Project '100 days of Appalachia' asks residents to respond to first 100 days of Trump presidency

Trump in Charleston, W.Va.

A project being launched this week, 100 Days in Appalachia, "will narrate the first 100 days of the Trump administration through the eyes" of people who live in Appalachia, Melody Kramer reports for the Poynter Institute. The project is a a joint collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, the Daily Yonder and WVY’s Reed College of Media.

The project team—West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Dave Mistich and WVU Reed College of Media professors Dana Coester and Nancy Andrews—are "asking contributors to submit photos, words and multimedia that can respond to questions like, 'Does it surprise the reader about Appalachia specifically and rural America in general in any way?' and 'Does it challenge or shed new light on stereotypes embedded in identity politics?'"

Mistich told Kramer, "One of the things I think that we’re going to have to address is the stereotype that Appalachia is Trump nation and just a lot of low-income uneducated people, but that’s not the entire story—there are parts of West Virginia and Appalachia as a whole that have different cultures and different education levels and different socioeconomic statuses—how can tell those stories without exaggerating?"

Coester told Kramer, "If we're successful in building an audience—and if we're successful in delivering some meaningful content that bursts a few cultural bubbles—we'd love to carry this through midterms and beyond, as a potential source for understanding issues in America that aren't going away anytime soon."