Tuesday, May 21, 2019

10-part series explores rural-urban divide in central Missouri

The Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri has launched a 10-part series that aims to explore the division between rural and urban communities in Central Missouri, and the changes those communities have seen over the past few decades.

The Rural Divide project is "the culmination of hundreds of hours of work by more than a dozen staff members in four GateHouse Missouri newsrooms," writes Daily Tribune Managing Editor Charles Westmoreland. "This series is one of the most aggressive projects I’ve been a part of, and it wouldn’t have been possible if not for the tireless work of our journalism teams."

Westmoreland takes readers behind the scenes on the series in his explainer, discussing how the reporting teams gathered information, what metrics and data they mined, and what inspired the series in the first place. "In the coming weeks the topics we will explore include jobs, education, municipal funding, health care, agriculture, crime, infrastructure, poverty and the role of local sports," Westmoreland writes. "The series will conclude June 19 with a look at how everything we’ve reported so far connects to Columbia and Boone County."

The first article in the series, published May 18, provides readers with an overview of the project. The next article will be published May 22.

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