with rural backgrounds are more likely to stick around and not leave after a year or two. They can be pretty sure that the absence of late-night clubs or art-house movie theaters won't drive away otherwise idealistic young teachers."
Suzanne Feldman, a senior at Drury University in Springfield, Mo., is a member of the inaugural class of the Ozarks Teachers Corps, which provides $4,000 annual scholarships in exchange for a commitment to work three years in a rural school district after graduation. "The community's expectations are higher" in rural areas, Feldman told Zagier. "Everybody knows everybody — and expects a whole lot more." Rural areas are far from a mystery to Feldman, who grew up in a town of fewer than 3,000.
"Small, rural communities are grounded in tradition and have deep roots," Catherine Kearney, president of the California Teacher Corps, told Zagier. "Someone who understands those traditions makes a huge difference." The California Corps, which hopes to attract professionals without teaching experience to classrooms, shifted its focus last year to the state's rural districts, which educate around 300,000 students. Randy Shaver, superintendent in Tupelo, Miss., says rural schools need a nationwide teaching corps to build on the efforts of programs like those in the Ozarks and California. "We need something that's far more intensive and far broader," Shaver said. (Read more)
Despite growing reports of Roundup-resistant weeds, an Obama administration official told a House subcommittee on Thursday the administration is committed to the continued use of genetically engineered seeds. Ann Wright, a deputy undersecretary at the Department of Agriculture, told the House subcommittee USDA lacks authority to restrict herbicide-tolerant crops even if it wanted to, Philip Brasher of The Des Moines Register reports. "This administration and USDA see biotechnology as being a very import tool for farmers to use in addressing some very important issues, globally and domestically," Wright said. "All the options we look at have to be supportive of that."
"Scientists link the resistance problem to farmers’ over-reliance on Roundup and crops such as soybeans and cotton that are genetically engineered to be immune to the weedkiller," Brasher writes. Wright countered that restricting use of herbicide-tolerant crops would force farmers to "return to older, often costly, and less environmentally friendly" ways of controlling weeds. USDA "can regulate herbicide-tolerant crops only to prevent them from becoming pests themselves, not to stop their use from leading to resistant weeds," Wright said.
The hearing was one in a series hosted by Ohio Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who was not pleased with Wright's comments. Kucinich argued USDA could "impose restrictions on herbicide-tolerant crops under its authority to control noxious weeds," Brasher writes. Wright admitted she wasn't familiar with the noxious weeds section of the law. Kucinich responded, "You’re really not? If the regulatory agency is not fully aware of the full extent of its authority then that may be why we’re having a problem here." (Read more)
While consolidating rural school districts is often offered as a way to improve services and save money, research is mixed as to whether it helps students. "Consolidation of school districts as a money-savings strategy is not supported by the research which concludes: consolidation will not reduce the costs for education, and it may very well have a negative impact on student performance," Dave Murray of The Grand Rapids Press reports. That's the message from William LeTarte, executive director of the Michigan Small & Rural Schools Association, who has written more than100 pages of research on the topic.
A 1994 University of Michigan study concluded "a systematic review of evidence on school systems in Michigan demonstrates that larger school districts are no more efficient or effective than smaller districts," and further, "there is very little evidence that larger educational units will achieve economics of scale in administration or operations." A 2007 study from the Mackinac Center "indicated that 'consolidating small districts could save $31 million while breaking up large districts could save $363 million,'" Murray writes.
A 2007 study from Arizona concluded "contrary to expectations, research overwhelmingly shows smaller decentralized school districts have superior student achievement and efficiency ... Proponents claim that there will be a savings in administrative costs, on the contrary, consolidation efforts have resulted in larger not smaller administrative staffs eroding the meager projected benefits from economics of scale." Research also offers a model for effective rural schools. A 2002 Knowledge Works Foundation study noted "the best small schools offer an environment where teachers, students, and parents see themselves as part of a community, and deal with issues of learning, diversity, governance, and building community on an intimate level." (Read more)
The U.S Environmental Protection Agency's independent Science Advisory Board's first draft review of EPA's research into mountaintop removal supports the agency's findings that mountaintop removal negatively affects water quality. "In their draft review, the SAB supports EPA’s scientific research and agrees with EPA’s conclusion that valley fills are associated with increased levels of conductivity (a measure of water pollution for mining practices) in downstream waters, and that these increased levels of conductivity threaten stream life in surface waters," EPA writes in a news release.
"This independent review affirms that EPA is relying on sound analysis and letting science and only science guide our actions to protect human health and the environment," said EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Water Pete Silva. "We will continue to follow the science and solicit input from all stakeholders as we safeguard water quality and protect the American people." The SAB reviewed EPA's draft report, "A Field-Based Aquatic Life Benchmark for Conductivity in Central Appalachian Streams," which uses field data to derive an aquatic life benchmark for conductivity. You can read the full EPA release via Ken Ward Jr.'s blog Coal Tattoo of The Charleston Gazettehere.
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