Federal grant cuts over DEI leave rural students and teachers with few options to replace funding and its benefits

Canceled federal grant money is more difficult for rural
schools to replace. (Adobe Stock photo)

Efforts to root out inclusion and equity programming prompted the Trump administration to slash educational grants, leaving rural schools in a lurch. 

The lost grant money, which funded additions such as counselors to teach mental health education, additional academic tutoring options for students and learning initiatives for teachers, is difficult for rural communities to replace.

"Federal dollars make up roughly 10% of education spending nationally, but the percentage is significantly higher in rural districts," reports Annie Ma of The Associated Press. "When the funding is reduced, many districts have no way to make up the lost money."

Since President Donald Trump returned for a second term, his administration has cut millions of dollars earmarked for "programs supporting mental health, academic enrichment and teacher development," Ma writes. Republican lawmakers defended the cuts, saying the canceled grants focused on diversity and inclusion agendas -- not academics.

In Kentucky, the loss of grant funding means student counselors and supportive programming in rural counties will most likely come to a premature end, along with the student and staffing advantages they provided. 

In Shelby County, Ky., where federal spending "makes up about 18% of schools’ budgets," Ma reports. "The programs are not political, Superintendent Joshua Matthews said, and the funding loss only hurts students."

Matthews told Ma, "We’re not promoting anything one way or the other.”

The Department of Education recently announced a new round of mental health grants, but these funds require schools to hire psychologists, not counselors. Unfortunately, there is a national shortage of school psychologists and rural schools that attempt to recruit one will compete with larger, more urban schools.

Debunking rural myths and misunderstandings

Photo by John Warg, Unsplash

Rural America makes up most of the United States’ land area and is a significant contributor to its economy. “Yet, in a nation with a mostly urban population, the challenges faced by rural people and places are often overlooked or misunderstood,” Tim Slack reported for GROW magazine.

Slack debunked five myths about rural areas that are pervasive among non-rural Americans.

Myth 1: In the context of urbanization, rural America is fading away due to population loss. “Paradoxically, the very definition of ‘rural’ puts limits on growth,” Slack wrote. Many rural areas are experiencing growth, however as the population gets bigger, those areas become reclassified as urban.

Myth 2: Rural is synonymous with farming. 
“Agriculture does constitute a greater share of employment in rural areas compared to urban areas,” Slack reported. But agriculture makes up only around 5% of employment in rural counties. Manufacturing is another major industry in rural areas. 

Myth 3: Rural America is not racially diverse. 
“In 2020, about one in four people (24%) living in rural America were non-White, with Hispanic (9%) and Black (8%) people representing the two largest groups,” Slack wrote. Indigenous people also live in rural areas.

Myth 4: Rural America is healthier. 
“Rural working-age mortality rates are higher for cancer, heart disease, Covid-19, transport accidents, suicide, alcohol misuse, diabetes, stroke, and problems related to or aggravated by pregnancy,” Slack reported.

Myth 5: A “rural revolt” propelled the presidential elections of Donald Trump. 
“While Trump has performed well with rural voters, doing so is consistent with a 50-year trend,” Slack wrote. Meanwhile, the drop in voter turnout happened in big cities with Kamala Harris receiving “roughly 8 million fewer votes than Joe Biden had four years before.”

Disagreement, diversity and a look that 'reflects the face of America better' give the Midwest political power

Candidates from the Midwest 'often bring a kind of approachable, average-American feel to a national ticket.' (Wikipedia and Election press photo)

What makes the nation's upper Midwest different is what makes it an election-year game-changer. "While many other parts of the country have sorted into neat red and blue columns, the big upper Midwestern states continue to sit on the dividing line between the two parties," reports Gerald F. Seib of The Wall Street Journal. "The upper Midwest reflects the face of America better than any other region of the country. . . . And it is populous enough to be decisive in the Electoral College, making it political ground zero."

Midwestern balance and diversity have made some of its regions political "power brokers," Seib explains. "In the latest Wall Street Journal poll, the Midwest overall was the most evenly balanced region of the country, with the two parties essentially tied there in both the presidential race and preferences for control of Congress. . . .The region is much more complicated, demographically and economically than is often assumed."

Politicians who've found success in Midwestern elections have always had to walk a keen tightrope between urban and rural needs while facing a gamut of diversity among other constituents. "At a time when the political split between urban and rural areas has become one of the starkest in the nation, [Midwestern] leaders have to be able to bridge that difficult divide," Seib reports. Candidates who "have successfully navigated the complexity of a big Midwestern state are well prepared to do the same nationally."

On the campaign trail, a Midwestern running mate can make a presidential pairing feel more down-to-earth for voters. Seib writes, "Candidates from the Midwest often bring a kind of approachable, average-American feel to a national ticket. . . . 'They look like and sound like a lot of America,' says Democratic pollster John Anzalone. In this year’s race, that means Vance and Walz nicely offset Trump the New Yorker and Harris of San Francisco."

News-media roundup: Apply for civic-discourse grants by Aug. 21; webinar Aug. 15 on funding of local news projects

The American Press Institute is seeking applications from local news organizations by 8 p.m. Aug. 21 "to kickstart initiatives to strengthen civic discourse in their community," API announced. Up to 20 grantees will get up to $10,000 each to use over four monthss, starting in September, and "share insights, learn from other civic discourse practitioners and develop new skills," API says. "We will prioritize projects that pay special attention to a diversity of voices and people. Projects can be new or build upon existing work. Experiments enabled by the grants should help news organizations learn and build toward sustainable civic-discourse initiatives, ones that are in place for the 2024 election year and beyond. API is especially interested in civic discourse projects that deeply involve communities of color. We are also interested in projects that give voice and build bridges among other differences, such as religion, class, immigration status, language barriers, politics or more. You can find participation details, eligibility requirements and apply here."

The Local Media Association's foundation invites independent and family-owned news organizations to join the 2023 Local News Fund to raise funds for local journalism projects through tax-deductible donations from their communities. The program runs from Sept. 1 to Dec. 31, but applications will be reviewed as they come in. Apply here. Funds are intended to provide new or expanded journalism efforts; potential coverage topics include climate, education, health care, investigative reporting and social justice. For an overview of the program, go here and/or register to attend an informational webinar Tuesday, Aug. 15 at 2:30 p.m. ET. Questions? Contact Terese Kartholl, director of journalism funding initiatives, at terese.kartholl@localmedia.org.

Church grows as many shrink, maybe because all welcome

Pastor Grant Myerholtz sings with his congregation.
(Photo by Will Crooks, The Washington Post)

T-shirts, tattoos and a universal "Y'All are welcome" message keep pew seats filled at Mt. Hebron Baptist Church in Hartwell, Ga., pop. 4,500, reports Alison Miller of The Washington Post. "At a time when many houses of worship are struggling to sustain themselves — with church membership and attendance both at all-time lows in this country — [Pastor Grant] Myerholtz seems to be pulling off a miracle of sorts: Tiny Mt. Hebron is flourishing. Barely a dozen people showed up for his first sermons in fall 2020; these days, sometimes 100 faces are looking up at him."

Myerholtz, who normally preaches in a T-shirt and jeans, offers an "interpretation of scripture [not] traditionally heard in a conservative community," Miller writes. "For instance, Myerholtz gave the opening prayer at the Hartwell Pride festival — which already had weathered a backlash from area churches over a proposed spring drag show." The organization's president, Collin Graham, who is trans, told Miller: "There's a community of people that guard their religion and say, 'It's not for you. You're a sinner. You can't love God like that.'. . . So I think it was important to have [Grant] out there to show people that you can be a Christian and you can be gay or trans."

Hartwell is in the "heart" of Hart County in
northeastern Georgia. (Wikipedia maps)

"Hartwell is the seat of Hart County, where chicken farming is the major industry, and massive broiler sheds house millions of birds. Downtown businesses include a store for ax throwing as well as an art gallery. American flags abound," Miller reports. "Church is, and has always been, the community's backbeat. . . . Myerholtz is a native son, with a family history several generations deep. He said he became weary of [preaching within] denominational doctrines, which he felt got in the way of Jesus's teachings. He stepped away." Myerholtz told Miller: ""If it were up to me, a representative of every ministry in this town would be there with arms wide open. We have the easiest job on the planet as Christians if we want to accept it. That is simply to love everybody."

Including everyone has not helped Myerholtz "win over other Baptist leaders in the area," Miller reports. "On the day that Myerholtz prayed at the pride festival, the Rev. Andy Buchanan of Liberty Baptist Church opened its doors and invited the community to pray for 'those who are engaged in this evil.'. . . . By contrast, Myerholtz showed a movie clip from Disney's The Lion King and then quoted 1 Peter 5:8. The verse warns that the devil prowls about like a 'roaring lion' looking for someone to devour. The exhortation that follows is to stand firm in faith, knowing that others in the world are dealing with similar suffering." Myerholtz told Miller: "In God's kingdom, it doesn't matter what color we are. It doesn't matter what party we are. What does matter in God's economy is how we treat one another."

Ky. community college to hold event on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging; seeks presenter ideas by Aug. 11

The event is set for Oct. 27 in Hazard, Kentucky.

Rural community colleges, in addition to being in rural areas, serve a different population and have a distinct culture from four-year universities. Initiatives for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in rural community college spaces "present very different challenges from both urban areas and four-year universities, yet much of the research and policy surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion focuses on urban spaces and/or traditional universities," says Hazard Community and Technical College in southeastern Kentucky, which has scheduled a conference for Oct. 27 "to explore strategies, policies, and barriers to creating a campus-wide sense of belonging in rural community colleges."

The college is seeking presenters for its DEIB in Rural Spaces Conference. Selected presenters will get a $500 honorarium for presenting the same workshop or presentation during morning and afternoon sessions. Proposals should follow these guidelines:

• Workshops and presentations should focus specifically on rural community colleges.
• Should fit in a 75-minute time frame and should allow for audience interaction and questions.
• Write a short description of your proposed session that is no longer than 250 words.
• Tell how your proposed session/workshop will help participants explore strategies, policies, and barriers to creating a campus wide sense of belonging in rural community colleges.
• Write a brief bio with your current position, your interest in DEI, and a photograph.
• Submit proposals by Aug. 11 here.

Rural Assembly sets online gathering Wednesday, June 28

The Daily Yonder

Rural Assembly Everywhere, the virtual gathering of the Rural Assembly, will feature conversations with rural leaders and allies, including Anderson Clayton, the youngest state political party leader in the nation.

Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic party, is one of several rural leaders and allies scheduled to be part of the free, virtual event from 1 to 3 p.m. ET Wednesday, June 28.

This year’s Everywhere is focused on rural people who are working toward safer, more connected communities. It is the fourth virtual event for the Rural Assembly, which has been hosting gatherings across the country since 2007.

Rural Assembly Everywhere will be broadcast via the Crowdcast platform. Attendees will be able to connect with one another before and during the broadcast through the event chat.

“Everywhere is the virtual analog to an in-person Rural Assembly,” said Rural Assembly Director Whitney Kimball Coe. “Even in a virtual space, we feel like we can create an experience that inspires and strengthens our connections to one another across Zip codes and culture.”

“The theme of ‘safer, more connected rural communities’ gives us an opportunity to explore how people and places are taking care of each other and affirming the dignity of one another–through arts and culture, policy advocacy, organizing and gathering, big and small acts of care. The stories from Everywhere remind us that rural people and places are extra and ordinary and essential to the future of our nation.”

The event will spotlight other rural voices through video stories and conversations:

• Appalachian author and Kentucky Poet Laureate Silas House in conversation with his friend the Rt. Rev. Brian Lee Cole, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee. House has written seven novels; his most recent, Lark Ascending, won the 2023 Southern Book Prize and the 2023 Nautilus Book Award. In 2022 he won the Duggins Prize, the nation's largest award for an LGBTQ writer.
• Highlander Center’s Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson and Allyn Maxfield-Steele will talk about the center’s work in the South.
• Sam Schimmel and Jonathan Blair, co-creators of a documentary-media and public-engagement initiative, "American Creed: Citizen Power," a follow-up to the 2018 documentary "American Creed" from Citizen Film – will discuss how they are working to build safer, more connected communities, the barriers they face, and their advice for other young rural community organizers.
• Stories from rural organizations and initiatives, including the Catwalk drag show in Fergus Falls, Minn.; Good Neighbor Missouri, Welcoming America, the Equal Justice Initiative, Main Street America, which helps revitalize older parts of small towns. and StrengthenND, which hekps nonprofits and rural communities in North Dakota.
• Artists Brett Hill, Eliza Blue, Cody & Alex, and Torrey McDowell will share stories and musical performances.

Registration for Everywhere is free. Visit www.ruralassembly.org/everywhere to register.

The Rural Assembly and The Daily Yonder are part of the Center for Rural Strategies.

Many of us never interact with people of another race and don't like interacting with those who don't share their politics

Photo by Anthony Garand, Unsplash

For some Americans, variety is not the spice of life; they'd rather not mingle with anyone they consider different. Instead, they value "sameness, not difference," reports Emma Green of The Atlantic. "Most Americans do not live in a totalizing bubble. They regularly encounter people of different races, ideologies, and religions. For the most part, they view these interactions as positive or at least neutral. Yet according to a new study by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic, a significant minority of Americans do not live this way. They seldom or never meet people of another race. They dislike interacting with people who don't share their political beliefs. And when they imagine the life they want for their children, they prize sameness, not difference."

This seems to be a disproportionately rural phenomenon, based on a poll taken for PRRI and The Atlantic in December. "People living in rural areas were significantly less likely than those in cities to encounter racial, religious, or political difference," Green reports. "And among white people, education level made a huge difference: Those without a college degree were more than twice as likely as their college-educated peers to say they rarely encounter people of a different race, and more than four times as likely to say they seldom or never encounter people from a different religion or political party."

When it comes to politics, "Just under a quarter of Americans say they seldom or never interact with people who don't share their partisan affiliation," Green reports. "Black and Hispanic people were more likely than whites to describe their lives this way, although education made a big difference among whites: 27 percent of non-college-educated whites said they seldom or never encounter people from a different political party, compared with just 6 percent of college-educated whites."

Merriam-Webster defines pluralism as "a state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, or social groups maintain and develop their traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civilization." In theory, pluralism supports democracy, Green writes: "In a political era when the vast majority of Americans believe the country is divided over issues of race, politics, and religion, [pluralistic] relationships across lines of difference could foster empathy and civility." However, "These survey results suggest that Americans are deeply ambivalent about the role of diversity in their families, friendships, and civic communities. Some people, it seems, prefer to stay in their bubble."

People may opt to stay within their political or social group because of poor past experiences. "Almost one in five of the survey respondents said their interactions with people of a different political party are negative. . . . Party affiliation influences not just how people vote, but cultural decisions such as what to buy or watch on television," Green reports. Lilliana Mason, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, told Green, "As these other social identities have moved into alignment with partisanship, we're seeing more animosity across partisan lines—not necessarily because we're disagreeing about things, but because we believe the [person from the] other party is an outsider, socially and culturally, from us."

Multiculturalism is a point of vast political divides. "In the survey, 54 percent of Democrats said they prefer the United States to be made up of people from a wide variety of religions, compared with 12 percent of Republicans. By contrast, 40 percent of Republicans said they'd prefer a nation mostly made up of Christians, compared with 14 percent of Democrats," Green writes.

It's Black History Month: Educator talks about teaching America's history, all 'the good, the bad, and the ugly'

DeWitt-King Barn in Vernon County, Wisconsin
(Painting by Patsy Alderson)

Would you like teach U.S. history to high school students? Many people would say "No." But veteran teacher Kevin Alderson and his wife Patsy, both rural Wisconsin natives, found a way: "Together, they are lifelong educators, and Kevin’s 30-year tenure teaching middle- and high-school history add to their credentials as stewards for their region’s history," reports Sara June Jo-Sæbo for The Daily Yonder. "Committed to uncovering and safeguarding the racial and ethnic diversity of rural Wisconsin, the Aldersons offer educational community programs to ensure that our inheritance with diverse American experiences isn’t lost."

Jo-Sæbo writes, "I wanted to talk to Kevin about ways he engaged high-school students in the classroom and to get his opinion about how teaching history has changed over the last 40 years. I also wanted to hear about how country schools and school consolidation affected rural students and racial diversity." Here are her questions and his answers:

As a history teacher, what did you observe in the classroom when students learned local history?
While my approach to teaching family and local history didn’t reach every student, for many of them, being able to connect national and world events with their families and local events – and seeing that they (the students) were part of the story – was the best method. It was about making a personal connection to that history.

Much of American history involves colonizing this continent through the use of impoverished Europeans and enslaved Africans. Our history also involves the persecution of Indigenous people. Does teaching about these traumatic experiences harm students? I accept the argument that we may not be responsible for what was done in the past because we weren’t alive then, but we are responsible for learning the truth about what happened. We fail when we don’t admit that this history happened and we fail when we don’t know the truth about what happened.  . . . If you’re truly trying to teach history – difficult history – you have to teach the greatness, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Unfortunately, the systemic tendency is to teach the great and the good and whitewash, or erase and ignore, the bad and the ugly. And there are a lot of people who have paid a heavy price for being overlooked.

Most people don’t know that Wisconsin has a substantial history of successful Black farmers who were also our earliest American pioneers. Tell me how you were exposed to Wisconsin’s African American history in your own childhood. I was not exposed to Wisconsin’s rural African-American history as a child. . . . Most of the rural Black history I’ve learned has been since I retired from teaching.

Vernon County, Wisconsin (Wikipedia map)

As an adult, what motivated you to help to preserve Wisconsin’s African-American and Indigenous history? This awareness of rural Black history in Wisconsin came to us through our interest in round barns. My wife, Patsy, is an artist who paints structures and landscapes. Of course, here in Vernon County we have the most round barns, as far as I know, in the nation. She began to make paintings of all the round barns that remained. I began researching the barns and, built upon what the Vernon County Historical Society had compiled, discovered the history of Wisconsin’s Black settlements.

Getting into the 1900s, what made it difficult for Wisconsin’s rural Black communities to remain in Southwest Wisconsin? Interestingly enough, a lot of the settlement faded away with the elimination of country schools. Instead of having your own little school and settlement – which were integrated Black, White and Native American – as soon as they were closing those schools as early as the 40’s and 50’s, they bussed those students to towns and any time new folks are brought into an environment – even from the country to the town – it often created an “us and them” situation.

How can educators teach this complicated story of American history? Intentionally or unintentionally, racism is systemic. There’s a conflict right now between recognizing the truth [of our American history with racism] and suppressing the truth. And how does an individual, or society, or nation move forward into something better if you don’t recognize the mistakes that have been made? Especially if you continue to perpetuate those mistakes. . . .We don’t have to attack our ancestors because it was a different day and a different age…. There are certain things in our history that were evil. Period. But there’s [also] a force of survival: looking for land and looking out for their families.

As a descendant of European settlers, why is it important to you to preserve the history of Black Americans who settled your home state of Wisconsin? Because the complete truth matters. I want to know the complete truth of all facets of American history. And, in fact, it goes beyond preservation. Most people are probably unaware of Black American settlement in Wisconsin during pioneer days. . . . History cannot be preserved if people don’t know it in the first place.

College students and 2023 grads have until Feb. 20 to apply for Rural News Network internships at nonprofit newsrooms

College students and 2023 college graduates can apply until Feb. 20 for paid internships available at nine nonprofit newsrooms in the Rural News Network of thhe Institute for Nonprofit News.

The Scripps Howard Fund created the internship program in partnership with INN, to give students of diverse backgrounds high quality, hands-on experience, at no cost to the newsroom.

Six internships will last 10 weeks and three will last 20 weeks. The nine news organizations will host and hire the interns.

The 20-week internships will be at The Daily Yonder, Carolina Public Press and Indian Country Today. The 10-week internships will be at KOSU (Oklahoma State University), South Dakota News Watch, Lower Cape Community Access TV in Massachusetts, Oklahoma Watch, The Conversation US and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

The application is here. Details about compensation are here.

Opinion: Rural Americans should identify as part of nation's diversity and seek roles in economy, centers of influence

Doug Burns

Rural Americans have a diverse set of experiences that are being increasingly left out of the modern economy, and they need to assert themselves by using a term that they may think doesn't include them, argues Douglas Burns in a column on his Substack newsletter, The Iowa Mercury: "For too many rural Americans, the term diversity is synonymous with otherness because residents of remote regions don’t realize that we, too, are underrepresented and misunderstood. Policies and structures strand and marginalize us. We rural Americans need to focus on correcting this, finding allies in other demographics who are similarly left out of the modern American economy and higher education and top levels of the judiciary — and yes, even my profession, journalism, where rural voices can be absent or hard to find in key power centers. Rural Americans served in wars and farmed and mined coal and built the manufacturing base, and increasingly there is little, if any, role for them in the new economy — one in which wealth is scooped and segregated to coastal tech clusters."

At his family's Carroll Times Herald, Burns works "aggressively" to get a mix of students from urban and rural areas for their internship programs, to let them "see rural Iowa up close and personal," he writes. That way if those students end up going to larger news media organizations with more reach "they bring an understanding and empathy of rural Iowa to decisions on how we will be covered at the national level."

Residents of remote regions are often "underrepresented and misunderstood" and are marginalized by their lack of representation in the wider culture, Burns writes, Citing a Daily Yonder interview with a legal scholar and his own conversation with former President Barack Obama, he notes how the rural experience is misunderstood by the legal system and the Supreme Court lacks a rural voice.

Study: W.Va. mining cuts aquatic species biodiversity by 40%, with some loss even in streams meeting EPA rules

Map from study, adapted by The Rural Blog; click on it to enlarge.

Appalachian streams are some of the most biologically diverse in the world, home to many species that can't be found anywhere else on Earth (like the hellbender salamander, for example). But surface mining threatens that diversity as downstream pollution hurts or destroys many species' habitats, according to a newly published study in the journal Ecological Applications.

A Duke University team led by Marie Simonin of France's National Research Institute for Agriculture examined 93 streams in southern West Virginia and found a clear link between coal mining and species loss: streams in heavily mined watersheds have 40 percent fewer species than streams with cleaner water. That includes fish, insects, crustaceans, mollusks, algae, fungi, bacteria, and more. They were able to tell what species had vanished by collecting and comparing DNA from scraps left in the streams such as scales, skin and excrement.

Pollution threatens the hellbender.
 (Fish and Wildlife Service photo)

The study is significant not just for its findings but for its breadth; other studies have noted the link between surface mining and species loss, but this study looked at all species in the same streams at the same time.

The study highlighted another concern: Pollutants hurt aquatic species at much lower concentrations than previously known, since the team found significant diversity loss in streams whose pollution was still well within Environmental Protection Agency disturbance standards. Duke biology professor Emily Bernhardt, the senior author of the paper, summed it up in a recent interview about the study: "By the time you get to the EPA’s reference point, you've already lost most of the species you're going to lose."

Small-town newspaper editors can still be heroes, but they have to be essential, like the library or the doctor's office

Uniontown, Pennsylvania, honored its late editor. (Photo by John W. Miller)

This was first published by The Poynter Institute.

By John W. Miller

The monument on Main Street in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, that caught my eye was not for a quarterback or soldier.

This gritty industrial community of 10,000 in Southwestern Pennsylvania named its central square after a newsman.

“Community journalist for more than six decades,” says a plaque for Walter “Buzz” Storey, introducing Storey Square. This is who a newspaper editor could be in small-town America: a hero.

And that’s the missing piece in the conversation about rebuilding local journalism and its artisanal truth-gathering practices with the holy superpower to defang conspiracy theories, rebuild shared narratives and make democracy possible.

To trust the work of journalists they don’t know, Americans need to see journalists they do know making phone calls, knocking on doors and printing corrections when they screw up.

“It’s one thing to look at a TV and say ‘national media sucks,’ it’s another to look a journalist who you actually know in the eye and say that,” John Isner, co-host of the popular West Virginia-based Appodlachia podcast told me. Without local journalism, he added, “the connection of rural America and national-level news is forever fragmented.”

America is becoming a land of news deserts. The U.S. has lost 2,100 newspapers in the last 15 years, and many of the surviving 6,700 papers have become “ghost newspapers,” shadows of their former selves, according to the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

There is hope — in the form of digital startups, philanthropic aid and reinvestment in local news. ProPublica is partnering with local newsrooms around the country. Report for America has funded hundreds of new local journalism jobs. The American Journalism Project is raising $50 million to invest in newsrooms. More investment — a Marshall Plan, to invoke the legacy of Uniontown’s own Gen. George C. Marshall — is needed.

“Local journalism can’t take place without institutional support,” said Victor Pickard, author of Democracy without Journalism? “You have to fertilize for new shoots to arrive.”

The money going into coding new websites, apps and algorithms is welcome, but the legacy of people like Buzz Storey is a reminder that good journalism is really about people, and that journalists have often been treasured members of working-class American communities.

In Moundsville, West Virginia, where I co-directed the PBS film “Moundsville,” an attempt to create a shared narrative of a classic American town, people still talk about editor Sam Shaw, who died in 1995. He rode his bicycle around town, covering the courthouse, knocking on doors for interviews and collecting the news from conversations on the street. The eccentric bachelor was celebrated for his integrity — and beloved for his bird-watching, choir-singing and fondness for walking marathons and finishing last.

Storey was born in Uniontown in 1921. After working a paper route as a teenager, he joined the news staff of the Daily News Standard, which became the Herald-Standard. He learned his craft, overcame a stutter and learned to read newstype upside down. For the next 61 years, he wrote about council meetings, crimes and fires, mainly as city editor.

Occasionally, there was a really big story. Hometown hero Gen. Marshall, who has his own statue near Storey Square, visited in 1953. In 1962, a mine explosion killed 37 men. In 1985, Uniontown flooded on election day, forcing Storey to cover the disaster from a helicopter.

Buzz Storey had his own politics. He was an FDR Democrat, but Republicans respected him “because he was fair-minded,” said Ted Storey, one of his six children. “And he did what a lot of small-town papers used to do, which is foster civil debate.” That integrity gave Storey a respect that transcended partisan politics, and fueled support among town elders for naming the square after him when he died in 2004, said Mark O’Keefe, former executive editor of the Herald-Standard. (The paper still exists, in diminished form. The current editor declined an interview.)

It might sound crazy in the age of unverified information flooding our senses and Facebook-fueled partisan bickering, but there’s a hopeful, and heroic, cohort of news pioneers now figuring out how to make local online journalism work.

These successful new digital journalists understand the human quality of journalism.

“It’s simple, people are looking for somebody who will go knock on the door of their favorite bar to find out why it closed,” said Shamus Toomey, co-founder of Block Club Chicago, a digital startup covering Chicago neighborhoods that started in 2018. “And with stories going online so quickly, you can gain instant credibility.”

Local journalism actually demands more accountability than national reporting.

“It’s a lot harder to write a story that makes the wife of your kid’s soccer coach look bad than it is to parachute in for The New York Times, write a story about dirty water and then leave,” said Ken Ward Jr., co-founder of the Mountain State Spotlight, a digital startup covering West Virginia that’s partnered with the American Journalism Project, ProPublica and Report for America. Ward believes that the solution to funding new local news outlets is tapping into local philanthropic networks. Americans will have to recognize that “a news organization is like the local health care clinic or the local library,” said Ward, who in 2018 won a MacArthur fellowship for his coverage of coal mining.

When Chris Horne founded The Devil Strip, an online newspaper which also publishes a monthly magazine edition in Akron, Ohio, in 2015, he spent months introducing himself in person to as many people in the community as possible.

“You have to be willing to be the person readers call on the phone to yell at,” he said. The Devil Strip now has a monthly audience of around 40,000 and is run by a co-op board elected by readers.

Of course, old-school pipe-smoking newspaper editors tended to be male and white. The next generation is already looking more like America.

In 2017, veteran Black journalist Wendi C. Thomas started MLK 50: Justice Through Journalism, a digital-only newsroom, with the goal of covering social justice issues in Memphis. It has around 30,000 readers a month, and an annual budget around $700,000, mostly from grants. When Thomas started the site, it helped that she had been a metro columnist in Memphis for 11 years.

She’s found an appetite to understand how journalism works. “Some of our most popular Facebook posts are where I explain how we got the story,” she said.

And that, in the end, is how you rebuild trust in journalism — by doing the work.

“It may sound like an opinion to you, but if you disagree when I say wealth in Memphis has been hoarded by whites, I say let’s go check out Census Bureau data,” said Thomas. “If you’re transparent about what you’re doing, and people can see the work, you get respect.”

That kind of integrity, incarnated by somebody keeping their finger on the pulse of their community, resonates with people who remember Buzz Storey.

“One time, somebody in our neighborhood killed a lady with a car and wanted to keep it out of the paper,” Phil Storey, another son, told me. “My dad said, just because I know you doesn’t mean I can treat you any differently.”

The story ran.

John W. Miller is a Pittsburgh-based writer and filmmaker. He is a columnist and contributor at America magazine, published by the Jesuits of the United States.

How to start a community advisory board for your newsroom

"Community editorial boards — or to use another term, community advisory boards, although both essentially serve the same purpose — are one way to start more of your journalism from a place of listening," Stephanie Castellano writes for the American Press Institute.

"Depending on the makeup of the board and how members are recruited, they can point you toward stories that have gone uncovered and people whose information needs are not being met. And they can help you build — or repair — relationships with groups that are often marginalized or misrepresented by the news media, and perhaps by your own newsroom."

Click here for tips on how to start a community advisory board in your newsroom, including:

• how to recruit an advisory board that reflects your community's diversity
• tips for running productive, meaningful board meetings
• how your newsroom can demonstrate accountability to the board
• tips for successfully pitching the idea of a community advisory board to your newsroom's leadership

Online News Association to hold virtual conference Oct. 1-16, Tuesdays through Fridays; diversity mentorships offered

Registration is open for ONA20, a virtual conference for the Online News Association to be held Oct. 1-16, on business days except Mondays. Click here for more information or to register.

ProPublica is organizing and hosting a Diversity Mentorship Event as part of the conference. Journalists from under-represented groups, including people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, and people with disabilities, are welcome to apply to be a mentee. Click here for more information.

Investigation finds whites are over-represented in many Midwestern police forces, including rural ones

The police force is a lot whiter than the general populace in many Midwestern areas, according to a collaborative reporting project by Lee Enterprises newspapers.

Reporters at 14 newspapers and online media companies sampled 68 municipal, county and state police departments in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and found that white officers were over-represented in 62 of those agencies. The gap is seen across urban, suburban and rural areas.

"Most police and other public officials interviewed for the Lee diversity analysis acknowledged diversity in proportion to community demographics is important on police forces," the story reports. "But challenges persist in recruiting that balance, and diversity within police ranks is no panacea for the systemic racism alleged by many who continue seeking reform throughout the nation's web of law enforcement agencies, many officials throughout the four states say."

Appalachian writer suggests three recent books that provide a more complex treatment of the region than most

Ivy Brashear

Appalachia is frequently presented in pop culture through a series of tired stereotypes—often negative—that belie the complex nature of the people and the region, Ivy Brashear, a native of Viper, Ky., , writes for Yes! magazine.

"To this day, Appalachia is a largely misunderstood place and people," Brashear writes. "National reporters have flocked to the region since 2014, the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty, and again in a wave of fervor after the 2016 presidential election, to seek an explanation for the nation’s ills by trying to define us and tell us who we are. For the most part, these waves of reporters have sought the easy answers—the bootstraps and hardhats narrative; the hopelessness narrative; the brain-drain narrative. And the region has suffered for their unwillingness to seek the answers to why the conditions the region faces exist at all."

There's no single narrative that captures the full reality of Appalachia, but seeking out more accurate depictions and discussions of the region is critical in order to address the complex problems it faces, Brashear writes. Toward this end, she suggests three recently published books that present a more nuanced picture of Appalachia.

Never Justice, Never Peace: Mother Jones and the Miner Rebellion at Paint and Cabin Creeks (West Virginia University Press, 2018) by Lon Kelly Savage and Ginny Savage Ayers provides an in-depth account of a 1912-13 coal miners' strike in West Virginia and the complicated tug of war between the major players: the coal miners, the union, organizer Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, coal companies, and law enforcement. The book underscores the role of women in activism, especially relevant today as Appalachian workers in many sectors are losing jobs and rights, Brashear writes.

In Unwhite: Appalachia, Race and Film (University of Georgia Press, 2018), Meredith McCarroll examines Appalachian stereotypes throughout the ages, and notes that journalists' periodic fascination with the region happens every 20-30 years when the nation is seeking explanations for major economic or political shifts. McCarroll also, interestingly, suggests that Appalachians be referred to as "unwhite" because Hollywood doesn't portray them quite as white people nor quite as minority people of color, Brashear writes. McCarroll also says that "One of the most effective means of controlling a people is controlling their image," and notes that Appalachians have little control over the stories told about them on the national level.

To Live Here, You Have to Fight: How Women Led Appalachian Movements for Social Justice (University of Illinois Press, 2018) by Jessica Wilkerson stresses the vital role women have played in Appalachia. They've been front and center in every labor struggle in the region, they've cared for their families, including husbands disabled in the mines, started medical clinics, organized across racial lines, picketed and held the line in strikes, and even worked in the mines themselves as a way of asserting workplace equality, Brashear writes.

"Women, people of color, young people, and queer people have held this place together, and held it up, making sure we kept our eyes on the importance of working together to address the challenges we face, as Wilkerson points out through the story of Appalachian women activists," Brashear writes. "And yet, their names will rarely, if ever, be seen in print, on TV, or in the movies. Children will not learn about their efforts in school. It’s a whole lot easier to keep Appalachia in an easily digestible box than it is to make the story more complex, and in so doing, more real."

Brashear is Appalachian transition director at the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development in Berea, Ky., and a former graduate assistant at the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog, for which she wrote many items.

Apply by Nov. 30 for Poynter Institute's 2020 Leadership Academy for Women in Media; scholarships available

The Poynter Institute is now accepting applications for its sixth annual Leadership Academy for Women in Media, which will take place at its campus in St. Petersburg, Florida in 2020. Applications are due by Nov. 30.

Women at any stage of their journalism career who have leadership potential or responsibilities are encouraged to apply. A 2018 Poynter survey of graduates from the first three years found that 81 percent got promoted or have more job responsibilities; 83% make more money, with half making substantially more money; and 76% have a clearer vision of what's important in their career.

Attendees can choose from three sessions: Winter (Feb. 23-28), Spring (April 19-24) or Fall (Oct. 4-9). Each session will accept up to 30 participants. Cost is $1,095 and includes lunches, snacks and some dinners; some need-based tuition scholarships and travel support are available through funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Rural areas can invite innovation by welcoming diverse 'creative class' talent, groundbreaking study says

Though rural America has still not regained the jobs it lost in the Great Recession, rural places can be hubs of talent and innovation too thanks to the rural creative class, a new study shows.

"The study by researchers at Oklahoma State University and Purdue University uses detailed data from the Rural Establishment Innovation Survey, conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service." Richard Florida reports for CityLab. "It is the first nationally representative survey of innovation in rural businesses and communities, covering more than 10,000 businesses in some 2,200 counties, with nearly three-quarters of the responses coming from businesses in rural areas (defined as non-metropolitan counties)."

The study creates an Innovation Index from factors like the presence of intellectual property (patents, copyrights and trademarks), accomplishments like new services and products, and customer feedback. It also assesses how innovation affects rural businesses' performance and other related factors like income levels, unemployment rates, and presence of creative workers, Florida reports.

Then, the study applied the Innovation Index to the nine types of rural and urban counties (as measured by the USDA's rural-urban continuum codes). Businesses in the six rural types of counties indexed below the national average for innovation, but this is mostly because rural areas simply have a lower share of innovative firms, Florida reports.

Innovation correlates with low unemployment rates and higher pay, and it has an outsized effect on the surrounding community, the study found: "places that are adjacent to areas with high levels of innovation appear to experience higher levels of creative class employees than would be expected." In other words, Florida reports, "Innovation invigorates talent and the creative class which in turn spills over to nearby places."

The key takeaway for lawmakers is that policy should focus on growing, attracting and keeping talent, which can be done by "adding to amenities and ensuring that communities are open to, and inclusive of, talent across the lines of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and sexual orientation," Florida reports. "These policies and approaches, which have typically been viewed as more appropriate for larger cities and urban areas, may have even more to offer smaller rural communities."

Journalist-author, a rural native, says metro and national editors should commission stories from rural journalists

Editors of national and metropolitan publications should commission stories from rural journalists who have more knowledge of their communities than urban reporters who parachute in, journalist Sarah Smarsh told Journalist's Resource, a service of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, where she was recently a Joan Shorenstein fellow, developing a podcast about the intersection of health and poverty.

Sarah Smarsh

“I’m most partial to the strategies that essentially harness the reporting power of people who are already there in those places who perhaps were laid off five years ago from their local newspaper,” Smarsh said. “I think we’ll find out the extent to which those strategies succeed over the next few years.”

Smarsh says too many urban reports on rural areas paid with a broad, white brush. “Rural areas are much more racially diverse than one would think from reading national headlines,” she told JR. “Those parts of the country have always been much more than white people, and as we speak they are diversifying, in some places quite rapidly, often due to an influx in immigrant populations taking jobs in industries like industrial agriculture and meatpacking plants. Barely a majority of the eligible voting population ends up at the polls, and then somewhere around under half of people vote for the candidate who wins that state, and then the whole square is colored red on a cable-news graphic.”

"Smarsh reports on socioeconomic class, politics and more for national and international outlets, including The Guardian, The New Yorker and The Cut," JR reports. "Her forthcoming book, Heartland: A Daughter of the Working Class Reconciles an American Divide, delves into her experiences with class and place growing up on a working farm in Kansas."