Young journalists tour nation to grasp its divisions

The five Crossing the Divide fellows in the top row (L-R): Mahlia Posey, Eric Bosco, Gabriel Sanchez, Rachel Cramer and Brittany Greeson. On the bottom row, field producers Ben Brody and Qainat Khan. (WGBH photo)

"A group of young journalists have set out on a road trip to learn about issues that unite and divide Americans," April Simpson reports for Current, a nonprofit news service for and about public media in the U.S. The project was organized by Boston's WGBH and GroundTruth, a journalism nonprofit housed at the station. During the three-month "Crossing the Divide" trip, which began Aug. 30. the five journalists are interviewing people in diverse communities about their concerns and detail their experiences through social media and a website. Universities, high schools, and local media outlets are hosting events along the way.

GroundTruth came up with the project after seeing deep divisions between American voters during the run-up to the last presidential election. After the election, many journalists began navel-gazing about whether the mostly urban-oriented news media were adequately covering rural areas; if they had, some think, they might have been better able to understand the despair felt by rural Americans that helped elect President Trump. Rural Americans might also have found it easier to trust the news media if their concerns were being reflected in the news. The Texas Observer's Rural Reporting Project is one result of that national conversation; the Crossing the Divide project is another.

Restoring Americans' trust in journalism is one goal of the project, says Charlie Sennott, executive director and founder of GroundTruth. "We want to be attentive to serious stories that are pulling the country apart, and we also want to be attentive to stories that unite the country and pull people together," he told Simpson.

The five fellows for the project were chosen from public universities in red and blue states: Western Kentucky University, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, the University of Minnesota, the University of Montana and the University of California-Berkeley. "The fellows comprise a photographer, videographer, audio reporter and two writers, one focused on narrative, the other on data," Simpson reports.