Monday, May 08, 2023

Save the date: July 7 for the third National Summit on Journalism in Rural America in Lexington, Ky., and online

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues (publisher of The Rural Blog) will hold its third National Summit on Journalism in Rural America Friday, July 7, in Lexington, Kentucky. This will be a free, hybrid event, with substantial online participation and presentations.

We plan to have a wide range of news-industry professionals, journalism funders, academic researchers and community developers who realize that communities need local journalism. The program is still being developed but will include presentation of research of new business models for local journalism, presented by Nick Mathews of the University of Missouri (research colleague of Teri Finneman of the University of Kansas, a major presenter at the last Summit), success stories from innovative rural publishers such as David Woronoff of The Pilot in Southern Pines, N.C., and funders such as Duc Luu of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

We are planning a full day and are interested in your ideas for presenters and programming that help answer the question the Summits and the Institute for Rural Journalism seek to answer: How do rural communities sustain journalism that supports democracy? Please email your ideas to al.cross@uky.edu.

The Summit will be held at The Campbell House hotel on US 68 in Lexington, the same highway that took attendees to the second Summit last June, but this time much closer to Blue Grass Airport. A block of rooms will be available at $139 per night; information on that, registration and more on programming will be forthcoming soon.

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