For locals in East Tennessee, Dolly Parton's death is personal. Here's how local news covered the story.

There are no shortage of tributes and obituaries pouring in from all corners of the country honoring the life and legacy of Dolly Parton this week after news of her death broke on Tuesday. But news of the country music legend's passing hit especially hard in Sevier County, the East Tennessee county where Parton was from. 

She never lost sight of Sevier County over her nearly 70-year career, and contributed millions to the county over decades. She gave money to help start a local hospital in the county, which opened in 2010 with a women's health center named for Parton. She started her beloved Imagination Library in Sevier County, hoping to increase childhood literacy rates there, and her scholarships for high school and middle school students caused the dropout rate to decrease from more than 30 percent to less than 10.

Here's how outlets in Tennessee covered the news this week:

WZTV in Nashville reported that Sevier County Mayor Larry Waters and Mayor-Elect Bryan McCarter declared Aug. 26 a day of mourning in the county.

WATE in Knoxville offered a list of Parton's "major impacts" on East Tennessee, reporting that "her impact on her East Tennessee community and the world beyond is a large reason why she is loved by so many."

The Mountain Press, Sevierville's local newspaper, reported reflections from local city and county officials who had direct ties to Parton outside the connections made through her charitable giving. Pigeon Forge City Manager David Wear told the paper that Pigeon Forge, where Parton's theme park Dollywood is located, has "lost one of our own," and that "Dolly loved these mountains, she loved this community, and she never forgot where she came from." 

And the Knoxville News Sentinel offers a list of Sevier County "landmarks that pay tribute to the Queen of Country back where her story began." Included are a statue of her in downtown Sevierville where a public memorial to Parton began on Tuesday, and several locations in town that Parton frequented or performed. 

Small towns use simple fix that starts with private funds to keep high schoolers out of dead-end jobs

rootED advisors help rural students navigate educational
and employment complexities. (rootED photo)

A new program launched by billionaire investment banker Byron Trott is helping students at small-town high schools develop and execute after-high-school plans that tap into their interests and keep them out of "dead-end jobs," reports Lauren Weber of The Wall Street Journal. 

Called rootEd Alliance, Trott's program "has placed advisers in schools across seven states to fill a gaping void: 17- and 18-year-olds are expected to navigate an astoundingly complex labor market, often with little or no explicit guidance," Weber explains. 

The majority of the 280 schools that rootEd partners with "already have guidance counselors," Weber writes. But many are "overstretched with basics like sorting students’ schedules and managing the life emergencies that hit students all too often."

The program partners with more than 1,500 national
and local businesses. (rootED photo) 

By planting an advisor dedicated to providing career guidance and opportunities, students and their post-high school plans get more attention. According to Weber, that kind of focused planning is particularly important for rural students who are traditionally exposed to fewer career options and role models. Root advisers also help employers connect with potential employees to fill skilled-labor shortages. 

Through its advisors, rootED also aims to help students avoid poverty by training for careers with solid pay and promotion possibilities. Weber reports, "Once a school is staffed with a rootEd adviser, students are 54% less likely to wind up in low-skill, low-paying jobs than before." 

At schools where a rootEd advisor is working, students are more likely to pursue higher education. Weber adds, But advisors are "agnostic on whether students choose college, military service, employment or trade school," Weber reports. "The goal is for each senior to have a Plan A and ideally a Plan B." To help students develop those plans, advisors take students to different trade schools and colleges and promote scholarships.

Opinion: America isn't broken. It's a country where 'the vast majority quietly do the right thing every single day.'

Most Americans are too busy living daily life to hate
on other Americans. (Photo by Dyana Wing So, Unsplash)

TV commentary, social media or major news websites can leave readers wondering where our country went wrong and why Americans hate each other so much. But is that honestly how average Americans see their lives and each other?

Mike Allen doesn't think so. In his opinion for Axios, Allen declares that the blasts of newsy angst and misanthropic disgust are a "ubiquitous, emphatic, verifiable lie. . . . Most Americans are too busy for social media, too normal for politics, too rational to tweet."

The most American "Super Majority" isn't online 24/7 looking for ways to throw tomatoes at other busy Americans, Allen insists. They may be at their desks grinding it out, their kids' sporting events, attending a book club or helping their neighbor with lawn care, but they are not working on hating others.

"Most Americans are patriotic, hardworking, neighbor-helping, America-loving, money-giving people who don't pop off on social media or plot for power," Allen writes. "It's the terminally online news junkies who are detached from the actual reality."

Allen writes, "Most people agree on most things, most of the time. And the data validates this, time and time again. . . . The system feels broken. The people are not."

Instead of allowing any other people to tell you who Americans are, look around you. Allen writes, "In a given year, you see hundreds of people frequently enough to appraise their character. Are they good people? Would they help shovel after a snowstorm or lift groceries for an aging neighbor? . . .We bet the answer is a resounding yes. This is America's Super Majority."

In 2024, Americans "gave $592.5 billion to charity — a record, with individuals accounting for two-thirds of it," Allen adds. "This isn't a broken nation. This is a generous one, where the vast majority quietly do the right thing every single day."

Next time you consider how you feel about your country and "your screen tells you America is broken, close it," Allen writes. "Walk outside. Talk to your neighbor. Coach the team. Go to the town meeting. That's the real America — and it's a hell of a lot better than the one being manufactured for clicks, clout and cash."

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. 

Rural Assembly Everywhere 2025 is all about rural people and regions flourishing even when resources are limited

Rural Assembly Everywhere is less than two weeks away. 

It's time to rev your rural engines and sign up for the virtual Rural Assembly Everywhere event happening on Wednesday, Sept. 17, from 1 to 2:30 p.m., E.T.

Rural leaders, community members, advocates and allies are invited to join this free, virtual gathering. Register here.

Virtual participants will have access to all programming, speaker panels and real-time chat with rural leaders across the country. The event is broadcast live via Crowdcast, which allows participants to ask questions and engage in discussions with one another before and during the event. Find more details here.

Everywhere 2025 highlights this year's theme: "A Bigger Pie: Cultivating Abundance in a Time of Scarcity." Event conversations and resources will delve into actionable ways to shift scarcity mindsets, enabling more rural communities to continue growing with renewed and resilient spirits.

The Rural Assembly and Everywhere 2025 are part of the Center for Rural Strategies.

Philanthropies pledge $37 million to help 'at-risk' PBS and NPR stations stay afloat after Congress cancels funding

The funding aims to help rural and underserved areas
keep their stations afloat. (PBS graphic)

When federal lawmakers voted last month to cancel nearly $1.1 billion in Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding, the futures of PBS and NPR stations looked bleak. But help from a group of philanthropists who have banded together to provide financial lifelines is already underway.

The Knight, MacArthur and Ford foundations, along with other major philanthropies, have pledged "nearly $37 million in emergency funding to keep public media stations afloat," reports Scott Nover of The Washington Post. A consultancy, Public Media Company, will manage millions of pledged dollars through a "bridge fund" aimed at helping "most at-risk public radio and TV stations across the country." Other donations will go directly to "stations and programs in the public media ecosystem."

Tim Isgitt, Public Media Company’s CEO, said his "fundraising goal is $100 million over two years to stave off the full effects of federal defunding, which he said immediately threatens 115 stations serving 43 million people," Nover writes. 

Isgitt told Nover, "They’re all in rural and underserved areas of the country with very little access to philanthropy and other news sources. The idea is to move resources to stabilize these at-risk stations, but also to help put them on some sort of pathway to sustainability.”

The Knight Foundation said its primary objective is to "help the organizations that derive 30% of their annual budgets or more from federal funding doled out by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which recently announced it is shutting down in the face of defunding," Nover reports. 

Q & A: Carnegie Foundation president shares how changes in education could benefit rural students and places

Tim Knowles wants to shift American education in ways that
could help rural communities. (Courtesy photo via the Yonder)

Every president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is asked to cast themselves into the future and make decisions about what will happen in five or even 10 years. For Tim Knowles, the foundation's 10th president, that means rethinking our educational systems and creating ways to develop rural talent and smaller-community success. An edited version of Knowles Q & A with Nick Fourienzos of The Daily Yonder is shared below.

Fouriezos: How do our current systems often miss rural students?
Knowles: Communities consistently prioritize the same core skills: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, curiosity, civic engagement, creativity, and hard work.

Think about a student in rural Iowa who wakes up at 4 a.m., works on the family farm, gets to school on time every day, does their homework, maintains good grades, and holds a weekend job. Those activities aggregated up, are clear signals of persistence. We need to figure out both how to capture that and then make it legible to employers and the post-secondary sector.

Fouriezos: How is Carnegie rethinking its classifications for post-secondary institutions?
Knowles: We’re introducing a new universal classification focused on economic opportunity. For every institution that receives federal money — about 4,000 of them — we’ll look at two main factors: access and earnings outcomes eight years after graduation.

Fouriezos: How will rural education and students be affected?
Knowles: This could particularly benefit rural institutions that serve disproportionate numbers of low-income families. About 25 states already have laws or regulations connected to the Carnegie classifications, and federal departments like NSF, NIH, and NASA use them to direct resources.

This is about making the post-secondary sector a much more vital engine for social and economic mobility. And in rural areas particularly, we need to better recognize and support the unique ways that schools and colleges contribute to their communities.

Fouriezos: Why do you feel like there is more of an appetite for actually changing higher education now, compared to in the past?
Knowles: The cost of higher education is out of reach for millions of Americans. Confidence in higher education is at an all-time low. And there are fewer college-age students in general. . . . You’re also seeing a massive lean toward Career Technical Education, with many conservative states making it more available to more students.

We need to ensure our systems are valuing and measuring the right things. By focusing on [educational] outcomes that matter, and directing public policy and public capital to the places that create genuine opportunity — even if they’re doing it in ways that don’t fit traditional models — the nation can accelerate economic opportunity for everyone.

National program wants to help newsrooms add more than 50 positions; news organizations can apply for help now

Report for America, a national service program, wants to help newsrooms across the United States -- and particularly in rural areas -- add more than 50 positions next summer. Applications are open for newsrooms interested in hosting journalists for up to three years, with part of the salary paid by the Report for America program.

According to Sam Kille, vice president of communications for Report for America, the program is designed to help newsrooms report on under-covered issues and communities.

Kille writes, "Through the program, host newsrooms receive:
-- Diverse, talented slate of candidates to choose from
-- Subsidized salary support for up to three years
-- Local fundraising coaching and resources, including the opportunity for no-cost fiscal sponsorship to accept donations
-- Extra training and mentoring for journalists

“We recognize the difficulties modern newsrooms encounter, from recruiting skilled journalists to offering the necessary mentorship and support,” said Earl Johnson, vice president of recruitment and alumni engagement at Report for America. “Partnering with Report for America enables local newsrooms to address critical news gaps, diversify their staff, and foster sustainable local backing within their communities.”

The application deadline is Sept. 13. More information about how the program works can be found here.

Report for America wants to expand its reach into rural areas where news gaps are prominent, and newsrooms owned or led by journalists of color. 

Kille specifies that newsrooms must demonstrate the following to Report for America:

Need — "Explain why the beat you’re proposing is vital to your audience and the community. We’re particularly interested in important beats that no other newsroom in your area is covering, or covering well. Also, why do you need our help to support this position?"
Support — "We look for newsrooms where corps members will receive good editing and mentoring, so they can do their best work."
A commitment to inclusion — "Newsrooms demonstrating a commitment to inclusion and supporting a diverse staff are important in our selection process."
A commitment to fundraising — "Where applicable, we ask our host newsrooms to try to raise money from local funders to pay for part of their corps member’s salary. Our development team can help you do this. We believe local philanthropy is key to strong local newsrooms and want to work with partners that believe this, too."

Report for America will help to provide up to half of the journalist’s salary and offer newsrooms tools to raise funds to support their share. Nearly $30 million has been raised by local newsrooms with Report for America’s assistance.

Report for America has matched more than 650 corps members with hundreds of local newspapers, public radio stations, digital platforms and television outlets since its launch in 2017.

Report for America will hold online information sessions with newsrooms and partner organizations throughout the application period. For more information, visit www.reportforamerica.org or send an email to: recruitment@reportforamerica.org.

Philanthropy organizations can help rural companies fill skilled labor positions through internships, other programs

A student intern at KEITH in Madras, Oregon.
(KEITH courtesy photo via The Daily Yonder)

Over the past two decades, finding and retaining skilled manufacturing talent has become increasingly difficult. The challenges seen at KEITH Manufacturing Company in Madas, Oregon, are similar to other areas of the country where the sector can't find enough workers, reports Nick Flouriezos of The Daily Yonder. Mike Feigner, KEITH's plant manager, told him, "I've been doing this job since 2006, and it seems like you always have a labor problem. . . . We suck up a lot of that skilled labor that is a great fit for us quickly, and then we're trying to fit it with other people who maybe aren't looking for that long-term commitment to learning those skills."

If companies can't find long-term workers, retention and training soak up more company resources. "The company has no choice but to train and support homegrown talent if it wants to continue producing the self-unloading conveyor belt system that has become a staple in waste and recycling trucks worldwide," Flouriezos explains. "One thing that’s helped? A partnership with Oregon STEM and its Spark Oregon earn-and-learn initiative that helped pay for KEITH to employ four local high school interns for the summer."

Madras, pop. 7,500, is located in
Jefferson County, Ore. (Wikipedia map)

Earn-and-learn money "helped the students justify doing the internship when they could have been making more working full-time at the local McDonald's for the summer, Feigner says. Working three days a week for two months, the students were exposed to everything from welding and forklifts to assembly and engineering work with the R&D team," Flouriezos reports. At the end of the first internship, the company was able to hire one of the interns. Feigner told him, "I think this is exactly what the country needs. . . .Even if we get one student every two or three years that ends up being a direct-hire, I would call that a win."

What worked in Oregon exemplifies the ingenuity many philanthropy organizations use to address shortages. "Philanthropies with a technology focus or background have been particularly creative in funding education and workforce programs," Fouriezos adds. "That’s fitting, says Matt Dunne, executive director of the Center on Rural Innovation based in his hometown of Hartland, Vt." Dune told Fouriezos: “If you dig into it, a lot of it has to do with the economy and the impacts that a completely unequal recovery from the 2008 recession led to. And if you look at the driver of that divide, it really comes down to the winners and losers of the knowledge economy driven by technology."

At times, philanthropy can do what government or private funding cannot. Josh Elder, vice president and head of grant-making at The Siegel Family Endowment, told Fouriezos: "We embrace the idea that philanthropy should operate as society’s risk capital. . . . We want to be able to support early-stage things that others might not look at."

Effort to raise $1 billion for local news, which just got past $500 million, says it will raise the rest of it at the local level

When the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation recruited the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and other major philanthropies to a campaign to raise money to reinvigorate local news, their hope was that they could get pledges for $1 billion over the next five years. They raised more than $500 million, but their reach exceeded their grasp. Now Press Forward is going local.

“Our goal is to raise the next $500 million at the local level,” MacArthur President John Palfrey said in a press release Friday. “For local news to be sustainable over the long term, communities will need to stand up and support their local news providers. We will need to invest in local news the same way that we invest in arts and culture, hospitals, or our alma maters. We are building a movement.”

Press Forward announced its first local chapters in Alaska, Minnesota, Kansas, Philadelphia and Springfield, Illinois. Palfrey wrote about the effort in The Atlantic, which gave his piece a pithy headline: "We’re making a $500 million investment. The other half is up to you."

He wrote, “Democracy in America is in crisis. The dramatic decline of local news is a major part of this crisis, and there are great ideas and organizations to fund, across all 50 states, to address it. These models include public media operations, nonprofit media start-ups, and for-profit companies. They include television, radio, and digital-only outlets as well as intriguing combinations of all three.”

Most of those efforts have focused on urban areas, but the National Trust for Local News is expanding its rural footprint, and plans to buy more existing media outlets, which is sees as the only way to accomploish a broad rescue of journalism in rural America.

In Press Forward's identification of three types of local ecosystems -- flouishing, expanding and nascent -- rural America's place was clear: “Too many Americans live in news deserts, in communities at risk of becoming news deserts, or in places where existing news sources are struggling to meet the information needs of audiences. In some of these places, a donor or group of donors are coming together to support local news and information for the first time.” Those include the Press Forward chapters in Alaska, Minnesota and Springfield, Ill.

Press Forward said its national donors will announce the first round of grantmaking in December, and issue grantmaking guidelines early next year. To express interest in forming a chapter, go here.

National Trust for Local News is taking nonprofit newspaper journalism rural; more acquisitions are in the works

This is the author's latest Sustaining Rural Journalism column for Publishers' Auxiliary, the monthly newspaper of the National Newspaper Association.

By Al Cross
Director emeritus, Institute for Rural Journalism, University of Kentucky

Nonprofit newspaper journalism, until now largely a feature of urban areas, is going rural – especially if the National Trust for Local News keeps up what it’s doing and plans to do.

“By December, we will be the fifth largest independent newspaper operator in the country,” among those that are not publicly traded or owned by hedge funds, the trust’s chief portfolio officer, Ross McDuffie, told the New England Newspaper and Press Association conference Oct. 19.

The trust recently bought 22 newspapers in Maine, most of them rural weeklies, and two years ago bought 24 papers along Colorado’s Front Range. McDuffie said in an interview that the trust plans to announce acquisitions in Georgia next month. The Knight Foundation recently gave the trust $5 million to create a newsroom in Macon, where McDuffie was publisher of the Macon Telegraph.

The trust says it is exploring opportunities in Kentucky, Montana and New Mexico, and wants to create 10 independent, state-level conservancies serving 475 counties and 20 million people in the next five years, with a goal of having one in every state. It says its fundamental purpose is to “keep local news in local hands.”

­­­

Ross McDuffie

At the National Summit on Journalism in Rural America in July, McDuffie said state-level nonprofits are “the most sustainable path forward for rural newsrooms.”

He told NENPA’s online meeting, “Our vision is to build and operate a federation of nonprofit subsidiaries that can sustain high-quality community journalism in small communities across the nation,” and to see that “established trusted news organizations thrive and remain grounded in the communities they serve.”

The trust gets its money to buy newspapers from donors, ranging from local individuals to major foundations. Those listed on its website include George Soros’ Open Society Foundations; in August the publication Semafor reported that OSF and Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, who is not listed on the trust’s website, “played a central role” in the Maine purchase. The trust denied that OSF committed money for the purchase, and OSF said its grants to the trust “have not included money for specific projects.”

The trust wouldn’t comment on Wyss (who earlier tried to buy Tribune Co.) and said it would tell more about the funders when its Maine advisory board was constituted in September. Asked Oct. 24 when that was going to happen, McDuffie said the board will make that decision and its membership still hasn’t been finalized, but “There is a real desire to have that constituted by the end of the year.”

The trust is still raising startup money in Maine. McDuffie told NENPA that the trust has raised $18.1 million for a two-year, $22 million “transformation” plan that includes unifying three operating businesses and expanding commercial printing, because “We believe in print and its longevity and its ability to serve an audience.”

He said the trust wants to “rejuvenate” its community newspapers, most of which are weeklies; “significantly boost” household penetration; and raise funds from “a very large and curious audience” in Maine. But one of his PowerPoint slides said the goal is to operate “as a sustainable news enterprise that does not require ongoing general support from philanthropy.”

As with for-profit enterprises, bigger is better, McDuffie said: “As we scale rapidly, we are uncovering more opportunities to leverage efficiencies of scale . . . that were only previously available to large media conglomerates or corporations,” such as buying power for paper, employee benefits, digital transformation and attracting talent.

He said the trust has raised $30 million across geographical, ideological, generational and programmatic lines that usually separate philanthropies, and “Funders are having a consistent and palpable reaction to our narrative within the first few minutes of hearing our story.”

Much of the philanthropy for local journalism has gone to startups, mostly online, but they are almost entirely based in urban areas, and McDuffie and others believe philanthropists need to look at funding the purchase of legacy newspapers to prevent the creation of news deserts in rural areas.

“With sufficient capital and expertise, conserving and transforming existing news sources IS an efficient way to strengthen democracy and support that civic and social fabric of small towns and rural communities,” he told NENPA, emphasizing the verb.

“These communities need reinvestment in the newsgathering teams that have spent decades of building trust and credibility,” he continued. “The creation of these state-level conservancies amalgamate legacy ownership into one operating model and unlock efficiencies of scale while keeping quality local news as the North Star of decision-making, as opposed to what’s happening at other larger, conglomerate, corporate media, where profits or shareholder value are typically the nexus of decision-making. It’s a difference of motivation.”

He said the need is greatest in the Southeast, where the trust estimates that 23 million people are at risk of losing their only local news provider. That’s more than half its estimate of 45 million in 1,424 counties – 45 percent of the nation’s counties. The estimates are based on counties with median household income below the national average.

The trust figures that in every state in the Southeast (including both Virginias), more than half of counties are at risk of becoming permanent news deserts. It estimates that is also the case in Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Nevada.

To the NENPA attendees, McDuffie rattled off the impact of news deserts, as established by research: higher taxes and borrowing costs, more government employees, decreased visibility of government decision-making, and more corruption and misuse of public funds.

And there’s a more fundamental threat. “There’s no democracy that can function without a shared understanding of what’s true and what’s not,” McDuffie said, in one of the pithier versions of that warning I have heard.

In an era of misinformation, including disinformation by political interests who want to control narratives to serve their own interests, news consumers will be skeptical of out-of-state outfits that use billionaires’ money to buy their local newspapers. So the trust will need a broad range of in-state funders, and boards that will help insulate the funders from the newsrooms.

McDuffie says its news outlets follow the transparency guidelines of the Institute for Nonprofit News, requiring website publication of donors of $5,000 or more, and the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. He said funders know the trust’s editorial-independence and non-interference polices, and “Our local newsroom staff are the only people who will decide what stories to pursue, the timing of those stories, and their content.”

In a distrustful information environment, the trust’s newsrooms may have to prove that every day. But if they do, the nonprofit option is a promising long-term path for sustaining rural journalism.

Al Cross edited and managed rural newspapers before covering politics for the Louisville Courier Journal and serving as president of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Bloomberg says he plans to spend another $500 million to 'finish the job on coal' by going after power plants

Photo by Albert Hyseni, Unsplash

In a bid to hasten the end of the U.S. coal mining, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said he will pump $500 million into "the next phase of his energy transition campaign, aiming to shut down 'every last' coal plant in the United States and slash gas-fired capacity in half by 2030," reports Valerie Volcovici of Reuters. The money is intended to bolster Bloomberg's Beyond Carbon initiative and "aims to 'finish the job on coal' by working with state and local organizations to force the closure of the roughly 150 coal plants that have not yet retired, slash current gas generation in half and block the construction of new gas-fired plants."

Bloomberg's decade-long investment into ending coal energy has already topped $500 million through the "Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, which originally aimed to retire 30% of the U.S. coal fleet by 2020," Volcovici writes. "The campaign ended up accelerating the retirement of over 60% of coal plants by that year and putting $85 million toward a similar mission to fight the expansion of petrochemical plants in the U.S."

Bloomberg, who is the U.N. Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, told Reuters: "By working with our partners across the country, we hope to transform the way we power America by moving beyond fossil fuels and replacing them with renewable energy." Volcovici reports, "The money would support litigation brought against utilities and power companies by grassroots groups, state and local policy advocacy and financing to assist local communities with coal plant closures, Bloomberg Philanthropies said."

Deadline today to qualify for a subsidized reporter from Report for America, who could be a local recruit

By Al Cross

Director emeritus, Institute for Rural Journalism, University of Kentucky

Report for America has become well known for sending promising young journalists to news outlets all over the nation, including rural areas. But did you know that a news outlet selected for the program may recommend a preferred candidate for consideration as their reporter or photographer?

We learned about that possibility during the webinar we hosted with Earl Johnson, RFA's vice president for recruitment. It could appeal to rural news outlets that may want their journalist to have some familiarity with the region.

Johnson said local news outlets may be aware of good reporter candidates who have served as interns or worked previously in their newsroom, or perhaps for other outlets, who could be good reporters for them. In such cases, he said, if selected as a host newsroom with RFA, the news outlet may recommend a reporter as a preferred candidate to fill their corps member position.

The preferred candidate would still be required to apply to RFA and be selected for the program. This approach allows newsrooms to partner with RFA to identify the best reporter candidates from rural communities. Preferred candidates can include current part-time newsroom staffers—journalists the newsroom has wanted to bring on full time but hasn’t been able to—but they can’t be current full-time staffers.

RFA says successful newsroom applicants get:
● Service-minded reporters, photographers and videographers
● Diverse, hand-picked candidates from a pool of early-career and experienced journalists
● Subsidized salary support for the reporter: 50% the first year (up to $25,000), 33% the second year
● Local fundraising coaching and resources, including the opportunity for fiscal sponsorship to accept donations
● Extra training and mentoring for journalists

For more information, contact the recruitment team at recruitment@reportforamerica.org

Talk with Report for America in a webinar today about getting a reporter next year; application deadline Sept. 18

Calling all rural newsrooms—there’s still time to sign up for this afternoon's Report for America information webinar at 4:15 p.m. ET/3:15 p.m. CT MT/1:15 p.m. The webinar will be hosted by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog. To gain access, send an email to Institute Director Emeritus Al Cross at al.cross@uky.edu.

"Report for America's efforts to place talented journalists in rural newsrooms have been limited partly by a shortage of applications from those newsrooms," Cross said. "This is a chance for rural editors and publishers to talk directly with Earl Johnson, RFA's vice president for recruitment, about the program." The deadline to apply for a reporter who would start next July is Sept. 18.

RFA said in a recent announcement, "While all local news organizations are eligible to apply, Report for America looks to expand its reach into rural areas. On the application, prospective newsrooms should identify specific gaps in coverage in the community, drawing attention to under-covered communities or issues."

In April, RFA announced the pairing of 60 journalists and newsrooms, 16 of them with rural employers or beats. A story on that is here. RFA says successful newsroom applicants get:

● Service-minded reporters, photographers and videographers
● Diverse, hand-picked candidates from a pool of emerging and experienced journalists
● Salary subsidies: 50% the first year, 33% the second year
● Local fundraising coaching and resources, including the opportunity for fiscal sponsorship to accept donations
● Extra training and mentoring for journalists

RFA says it understands the challenges today’s newsrooms face, not only finding talented journalists but also providing the mentorship and support they might seek. It says, "By partnering with Report for America, local newsrooms are better positioned to cover important issues, diversify their newsrooms, and grow sustainable, local support within their communities." More information about how the program works can be found here.

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

Newsrack in Monterey, Va. (PBS)

By Al Cross, director emeritus

Institute for Rural Journalism, University of Kentucky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk with Report for America in a webinar Thursday about getting a reporter next year; application deadline Sept. 18

Report for America is making a special effort to place more of its reporting corps members in rural newsrooms for up to three years, and will hold a one-hour webinar for rural news media at 4:15 p.m. ET Thursday, Aug. 31.

The webinar will be hosted by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog. To gain access, send an email to Institute Director Emeritus Al Cross at al.cross@uky.edu.

"Report for America's efforts to place talented journalists in rural newsrooms have been limited partly by a shortage of applications from those newsrooms," Cross said. "This is a chance for rural editors and publishers to talk directly with Earl Johnson, RFA's vice president for recruitment, about the program." The deadline to apply for a reporter who would start next July is Sept. 18.

RFA said in a recent announcement, "While all local news organizations are eligible to apply, Report for America looks to expand its reach into rural areas. On the application, prospective newsrooms should identify specific gaps in coverage in the community, drawing attention to under-covered communities or issues."

In April, RFA announced the pairing of 60 journalists and newsrooms, 16 of them with rural employers or beats. A story on that is here. RFA says successful newsroom applicants get:

● Service-minded reporters, photographers and videographers
● Diverse, hand-picked candidates from a pool of emerging and experienced journalists
● Salary subsidies: 50% the first year, 33% the second year
● Local fundraising coaching and resources, including the opportunity for fiscal sponsorship to accept donations
● Extra training and mentoring for journalists

RFA says it understands the challenges today’s newsrooms face, not only finding talented journalists but also providing the mentorship and support they might seek. It says, "By partnering with Report for America, local newsrooms are better positioned to cover important issues, diversify their newsrooms, and grow sustainable, local support within their communities." More information about how the program works can be found here.

Deadline is Sept. 18 for newsrooms to apply for reporter co-funded by Report for America, which wants rural applicants

Local newsrooms that would like to host a Report for America reporting corps member starting next summer have until Sept. 18 to apply, and the national service program is making a special effort to get more rural newsrooms involved.

RFA places talented journalists in local newsrooms for up to three years to report on under-covered issues and communities, including rural areas. It says the successful newsrooms get:

● Service-minded reporters, photographers and videographers
● Diverse, hand-picked candidates from a pool of emerging and experienced journalists
● Salary subsidies: 50% the first year, 33% the second year
● Local fundraising coaching and resources, including the opportunity for fiscal sponsorship to accept donations
● Extra training and mentoring for journalists

More information about how the program works can be found here. News organizations can also learn more by attending one of RFA's scheduled information sessions. One specially designed for rural newsrooms will be announced soon. The current list of sessions is here.

RFA says it understands the challenges today’s newsrooms face, not only finding talented journalists but also providing the mentorship and support they might seek. It says, "By partnering with Report for America, local newsrooms are better positioned to cover important issues, diversify their newsrooms, and grow sustainable, local support within their communities."

RFA adds, "While all local news organizations are eligible to apply, Report for America looks to expand its reach into rural areas. On the application, prospective newsrooms should identify specific gaps in coverage in the community, drawing attention to under-covered communities or issues."

In April, RFA announced the pairing of 60 journalists and newsrooms, 16 of them with rural employers or beats. A story on that is here.

National Trust for Local News officer says nonprofits best hope for rural news; reports on survey of rural publishers

State-level nonprofits or "conservancies" are "the most sustainable path forward for rural newsrooms," the chief portfolio officer of the National Trust for Local News said Friday at the National Summit on Journalism in Rural America.

Ross McDuffie

Ross McDuffie spoke four days before the Trust announced creation of its second such conservancy by buying most of the newspapersowned by the owner of most newspapers in Maine, the second most rural state by population. Two years ago it bought 24 rural and suburban papers in Colorado, and it says it is working to make similar purchases in other states.

McDuffie said that a nonprofit umbrella organization "creates the scale without trivializing the localness that makes these organizations special and essential to the communities that they serve. . . .You unlock efficiencies of scale while keeping quality local news as its North Star, as opposed to what happens most often at these publicly traded corporate media houses where the North Star is profit or shareholder value."

McDuffie's remarks came with his report on a survey of 39 rural newspaper publishers that found 10 of them did not expect to be in operation five years from now, while only one expressed concern that their newspaper would close in the next 12 months.

The survey was conducted online June 6-23 among a random sample drawn from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues' database of rural newspapers. Institute Director Al Cross noted that the 39 were "people who are willing to respond to a survey," and McDuffie said they "are likely going to be more optimistic and and wanting to share that in a survey."

The survey found that 15% of the publishers' newspapers had no digital presence at all, and "over half had fewer than 500 digital paying subscribers," McDuffie said. "These results point to a lot of work that's needed, but I'm an optimistic guy, and I see a lot of room for optimism here. . . . There's lots of room for growth in revenue diversification right there."

While rural newspapers still survive mainly on display advertising, and increasingly public-notice ads, "We cannot sit idly and push off and kick the can down the road on building our digital future because we have those revenue streams," McDuffie said. "Now we have to take advantage of them and the profit that they do generate, even if it is minimal, and recognize that as runway to help future-proof organizations."

McDuffie said the survey showed that "These publishers are very dedicated to their communities and have spent years and decades cultivating the trust of those communities and the readers in those communities. Their challenge now is finding opportunities to collaborate at scale beyond the sharing of just content, or maybe revenue sharing and agreements on ad sales. Operational efficiencies are very, very hard to come by for this group."

At the same time, he added, "These smaller news organizations are fertile ground for product innovation, because we can experiment with purpose at minimal cost. We can do that at small scale. And we can fail. And that that be okay, right? We an fail forward, I think, is the way to look at it. and we can try different things quickly. And at minimal cost."

McDuffie, a former executive with Lee Enterprises and the McClatchy Co., said there is more potential in existing publications than "ground-up restarts," which most rural communities are unlikely to support. "These communities need reinvestment in the newsgathering teams that have spent decades, and in many cases centuries, building trust and community and and credibility in those communities," he said.

He said their success will depend not only on "the communities they serve," but "also the greater philanthropic community," from which the Trust gets its money to buy newspapers. "We've got to find alternative sources for funding and transformation," he said. "There also has to be access to subject-matter expertise . . . without adding additional burden to the expense line."

And where will rural newspapers, which already find it difficult to find qualified staff, attract talent even if they have philanthropic money to do it? "The combination of lower cost of living can make rural newsrooms great training grounds for new reporters, as long as those reporters see an opportunity to hone their skills and experiment with new tech and with innovation and local news," McDuffie said.

"I don't think that these reporters are are choosing to not work in rural news organizations because they just have some, you know, some adverse relationship with rural America. I think that what they want to see is, they're gonna join an organization where they can learn where they can experiment with new things where they can push the limits, maybe a little bit where they can put together an email newsletter strategy and be a part of that growth. We have a story to tell for young journalistic talent in rural newsrooms, but we have to be really aggressive in telling it and going after top talent."

Masthead Maine papers sold to National Trust for Local News, which will own and operate most of the state's papers

Reade Brower

Maine news-media mogul Reade Brower has sold most of his newspapers to the National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit that seeks to "keep local news in local hands" and made a similar purchase of 24 papers along the Front Range in Colorado two years ago. Brower has owned most of the state's newspapers, and now the Trust will. It is looking at other states with an eye to similar purchases.

"The sale price was not disclosed, but it encompasses five of the state's six daily papers and 17 of its weeklies," reports Rachel Ohm of the Portland Press Herald, the state's largest daily and part of the sale. It includes all the assets of Masthead Maine, including the Sun Journal in Lewiston, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, the Morning Sentinel in Waterville, the Times Record in Brunswick and 17 weekly papers in southern and western Maine, including the Forecaster group."

Elisabeth Hansen Shapiro

The deal is set to close in July. Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, CEO and co-founder of the trust, "said the papers will continue to be managed by Masthead Maine CEO Lisa DeSisto and her staff," Ohn writes. Hansen Shapiro told her, "Our overall framework and set of values is that local news is really critical to communities being able to hang together and function well. . . . We have an overall set of principles and strategies for sustainability and for enhancing the quality of local service, but all the details of what that means for the papers is really something we're going to be working closely with Lisa and working with community members on."

Brower told Ohm: "This is the most independent route I think I could have taken that maintains both the independence of the press and continuity for staff and readers. I believe they want to continue to run this as a sustainable business, which I like, and I don't believe they will try and drain resources, which I like."

Steve Greenlee, executive editor of the Portland Press Herald and its Maine Sunday Telegram, said he viewed the sale as a win for the future of Maine's news industry: "This is the ideal outcome for us, and it's an amazing opportunity. . . . Those of us who devote our lives to journalism do it to serve the public good, and now our business model will support that mission entirely. This may be the most important moment in the history of Maine journalism."

The News Guild of Maine, which represents workers at the papers, said it was thankful that Brower had chosen to “pursue a nonprofit business model rather than sell his companies to the bad actors that have decimated news organizations across the country. We see the nonprofit model as one that can better sustain journalism’s dual nature as both a consumer product and a public good.”

Brower held onto six coastal weeklies, Lori Valigrar of the Bangor Daily News reports: The Ellsworth American, The Mount Desert Islander in Bar Harbor, The Courier-Gazette in Rockland, The Republican Journal in Belfast, The Camden Herald and The Free Press in Camden, where Brower lives. Publisher Chris Crockett "said he was not given an explanation about why his group of papers was not included in the sale." The Associated Press notes, "Brower purchased MaineToday Media, the parent company of the Press Herald, the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, in 2015 and added newspaper groups and newspapers over the next several years."

Digital rural newsroom helps fill gaps left by shorthanded local papers, allowing them to use its in-depth reporting

The Border Belt Independent covers Bladen, Columbus, Robeson and Scotland 
counties in southern North Carolina. (Illustration by Xandr Brown, The Daily Yonder)

Police took a drunk man to his girlfriend's home, he killed her, and no reporting ensued. Questions?

"Mandy Chardoudi's mother was murdered by her ex-boyfriend on November 17, 2018. Chardoudi was shocked to learn nearly four years later in a Robeson County courtroom that her mother's murderer had not made his own way to her mom's house. He had been delivered to her doorstep by an on-duty Lumberton police officer. . . . Bonnie Wathey had sent the tip to a local paper on behalf of her friend, Mandy Chardoudi, whose first inquiry to the paper had gotten no traction," reports Xandr Brown of The Daily Yonder. "Sometimes news outlets consciously avoid doing stories. But other times, it's a matter of being strapped for reporters and resources. Those gaps in coverage can be harder to fill in rural areas."

Sarah Nagem reported Mandy Chardoudi’s
story. (Courtesy photo via The Daily Yonder)

Wathey did get a response from "an independent newsroom that covers four southeastern counties of North Carolina," Brown reports. "The Border Belt Independent is a nonprofit news organization that publishes a weekly digital paper with in-depth stories. Sarah Nagem, the editor of the publication, reported the story. The article went viral, circulating to news outlets statewide."

The Independent fills gaps that small, rural newspapers often don't have reporters to cover, Brown writes: "Publishing an in-depth story about the performance of local law enforcement shows why newsrooms like the Border Belt Independent are important. Nagem said that lack of local journalism capacity can be a big problem." She told Brown, "I think that, like other rural communities across America, we have elected leaders and county managers and town managers who have gotten away for a really long time with not talking to the media and not being very transparent. . . . That's one of the areas where we can help the most."

Border Belt Independent Publisher Les High

While traditional papers focus on day-to-day events, the Independent's award-winning publisher, Les High, sees it as "a dual service, providing information directly to the community and giving unique local content to the region's newspapers," Brown reports. Its four counties were once centers of the tobacco industry and textile manufacturing. . . . Today, the Border Belt Independent is helping cover the ways residents are redefining the area in positive ways — like reviving the counties' agricultural roots."

The partnership shows a dynamic shift in newspaper management. Penelope Abernathy, visiting jouirnalism professor at Northwestern University, told Brown, "In the old days, journalists on different publications competed with one another. We have lost so many journalists over the last 15 years, almost 60% of journalists. . . . Whether you're working on a digital startup site or on a traditional newspaper, a wise editor understands that the only way you're going to be able to cover what needs to be covered is to collaborate." Brown notes, "The Border Belt Independent allows local papers to republish its stories for free. It can do that because it has found other funding supporting its mission of serving rural communities." That's mainly from foundations.