By Al Cross
Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues
When I was running or helping run weekly newspapers, every couple of months we would have a sponsorship page, promoting a good cause with the help of advertisers who were recognized with a small box or just a line noting their sponsorship. My favorite publisher called them "tin cup" ads, because we were sort of like a beggar on the street, rattling a tin cup. Today, we rattle the tin cup.
The biggest fund-raising activity for the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues is the annual Al Smith Awards Dinner, when we present the Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism by a Kentuckian (co-sponsored by the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and often the national Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism, if that's where the recipient(s) want to receive it. But there's no dinner this year, due to the pandemic. We hope the situation will be different at this time next year.
In the meantime, today offers us a one-time chance to make up that deficit. Today and today only, gifts to the institute will be matched, as part of a University of Kentucky initiative and a donor to our college. Click here for the special matched-giving page, then click on "Communication and Information Match." It will ask you to designate a fund. Click "Other" and you will get a box into which you should type, "Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues Endowed Fund." We wish it were simpler, but this special procedure is needed to get the matching money.
Thanks for your support, and thanks for reading The Rural Blog, our national publication. We also publish Kentucky Health News, with support from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, and the Midway Messenger, a mostly online newspaper for a rural town, with most of the work being done by students in my Community Journalism classes in the UK School of Journalism and Media. Your gift helps support all three publications, and the Institute's mission, to help rural journalists define the public agenda in their communities. That mission has recently expanded to include the sustainability of rural newspapers; they are getting more of their revenue from their audiences these days, and we hope you will help us do likewise.
Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues
When I was running or helping run weekly newspapers, every couple of months we would have a sponsorship page, promoting a good cause with the help of advertisers who were recognized with a small box or just a line noting their sponsorship. My favorite publisher called them "tin cup" ads, because we were sort of like a beggar on the street, rattling a tin cup. Today, we rattle the tin cup.
The biggest fund-raising activity for the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues is the annual Al Smith Awards Dinner, when we present the Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism by a Kentuckian (co-sponsored by the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and often the national Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism, if that's where the recipient(s) want to receive it. But there's no dinner this year, due to the pandemic. We hope the situation will be different at this time next year.
In the meantime, today offers us a one-time chance to make up that deficit. Today and today only, gifts to the institute will be matched, as part of a University of Kentucky initiative and a donor to our college. Click here for the special matched-giving page, then click on "Communication and Information Match." It will ask you to designate a fund. Click "Other" and you will get a box into which you should type, "Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues Endowed Fund." We wish it were simpler, but this special procedure is needed to get the matching money.
Thanks for your support, and thanks for reading The Rural Blog, our national publication. We also publish Kentucky Health News, with support from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, and the Midway Messenger, a mostly online newspaper for a rural town, with most of the work being done by students in my Community Journalism classes in the UK School of Journalism and Media. Your gift helps support all three publications, and the Institute's mission, to help rural journalists define the public agenda in their communities. That mission has recently expanded to include the sustainability of rural newspapers; they are getting more of their revenue from their audiences these days, and we hope you will help us do likewise.
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