Opinion: When it comes to sharing thoughts on elections, maybe asking questions is best

When it comes to sharing thoughts or concerns about upcoming elections with people close to us, we often avoid discussing them out of fear of misunderstandings or unwanted tension. Perhaps a tone of curiosity might be a better way to strike up those conversations, writes Donna Kallner of The Daily Yonder. 

"We might even find we’re not quite as divided as we think on some things," Kallner adds. "We are probably in agreement on the fundamental question, Do you want free and fair elections? I get that we are far apart on the specifics of how to ensure those. But maybe we could at least acknowledge that we have this one important Yes in common." To help everyone stay level-headed, Kallner suggests using election-oriented questions to start meaningful conversations. A few of her questions are shared below. 

What personal experiences helped form your opinions about elections? Kallner writes, "Frankly, voters get far more prompting to amplify someone else’s messages than to tell their own stories. So let’s ask each other about them – not who we voted for but what it looked like when we voted and what that means. . ."

What personal connections do you have with people who conduct elections? Since many rural families still live close to each other, friends or neighbors will often know someone who worked at an election or as an election official. What was their role? What did they say about the experience?

How long do you think it should take to declare the winner of an election? Sometimes, final election results take longer than many people would like, so Kallner suggests asking, "What legitimate reasons might there be for certifying election results to take longer? . . . What conditions do you think should apply to compel a recount? "

Have you attended a public test of voting machines? "In Wisconsin, where I live, a public test is conducted before each election. Anyone can attend. Few do," Kallner writes. "But it’s a great time to ask questions like: Is this machine connected to the internet? What happens if it runs out of paper or jams? . . . What checks and balances are in place to ensure that each ballot is counted and secured in case it’s needed for a recount or audit?"

What would you do? "A 2024 survey of local election officials found that more than one-third have experienced threats, harassment, or abuse specifically because of their job," Kallner writes. Asking people to set boundaries by asking questions can help: "What behaviors would you consider threatening if they were directed at a family member working the polls here? What would you do if you witnessed that behavior? What do you think might be done to moderate the potential for that kind of behavior?"

Local News Day is April 9; it offers Americans opportunities to reconnect with the local news they trust

Thursday, April 9, is Local News Day across the USA.

Most Americans consider local media coverage to be their most important, trusted and reliable news source. On April 9, Local News Day will help millions of Americans in communities of all sizes reconnect with the local outlets they trust to provide coverage of recent events, hold leaders accountable and strengthen an overall sense of community. 

As part of the day, Rebuild Local News and the Online News Association will co-host “2026 State Policy Playbook for Newsrooms,” an online event for newsroom leaders and journalists offering a clear, practical overview of emerging policy models and guidance on how to engage policymakers effectively. Register here.

Local News Day also offers connection support and tools for nonprofit organizations and government offices that want to support their valued news resources. Local News Day will provide organizations with ready-to-use tools designed to engage communities and strengthen the trusted local news they rely on. Sign up by April 2.

Individuals looking to voice their support for the community strength local news provides can sign up for updates on Local News Day activities here. 

AI giants ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok all 'pilfer' stories from Canadian news outlets, a new audit finds

AI companies chose not to attribute their source materials.
(Photo by Markus Winkler, Unsplash)

ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok all hijack Canadian news stories to use in their databases without adding legal attributions to stories pilfered from authors or arranging for copyright payment to publishers, according to an AI audit by Canadian researchers at McGill University, reports Brier Dudley, Free Press editor for The Seattle Times.

Professors Taylor Owen and Aengus Bridgman at McGill "tested four major AI models to see how much they knew about current news stories in Canada and how much credit they give to outlets that originally reported the stories," Dudley explains. The audit proved that tested AI models were "quite knowledgeable about current news stories. But in queries involving web searches, they provided no source attribution in 82% of the responses."

Owen and Bridgman write, "They have [taken and used content] without compensation, without attribution, and without any obligation to sustain the infrastructure they are drawing from. The result is a system that accelerates the economic decline of the journalism it relies on.”

The lack of attribution by AI companies is intentional. "When asked about a story from a specific outlet, the responses named the source 74% to 97% of the time," Dudley adds. "That indicates the companies are technically capable of naming sources but are making a 'design choice' not to, the audit states."

AI's pilfered stories let people get news without visiting the publisher's site or paying for a subscription. Dudley writes, "AI companies get the subscription and advertising revenue, instead of news sites that paid to report, edit and publish the stories."

Through the Online News Act, Canada now requires tech behemoths like Google and Meta that profit from using news sources to compensate publishers. With the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, the U.S. tried to pass protections similar to those adopted in Canada, but the bill faded in Congress in 2023. 

Dudley writes, "It’s past time for a new version of the JCPA, addressing how AI companies are changing the way people get information and preventing them from suffocating the local news industry. . . . To help get the ball rolling, I encourage academics in the U.S. to connect with Owen and Bridgman, who are willing to share their models, and produce similar audits here."

The majority of Americans agree that media scrutiny acts as a check on politicians

Pew Research Center graph, from Pew's American trends panel and center phone survey data.

Despite the somewhat contentious relationship many Americans have with news outlets, most citizens still agree that "media scrutiny keeps politicians from doing things they shouldn’t," reports Sarah Naseer on a Pew Research Center survey conducted and released this year. This opinion has remained a constant over the past 40 years, even as the government's majority party affiliations have changed.

The Pew Research Center began "asking Americans about the news media’s role in investigating and reporting on public officials to hold them accountable since the mid-1980s," Naseer explains. "That was about a decade after The Washington Post’s coverage of the Watergate scandal contributed to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974."

In Pew's 2024 survey, about "three-quarters of Americans (74%) said criticism from news organizations keeps political leaders from doing things that shouldn’t be done, while far fewer (24%) said this type of scrutiny keeps leaders from doing their job," Naseer reports. "The last time such a large share of Americans expressed the view that media criticism helps hold political leaders accountable was in 2016, just before (Donald) Trump was elected the first time."

The survey also asked respondents if "they see the news media as generally fair to all sides when reporting on politics and social issues, or if they think the media tend to favor one side," Naseer adds.
"About three-quarters of U.S. adults (77%) say news organizations tend to favor one side when presenting the news on political and social issues. Far fewer (22%) believe news organizations deal fairly with all sides. In surveys going back almost 40 years, most Americans have viewed news coverage as biased toward one side."

Throughout the survey's 40-year history, political parties have consistently held separate beliefs about media fairness, with Republicans more likely to see media as favoring one side more than Democrats. Naseer reports, "In this year's survey, about nine-in-ten Republicans (88%) say news organizations tend to favor one side when presenting the news on political and social issues, compared with 67% of Democrats."

Election officials face a sea of stresses and threats; many have retired and left new officials to face the fray

AI and deepfake election intrusions add another layer
to election officials' work. (Adobe Stock image)

In the not-so-distant past, county election officials could expect to register voters and repair voting machines. But in more recent election years, including 2024, their jobs have become overwhelming and at times, dangerous, reports Tiffany Hsu of The New York Times. "Elections officials must multitask as defenders against disinformation. They have been flooded with inane demands for details about their employees, faced harassment campaigns targeted at their female family members, received intimidating letters laced with fentanyl and been subjected to fake threats of bombings and break-ins."

For many long-time officials, the pressure cooker environment pushed them into retirement. The gap retirees left has been filled by officials new to the process at a time when the position is exponentially more complex. Hsu explains, "In Wisconsin alone, the state association of county clerks found that 31 of its 72 members had never administered a presidential election. . . .The remaining officials, many of them overwhelmed and very tired, are once again marshaling their limited resources . . ."

Jazmin Wingert

Despite ongoing struggles that range from budget cuts to poll worker shortages, "elections officials are doing what they can this year to shore up voter trust, setting up fact-checking websites (like in Pennsylvania) and posting refutations on social media (like a Mythbuster Mondays series in North Carolina)," the Times reports. "Jazmin Wingert, the Republican county clerk for Stephenson County in Illinois, took an elections certification course with lessons on combating false narratives and meets nearly monthly with other county clerks to share security resources."

Managing AI and deepfakes is also on election officials' to-do lists. "The technology could also supercharge harassment campaigns," Hsu adds. "Last week, a bipartisan group of secretaries of state wrote to the tech billionaire Elon Musk to urge him to fix his A.I.-powered search assistant, Grok chatbot, saying it provided inaccurate information about ballot deadlines and then failed to correct the mistake for 10 days."

Opinion: Keeping D-Day remembrance alive throughout this year's elections can help Americans support democracy

Omaha Beach 116th Regimental Combat Team Memorial
in Normandy, France. (Adobe Stock photo)

The 80th anniversary of D-Day occurred about a week ago, but how many Americans stopped to think about using that day's massive human undertaking as a sounding board for this year's elections? In his opinion for The New York Times, Garrett M. Graff encourages Americans to look at what the country accomplished together during the World War II years and use it as our North Star to guide how we support our democracy through this year's election cycle.

"Day by passing day, the Greatest Generation is coming toward its end. D-Day, June 6, 1944, had more than two million Allied personnel on the move across Operation Overlord, and today, perhaps a few thousand veterans remain," Graff writes. "As we mark the final passing of those who won that war, it's easy to get caught up in gauzy romanticism and lose sight of how the Axis powers unified the free world against them and showed Americans, specifically, what we are capable of."

As Americans follow this year's elections and prepare to vote, "it's worth asking what we are doing with the legacy that the Greatest Generation defended and bequeathed to us. . . . A story of hard-fought rights and bloodily defended liberties that each generation of Americans has handed down to the next," Graff says. "We now face the very real question of whether America will embrace a vision of a country less free and less democratic, more divided and more unequal. It would be a step backward unlike almost anything else in American history."

Consider D-Day's planning and execution. It was "a titanic enterprise, perhaps the largest and most complex single operation in human history — an effort to launch a force of more than a million men across the English Channel on more than 3,000 planes and more than 7,000 ships; to methodically transport entire floating harbors, a herculean secret project known as the Mulberries, as well as 300,500 gallons of drinking water and 800,000 pints of blood plasma, a stockpile carefully segregated, as mandated at the time, between white and Black donors."

What do we, as Americans, have in common with the soldiers and support personnel from 1944's Allied invasion? "Across the next few months, we will be hearing a lot of argument about what America is and what it isn't," Graff writes. "There's a simpler answer to that question than many would like to admit: What we'll fight for is who we are. And, as we look ahead, we must decide if we're still as willing today to fight for democracy as the generation who stormed Normandy was 80 years ago."

Opinion: American social norms and buffers are endangered as leaders 'behave without moral authority'

'Civil discourse and engaging with those with whom
you disagree' used to be an American norm. (Adobe photo)

With the next U.S. presidential election less than six months away, most Americans expect to see probable candidates such as Donald Trump campaigning across the country. But Trump has not been focused on stumping. Instead, he has been in court where Americans have seen and read coverage of his efforts to "buy the silence of a porn star on the eve of the 2016 election," writes Thomas L. Friedman in his opinion for The New York Times. While this case may not be the most critical case against him, this case "more than any of the other cases is revealing of a trend ailing America today: how much we’ve lost our moorings as a society."

Friedman uses mangroves as a metaphor for what used to support U.S. social systems. In nature, "mangroves filter toxins and pollutants through their extensive roots. . . .They create nurseries for young fish. . . . They literally help hold the shoreline in place . . . .One of the saddest things that has happened to America in my lifetime is how much we’ve lost so many of our mangroves. They are endangered everywhere today — but not just in nature."

Friedman writes, "All those things that used to filter toxic behaviors, buffer political extremism and nurture healthy communities and trusted institutions for young people to grow up in and which hold our society together. . . . Locally owned small-town newspapers used to be a mangrove buffering the worst of our national politics. A healthy local newspaper is less likely to go too far to one extreme or another because its owners and editors live in the community."

Expressing shame for misdeeds used to be a mangrove that protected social norms. Friedman writes, "To be clear: People in high places doing shameful things is hardly new in American politics and business. What is new, Dov Seidman, the author of the book How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything, told Friedman, 'is so many people doing it so conspicuously and with such impunity.' . . . That is what erodes norms. . . . Nothing is more corrosive to a vibrant democracy and healthy communities, added Seidman, than 'when leaders with formal authority behave without moral authority.'"

Rural Journalism Collective hosts election-year reporting webinar: Thursday, June 20, 2 p.m., E.T.

The Rural Journalism Collective is hosting a free webinar with tips on how journalists can tell more accurate stories about rural voters. The webinar will be held on Thursday, June 20, at 2 p.m., E.T. You can register here.

Session panelists include Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies; Pauly Denetclaw, political correspondent for ICT; and Cathy Darling Allen, registrar of voters and Shasta County clerk in rural California.

As Americans head into the final months before November elections, rural journalists can help their communities fine-tune their political voices while supporting poll workers and election officials throughout the election cycle.

The discussion will touch on voter polling conducted by the Center for Rural Strategies, Native and Indigenous voters, and how journalists can use their reporting to lead their communities through the democratic process.

Opinion: Addressing white rural rage may mean using a broader scope of understanding and asking better questions

The book White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman has continued to stir debate. The Rev. Daniel Schultz shares his insights on the book's controversial themes in his opinion for Raw Story. An excerpt of his opinion is shared below. To read his entire opinion, click here.

To begin with, the book faces two primary objections. "First, Schaller and Waldman may have misrepresented or misunderstood scholarship on the rural context. Second, their thesis — that white rural voters pose a unique threat to American democracy — may be overstated and undersupported.

"I've known of Schaller and Waldman's work for a long time and know Tom himself at least a little. So, I was surprised to see the vehemence and breadth of the pushback on the new book. I was equally surprised to see other folks I know strongly defend their thesis. The authors got their own word in at The New Republic."

Natilyn Photography image, Unsplash

It's time to consider that rural voters may be voting for race. "While I was groping around for what I did want to say, Noah Berlatsky ... just went ahead and nailed it: 'Democrats struggle not with rural voters in general, but with white rural voters in particular. And white rural voters do not vote for the GOP because they are rural. They vote for the GOP because they are white.'

"That's pretty much it. As one scholar argues, if you control for other factors, the difference between rural and urban voting patterns essentially disappears. Race is a much stronger predictor than things like income, religion or place of residence."

Social life and an unwillingness to 'rock the boat' motivate rural voters. "There is one factor particular to rural areas that deserves consideration before we look at potential answers to the 'rural problem.' Rural folks traditionally don't move around as much as city folks. Deep roots feed social capital through rich networks of relations, neighbors and friends. . . . But those same roots provide lots of incentives not to rock the social boat."

"There's a need to start asking better questions. "I don't say these things to valorize or demonize rural areas. It's just that knowing them helps us to ask the right questions. . . . The usual hot take is that they've been hoodwinked by Republicans into voting on culture rather than cold hard cash. But that doesn't give them much credit. They're not fools." 

"Democrats and progressives will need to do a lot less writing off rural districts as hopeless and a lot more intentional work on developing solidarity with them. . . . It would help if there were a leftwing media ecosystem to push the good news coming out of those developments."

Opinion: As new generations move into American politics, changes could 'actually erase' social polarization

Younger generations share more common views.
(Adobe Stock photo)

Will the U.S. ever reach a less polarized political environment? New research indicates that as power transitions to new generations, present tensions may ease, write Sally Friedman and David Schultz for The Conversation, a journalistic platform for academics. "The rise of younger generations to political power may actually erase the deep social divisions associated with polarization. . . . That's one of the strong possibilities for the future suggested by the diverse array of findings of our research."

Friedman and Schultz explain: "For the past 30 years, baby boomers (those born roughly between 1946 and 1964) and members of the Silent Generation (those born between 1925 and 1945) have driven and defined American politics. For the most part, the Silent Generation and the older baby boomers were the core of the Republican Party. The younger baby boomers, along with many Gen Xers (born roughly between 1965 and 1981), formed the core of the Democratic Party."

It's worth noting that millennials (born between 1982 and 1995) and Gen Z (born between 1996 and 2013) have emerged as significant political forces. Their liberal leanings and strong support for the Democratic Party have been instrumental in securing Democratic election victories in 2018, 2020, and 2022, particularly in swing states.

Millennials and Gen Zers, who are less defined by party choice, will replace the previous generations, which "may lessen polarization" caused by strict party affiliation.

Over the last 50 years, more Americans have come to define themselves as left or right-wing, with fewer identifying in the broader middle. However, the current partisanship may subside as new generations move into the political forefront. "Younger generations are more likely to self-identify as liberal. As we and others explain in several chapters of our book, surveys show they are more liberal on a whole range of issues regarding social matters, the economy, immigration and climate change," Friedman and Schulz write. "The consensus on political views among members of these younger generations means there is potential for decreasing polarization."

The U.S. has 100,000 fewer polling locations, which can change who votes and who wins elections.

Lack of oversight and pandemic changes have reduced
on-site voting options. (Photo by Ernie Journeys, Unsplash)

A lack of places for Americans to cast their votes adds a new wrinkle to an already challenging U.S. election year. "During the 2022 midterms, voters cast their ballots at just under 95,000 polling places across the country — half the number of locations available four years prior," reports Chris Teale of Route 50. The downward trend began after the Supreme Court's 2013 ruling against the Voting Rights Act. "In particular, justices struck down Section 5 of the 1965 law, which required certain state and local governments to obtain federal pre-clearance before making any changes to their voting laws or practices."

Once some states were no longer required to obtain permission, local offices were able to close polling places, change voting hours and create other restrictions without oversight. Teale writes, "Fewer places to cast a ballot can be a barrier to voting for many people, especially low-income individuals who may lack transportation or time off to vote." The voting rights program at the nonprofit Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights "identified 868 polling places that were closed in jurisdictions that previously were subject to Section 5."

The 2013 ruling isn't the only reason polling places closed. The pandemic fundamentally changed American voting habits. "Amid stay-at-home orders, states were forced to rethink their voting procedures," Teale reports. "Some embraced vote-by-mail and absentee options that remain in place today. As a result, some states have less of a need for physical polling places and have consolidated them."

Regardless of why there are fewer voting locations, the lack of them can profoundly change who will vote. A 2020 study by Enrico Catoni in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics "found that an increase of one mile in the distance someone must travel to a polling location reduces turnout from majority-minority districts by 19%, compared to a 5% reduction for majority-white districts," Teale adds. "What’s more, fewer polling places can mean longer lines at those still open, which can discourage people from voting."

Report for America will no longer work with newspapers owned by hedge funds; it's 'not a model we support'

Report for America journalists report on under-covered
places and issues. (RFA photo)

Report for America supports local newsrooms struggling to cover their community's issues by recruiting and matching hardworking journalists with papers in need and then subsidizing reporters' salaries. 

But the initiative, which is part of the nonprofit media organization The GroundTruth Project, has taken a stand on which organizations it wants to support. "It has decided to stop working with one growing category of newspapers — those backed by hedge funds or private-equity firms," reports Jeremy Barr of The Washington Post. Kim Kleman, Report for America's Executive Director, told Barr, "Hedge fund ownership of local newsrooms is not a business model we support. America has seen the results: an axing of staff and also local news coverage."

Report for America's choice means "some major chains — including Gannett and Tribune Publishing — will no longer receive new reporters from the Report for America corps, though those currently placed in newsrooms will be able to finish their service," Barr explains. "Some journalists and industry-observers cheered the decision. American University journalism professor Margot Susca said 'it was a long time coming.'"

Still, the decision sparked controversy because some journalists felt the removal of Report for America reporters would further damage the profession and the quality of news coverage. Barr reports, "[They] expressed concern that journalists working at hedge fund-associated newspapers would be hurt by the disappearance of corps members, who fill staffing gaps and report on under-covered issues and communities."

As news outlets wrangle with shrinking profits and staff, Report for America journalists are in high demand. "To date, Report for America has placed 607 journalists in some 339 newsrooms, including nonprofit organizations, locally owned businesses and public media outlets," Barr reports. "Some 15 percent of those corps members have worked at news organizations owned by or associated with hedge funds, including 21 current journalists."

Different views on a new book, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, attracting national attention

 Penguin Random House

A new book, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, is getting a lot attention nationally -- both positive and negative. In his opinion essay for the New York Times, Paul Krugman writes positively about the book and explores how technology and connection grew cities while rural Americans lost jobs, dignity and their place in the national dialogue.

When progress benefits one region and destroys another, anger and resentment are natural outcomes. Krugman writes, "It can be devastating economically and socially for those who find themselves on the destruction side of the equation. This is especially true when technological change undermines not just individual workers but whole communities. . . .This isn't a hypothetical proposition. It's a big part of what has happened to rural America."

The continuum of white rage is "laid out in devastating, terrifying and baffling detail" in the book, Krugman adds. 

The technology Schaller and Waldman point out isn't limited to the Internet, cell phones and global competition. It's the advances in farming technology and worldwide shifts in energy production. "American farms produce more than five times as much as they did 75 years ago, but the agricultural workforce declined by about two-thirds over the same period," Krugman writes. "[Due to] technologies like mountaintop removal, coal mining as a way of life largely disappeared long ago, with the number of miners falling 80 percent even as production roughly doubled."

Schaller and Waldman's book discusses
Jason Aldean's controversial song and video.

Jeffery H. Bloodworth takes a much different view of the book's main points and conclusions. In his opinion piece in The Daily Yonder, Bloodworth writes: "Rather than listen and understand complicated, three-dimensional rural Americans, they stereotype. Their analysis is an amalgam of our collective ills. Unwilling to reach across the divide, Schaller and Waldman gorge themselves on the negative and nihilistic. Then they regurgitate every rural, red America stereotype imaginable."

Bloodworth writes that many concerns of rural voters do involve economic issues, but reaches a very different conclusion that the book's authors. He writes: "Kirkus Reviews neatly summarizes their argument, “A view of rural America as a font of white privilege—and of resentment that the privileges aren’t greater.”

Bloodworth responds that the problems are grounded more in the huge declines in social interactions among people, a concern addressed more than two decades ago in Robert Putnam's book, Bowling Alone, and made much worse by smartphones and social media. Bloodworth writes: "Mr. Schaller and Waldman, rural whites aren’t a threat to American democracy. A rural-urban economic divide, cable news, doom scrolling, and 'bowling alone' endanger it."

For more on the topic, the 2017 story "For the rural right, the key's what 'feels true'," by Christina Pazzanese of The Harvard Gazette offers another exploration.

To read an excerpt of Schaller and Waldman's book, click here. For Waldman's recent column on the topic, go here. UPDATE: For a rip-snorting riposte from Pulitzer Prize-winning Editor Art Cullen of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in northeast Iowa, click here.

Wealthier, more metro residents have access to local news, while lower-income communities often live in news deserts

Medill Local News Initiative map, from Local News Initiative data

As local news outlets dwindle, lower income residents are more likely to live in a news desert than wealthier residents, who are more likely to live near or in a metro area. "The State of Local News Project at Northwestern University documents the changing local news landscape across the country. Our latest report shows that where you live and how much money you make affect whether you live in a news desert or a news oasis," reports project director Sarah Stonbely for The Conversation, a journalistic platform for academics. "This divide is related to other factors affecting the health of our democracy, as analysis of our data by the nonprofit Rebuild Local News showed."

The expansion of news deserts means areas have no outlets reporting on local news or civic meetings that help residents stay informed and involved in the democratic process. Regional news revenue has shrunk as social media has taken chunks of advertising dollars without investing in local communities.

Without ad revenue, "Many outlets rely on audience funding, philanthropy, cost-cutting or some combination of the three," Stonbely explains."In communities with little disposable income for news subscriptions or donations and no local philanthropies, cost-cutting becomes the only option. This creates a self-reinforcing spiral of lower quality and declining readership and, ultimately, closure."

Right now, the determining factor between news haves and have-nots is money. Stonbely writes, "Wealthier communities do better sustaining local news organizations. . . . An example is the Moab Sun News, which is thriving in the rural rocky highlands of Utah, thanks in part to a robust tourism industry and retail base. Though it serves a relatively small permanent population of 5,321, the Moab Sun News has built a sustainable business model."

For some news outlets, the current market is not sustainable. "All told, 1,558 of the nation's 3,143 counties have only one news outlet, while 203 are news deserts with zero, meaning there are likely thousands of communities that simply do not have access to local news," Stonbely reports. "For example, Texas and Tennessee had four counties lose their only remaining newspaper last year. All eight papers were independently owned."

Despite the tough market, ways to help sustain local journalism -- especially in challenging markets are emerging. Collaboration is one way. "In Colorado, the national nonprofit news outlet The Daily Yonder has hired a reporter based in a rural community to write stories about life there and share them out with both local and national organizations," Stonbely reports. Another option is philanthropic support. "Public policy should also play a role. At the state level, policies to support local news have seen success in New Jersey, California and elsewhere, and more bills are working their way through state legislatures."

Female election officials are often targets of physical and verbal threats, but there are tools to protect them

A polling station worker in Falls Church, Va.
(Reuters photo via Brookings)

As the U.S. heads into the final months of election preparation, officials are dealing with challenges that go beyond counting votes --  physical and verbal threats, especially against women. "The threat of violence against election officials is pervasive. Women make up 80% of election workers in the United States, and they face unique, gendered harassment," report Zoe Wynn, Hannah Fried, and Norman Eisen of Brookings.

With more partisan politics, election site hostility has become more common. "Legal tools are available to make things better. The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 lays out confidentiality provisions aiming to protect the personal information of survivors of domestic violence," Brookings reports. "If codified into state law, similar provisions based on those in VAWA could help protect female election officials in advance of the expected surge of election denialism in the 2024 election."

The harassment of female election officials has been well-documented, alongside the loss of seasoned election officials who have quit or retired. "An investigation by Reuters in 2021 found that threats to election officials were typically generated by men and directed at a predominantly female workforce. Reuters found that dozens of these threatening messages used sexual or misogynistic language," Wynn, Fried and Eisen write. "The Brennan Center for Justice found that one in five election officials are 'very' or 'somewhat unlikely' to continue serving through 2024. The election officials surveyed specifically cite attacks on the system and stress as their primary reasons for leaving."

The VAWA gives states a framework to begin protections, but a "one-size-fits-all" structure is not the answer. "The VAWA provides a useful legislative starting point for a tailored, female-specific anti-harassment law. The bill's aims include reducing violence against women, securing offender accountability, and ensuring victim safety," Brookings reports. "Eleven states have passed comprehensive laws to protect election officials. . . . Threats to female election require a tailored approach that accounts for the gendered nature of the issue."

"A critical portion of the law is its confidentiality provisions. Confidentiality provisions are measures to protect the personal information of survivors of domestic violence and can provide opportunities for disciplinary action if personal information is disseminated," Wynn, Fried, and Eisen explain. "Lawmakers identified these measures as an effective means of preventing abusers from tracking their victims and causing them further harm."

Brookings reports, "Women who serve in election posts should be awarded similar protections commensurate with the nature of the threat to their safety. The functioning of our elections, and therefore our democracy, depends upon it."

Democracy depends on newspapers, and the big threat is outside metro areas, newspaper chain executive warns

Bill Ketter with his Wells Key award from SPJ and fellow CNHI
executives Matt Gray, left, and Jim Zachary (Photo by Al Cross)

By Al Cross

Director emeritus, Institute for Rural Journalism, University of Kentucky

LAS VEGAS, Nev. – The future of democracy depends on newspapers, and “The greatest threat to democracy is in the small towns and cities of America,” the top news executive of one of the country's largest newspaper chains said Saturday in accepting the Society of Professional Journalists’ top award.

William Ketter, CNHI’s senior vice president for news, was awarded the Wells Key for service to SPJ, of which he has been a member for 62 years, since he was a student at the University of North Dakota.

“Newspapers and democracy go hand in glove,” said Ketter, who guided the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune of Massachusetts to the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting and was president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1995.

“Democracy is dying. It is absolutely dying,” Ketter declared, saying that school boards and local governments are being taken over by “far right” activists, largely unchallenged. He said many local newspapers, weakened by the loss of advertising and circulation, can’t handle “some of the anti-press attitudes that are being fostered in America.”

Ketter decried the efforts of local governments to get state legislatures to weaken laws that require local governments and other entities to run paid public-notice advertisements in local papers. “Those notices are what help small-town newspapers, and in small cities, survive,” because they can no longer depend on retail advertising, Ketter said, noting that in some places, governments have stopped placing the ads in newspapers whose coverage they don’t like.

“It’s not just about newspapers, it’s about democracy,” Ketter said. “The two are tied together.”

Ketter said he was glad to see the SPJ Foundation exploring an effort to see how it might funnel contributions to community news media or otherwise help them. He is on the foundation's board.

Like other speakers at SPJ’s annual awards banquet, Ketter said he was inspired by others who were recognized, including the late Jeff German, a Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter who was murdered – allegedly by a public official he was investigating. The official is now on trial. Outgoing SPJ President Claire Regan said it was “the first time in modern American history that a sitting public official was charged with the murder of a journalist over news coverage.”

Pulitzer winner Dana Priest of the University of Maryland and The Washington Post, one of the newest SPJ fellows, said “I can’t tell you how inspired I have been to be here,” away from “the East Coast media bubble. . . . You guys are heroes because you keep government on their toes.”

Op-ed on improving news coverage: A news site publishes an indictment of the losses caused by cutbacks

The Ithaca Voice is a nonprofit digital newsroom in Ithaca, N.Y., pop. 32,000, in Tompkins County. The op-ed below was written by the Tompkins County Public Information Advisory Board and shared on the newspaper's front page.

When was the last time you read, heard or watched a local news report on one of these issues in the community?
-- What's the status of the 20+ years of repeated efforts to clean up the lead and arsenic contamination at the popular hiking and pet walking trail at Ithaca Falls? How does that contamination impact visitors?
-- Why does Tompkins County's polio vaccination rate lag the state's vaccination rate and several other counties in the region?
-- Who are your school district, municipal, county, state or federal representatives? Do you know what actions they took on a public issue in the last 6 months?

Tompkins County, New York
(Wikipedia map)

If you're uncertain of any answer, you're not alone. News coverage on significant local issues has been shrinking, making it more difficult for Tompkins County residents to be well-informed about their communities while eroding community cohesion and deepening polarization. The local pattern is the same in both New York and the nation.

The rapid growth in free or inexpensive digital advertising made available by tech giants eroded the ability of local news providers to generate revenue to pay their journalists, ad salespersons, marketing staff and administrative employees. In 2004, New York had 62 daily papers and 439 weekly papers. By 2019, these numbers declined to 54 dailies and 249 weeklies. With those closings, newspaper newsroom employment shrunk 25 percent. The loss was not offset by more jobs appearing in local and regional TV, radio and digital news operations.

Locally, The Ithaca Journal's newsroom staff reductions illustrate the sobering metrics. Twenty years ago, the Journal had two dozen full-time reporters, sports writers, editors, photographers and clerks. Another six freelance writers produced weekly "town talk" columns on every town in Tompkins County. The Journal's last full-time staff reporter resigned in the spring and was replaced in August when the Journal contracted with a freelance reporter to handle the news coverage that nearly 30 full-time staffers and freelancers once produced.

Meanwhile, The Ithaca Times and The Ithaca Voice face a daunting task of covering local news with their small and dedicated staffs of young journalists. The Voice launched in 2014, as a web-based nonprofit, local news provider. Its website lists one editor and three full-time reporters on its staff, while a handful of freelance contributors supplement its coverage. The Ithaca Times weekly newspaper, its website ithaca.com, and its Finger Lakes Community Newspapers of nine small weeklies lists two managing editors and a sports reporter. Tompkins Weekly, WHCU, WRFI and a few other news outlets have small local operations and some regional media like WSKG cover news across many counties. All face challenges in providing community news.

The impact of fewer journalists working in Ithaca has been a sharp decrease in the regular coverage of local government, school boards and issues as important as health, economic development and public safety. There's less access to information that brings communities together, like sports coverage, highlighting student achievements, and recognizing when someone passes away. Getting key public information to residents has become more difficult for local governments as leaner local media budgets reduce their supply of community news. In the absence of media coverage, newsmakers such as politicians and local governments try to fill in the information gap, often with limited resources.

The Tompkins County Public Information Advisory Board has been discussing this trend, and we are increasingly alarmed to see important stories not being told. Less access to local news leaves community members lacking the information they need to participate in the political process, hold government and powerful private actors accountable and engage in civic activities from voting to volunteering.

Legislation in both Albany and Washington has proposed ways to improve community news coverage. Among those:

• A tax deduction for personal subscriptions to eligible local news organizations might incentivize more individuals to pay for local journalism and boost the revenues of local outlets.
• Tax offsets for eligible production expenditures incurred by newsrooms could help defray the costs associated with original reporting.

Elected leaders should consider resolutions supporting such legislation, as well as ways to bolster resources available to support local news coverage — but governments aren't the only ones with skin in the game.

Local businesses and organizations should also consider increasing advertising efforts in local publications, and residents who have the means can consider donating to local nonprofit news outlets such as The Ithaca Voice, WSKG, or WRFI. Local philanthropies should consider inviting news providers to apply for funds to increase and sustain their coverage. Also, our community's media should explore collaborations to improve local news coverage.

In the coming months, PIAB will examine ways our community can foster better coverage of major public issues and their impact on residents as well as improve basic news about public safety, governmental actions and local events. We're inviting community ideas to increase and improve public information efforts. If you have ideas, please share them with us at tcgov.co/piabideas or email pubinfo@tompkins-co.org.

The Tompkins County Public Information Advisory Board includes Chair Larry Roberts, Secretary Patty Poist, Bruce Estes, Elizabeth Graeper-Thomas, and Kate Supron. Legislature Liaison Amanda Champion and Tompkins County Communications Director Dominick Recckio assist the board.

Marion County Record raid shows rural newspapers' vital role in government; International Democracy Day is Sept.15

Friday, Sept. 15, is International Democracy Day, a day the United Nations set apart to remind everyone living in a democratic society to celebrate their hard-won freedoms and to refocus on each citizen's responsibility to protect those liberties.

For rural newspapers, this year's raid on the Marion County Record's newsroom was a sobering reminder of how mutable democracy is without the free press. Our community newspapers are the first voice of the people, and pushing to maintain your local presence is a service to your community and, more broadly, your country.

"We all need to speak out. . . . The recent raid on The Marion County Record in Kansas was a shockingly flagrant disregard of the Constitution and, unfortunately, underscores a deeply concerning trend of governmental overreach and attempts to intimidate the press in the U.S.," Tim Regan-Porter, CEO, Colorado Press Association, told Gretchen A. Peck of Editor & Publisher. "Such interference in the press' ability to hold government accountable threatens democracy itself and should concern not only members of the press but all citizens. As champions of free speech and democracy, it's imperative for the industry to unite against such unconstitutional strong-arm tactics and safeguard the essential role of the press in society."

According to a statement from The Committee to Protect Journalists' President Jodie Ginsberg, "Local news providers are essential in holding power to account—and they must be able to report freely, without fear of authorities' overreach." Peck adds, "News publishing advocates also expressed support and solidarity with the local news publisher."

Part of the Sept. 15 celebration can be recognizing that in the case of the Record, the U.S. press stood behind a community newspaper as it pushed fearlessly onward to do its job--supporting democracy with good community journalism.

Nonprofit journalism in rural areas needs 'ignition' that helps citizens understand that they can raise philanthropic support

Newsrack in Monterey, Va. (PBS)

By Al Cross, director emeritus

Institute for Rural Journalism, University of Kentucky

Judy Woodruff of PBS continued her reports about journalism and democracy on "NewsHour" tonight with a story about a rural Virginia editor-publisher who charges $5 a copy for her weekly paper, and a look at the prospects of journalism being funded by philanthropy as well as advertising and the audience.

"While that nonprofit model is showing promise in urban settings, economic realities persist for small, local newspapers that still depend on subscriptions and advertising," Woodruff reports, referring to The Recorder, a weekly that covers three counties in the Allegheny Mountains of Virginia and was the first newspaper to report plans for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a project abandoned in the face of public opposition (and the first to report its demise, she says). Editor-Publisher Anne Adams raised her single-copy price to $5 in 2017, and when the pandemic hit in 2020, her readers helped her stay afloat with donations.

But few rural newspapers are asking for donations or charging that high a price for single copies, which would seem to require a certain level of quality that is harder to achieve when profit margins have become thin. "There just isn't sufficient subscriber revenue to pay the bills, and of course, there's not sufficient philanthropic dollars to lift them up over the profit margin," newspaper researcher Penny Abernathy of Northwestern University told Woodruff.

It may take a different way of thinking. Sarabeth Berman, head of the American Journalism Project, which is supporting 41 newsrooms, including Mississippi Today, the Pulitzer Prize winner that was also featured in Woodruff's report, said "These organizations are really thinking of their financial structure in the same way we think of other organizations that are really essential to our communities, like libraries and museums and other institutions that stitch us together."

That's harder in rural areas. Abernathy said, "These smaller communities are kind of at a loss as how you go about getting that initial ignition that brings people together and helps 'em understand that they can do this, they can raise that money to support local news operations." 

She said, "Increasingly I'm worried that we're evolving into a nation of journalistic haves and have-nots. That has huge implications for not only our democracy but for our society: How do we come together around a common set of facts to solve the issues that are confronting us in the 21st century?"

An earlier report in Woodruff's series focused on another great rural editor-publisher, Laurie Ezzell Brown of The Canadian Record of Texas, which now exists only on Facebook after it stopped printing in March.

Without print journalism, communities will be fragmented and uninformed, award-winning Minnesota editor says

Reed Anfinson holds a freshly printed copy of the Swift County Monitor-News. (Associated Press photo by David Goldman)

By Reed Anfinson
Swift County Monitor-News, Benson, Minn.

This column is based on the speech given on acceptance of the Eugene Cervi Award at the annual meeting of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors in Reno, Nevada, June 24.

There is no doubt that if print journalism disappears, so will a citizen’s focus on and knowledge of local civic news. Left to self-motivation to seek out news on the internet, many will put it aside for later, never to return to it.

Their news consumption will become infrequent, scattered to those times when they may be directly affected by the action of a council, county board, zoning committee, or school district. But then putting it aside won’t matter because it won’t exist – no one will be left covering local news.

In America, 76% of the communities are under 5,000 population – more than 14,600. These communities most likely cannot sustain a news operation based on digital revenue alone. We don’t have the views or advertising to generate anywhere near the income needed.

Despite the loss of nearly 2,500 newspapers in America, despite the loss of tens of thousands of reporters, and despite the inability of many quality internet news sites to make a profit leading them to cut staff or close, we still hear and read the overly optimistic promises of a rich journalistic internet world.

The lies are exposed in the reality of steadily declining coverage of public bodies and life in our communities. 

We’ve been told that it can be folly to “romanticize print as somehow superior to digital-only” news. We subscribe more to a famous quote often attributed to Albert Einstein: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

For two decades, we’ve been promised a revolution of civic participation built on the broad, deep knowledge citizens will gain from online reporting, that it will be a participatory process where we educate one another. The reality of the past two decades has exposed the faults in this thinking.

What we have experienced is an internet world that has fractured society into warring social and political groups no longer willing agree to disagree, but viciously attacking one another. Death threats, shunning, misinformation, and ridicule are more common than harmony, compromise, and enlightenment.

Lies gain power, and the truth is harder to find. With the coming explosion of artificial intelligence software that allows anyone to craft eye-catching and reasonably sounding internet stories and videos that are entirely false or misleading, our ability to sort truth from lie will become increasingly challenging.

Print’s loss matters; the impact of its absence visible. Rather than a representative democracy strengthened by more knowledge on the internet, we find wherever a newspaper has disappeared the opposite is happening. Where a newspaper closes fewer people vote, fewer people run for office, more incumbents are re-elected, people become more rigid in their voting, sticking to one party or the other, and malfeasance in office increases.

It is visible in the empty reporter desks in newsrooms where the print product has declined as newspapers transition to digital only. What isn’t visible, at first, is the impact of the lost reporting.

Five underlying qualities of journalism give community newspapers equal standing with the government, business, and social powers that make up a community:

• Survey after survey shows that the local community newspaper is the most trusted news source. We are trusted because people know us and feel they can give us direct feedback if they think we are unfair or slanted in the news we write.
• Our financial strength, now significantly weakened, gave us the resources to challenge power when it would frustrate the public’s right to know. Individuals lack the interest and finances to challenge government officials and attorneys.
• We show up – day after day, month after month, year after year. The public officials know that we will write stories about their actions or inaction at every meeting. We will follow up, reminding citizens of past successes and misdeeds.
• Our knowledge of the laws that govern public officials, such as the Minnesota Open Meeting law, ensures transparency and accountability. Citizens lack this knowledge allowing them to be deceived in their efforts to attend meetings or gather public information.
• Perhaps our most powerful attribute today is our physical presence.  Newspapers have a deep reach among citizens in their communities. Elected leaders know that a story printed in the newspaper will circulate throughout the towns and rural areas. It is found on the store counter, around the house, in the library, and in the café every day of the week – its headlines, advertising, and photos catch your eye. Headlines in print reach out to everyone who passes by. People who don’t subscribe still see what is happening in their community at no charge. Without the print newspaper, many would never see those headlines or stories.

Nothing replaces the community newspaper’s ability to hold those in power accountable. But as our financial strength, staff with knowledge of laws protecting citizen rights, persistent coverage, and physical presence erode, American representative democracy is weakened.

As they have lost print subscribers and advertising dollars, some newspapers increasingly focus on their digital products. They put up paywalls and, in the process, exclude most of their local residents from the news of their community.

If the news that binds us together in common purpose is gone, if the stories we share about our fellow citizens disappear, our sense of community weakens. When we don’t feel shared responsibility, the vital work that improves our schools, healthcare, public safety, recreational facilities, and cultural experiences fades. These aren’t exaggerations; they are realities based on what happens in communities that lost their newspaper.

At 95% of the public meetings we cover, we are the only person in the room who isn’t an elected official or staff. Though there is an online link to the meeting, no one tunes in. Without a community journalist in the room, the stories of your local government won’t be told.

A newspaper’s physical presence is a constant reminder that there is news you should be paying attention to in your community.

When you sit down with a print newspaper, you are more focused than you are online, where you suddenly find yourself on social media, shopping, or skimming sites for entertainment.

Print is patient. It is present. It is a physical reminder of community. It is community pride and spirit. Online, it loses those unique qualities that unite us with a common identity. Print is local.

Newspapers are a public good that deserves public support. Urge your members of Congress and the Minnesota Legislature to support legislation that helps finance their future.