The cat's out of the bag now: Kentucky is home to one of journalism's rising stars

Grant Gerstner after being presented first place in print reporting 
at the CFINR annual awards ceremony. (Photo via the Era)

Grant Gerstner, the editor of The Oldham Era and the Henry County Local for Paxton Media, won "one of the nation’s most prestigious journalism awards during a May 19 ceremony in Washington, D.C., when he received first place in the print reporting category during the Center for Integrity in News Reporting’s annual awards ceremony," reports the Oldham staff.

Gerstner's award-winning series followed the path of a controversial data center build planned in Oldham County. He succeeded in out-writing competition from "major publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and others," they add. He is the first Kentucky-based reporter to win the award, which comes with a $25,000 prize.

The CFINR judges praised Gerstner's reporting as remarkably fair and thorough. The Era reports, "The judges singled out the work for what is often hardest in small-market reporting: covering a contested local issue from start to finish without taking a side, and trusting the reader to understand the trade-offs."

Era and Local Publisher Jane Ashley Pace praised Gerstner's work as an example of the important part media can play in a community, saying, "Grant's coverage became a trusted source of information and proves why local newspapers like the Era are so important."

Gerstner graduated from South Oldham High School in 2019,  the Era reports. "He later joined the Era and Local in 2024 after graduating from the University of Louisville."

Gerstner told reporters, "Winning this award is the honor of a lifetime, and it is made all the sweeter by the fact that my reporting followed one of the largest issues in the history of my hometown."

Nominations sought for the Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism by June 15

Tom and Pat Gish

Each year the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues presents the national Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism, named for the couple who exemplified those qualities as publishers of The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., for 52 years.

Nominations for the Gish Award may be made at any time, but the deadline for new nominations to be considered for this year's award is Monday, June 15. The winner will receive the award at an event in Lexington, Ky., on Oct. 22.

To make a nomination, please send a detailed letter explaining how the nominee shows the kind of courage, tenacity and integrity that Tom and Pat Gish demonstrated at their weekly newspaper in the Central Appalachian coalfield. They withstood advertiser boycotts, business competition, declining population, personal attacks, and even the burning of their office to give their readers the kind of journalism often lacking in rural areas, and were the first winners of the award named for them. Tom died in 2008 and Pat in 2014. Their son, Ben, is the editor and publisher of the Eagle and serves on the award selection committee.

Additional documentation may be submitted after the nomination, and may be requested or required. Send your nominating letter, initial documentation and any questions to Institute Director Benjy Hamm at benjy.hamm@uky.edu.

The Institute seeks nominations that measure up, at least in major respects, to the records of the Gishes and other previous winners. Other winners have been the Ezzell family of The Canadian Record in the Texas panhandle; Jim Prince and Stanley Dearman, current and late publishers of The Neshoba Democrat in Philadelphia, Miss.; Samantha Swindler of The Oregonian for her work at The Times-Tribune in Corbin, Ky., and Jacksonville Daily Progress in Texas; Stanley Nelson and the Concordia Sentinel in Ferriday, La.; Jonathan and Susan Austin of the Yancey County News in North Carolina; the late Landon Wills of the McLean County News in Kentucky; the Trapp family of the Rio Grande Sun in northern New Mexico; Ivan Foley of the Platte County Landmark in northwestern Missouri; the Cullen family of the Storm Lake Times-Pilot in northwest Iowa; and Les Zaitz of the Malheur Enterprise in eastern Oregon. In 2019, the award went to three reporters whose outstanding careers revealed much about the coal industry in Central Appalachia: Howard Berkes, retired from NPR; Ken Ward Jr., then with the Charleston Gazette-Mail; and his mentor at the Gazette, the late Paul Nyden. In 2020 the award went to the late Tim Crews of the Sacramento Valley Mirror; in 2021 to the Thompson-High Family of The News Reporter and the Border Belt Independent in Whiteville, N.C.; in 2022 to Ellen Kreth and the Madison County Record of Huntsville, Ark.; in 2023 to Craig Garnett of the Uvalde Leader-News in Texas; in 2024 to Eric Meyer and the Marion County Record in Kansas; and in 2025 to Lisa Stayton and The Mountain Citizen of Inez, Kentucky.

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based at the University of Kentucky, is focused on helping sustain journalism in rural communities in the United States through information, expertise, training, outreach and other programs.

June 1 is deadline for nominations for the Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism

Al Smith

The Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky seek nominations for the Al Smith Award by Monday, June 1. This honor is given annually for public service through community journalism over a lifetime by a native or resident of Kentucky, or someone who has spent a significant portion of his or her career in the state.

The award is named for its first recipient: Albert P. Smith Jr., who owned weekly newspapers in Kentucky and Tennessee and was the founding host of KET’s “Comment on Kentucky” and the main co-founder of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. He was chairman emeritus of its national advisory board when he died in 2021.

The award is based on news coverage and editorial leadership that serve community needs. Preference is given to journalists in smaller markets, to recognize restrictions that market size can place on the ability to provide outstanding public service through journalism. If a publisher or station owner is nominated, the judges may consider his or her civic service and the successful management of conflicts that can arise between journalistic, managerial, ownership, and civic roles.

Past winners of the Al Smith Award have been Bill Estep of the Lexington Herald-Leader; Bobbie Foust, a longtime fixture in West Kentucky journalism; Ben Gish and Sam Adams of The Mountain Eagle; Chris and Allison Evans of The Crittenden Press; WKMS News at Murray State University; Becky Barnes of the Cynthiana Democrat; David Thompson of the Kentucky Press Association; Stevie Lowery of The Lebanon Enterprise; Ryan Craig of the Todd County Standard and his late uncle Larry Craig of the Green River Republican; Sharon Burton of the Adair County Community Voice and The Farmer’s Pride; the late Carl West of The State Journal; Bill Bishop and Julie Ardery of the Daily Yonder; John Nelson and the late Max Heath of Landmark Community Newspapers, Jennifer P. Brown of Hoptown Chronicle; and Smith. More details can be found here. 

The award will be presented at the annual Al Smith Awards Dinner Oct. 22 at The Campbell House in Lexington. Nominations, supporting letters and sufficient documentation should be sent by Monday, June 1 to:

Al Smith Award SPJ Bluegrass Chapter 
123 West Todd Street 
Frankfort KY 40601-2825

Nominations may also be sent electronically to al.cross@uky.edu. For more information about Al Smith and the award see www.ruraljournalism.org or call Bluegrass SPJ Secretary Al Cross at 502-682-2848.

Commentary: Why one journalist traded covering national news for a small-town newspaper in Big Sky Country

After he left a national media career to become editor of the Glasgow Courier in Glasgow, Montana, this journalist began to see his writing and the news differently, writes Skylar Baker-Jordan, reflecting in The Daily Yonder on his journey to a new career in the "middle of nowhere."

"Within my first few hours of being in Valley County, I learned people are hungry for local news. A new face in Glasgow, a town of 3,202 people, folks immediately asked what brought me, a born and bred Appalachian, to the high plains of Montana," Baker-Jordan writes.

Once Glasgow residents learned Baker-Jordan was the Courier's new editor, he was inundated with town gossip, juicy conflicts and events the paper needed to investigate. He writes, "That thirst for local news is not unique to Glasgow, but it is increasingly difficult to quench. . . More than 130 local papers ceased publication in the past year alone."

As smaller newspapers close, fewer towns can rely on local reporting, which the "middle of nowhere" towns need more than most. Baker-Jordan adds, "Moving here was my chance to use my talents in the service of a community that needed an editor to help its local paper avoid this fate."

Baker-Jordan didn't decide to switch careers in an instant, but over time, while he was working as an editor at 100 Days in Appalachia, a nonprofit newsroom managed by and for Appalachians. He writes, "Suddenly, I was writing about and reporting on regional matters I’d long overlooked, and the response was overwhelming. In my entire career, the most gratitude I received from readers – the highest volume of responses – was to stories I wrote about local and regional matters."

He began to think about his past journalistic efforts differently. Baker-Jordan explains, "The sheer vitriol of the partisan press began to make my screeds feel less like a righteous contribution to public discourse and more like the very thing eroding trust in media and our civic institutions writ large."

Baker-Jordan doesn't see his new editing gig or his town as lesser than his career in the bigger national news arena. He writes, "Small towns deserve to see themselves reflected and taken seriously every bit as much as large urban areas or Congress and Wall Street. They deserve reporters and editors who are dedicated to telling their stories, to establishing a public record of their history and people."

Report for America seeks service-minded journalists and photographers: Application deadline is Feb. 16

Report for America, the national service program that places early-career and experienced journalists and photographers in local newsrooms to report on under-covered topics and communities, is accepting applications for new corps members.

The application deadline is Feb. 16, with references due by Feb. 23. The upcoming program start date is July 13. Apply here.

If you are passionate about service-minded journalism, you might be a good fit for one of RFA's 70 journalism positions open in newsrooms of all types, including digital startups, daily and weekly newspapers, and radio and TV stations. An interactive database of their openings, newsrooms and reporting beats is found here.

Report for America is a two-year program, with an optional third year. Their members are part of a national movement to strengthen communities and democracy through truthful, fair local journalism.

Answers to commonly asked questions can be found by reading FAQs. Contact the Report for America recruitment team at recruitment@reportforamerica.org. 

Community newspaper publishers voice frustration over USPS costs and delivery delays

Delayed newspapers can hurt a publisher's bottom line.
(Photo via NiemanLab)

U.S. Postal Service cost-cutting measures and process changes have slowed some local newspaper deliveries to a crawl, leaving frustrated local publishers searching for solutions, reports Sophie Culpepper of NiemanLab.

Smaller, more rural newspapers often use USPS because it is cheaper than hiring newspaper carriers; however, over the past decade, USPS has repeatedly raised postal rates even as its reliability decreased. Culpepper writes, "By the USPS’ own measurement, about 20% of periodicals were delivered late nationally between July 1 and Sept. 30, 2025, up from around 15% delivered late during the same period in 2024."

The Midcoast Villager in Maine is a community newspaper that is the "primary or only local news source for most of the 80,000 residents of Maine’s Knox and Waldo Counties," Culpepper writes. The Villager has tracked papers that are a week or more late. Delayed delivery can irritate readers, who may choose to drop their subscriptions. "Small local publishers can’t afford those losses, and they have little visibility into — or control over — the delays hurting their bottom lines."

The Villager's publisher, Willy Blackmore, shared his frustration with USPS in his 2025 editorial: "It bears mentioning that the Postal Service is just that, a service, and not a business that has historically had or needs a profit motive, but it is a service that the Villager spends over $49,000 on annually, and we decidedly are not getting what we pay for."

Rural papers in South Dakota are facing a similar struggle. David Bordewyk, the executive director of the South Dakota NewsMedia Association, told Culpepper, "I’m confident in telling you…100% of our newspapers are having problems with delivery."

In December, a National Newspaper Association delegation met with Postmaster General David Steiner, who used to be a paperboy, to discuss ongoing challenges and request a process for newspapers to enter into the Postal Service’s "delivery measurement system," which includes scans and barcodes that could track a newspaper from beginning to end.

In an update to NNA members, Matt Paxton, a publisher who attended the meeting with Steiner, wrote, "Postmaster General Steiner was attentive. But didn’t indicate that he plans to deviate at this time from the USPS’s Delivering for America Plan."

Study: Gen Z journalists may be avoiding rural newsrooms

Some younger journalists worry that rural newsrooms
might be too conservative for them. (Adobe Stock photo)

Gen Z journalists may be steered away from rural newsrooms due to a lack of knowledge in jobs available, as well as concerns of salary, politics, social life and career advancement potential, according to a new study involving students in the United States and Canada.

To examine why students in their late teens to early 20s are not attracted to working in rural areas, journalism professor Teri Finneman of the University of Kansas and instructor Tyler Nagel of Southern Alberta Institute of Technology surveyed 183 of their local mass communication students to ask how they felt about the possibility of reporting in rural communities, writes Tandy Lau for E&P Magazine.

Shared below is a Q&A on why some students who were surveyed find reporting in rural areas to be unappealing and what newsrooms may be able to do to attract younger journalists.

Q: Why aren’t more journalist students aware of available jobs in rural areas?
A: Some journalism schools are only teaching their students about journalism at a national level and not providing the context of journalism at a rural level. Eighty percent of Kansas respondents said they had not been taught about rural journalism in their classes at all, so they didn’t know what jobs there are available.

Q: Why are students concerned about salary?
A: While rural newsrooms often have a lower cost of living, students still have financial concerns. The Kansas respondents said they face student debt while the Canadian respondents face a current housing crisis.

Q: Why might students be concerned about politics?
A: Kansas students, particularly those with diverse backgrounds, responded they fear not being welcomed in rural communities due to polarizing politics and rural areas leaning red.

Q: How can rural newsrooms combat concerns of a lack of social life and career advancement opportunities?
A: Communicating with young journalists still in school is key in opening rural opportunities for them. Modernizing job descriptions, communicating opportunities to grow into leadership roles, creating a network for young journalists to socialize, and incentivizing the possibility of taking over a rural paper are a few of the recommendations by Finneman and Nagel after conducting their study.

Research shows that government transparency decreases without newspapers

Photo by Ashni, Unsplash

A study comparing freedom of information requests in relation to news deserts showed that governments were less transparent in states that had fewer newspapers, Gretchen A. Peck reported for Editor & Publisher.

“These initial studies show that newspapers make a difference. They hold governments accountable, especially to budgets,” David Cuillier, study researcher and former newspaper editor, said in an interview with Peck. “Local governments are more likely to be careful with our tax dollars and less wasteful. Engagement improves. Voting turnout improves. … Newspapers matter in saving democracy.”

Cuillier also expressed his worries about restrictions on journalism in the current political environment.

He cited the removal of access to White House visitor logs, websites and data, and other files and information pertaining to department activities. Cuillier also mentioned the administration’s “battle” against journalists through financial, legal and prohibitive means.

“There are huge things going on right now that we haven’t seen before, starting with the president not releasing his tax returns, unlike all other presidents,” Cuillier said. “The list goes on and on.”

Reminder: Apply by Oct. 20 to host a journalist with support from Report for America

The deadline for newsrooms to apply to host a reporter with financial support from Report for America is Oct. 20. A sample application can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/4oLOt71

Report for America is an organization that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities.

Host newsrooms receive the following benefits:

• A reporter committed to the newsroom for two years
• Half of the salary of the reporter will be paid during the first year and 33% of the salary the second year
• Training and mentoring for the reporter
• Assistance with fundraising to cover the newsroom’s portion of the reporter’s salary through Report for America’s Local News Sustainability Team
• Access to a network of other host newsrooms for collaboration

Journalists at rural Alaska newspapers quit over abrupt corporate edits to Kirk story that upset a state politician

Photo by Mark Sabbatini, Juneau Independent

Four journalists resigned from newspapers in rural Alaska after the publications’ corporate owner made "significant edits to an article about Charlie Kirk’s death, appearing to yield to pressure from a Republican state lawmaker who had criticized the coverage," reports Neil Vigdor of The New York Times.

The journalists who worked for The Homer News, The Peninsula Clarion and The Juneau Empire, were all employed by Alabama-based Carpenter Media. The news staff issued a joint resignation letter, noting that they had not been consulted about the edits, and that without editorial independence, the company's integrity as a news source was compromised.

The story at issue "chronicled a Sept. 17 vigil in Homer, Alaska, for Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder and a right-wing ally of President Trump’s who was fatally shot while speaking at Utah Valley University," Vigdor writes. In its second paragraph, the story "described Kirk as a a 'Christian-Nationalist icon' and defender of 'often racist and controversial views.'"

One of the vigil's organizers, Sarah Vance, a Republican state representative, took issue with the description of Kirk and wrote to the paper's corporate owners and "suggested that advertisers were planning to boycott the publications," Vigdor adds. The story then disappeared from online, only to reappear with numerous edits a few hours later.

In a statement, Carpenter Media Group said it altered the story because it did not meet company standards. Gregory Knight, an aide to Vance, "provided a statement from Vance saying that she did not expect her complaint to contribute to the resignations," Vigdor reports.

Former 'city dweller' explores rural-urban divide in new graphic novel

Mahadavian reflects on rural life and the rural-urban 
divide in his new novel, This Country. (Yonder photo) 

In his new graphic novel, cartoonist Navied Mahadavian reflects on rural life, the rural-urban divide and the political divisions between “city dwellers” and “rural folk,” Myat Theingi of The Daily Yonder reported.

Searching for affordable living and what Mahadavian described as the “allure of possibility,” he and his wife moved to rural Idaho from the San Francisco Bay area.

Despite some unpleasant encounters due to his race, his interactions with people in the town opened his eyes to the emotions and pride of people who live in rural places, the complexities of their political beliefs, and their reasons for distrusting people who come from the city.

“So, after reading my book, I hope that city dwellers will gain some insights into rural life and vice versa. I also hope they see that there are divisions and different cultures. But there are also friendships that I forge, that show that it is possible to bridge those divides in a meaningful and lasting way,” Mahadavian said in an interview with Theingi.

The Mountain Citizen of Inez, Ky., wins the 2025 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism

A scrappy little newspaper that has fought for more than 30 years for clean water and open government in its Appalachian county is the winner of the 2025 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism.

The Mountain Citizen is a weekly paper serving the 11,000 people of Martin County, 231 square miles along Kentucky’s northeastern border with West Virginia. For decades, the Citizen has been the key watchdog on the local water district, which has long had problems providing clean and adequate supply, and on coal companies and local government.

Tap water in Martin County often runs brown, and the Citizen’s efforts prompted state Public Service Commission investigations of the Martin County Water District in 2002, 2006 and 2016. This year, the paper revealed that a state agency had failed to correctly calculate Martin County’s scores in a water-funding competition for poor and underserved counties, and that in 2018 the county’s water was some of the most corrosive in the nation, more so than in Flint, Michigan, in 2015.

“The Mountain Citizen has spent decades overcoming obstacles and opposition to inform its community about serious problems with its water supply and other important issues,” said Benjy Hamm, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism. “Its work represents the best of rural journalism and everything the Gish Award was established to honor – courage, integrity and tenacity.”

In recounting the paper’s water work, owner Lisa Stayton wrote, “When you live here and see your neighbors carrying bottled water into their kitchens, you understand this is about survival. And you worry because you know that many of your neighbors can’t afford to buy bottled water and are drinking tap water that you wouldn’t drink yourself.”

The paper’s water reporting began in 1993, when it revealed that a coal company had so badly cracked the bed of a creek that it had to put a plastic liner in the creek to keep its water out of an underground mine. The paper reported several coal-slurry spills, then got an important scoop in 2000 when it obtained and published maps of a defunct mine that was the conduit for a massive spill from a surface-mine pond, which polluted streams and valleys with an estimated 250 million tons of waste.

When the Citizen forgot to renew its corporate charter in 2000, its corporate name was legally claimed by the water district’s board chairman, who had been the subject of critical reporting by the newspaper. The paper kept using its name, defying a court order, and was fined for contempt of court, but after two years the state Court of Appeals threw out the charge and the fine.

Though the paper’s future was in jeopardy, then-Editor Gary Ball, a former coal miner, continued its strong stances. When the state attorney general’s office announced it would have investigators in the field for the 2002 general election, he told the Lexington Herald-Leader that they were “paper tigers” who were six weeks late, since the groundwork for vote fraud is laid well before an election.

In 2003, the Citizen reported that the county schools spent nearly $250,000 on travel over four years, including airfare for spouses of board members, prompting the schools to refuse complimentary copies that the newspaper had sent to all classrooms. In 2012, the paper challenged the school board’s private discussion of the superintendent’s contract and was upheld by a binding opinion from the state attorney general. In the same year the attorney general ruled the paper was entitled to child-abuse records withheld by the state.

The Citizen was founded in 1990 as a consolidation of the Martin County Mercury and The Martin Countian, a newspaper that had won national attention for the crusading reporting and editorial stances of owner-publisher Homer Marcum. The Citizen took similar approaches; when the school system was no longer required to publish the names and salaries of teachers, the paper did that on its own. It withstood competition from other newspapers and by 2001 was the county’s sole paper.

The award is named for Tom and Pat Gish, who published The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Kentucky, for more than 50 years. Their son and successor, Ben Gish, is on the award selection committee. “I read The Mountain Citizen regularly (we trade subscriptions),” he wrote. “They do a really good job.”

Stayton and the Citizen will receive the Gish Award Nov. 13 in Lexington, Ky., at the annual Al Smith Awards Dinner of the Institute for Rural Journalism. The dinner will also include presentation of the Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism by Kentuckians to Bill Estep, who recently retired from the Lexington Herald-Leader after chronicling the stories of Appalachian Kentucky for more than 40 years.

 

The keynote speaker will be Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies.

Other Gish Award winners have been the Ezzell family of The Canadian Record in the Texas panhandle; Jim Prince and Stanley Dearman, current and late publishers of The Neshoba Democrat in Philadelphia, Miss.; Samantha Swindler of The Oregonian for her work at The Times-Tribune in Corbin, Ky., and Jacksonville Daily Progress in Texas; Stanley Nelson and the Concordia Sentinel in Ferriday, La.; Jonathan and Susan Austin of the Yancey County News in North Carolina; the late Landon Wills of the McLean County News in Kentucky; the Trapp family of the Rio Grande Sun in northern New Mexico; Ivan Foley of the Platte County Landmark in northwestern Missouri; the Cullen family of the Storm Lake Times-Pilot in northwest Iowa; and Les Zaitz of the Malheur Enterprise in eastern Oregon.

In 2019, the award went to three reporters whose outstanding careers revealed much about the coal industry in Central Appalachia: Howard Berkes, retired from NPR; Ken Ward Jr., then with the Charleston Gazette-Mail; and his mentor at the Gazette, the late Paul Nyden. In 2020 the award went to the late Tim Crews of the Sacramento Valley Mirror; in 2021 to the Thompson-High family of The News Reporter and the Border Belt Independent in Whiteville, N.C.; in 2022 to Ellen Kreth and the Madison County Record of Huntsville, Ark.; in 2023 to Craig Garnett of the Uvalde Leader-News in Texas; and in 2024 to Eric Meyer and the Marion County Record in Kansas.

Apply by Oct. 20 to host a journalist with support from Report for America

Applications to receive support for a reporter for your local news organization through Report for America will open on Sept. 15. 

Report for America is an organization that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. 

The deadline for newspapers to apply to host a reporter is Oct. 20. You may review a sample application here: http://bit.ly/4oLOt71  

Host newsrooms receive the following benefits: 

• A reporter committed to the newsroom for two years 
• Half of the salary of the reporter will be paid during the first year and 33% of the salary the second year 
• Training and mentoring for the reporter 
• Assistance with fundraising to cover the newsroom’s portion of the reporter’s salary through Report for America’s Local News Sustainability Team 
• Access to a network of other host newsrooms for collaboration

Questions can be directed to recruitment@reportforamerica.org.

Quick hits: Newspaper sitcom; free child care; inspiring cave cleanup; soybean field discovery; dark sky ruminating

Can a sitcom about journalism capture its 'grit, humanity, and relentless optimism'?

Keeping a local newspaper alive is one thing, but revitalizing one staffed with employees who list texting and tweeting as their most recent writing ventures is an entirely different story. Meet Peacock's new mockumentary, "The Paper," which depicts the life and times of the struggling Toledo Truth Teller newspaper and its quirky staff. "Members of the news community weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry," writes Gretchen A. Peck of E&P Magazine. "For publishers and editors. . . the [show] raises big questions: can a sitcom capture the grit, humanity, and relentless optimism of real journalism?" The trailer is here.

New Mexico will be the first state in the union to offer free child care to all its families, regardless of income. "The state has been working to lower child care care costs since 2019, when it created the Early Childhood Education and Care Department," reports Chabeli Carrazana of The 19th. The new policy rollout in November will allow all families access to the state’s child care assistance program without meeting eligibility criteria and will remove any copay requirements. Families are expected to save an average of $12,000 per child.

Hidden River Cave's kaleidoscope-like Sunset
Dome is a popular tourist attraction.

What was once a heavily polluted cave in Horse Cave, Ky., is now a point of community pride and a tourism draw. "For generations, the cave was all but lost to the town on top of it. Miles of caverns and waterways brimmed with sewage that sent a putrid stench up from the depths and across downtown," reports Hiroko Tabuchi of The New York Times. "The restoration of Hidden River Cave is one of the most remarkable examples of a cave cleanup. . . . Last year, 30,000 people, more than 10 times the town’s population, toured the cave."

Some ranchers prefer the beaverslide for stacking hay.
(Photo by Linda Teahon, Offrange)

No need to purchase fancy machinery to stack hay bales -- a beaverslide is much cheaper and simpler to own. "The haystacking device consists of a wide, sliding fork at the base of a ramp and a cable pulley system rigged to the ramp’s underside," explains Katie Hill for Offrange. "Ranchers use a team of horses or a motorized vehicle to pull one of the cables perpendicular to the beaverslide, which in turn hoists the fork up the ramp, bringing a giant pile of hay up with it. . . .At the top of the ramp, the hay falls to the other side, forming three-story piles that can reach 25 tons in weight."

It hadn't been seen or touched by humans for 2,000 years, but this summer, artifact hunter Ben McGhee unearthed the discovery of a lifetime: "A hoard of 51 Native American blades buried in a Missouri soybean field," writes Chris Bennett of Farm Journal. "Based on the location, and the lack of percussion flakes or hammer stones within immediate proximity, McGhee believes the cache was transported to its present location, close to the water’s edge, for trade access." Native Americans traded the blades, which could be more precisely carved into arrowheads.

Glacier National Park is an International Dark Sky Sanctuary. Visitors can see the Milky Way from St. Mary’s Glacier, pictured here. (Photo by Ray Stinson, National Park Service)

In places where the cover of night is treasured, skies filled with stars, glowing planets and the Earth's solitary moon light the way. For many people, dark skies offer a window into thoughtfulness and mystery. "There is a feeling of possibility, timelessness, and, potentially, of fear, in the night sky," writes Sarah Melotte of The Daily Yonder. Some rural places "claim the preservation of dark skies as a core value. They protect a visitor’s experience of wonder and mystery. . . There are 152 dark sky 'places' in the continental United States." Find dark skies here. 

Illinois publisher closes newspapers in five states, leaving some towns as 'news deserts'

The Brookings Register was the area's last local news source. 

Update: "Recently shuttered newspapers across Wyoming and South Dakota are set to publish again, after buyers stepped up within days to prevent the rural communities from becoming 'news deserts,' where little or no local media remains," reports Sarah Raza of The Associated Press. 

As of last week, 31 communities in the Midwest and the West no longer have a newspaper. "News Media Corp., which owns local newspapers across five states, said it will close 14 operations in Wyoming, seven in Illinois, five in Arizona, four in South Dakota and one in Nebraska," report Sarah Raza and Jack Dura of The Associated Press.

While newspapers have closed all around the United States, when a rural area loses its only local news source, the void is unlikely to be replaced by another paper or online publication. "The U.S. has lost over one-third of its print newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2004," Raza and Dura explain. "NMC’s closure affects longtime newspapers that were often the primary source of news in numerous small towns, worsening the problem of news deserts in rural areas."

The company's CEO, J.J. Tompkins, listed the current financial woes of the news industry alongside a failed bid to sell the company as the reason for the sudden closures. "Hundreds of employees were terminated immediately, and Tompkins wrote that the company will make 'reasonable efforts to pay you all remaining compensation you have earned,'" Raza and Dura write. Even upper management at many of the papers told AP they did not see the closure coming.

The Brookings Register in South Dakota was the town's last news source. The town's mayor said "the closure of his town’s newspaper 'absolutely' leaves a big hole in the community," AP reports. "He liked the newspaper’s commentary for fostering conversations. The reporters did a great job telling readers what was going on in Brookings, a city of about 25,000 people." 

Quick hits: Visit the last linotype machine newspaper; 'app store accountability' law; memoir celebrates snail mail delivery; small town battle over Buc-ee's

While other papers have transitioned to computer technology, the Saguache Crescent remains the country's last linotype machine newspaper, reports Jared Ewy for The Daily Yonder. While other newspapers use keyboards, this small-town Colorado paper continues to use heat and metal to produce the news, just as it has since 1882. "News outlets from around the world have come to visit and pay tribute to the century-old linotype machine," Ewy reports. "At the Crescent, a keystroke sends us through time and into an America dominated by heavy, hot industry. When even the words were made of molten labor. Letters and characters are hammered with Steampunk gusto on different-sized mattes and assembled into information."

In a bid to protect minors from downloading apps with questionable content, Louisiana became the third state "to pass what it described as an 'app store accountability' law, joining Texas and Utah in instituting such legislation," reports Christ Teale of Route Fifty. The bill requires app stores conducting business in Louisiana to "identify when users are children and obtain parental consent before apps can be downloaded." Louisiana's law also requires app stores to include age-appropriate ratings and "prevents them from enforcing terms of service on minor users without parental consent."

The U.S. Postal Service and its brave mail carriers helped shape the nation, and some would contend, it's part of the glue still holding the country together. "The Postal Service is America’s first miracle and among its most endangered, threatened by private delivery services, email, texting and the pensions owed to retired carriers," writes David Von Drehle for The Washington Post. "Memoirist Stephen Starring Grant offers a highly personal, utterly charming tribute to this American treasure in his new book, Mailman. . . .The Postal Service, he convincingly argues, is far from outdated; it is the embodiment of an indivisible nation."

A drama pitting anti-sprawl conservation against a beaver-booming, mega-gas station continues to unfold in the small western town of Palmer Lake, Colorado. "Emotions have boiled over in Palmer Lake since the Texas-based Buc-ee’s chain — featuring a grinning beaver mascot — targeted undeveloped land along Interstate 25 for a new outlet: a 74,000-square-foot store with 60 gas pumps and parking for nearly 800 cars, open 24 hours a day," reports Jim Carlton of The Wall Street Journal. "It has become an epic battle over the soul of the American West — and it has descended into accusations of harassment, slashed tires, crude name-calling and vicious private texts made public."

Thousands of American children have type 1 diabetes, which, when treated, can mean a lifetime of carrying equipment and a list of activity restrictions that can make kids feel self-conscious. To help ease some of those challenges, Mattel released a Barbie with the disease. "The latest Barbie slays in a chic blue polka-dot crop top, ruffled miniskirt, chunky heels and an insulin pump. She is the brand’s first doll with type 1 diabetes," reports Brenda Goodman of CNN News. "Dollmaker Mattel worked with Breakthrough T1D, formerly known as the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, to design the doll, which aims to represent the roughly 304,000 kids and teens living with type 1 diabetes in the United States . . . . The new Barbie comes with an insulin pump, a glucose monitor and snacks to help her control her blood sugar."

With all the business of life, it's still important to take time to look up and see what going on in our skies. On the mornings of July 21 and 22, the Moon, Venus and Jupiter will provide a beautiful scene "with the crescent Moon and Venus, plus several bright stars. And if you have a clear view toward the horizon, Jupiter is there too, low in the sky," writes Preston Dyches for NASA. During the entire month of July, the Eagle constellation, Aquila, "appears in the eastern part of the sky during the first half of the night. Its brightest star, Altair, is the southernmost star in the Summer Triangle, which is an easy-to-locate star pattern in Northern Hemisphere summer skies."

Marfa, Texas, may be small, but it has a big newspaper success story

Co-owner Max Kabat keeps the cafe stocked with Big Bend 
Sentinel newspapers. (CBS video clip)

Like many rural newspapers in towns off the beaten path, The Big Bend Sentinel didn't make a lot of money. But that didn't make it any less important. The paper had been serving up local news for tiny Marfa, Texas, in far west Presidio County, for nearly a century. 

When the Sentinel's owners decided to sell the paper, they were lucky and smart. "Maisie Crow and Max Kabat had moved to Marfa from New York City in 2016 in search of community," reports Janet Shamlian of CBS News. "Then, in 2019, the paper's owners approached them about buying it. They said they had never considered it before." Kabat told her, "A newspaper found us. We didn't go and search out to find the newspaper."

Crow had worked with local news outlets as a documentary filmmaker, and both she and Kabat knew how unforgiving the newspaper business could be. Shamlian reports, "The couple knew it would be tough to keep the paper afloat without another source of revenue. That's when they became unlikely restaurateurs."

Location of Presidio County, TX
(Wikipedia map)

The couple opened a cafe to add revenue to support their newspaper's bottom line. Crow openly admits that the coffee shop is the biggest money maker. She told Shamlian, "I don't think it would surprise anyone that the large majority of the revenue comes from the coffee shop, the restaurant, and the home goods that we sell."

When Crow and Kabat took over the Sentinel, it had four employees. It now has nearly 20. Shamlian adds, "It's one of Marfa's biggest employers."

Despite its small size, the town is a tourist location, which helps the business, but it's the local support that keeps the paper going. Presidio County Attorney Blair Park told CBS News, "The other news outlets [are] not really concerned about what's going on in Marfa. So if it wasn't for this newspaper, we wouldn't be seeing our local, community news anywhere."

A vodcast and story about The Big Bend Sentinel appears in Editor & Publisher. Watch it here.

Jeremy Gulban is serious about saving local newspapers. 'It’s kind of crazy,' but he's trying to find a way.

Jeremy Gulban

Jeremy Gulban is a man on a mission to save at least 92 community newspapers from shuttering their doors. While he's out in the trenches facing tariffs, polarized audiences and stiff competition, "Gulban is discovering in ways large and small just how hard it is to revive America’s ailing local news outlets," reports Katherine Sayre of The Wall Street Journal. "Americans are increasingly distrustful of print media, podcasts are ascendant as go-to news sources and even finding human reporters to hire has proven tough."

Over the past five years, Gulban has purchased dozens of small newspapers through his company, CherryRoad Media. "Today, the top 30 or so of Gulban’s newspapers are profitable, about 30 post mediocre results and about 30 are losing money. The company had $30 million in revenue last year and wasn’t profitable overall," Sayre writes. "Gulban needs between 15% and 20% of households in his communities to subscribe to be economically viable. . . . Across the company, about 8% of households subscribe now, but that ranges from 2% to 69%, depending on the paper."

Gulban began his foray into print news because he felt "that big tech companies like Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google had too much control over the flow of information and commerce for local businesses," Sayre explains. Gulban told her, "If we made the rational business decision, we would take our best-performing markets, say that’s what we’re going with. But that’s not what I want to do. I want to figure out how to make this work.”

Part of Gulban's plan was to hire dedicated reporters who interact with their community. "In some markets, Gulban can’t find reporters willing to do the job," Sayre adds. "The company searched for two years for a full-time reporter at its Crookston Daily Times in Minnesota, offering a salary of $40,000. The newspaper was shuttered in February."

Some people in small towns have reached out directly to Gulban for help. "Kitty Mayo and other residents in the area of Two Harbors, Minn., lobbied Gulban to start a newspaper there after the Lake County News-Chronicle closed in 2020," Sayre reports. "Gulban agreed. The Lake County Press launched in 2022. Mayo said she asked an editor at another CherryRoad newspaper about Gulban before she contacted him. The editor told her: 'This guy, he’s legit. He wants to save small newspapers. It’s kind of crazy. I don’t know if he can do it.'"

A small town saves its local newspaper with citizen-led fundraising and a 2-year search for a new owner

There's a new paper in town for La Conner, Wash.

When their small-town newspaper closed, the citizens of La Conner, Wash., didn't sit idly by and let their community become another "news desert." Instead, town activists "raised $70,000 and worked for two years to find someone to save it," reports Eric Wilkinson of KING-TV. Last week, the newly revived paper celebrated its "first day of delivery as the La Conner Community News, keeping a journalistic tradition that has connected townspeople for more than a century."

The newspaper's new owner, Kari Mar, said she bought the paper because she "saw an opportunity to make a difference at a time when facts and accuracy are critically important," Wilkinson writes. She told Wilkinson, "The pain of not having a local newspaper was pretty widely felt. There was no place to send an obituary. The town council didn't have a way to get the word out. Firefighters were having a fundraiser. They couldn't tell anybody about it. The need for the paper was palpable."

Small newspaper closures have become almost commonplace. Wilkinson reports, "Over the past 20 years, more than 3,200 newspapers have vanished, nationwide. Since 2004 Washington state has lost 20% of its local papers. . . . The situation is so dire, that a bill is being considered [in Washington] that would tax social media platforms and search engines to help fund the state's struggling newsrooms."

Meanwhile, folks in La Conner are celebrating a special win for local journalism. "The La Conner Community News already has more than 900 subscribers in a community of fewer than 1,000 people," Wilkinson writes. Mar told him, "We have almost everybody. . . .That's pretty good."

Vilsack says legacy of his 12 years at USDA is new revenue sources that will help smaller farmers and small towns

Rural voters strongly rejected President Biden, but his administration has started programs that are already reversing the decline of rural America, says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a longtime politician who has given 12 years of his life to the job, more than anyone.

Vilsack summoned Jonathan Martin of Politico for an exit interview, and his frustration came through. “I think the challenge that we have in rural America is that we talk a lot about programs and not about vision,” he said when Martin asked what went wrong for Democrats in rural America.

“The vision is, you don’t have to get big or get out,” which has been a basis of federal agriculture policy since Richard Nixon was re-elected president in 1972, Vilsack said. “You can actually have diversity within your agriculture and in your national resource base in your rural economy and that can create enormous opportunity. And we’re investing in it.”

Vilsack cited “carbon market” payments for preventing greenhouse-gas emissions and other programs designed to help small and medium-sized farmers and boost local and regional food systems. But he said rural voters have yet to feel the impact of changes made under Biden.

“After 50 years of one approach, you can’t do this in a matter of a couple of years. You have to build the foundation. Now, the foundation has been built. The economic model is changed by virtue of the investments we’ve made in this administration. At least 10,000, probably more than that, investments have been made just in this department, in creating a different model so that small and mid-sized farming operations have an opportunity to stay in business.”

Vilsack served eight years under Barack Obama and four
under President Biden. (Associated Press photo by Carolyn Kaster)

Vilsack voiced frustration that the news media and others in Washington haven’t recognized the importance of those changes.

“Change is occurring,” he said. “It just hasn’t resonated with people like you. Or people in this city. You gotta understand the economics of this. You don’t. Nobody in your business understands it, which is the frustrating part for me. When you have a ‘get big or get out’ mentality, when you have an economy that is commodity-based, the big guys do really, really well,” but smaller producers may not.

He said 2022 was the best year ever for farm income, “but if you went out and talked to folks in rural places about that . . . that’s not how they would have seen it. It was a record year for a relatively small number of folks. So what happens, these folks are on knife’s edge, bad year comes, they have a hard time. Who is in a position to buy their farm? The larger farm or investment banks. . . . So you’ve got this model that we’ve had for 50 years that has slowly eroded economic opportunity in rural places.”

While debate about the Farm Bill is “all about reference prices” for crops, “The reference prices are about half a dozen commodities out of 100 some commodities,” Vilsack said. “We’ve created an opportunity in all 50 states, over 100 commodities. We’re paying farmers to do this. We’re giving premiums for what they’re growing and raising. It’s a brand-new concept. It’s really innovative. And it creates not only a better value for the farmer, it creates the ability to get that ecosystem market credit, to transform their waste into something more valuable.”

He added, “People out there are beginning to get it. I’ve had people come up and say, you know, for the first time, I see my kind of operation at USDA. For the first time, I see some change. I see some investment in small and mid-sized farming operations. You want to ask about legacy? That, to me, is the most important legacy.”

Vilsack said USDA “doesn’t get anywhere near the attention it deserves. Not for lack of trying, man. We tried.”

When Martin noted “the collapse of local and regional press, which would be a way to get your story out,” and cited a newspaper Vilsack knows well, the two-term Iowa governor interjected, “That’s bullshit. . . . The Des Moines Register is a shadow of what it was. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that it can’t cover what it should cover.”