Wednesday, March 29, 2023

We're looking for examples of how lack of broadband affects rural news outlets' ability to serve their communities

Broadband access and adoption remain major challenges for rural America, despite recent expansion of high-speed internet service to many rural areas and the prospect of more with federal infrastructre funding. The Rebuild Local News Coalition is seeking examples of how a lack of broadband infrastructure affects the ability of local news outlets to fulfill the information needs of its community, and is especially interested in examples from rural areas.

If you know of such examples, please click here to email them to Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, publisher of The Rural Blog. He is a member of the coalition's steering committee, which will hold its monthly meeting next week.

The Federal Communications Commission estimates that 16 million people in rural America lack high-speed internet, but that number may be far higher; some estimates go as high as more than 150 million Americans lacking adequate broadband, according to research published recently in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

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