News nonprofits with statewide missions can provide local news in places where philanthropy is less likely to play

Mountain State Spotlight looked at the future of St. Mary's, W.Va. (Photo by Doug Soule) 

By Al Cross, Director and Professor

Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

While we worry that philanthropy for journalism won't find its way into rural news outlets as extensively as it is in metropolitan areas, at least two nonprofit news organizations with statewide missions are showing that they can provide more local reporting.

This week's big news on that front was the announcement by the Texas Tribune that it would station its first news bureaus outside the megastate's major metropolitan areas and far-flung El Paso: in the Panhandle-South Plains, East Texas, the Rio Grande Valley, and the Permian Basin of West Texas, with a regional editor to oversee coverage.

“There’s a whole debate right now about the Washington-centric nature of political news in America, Editor-in-Chief Sewell Chan told Nieman Lab. “When everything is refracted through the one powerful capital, what distortions does that produce? I think in Texas, we have a similar challenge on a different scale. If all news is refracted through the perspective of Austin’s lawmakers, regulators, lobbyists — all of whom have immense power — does that mean that we’re not getting the diversity of perspective from the various parts of the state?”

Of course it does, when Austin and the major metros are politically progressive and culturally liberal and the rest of the state is opposite. In our tribalized political era, it will be important for the reporters in places like Lubbock to become part of the community so they can accurately reflect and represent their coverage region to the Tribune's audience, which is metro-centric but likes to think it has an appreciation for all things Texas. They might take some cues from editor-publishers like Laurie Ezzell Brown in the Panhandle town of Canadian; she take progressive stances in The Canadian Record but has the support of conservative readers because they know she respects their views and values.

And they should be careful about viewing too much through a political lens. In his Breaking the News letter on Substack, James Fallows notes a Twitter post from The Washington Post seeking a "reporter to document life in red-state America and develop a new beat mapping the culture, public policies and politics in a region shaped by conservative ideology." Fallows, who once lived in Texas, questions "the assumption that an assemblage of nearly 30 million people, in the fastest-growing and second-most populous state, can usefully be classified as 'red-state America.' And that for journalistic purposes, the area can be understood as 'a region shaped by conservative ideology.' These views are connected to the larger flattening impulse of thinking that the real 'news' in most developments is their political impact. That is something many people in journalism and government naturally think, and that most other people do not." 

The news from Texas also made me think of another friend, Ken Ward Jr. and his Mountain State Spotlight, which covers West Virginia. I'll bet Ken visited every one of the state's 55 counties when he worked for the Charleston Gazette (now the Gazette-Mail), and he knows where to send reporters for good local stories that have statewide resonance but aren't being done by local papers.

The latest example of that is Douglas Soule's story and photos from Pleasants County, one of the state's smallest, about what the closure of the local coal-fired power plant will mean for the Ohio River county. "It’s not just plant employees and their families that would be affected by a closure," Soule writes. "When such an economic engine sputters out, it has a domino effect, and the whole community loses."

Soule reports a specific example: "Next fiscal year, the Pleasants County school system is projected to collect around $6.7 million in taxes. Superintendent Michael Wells said if the plant closes, the system could lose $1.3 million of that tax revenue annually, only some of which could be made up." We don't know if that information has been in the weekly Pleasants County Leader; it's not online.

Statewide nonprofits can't provide regular coverage of local governments and institutions; that's up to local news media. But many of those news outlets are unwilling or unable to provide journalism that provides accountability and context, and that's where nonprofits can help from time to time.