Interested in rural reporting? Attend the live, virtual launch of the Rural Reporter's Notebook podcast and learn more.

For people curious about rural reporting or want to know more about how other news sources approach it, the Rural Journalism Collective is launching the Rural Reporter's Notebook podcast on Wednesday, May 14 at 2 p.m. (Eastern Time) with a live recording that includes a Q&A session with podcast hosts Claire Carlson and Julia Tilton from The Daily Yonder.

Anyone interested can attend this live, virtual event. Register here.

The podcast on May 14 will highlight how Carlson and Tilton interview their featured guest. The two will explain their processes during and after the interview. Then Caroline Carlson, senior digital editor of the Daily Yonder, will join the show and share details about launching and stewarding this bi-weekly podcast. The Q&A will follow.

The bi-weekly podcast will feature Claire Carlson and Tipton discussing news stories big and small and what they mean for rural communities. 

New podcast aims for 'a different discourse' about rural U.S.

(Photo by Judith Prins, Unsplashed)

There's a lot more to "rural" than row-crop farmers, shriveling towns and political conservatism. There are smart people raising the world's food, driving industry changes and finding ways to reinvigorate their hometowns. That spirit of growth and ingenuity is core to a new podcast from The Brookings Institution, "Reimagine Rural," reports Kristi Eaton of The Daily Yonder.

"The narrative that we often hear about rural America is one of decline or political divisions," podcast leader Tony Pipa, senior fellow at the institution's Center for Sustainable Development, told Eaton. "And to my mind, there is a lot of innovation, a lot of creativity, and a lot of people working together in rural America. We’re not hearing about that."

The first podcast episode presents Shamokin, Pennsylvania, a coal community where Pipa went to elementary school. He gave Eaton some highlights: “It’s a town that’s been on a long, slow, steady decline since the 1960s when anthracite coal left . . . However, through mine reclamation, they have pieced together 8,000 acres and turned it into a park for motorized vehicles like ATVs and motorcycles. . . . I was really looking for places where there’s forward momentum, and there’s a group of people who are working together to kind of create that vision and move forward. I wanted to show a diversity of places. And show off the diversity of rural America.”

The podcast offers examples of how rural communities can move forward. "Things need to start at the local level," Pipa told Eaton. "We have to be willing to be patient and invest patiently over time . . . include the role of the private sector as well as a theme around the sense of hope for the long haul."

The podcast hopes to catch the ears of policymakers. Pipa said, "I hope that sets us into a different discourse and dialogue, even politically, on what it means to be rural and the value that rural America provides to the United States as a whole."

Experts' advice to papers: Take more risks, get outside help, create ad agencies, cooperate with other news publishers

Community newspapers need to take more risks, cooperate with other news publishers, and call on people outside the industry for advice about digital adaptation, said speakers at a July 14 webinar sponsored by e-commerce platform Vendasta and the Local Media Association.

"Our industry has a history of avoiding risk, but now newspapers must be risk-takers, in a calculated way, community newspaper consultant John Newby said: "Risk is part of doing business. . . . If you're not risking, you're not trying. The greater risk is not taking the risks."

Risks must be calculated, Newby said, and Mike Blinder, owner of Editor & Publisher magazine, offered a guideline: "Fail fast, fail cheap."

Newby said the industry also has a poor record of bringing in help from the outside, and needs to reverse that, too, as it converts to primarily digital operations: "I'm not sure we have the leadership in our industry, to be honest with you, to make those transitions."

Blinder said there is no one leader to follow, but several good examples, including Hearst's strong sales of digital subscriptions in Connecticut, Adams Publishing Group's success with video, Pamplin Media Group's revenue from sponsored content, and Hometown News Media Group in Florida "figuring out the perfect way to make digital agencies profitable." He called in-house ad agencies "a creative force that solves the advertisers' problems."

Newby said traditional news media are "missing a lot of opportunity right now" by not creating their own advertising agencies. He said some local chambers of commerce have started advertising agencies because local newspapers are not meeting their needs of local businesses.

"If a chamber has to create an ad agency because a newspaper isn't fulfilling what their customers want, what does that tell us?" Newby asked. "Suck it up. You gotta have these products, you gotta have these things to offer."

Newspaper consultant Gordon Borrell has said he expects advertising to be 90 percent digital by 2032. Blinder said that doesn't mean print will disappear, nor should it.

Blinder said "digital is much more profitable for me than cutting down a tree and turning it into pulp and getting the Postal Service to mail it for me. But I'm never giving up that magazine, ever, because it's my differentiator. It makes me different."

Blinder added, "If you want to build your audience and polish up your brand so GenZs and Millennials don't think you're a dead-wood medium, get on podcasts and audio and video now. . . . It's been the most amazing way to build my audience." He said those media can be monetized "to the point that you won't lose money with it."

A better revenue source may be local events, which Blinder suggested may be even more valuable as branding devices or generators of leads for local advertisers to customers, who can then be reached by the digital agency.

Blinder also said, news publishers need to cooperate with each other to emphasize the value of local news, and how it differs from other types of information: "It would be an amazing thing if we could all finally say, 'Wait a second. Our competition is not each other Our competition is Google and Facebook,' and let's get into the game together." Some radio stations use local newspapers' reporting, giving them credit and advising listeners to get the full story from the paper.

The free webinar was the first of three scheduled by LMA and Vendasta. The second, focusing on sales and monetization, is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. ET Aug. 10; the third, on talent, is set for 12:30 p.m. ET Sept. 15. The webinar recordings are available only to registered participants.

Podcaster's rise and Colorado primary today illustrate increasing comfort with violent rhetoric on the right wing

Joe Oltmann (Photo: Olivia Sun, Colorado Sun/Report for America)

Right-wing podcaster Joe Oltmann regularly hypes up Colorado listeners with violent rhetoric, in one recent instance suggesting that Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, be hanged. He said afterward it was a joke, but some listeners may not take him that way. "The violent rhetoric has contributed to such a tense political climate that Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) — a frequent target of Oltmann’s denunciations — now travels with a security detail, a first for the office she said," Rosalind Helderman reports for The Washington Post. "Oltmann, a businessman who gained a national profile on the far right after he claimed he had personal knowledge that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, is hardly a fringe figure. He now leads an influential and growing political movement in Colorado that is shaking up the state Republican Party."

His influence will be tested today, as Colorado voters decide whether candidates Ultmann has endorsed will advance to the general election. One is Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk who was indicted on multiple felonies after allegedly sneaking someone into the county elections offices to copy the hard drives of Dominion Voting Systems machines in an attempt to prove election fraud. "Peters, who has denied wrongdoing, is now running to be the Republican nominee for secretary of state, a position that would give her sway over future Colorado elections," Heldman reports. "Oltmann has embraced her as a rising political star, hosting her on his podcast and appearing at joint public events where she has received wild applause."

Oltmann's rise "shows how the stolen-election myth has vaulted previously unknown figures into positions of prominence within the GOP," Helderman reports. "It also provides a window into the state of the Republican grass roots — where belief that the 2020 election was rigged has become widespread, and comfort with extreme and violent rhetoric is growing." Arizona senator Wendy Davis is another example of a conservative who pivoted to extremist views as a means to gain power.

"Oltmann’s political organization — FEC United, standing for 'Faith, Education and Commerce' — is less than two years old, but it has been advocating for candidates up and down the Colorado ballot, from key statewide positions to obscure county jobs," Helderman reports. Federal, state and local candidates he supports in a wide variety of offices are all running on platforms focused on the myth of the stolen election. "It’s amazing. Whether they’re running for coroner or sheriff or clerk, their platform is focused on elections," Chuck Broerman, the elected clerk of Colorado’s El Paso County (Colorado Springs) and a former chairman of the county GOP, told Helderman.

"Meanwhile, FEC United has grown more active in local politics, with members showing up at school-board meetings around Colorado to complain about mask mandates in schools," Helderman reports. "During a speech last year, Oltmann bragged that the group had endorsed 53 candidates for school board elections in 2021, and he claimed that all 53 had won. He did not name them."

Some Democrats are promoting Republican election deniers, thinking them easier to beat. "Democrats are behind some of the ads promoting more conservative Republican candidates for U.S. Senate, Colorado governor and the 8th Congressional District," Sandra Fish reports for The Colorado Sun. "The strategy has been criticized by some Democrats, who warn that it could backfire by raising the profile of election deniers and potentially adding fuel to their movement." The triangulating is spurring "a wave of campaign finance complaints and raising ethical questions about some of the political maneuvering," Fish reports.