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.

PBS and NPR executives pledge to push back 'very hard' against White House efforts to end taxpayer support

PBS’s Paula Kerger

PBS and NPR leaders say they are exploring legal options to protect their services from President Trump's executive order barring them from receiving taxpayer dollars through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

PBS’s chief executive, Paula Kerger, "told CBS News’s Face the Nation that Republican-led threats to withdraw federal funding from public broadcasters had been around for decades but are 'different this time,' reports Edward Helmore of The Guardian. NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher agreed and said that both services will be "'pushing back very hard, because what’s at risk are our stations, our public television, our public radio stations across the country.'"

The White House maintains that taxpayer dollars should not support biased broadcasting. Helmore writes, "The order added: 'Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter. What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.'"

NPR’s Katherine Maher

As the battle ensues, services to many rural Americans would be the first affected. Helmore reports, "Maher said in an April interview with NPR that rural stations would see the biggest impact. 'You could see some of those stations really having to cut back services or potentially going away altogether.'" NPR radio has historically been one place rural Americans turned to for emergency alerts and safety directions.

PBS stations in rural areas could also face shortfalls and possible cuts. Helmore adds, "A fact sheet from PBS says on average federal funds make up 15% of their revenue, but a funding cut would be especially acute for smaller and rural stations."

It's uncertain how Trump's executive order will be implemented. "The CPB’s budget is already approved by Congress through 2027, and in a statement to The New York Times, CPB’s president, Patricia Harrison, said the agency was not subject to the president’s authority," Helmore reports. “'Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private non-profit corporation wholly independent of the federal government,' she said."

On the whole, the CPB spends "more money on less populated states," reports Alex Curley of Current. "We can also say that, despite a few blue-leaning outliers like the District of Columbia and Vermont, public media stations in states that voted Republican in the last Presidential election tended to get more Community Service Grants, or CSG money, per person than in states that voted Democrat."

The CPB awards money through its Community Service Grants, or CSGs.
(Graphic by Alex Curley, Current, from CPB data)

Some Republican legislators push for NPR and PBS cuts over alleged bias. Rural stations depend on public funds.

PBS stations in rural areas are more dependent on
tax payer money. (PBS graphic)

During recent hearings with heads of PBS and NPR, Republican legislators zeroed in on alleged reporting bias to justify "dismantling and defunding the nation’s public broadcasting system," reports David Bauder of The Associated Press. "The nation’s public broadcasting system is facing perhaps the biggest threat to its existence since it was established in 1967. . . . The broadcasters get roughly half a billion dollars in public money through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting."

While some Republicans have routinely "grumbled that PBS and NPR news programming leans left, their efforts to cut or eliminate funding usually fade because legislators want to protect their local stations — 336 of them for PBS alone, with those in rural areas most heavily dependent on taxpayer money," Bauder explains. The fact that President Donald Trump said he would 'love to' see both services cut off from federal dollars may keep GOP defunding efforts alive.

The hearings allowed "a succession of GOP lawmakers to complain bitterly about alleged bias, particularly from NPR stations, making clear it was not an issue that was going away quietly," Bauder writes. "Democrats characterized the hearing as a distraction from more important issues, like this week’s revelation that a journalist from the Atlantic was included in a text chain of Trump administration officials detailing a U.S. military strike in Yemen."

Broadcasting leaders acknowledged some past errors in judgment. "NPR President Katherine Maher said the radio network was wrong to dismiss what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop as a non-story," Bauder adds. "Although saying she is not responsible for editorial content, Maher detailed efforts by NPR to ensure a variety of political viewpoints are represented."

PBS chief executive Paula Kerger "emphasized the service that PBS provides to local communities, particularly with its educational programming for children, and said she is worried for the future of its smaller stations," Bauder reports. Kerger told the committee, “This is an existential moment for them.”

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

Tom and Pat Gish, about 20 years ago

Each year the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog, presents the 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 April 15. To make a nomination, send a detailed letter with some documentation 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 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.; and in 2023 to Craig Garnett of the Uvalde Leader-News in Texas.

Rural commentators on PBS, from right and left, agree Haley had strongest peformance in Republican debate

Gary Abernathy and Sarah Smarsh (PBS image)

The commentary section of "PBS NewsHour" Friday night was all rural, as former southern Ohio editor Gary Abernathy and Kansas author and freelance journalist Sarah Smarsh filled in for their conservative and liberal counterparts, respectively. They agreed on most things, including a belief that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley did best in the first presidential debate, among eight Republicans,

After a clip of Haley telling Mike Pence that a federal abortion ban won't fly because of the Senate, Abernathy said, "Republicans have overstepped on abortion. I think the Supreme Court was right to send it bach to the states. Nikki Haley was right . . . I felt she was the strongest in that debate."

Smarsh agreed. Noting last year's Kansas referendum in favor of abortion rights, she said Democrats are "reclaiming the notion of freedom or liberty and applying that to bodily automony. . . . The post-Roe landscape seems to have affected voter behavior in ways pre-Roe models can't necessarily predict."

Butg that hasn't changed how GOP candidates approach the issue in their race, Abernathy said: "You can't be too pro-life for the Republican electorate."

When host Geoff Bennett played Ohio biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy's declaration that "The climate-change agenda is a hoax" and said "Climate change is settled science," Abernathy said, "It's not settled among Republicans, Geoff. . . . Ramaswamy was playing right to that base."

Asked about the Atlanta booking of former president Donald Trump. Smarsh said, "Millions of Americans are aghast that this person facing all these indictments and criminal charges is still the eminent front-runner." Abernathy, describing the widely circulated mug shot, said "That's a portrait Trump may have commissioned and sat for himself, the way it turned out."

News-media roundup: Wash. papers held out for right buyer; W.Va. public-media chief quits; Ariz. news lobbies merge

Leavenworth and Chelan County,
Washington (Wikipedia map)

The publisher of four weekly papers in north-central Washington kept "them going, barely, until new owners were found to revive them," reports Brier Dudley, free-press editor of The Seattle Times. After declining several offers, Carol Forhan sold the Leavenworth Echo, the Cashmere Valley Record, the Lake Chelan Mirror, the Brewster-based Quad City Herald and the monthly Wenatchee Business Journal to Terry Ward and Amy Yaley. Ward, a former reporter and longtime newspaper manager and publisher, told Dudley, “I think there’s a strong opportunity for a long life ahead of them.” Dudley writes, "That’s refreshing to hear from the new owner of newspapers that barely survived a plunge in business during the pandemic."

TV has challenges too: For the first time, broadcast and cable TV viewers now account for less than half of television usage in the United States "even as the prices of streaming services rise," CNBC reports on Nielsen’s monthly streaming report, The Gauge. "Usage among pay-TV customers fell to 29.6% of TV, while broadcast dropped to a 20% share during the month. Streaming made up nearly 39% of usage in July, the largest share reported since Nielsen’s first time reporting the monthly numbers in The Gauge in June 2021. . . . Year-over-year, pay-TV viewership was down 12.5%, while broadcast was down 5.4%."

West Virginia Public Broadcasting's executive director has quit after a year on the job, "the latest sign of upheaval at a news outlet recently shaken by a reporter’s allegation that she was fired for writing an unfavorable story about a division of the state health department," reports John Raby of The Associated Press. "Butch Antolini, former communications director for Gov. Jim Justice," gave no reason for his resiugnation in a letter to WVPB's board. Eddie Isom, chief operating officer and director of programming, was named interim director.

Arizona news-media trade groups merge: Following the lead of some other states, the Arizona Broadcasters Association and the Arizona Newspapers Association are merging to create the Arizona Media Association. I wish they had followed the examples of Ohio and Pennsylvania and named it the News Media Association, since the public increasingly has difficulty distinguishing among news media, social media and other forms of digital media. --Al Cross, director emeritus, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

Paxton TV station files suit to get records on university's interference with reporting by its award-wining radio station

Radio station is in Murray; TV station is in Paducah.

WPSD, the only TV station in Paducah, Kentucky, has filed suit against Murray State University to get records "related to the university's attempts to interfere with reporting by WKMS, a National Public Radio-affiliated station operated by Murray State," the station reports.

"Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron previously ruled that the university violated the Kentucky Open Records Act when it improperly involved the preliminary-records exemption and when it refused to search for some records, claiming the request was unreasonably burdensome. That ruling also summarily rejected Murray State's contention that the First Amendment somehow protected administrators' emails simply because they may be related to WKMS, a news gathering operation."

MSU President Bob Jackson "demanded through two other high-ranking administrators a written explanation" from the station for its reporting on the local circuit judge, who had called Jackson to complain. The Kentucky Judicial Conduct Commission recently ousted the judge, saying he had "improperly used his position seeking to kill an unflattering story," write WPSD reporter Todd Faulkner and News Director Perry Boxx.

Chad Lampe, who was manager of the station and its former news director, told the commission "that the incident was a contributing factor to, and acceleration of, his departure from the station and the university," WPSD reports. In 2021, WKMS News's reporting on toiugh issues, including university matters, won it the Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism from the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog.

WPSD also filed a request "seeking documents relating to other incidents involving Jackson and others," the station reports. "The request sought records about university attitudes, including those of Murray State Board of Regents leadership, about the radio station's investigative reporting efforts and the 'mission and purpose of WKMS.' We also seek records regarding the university’s simultaneously ongoing attempt to retain accreditation for the school's journalism department. Monday's lawsuit said MSU again provided improperly heavily redacted documents."

WPSD is the only TV station owned by Paxton Media Group, which is headquartered in Paducah and owns about 125 newspapers, ranking it fifth among U.S. newspaper owners.

NPR does deep dive at West Virginia Public Broadcasting, finds CEO (governor's ex-flack) making editorial decisions

West Virginia Public Broadcasting's recent dismissal of a part-time reporter who angered state officials was "part of a years-long pattern of mounting pressure on the station from Gov. Jim Justice's administration and some state legislators," reports NPR media reporter David Folkenflik. "Since 2017, politicians have sought to eliminate state funding. The governor appointed partisans hostile to public broadcasting to key oversight positions. And the station's chief executive has intervened repeatedly in journalistic decisions."

CEO Carl "Butch" Antolini

WVPB Chief Executive Carl "Butch" Antolini denied "any hint of political interference in coverage," Folkenflik reports, quoting him: "A lot of the information that has been reported or disseminated is either partially or completely inaccurate." Folkenflik notes, "The statement was the only response Antolini or any West Virginia Public Broadcasting official would give NPR News for this story, despite repeated questioning." Later, Folkenflik notes that when he began inquiring, WVPB removed from its website all references to NPR.

"Allegations of serious political pressure on state-funded stations are rare," Folkenflik reports. "More than a third of West Virginia Public Broadcasting revenue comes directly from the state. Outside West Virginia, there are currently eight NPR member stations licensed to state entities, according to NPR. Many others are licensed to state universities." But WVPB "plays an outsized role in the local media landscape" in a state where "vast natural resources and wealth sit alongside abject poverty," because "the news industry has hit hard times." WVPB's 2021 annual report says it served 684,000 television viewers each month and 91,000 radio listeners each week, and other materials said its website got 1.6 million page views in 2022.

When Gov. Jim Justice took office in 2017, he tried to end all state funding of WVPB, but the legislature only cut 10 percent. The news director at the time said two senior officials "pressed the newsroom to stop covering Justice's business travails," Folkenflik reports. The officials didn't reply to his queries. After two CEOs came and went, the job went to Antolini, a former executive editor of The Register-Herald in Beckley, who had been Justice's spokesman. He was hired by a new governing board named by Justice, including "a top lobbyist for the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce" who had been a director of "a conservative think tank that has characterized state funding on West Virginia Public Broadcasting as 'wasteful' spending," and another lobbyist and "top adviser" to controversial coal operator Don Blankenship, Folkenflik reports.

When state Senate President Craig Blair questioned the dismissal of the part-timer who reported abuse of residents in state nursing homes, Antolini told his news director to get Blair on the air immediately, "saying Blair misspoke or was uninformed," and said he would review the news director's questions before the interview. Blair wouldn't cooperate. Folkenflik's story ends, "According to two people with direct knowledge of its activities, the legislature's commission on special investigations — a joint committee of the House and Senate — has launched hearings behind closed doors about the political pressures besetting the station."

Flooded Eastern Kentuckians seek higher ground, which coal firms own; radio station and others tell story of recovery

Logo for WEKU series

The record flash flooding in Eastern Kentucky last July has prompted a search for higher ground on which people can live and remain in the region. That's one upshot of an ambitious, collaborative reporting series that began on WEKU, the public radio station of Eastern Kentucky University, this week.

The "Rise" series is about "present realities and future prospects" in the 13 affected counties, host Tom Martin says: "As extreme weather seems to become more frequent, how will efforts to prevent future losses of life and property affect a mountain culture characterized by deep, strong ties to place, family and neighbors? Will enough people remain in the region to keep local tax bases above water for the resources they need to respond when crisis strikes?"

There is a strong consensus that housing is the immediate need, with many people still in temporary housing, Martin reports. Mike Harrison of First Christian Church in Pikeville, said he expects that it will take "two or three years to get people back to normal."

With $37,000 the maximum grant avalable from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, not enough to build a home, many residents are being urged to relocate, but many don't want to leave the region: "This is my home, my everything," one woman said. "I just want people know we still need help, and we're deserving people."

From their devastated hollows, residents look up, to ridgetops and reclaimed surface coal mines, where new neighborhods could be built. But such places generally lack utilities, and most of them are owned by coal and landholding companies that have demonstrated little if any interest in making it available for housing. Kentucky River Properties, former Kentucky River Coal, is the largest landowner in the four hardest-hit counties, lawyer Joe Childers told WEKU. The company has donated $500,000 to housing-development nonoprofits that are building and rehabbing homes.

Rebuilding in Knott County, Kentucky (Photo by Jeanne Marie Hibberd)

Some landowners recently donated 75 acres for a new housing development, which encouraged Gerry Roll, president of the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky: "If this gives even a handful of people in our region some hope there is a better time ahead, there is a better opportunity coming, that gives me joy."

Gov. Andy Beshear said donations are still needed for relief and recovery and the state is "in active negotiations in every county" to find land for housing. UPDATE, Jan. 24: Beshear announced another high-ground development, on 50 acres near Hazard.

"Rise" is produced with the help of several other newsrooms that pay attention to Appalachia: Sam Adams of The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Bill Estep of the Lexington Herald-Leader, Anya Slepyan and Joel Cohen of The Daily Yonder, Jared Bennett and Justin Hicks of the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, Alexa Beyer of West Virginia's Mountain State Spotlight and Katie Myers of WMMT, the Appalshop radio station in Whitesburg.

UPDATE: The second segment "focuses on a pre-existing housing shortage made far worse by the destruction and damage of the flood; flood-insurance issues; floodplain mapping; leadership exhaustion and stress; and the work of some of the key non-profit organizations in the region," WEKU says. "The episode is capped by a Chris Begley essay about the nature of mountain communities and how this event is forcing difficult change." Feb. 18: The final segment asks important questions: "While still adjusting to such heavy loss and amid much uncertainty, Eastern Kentuckians are giving careful consideration to the future. In addition to addressing the immediate need for housing on higher ground, that future includes preparing for the possibility of more frequent extreme weather. Is this a turning point? Or just another turn on the curvy road ahead? Residents demonstrate the most important key to a strong community is knowing how to show up for your neighbors."

News-media roundup: PBS aims to rebuild trust in news media, look at whole country; Nader starts a weekly . . .

"Don’t blame traditional media for being put under the pressure of cataclysmic change and struggling, blame those in leadership for not telling you clearly what was happening," writes Darrell Ehrlick, editor of the Daily Montanan (published by States Neswsroom) and former editor of the Billings Gazette. "Journalists are taught repeatedly that the story – whatever they’re covering – is not about them. . . . Decades of being told that the story is never about journalists or journalism has given publishers and corporate owners just enough leverage to remain silent on what is going on within the company."

The new anchors of "PBS NewsHour," Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett, feel “an obligation to do good journalism, and to build back hopefully the trust that the audience has been losing in the overall media industry,” Senior Executive Producer Sara Just told The Wrap. Bennett, who has been PBS's chief Washington correspondent and anchor of its weekend news show, said he hopes to to take “a deeper look at the messaging and the agenda of the Democratic and Republican parties and how that intersects with the greater country” and help viewers understand that “politics is more than just what happens in Washington. . . . It’s what’s happening across the country.”

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader is helping launch a weekly newspaper to eliminate what he calls a “news vacuum” in the small Connecticut town where he lives and five surrounding towns, the Hartford Business Journal reports. The pilot edition of the Winsted Citizen "is slated for publication in early 2023," the HBJ reports. The name is a shorter version of the daily evening paper that served the town of 7,700 until 1984, when it was merged with Hearst Corp.'s Torrington Register to create The Register Citizen. Nader told that paper that the editor and publisher will be Andy Thibault, who teaches journalism and communication at the University of New Haven.

America's 'cowboy poet' Baxter Black dies at 77

Baxter Black performs in 2010 (Getty Images)

"Baxter Black, the nationally popular cowboy poet, storyteller, and philosopher of rural life in America," died June 10 at age 77 at his home in Benson, Ariz., Terri Jo Neff reports for the Arizona Daily Independent. The family didn't specify the cause of death, but a January Facebook post from his wife Cindy Lou said he had blood leukemia and dementia.

Black was born in Brooklyn, but grew up in Las Cruces, N.M. He competed in rodeo through high school and college, and graduated from veterinary school in 1969. He was a practicing vet through the mid-1980s as he honed his skills as a poet and public speaker at Future Farmers of America functions, Neff reports.

"Black's first column was published in Colorado's Record Stockman in 1980. Several years later, he made his way to public radio," Rachel Treisman reports for NPR. In the mid-1980s, NPR played a recording he sent in of his poem about wildfires in Yellowstone National Park. Listeners loved the poem, and Black went on to offer commentary for "Morning Edition" for the next two decades. 

"When he wasn't on the air, Black spoke at conventions and events across the country, appeared on television programs including "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson," wrote a weekly column and published and recorded audiobooks — of which Ag Daily says he sold more than a million," Treisman reports. "His column, "On the Edge of Common Sense," was published by more than 100 newspapers across the U.S. and Canada over the years."

Black retired at the end of 2021 due to health problems. "In his undated website FAQ, Black dodged a question about his top three accomplishments, saying, 'I haven't accomplished them yet'," Treisman reports. "But he did reflect on how he'd like to be remembered: 'As someone who didn't embarrass his friends.'"

Several rural winners are among the Edward R. Murrow Awards from the Radio Television Digital News Association

The Radio Television Digital News Association announced on Tuesday its annual Edward R. Murrow Awards. Here are some rural winners and winners who addressed subjects with rural resonance:

West Virginia Public Broadcasting won the award for video by Small Market Radio stations for a story on struggling apple farmers: Despite Increasing Demand, Some W.Va. Apple Farmers Struggle.

WVPB also received the News Documentary award for Grandfamilies of the Opioid Crisis.

Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX in Emeryville, Calif., received the Podcast award in the Network Radio category for American Rehab, about a drug rehabilitation company that forced patients to work full-time at chicken plants, factories and more—for free.

100 Days in Appalachia received the Hard News award in the Small Digital News Organization category for Framing Domestic Extremism in Appalachia and Beyond.

Vermont Public Radio in Colchester, Vt., received the Feature Reporting award in the Small Market Radio category for Our Moms Have To Talk': Pocket Dial Connects Grieving Moms.

VPR also won for Podcast for Brave Little State.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution won in the Investigative Reporting category for Large Digital News Organizations for The Imperfect Alibi: The forgotten suspect, the DNA and the church murders that haunted a detective, about a murder in rural Georgia.

Winners will be honored at the Murrow Awards Gala on Oct. 27 in New York.

Public radio station at Ky. university wins award for public service via community journalism; first broadcasters to get it

Station's signal blankets and helps define West Kentucky.

The journalists at WKMS-FM at Murray State University are the winners of the 2021 Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism by Kentuckians.

“We usually think of ‘community’ as one county, town or neighborhood, but there are geographic communities, and there are communities of interest. West Kentucky is a geographic community of interest, and WKMS has the only newsroom that covers the whole region and its interests,” said Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky (and publisher of The Rural Blog). “It does it well.”

The institute presents the award with the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Chapter President Tom Eblen, a former Lexington Herald-Leader managing editor and columnist, said “WKMS has a history of reporting important stories in its region accurately, thoroughly and without fear or favor. It is a model for courageous public-service journalism, especially at a time when citizens are looking more to public radio to fill voids left by shrinking commercial media outlets.”

The station was nominated by Constance Alexander of Murray, a columnist and playwright who is on the Institute’s advisory board. She wrote, “With a consistent record of reporting on important events and community issues -- and editorial leadership that dares to address controversial subjects and hold power accountable -- WKMS serves the informational, cultural and community needs of the region, exemplifying the values represented by the Al Smith Award.”

The station is being honored for years of work and maintaining its high quality despite getting less money from the university. It has covered its paymasters forthrightly, reporting in 2013 that a quorum of the Board of Regents discussed official business, including an extension of the president’s contract and the station’s funding, at a social gathering the night before its official meeting.

In 2018, the station revealed that a Murray High School teacher’s predatory sexual behavior had been under investigation by the Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board for five years, with no public disclosure. After two suspensions, the teacher resigned.

In 2020, WKMS reported that the Marshall County judge-executive had refused to sign a grant application for more school resource officers after a deadly school shooting, while giving two employees raises totaling nearly $30,000, the amount the county would have had to contribute for the grant if awarded.

In daily and enterprise reporting on the pandemic, WKMS has been “a beacon of information, companionship and understanding in a time when we needed it most,” Alexander wrote. But the station also continued its accountability journalism. Assistant News Director Liam Niemeyer won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for a story about a Paducah school official who appeared in blackface for Halloween. Rather than make the school official the main focus, Niemeyer framed his story within the context of the larger experience of the Black community in Paducah, giving a richer view of the city’s racial history, and a deeper understanding of why use of blackface by a trusted public official was so hurtful. The story launched an occasional series, “Black Lives in Red States,” that is continuing at Ohio Valley ReSource, a consortium of public radio stations in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia.

Chad Lampe

WKMS Station Manager Chad Lampe, who moved up from news director in 2015, said, "I am so incredibly proud of our newsroom and our station staff as a whole. We take an ‘audience first’ approach to all of our work and this is why we remain committed to telling stories that matter. I am particularly proud of our Murray State student journalists who we bring into our newsroom, train and mentor to produce professional news right alongside the work of our staff."

The station is an affiliate of National Public Radio. “WKMS is unique in our region as our only full-service provider of public media news,” noted Berry Craig, retired history professor at Paducah Community College. “The closest NPR affiliates to Murray are at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale – almost 114 miles north – and Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, nearly 119 miles east.”

WKMS punches above its weight by partnering with other news outlets in the region, which was once served by the Louisville Courier Journal and occasionally by papers in Tennessee and Indiana.

“WKMS has met the challenge, and then some, to report more deeply on stories about local governments, race relations, education, the environment, culture and the coronavirus pandemic,” said Hoptown Chronicle Editor-Publisher Jennifer P. Brown of Hopkinsville, a WKMS partner and a previous Smith Award winner.

The award is named for the late Albert P. Smith Jr., who published newspapers in Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee, was founding producer and host of KET’s “Comment on Kentucky” and federal co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission. He was the driving force to create the Institute, headed its advisory board and was its chair emeritus until his death in March at 94.

Smith was the first winner of the award. This is the first time it has gone to broadcasters or a news outlet at a university.

The award will be presented at the Al Smith Awards Dinner in Lexington Oct. 28. The dinner was not held in 2020, due to the pandemic, so 2020 winner Becky Barnes, editor of The Cynthiana Democrat, will receive her award at the dinner, too. Winners of the Institute’s national Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism will also be recognized at the event.

Previous winners of the Smith Award, with their affiliations at the time, are:
2011: Al Smith
2012: Jennifer P. Brown, Kentucky New Era; and Max Heath, Landmark Community Newspapers
2013: John Nelson, Danville Advocate-Messenger
2014: Bill Bishop and Julie Ardery, The Daily Yonder
2015: Carl West, The (Frankfort) State Journal
2016: Sharon Burton, Adair County Community Voice and The Farmer’s Pride
2017: Ryan Craig, Todd County Standard, and the late Larry Craig, Green River Republican
2018: Stevie Lowery, The Lebanon Enterprise
2019: David Thompson, Kentucky Press Association
2020: Becky Barnes, The Cynthiana Democrat

NPR stations' bureau in Mountain West shares content with smaller stations, papers in areas less served by news media

A collaboration of radio stations in the Western U.S. aims to bring more local and regional news coverage to areas poorly served by other news media.

Finding an analog radio station has always been a challenge in the Mountain West, partly because of sparse population and partly because of Federal Communications Commission rules that once limited how many stations a company could own. "But as the events of the past year have shown, when people need information about what’s happening in their communities, radio is one of the first places they’ll go. Kate Concannon, managing editor of the Mountain West News Bureau, a consortium of NPR stations that serve New Mexico, Nevada, Montana, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming, cites the region’s 'shared issues' as the reason why her team has found success and relevance across such a broad area," Rachel Del Valle reports for Harvard University's Nieman Lab. "She manages six reporters embedded in public radio stations, plus one roving reporter who travels the region, sometimes by bike."

During the pandemic, the bureau began making its content free to smaller, community radio stations without a news budget and with small newspapers; small affiliates that want access pay for content on a sliding scale. "We’ve continued that," Concannon told Del Valle. "We’re really trying to get the content out, we’re all about collaboration and sharing."

It's an ideal partnership for news media in the rural Mountain West. "Despite the trend toward syndication nationally, a localized approach really does play to FM radio’s strengths, both for advertisers and listeners," Del Valle reports. "By design, it’s a localized medium — signals can only travel so far. As a technology, radio matches the expectations the internet has set for modern media consumers. It’s free to use and — in most parts of the country — easy to access. You don’t even need an internet connection to consume it. You just turn on the tap and it’s there. In this way, radio is uniquely positioned to fill in local news gaps. And when shared on digital platforms, stories can go beyond individual communities and into larger regional and national conversations."

Al Smith, who co-founded the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and left a broad legacy, dies at 94

Al Smith in 2010

Albert Perrine Smith Jr., a noted Kentucky journalist, public citizen and co-founder of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues (publisher of The Rural Blog), died peacefully Friday, March 19 at home in Sarasota, Florida. He was 94.

Smith, who was born in Sarasota and grew up in Hendersonville, Tenn., once owned seven weekly newspapers in Kentucky and Tennessee. For 33 years he was the host and producer of Kentucky Educational Television’s “Comment on Kentucky,” the longest running public-affairs show on a PBS affiliate, taking leave in 1980-82 to serve as federal co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission for Presidents Carter and Reagan.

After selling his newspapers in 1985, Smith broadened his civic work. He and his friend Rudy Abramson, who died in 2008, thought up the Institute for Rural Journalism in the late 1990s, and he persuaded his onetime intern, Hodding Carter III, to take it past the study stage with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which Carter headed, to the College of Communication and Information at the University of Kentucky. He was chair emeritus of the institute’s Advisory Board. He was a charter member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame and a fellow of the national Society of Professional Journalists, and former chairman of the Kentucky Arts Commission and former president of the Kentucky Press Association.

At 15, Al beat out 100,000 contestants to win the American Legion’s national oratorical contest. He traveled the country for a year speaking to raise money for the war effort. After high school, he proudly served stateside in the Army during World War II. He attended Vanderbilt University (spottily) before beginning his journalism career in New Orleans, where he was an editor and reporter for two daily papers. Though his 10 years in New Orleans were colorful and fueled a lifetime of stories, alcoholism derailed his career there. He relocated to Russellville, Kentucky, where he became the editor of The News-Democrat, and quit drinking in 1963. He went on to accompany countless others to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and was a “friend of Bill W.” for 58 years.

In 1966, he met his future wife, Martha Helen. They married in 1967. The next year, he left the News-Democrat to start his own weekly, The Logan Leader, and soon purchased The News-Democrat. Through the 1970s, Smith was editor and publisher of the Russellville papers, and with partners acquired other weeklies. The papers took strong stands on public issues, particularly education. In 1974, he began a broadcasting career, hosting “Comment” on Friday nights. The show featured a panel of Kentucky journalists discussing and analyzing that week’s news and soon became popular.

In the 1970s and 80s, Al became involved in several statewide public-service organizations. He was founding chair of the Kentucky Oral History Commission and chaired both Leadership Kentucky and the Shakertown Roundtable, a forum on challenging issues facing Kentucky. He hosted and produced a daily radio show, “Primeline,” from 1990 to 1996, and wrote two books, Wordsmith and Kentucky Cured. He was always an advocate for rural journalism, as noted in this sidebar.

Smith’s greatest legacy was the many people he helped along the way. He mentored younger journalists and others who crossed his path. He was a kind, generous man and a wonderful (if long-winded) storyteller, with a Shakespearean grasp of political foible and triumph. His curiosity was more than a journalist’s quest for a story; it was a wider curiosity that reflected his love for humanity and its condition. That quality brought him a wide circle of friends from all walks of life. He loved his family, Kentucky, political stories, his dogs Chloe and Coco, chocolate and Willie Nelson. Fats Waller’s “Your Feet’s Too Big” transported him to the snowy rifle range at Fort Sill, Okla., or to New Orleans, where he loved the food, the music and the people.  

    
Smith received honorary doctorates from the UK and eight other colleges and universities. He was a Distinguished Rural Kentuckian of the Kentucky Association of Electric Cooperatives and a Rural Hero (for journalism) by the National Rural Assembly. He received the Medallion for Intellectual Achievement from the UK Library Associates, the Media Award of the East Kentucky Leadership Foundation, the Kentucky Press Association’s Lewis Owens Award for Community Service, the Kentucky Broadcasters Association’s Ralph Gabbard Distinguished Kentuckian Award, and the Flame of Excellence Award from Leadership Kentucky.

Two statewide awards are named for him. One is given by the rural-journalism institute and the Bluegrass SPJ Chapter for public service through community journalism (he was its first recipient); the other is a $7,500 award from the Arts Commission to a Kentucky artist who has achieved a high level of excellence and creativity.

He was the son of Albert Perrine Smith and Elvira Mace Smith. Survivors include his beloved wife of almost 54 years, Martha Helen Smith; his children, Catherine McCarty (William) of Birmingham, Ala.; Lewis Carter Hancock of Louisville and Virginia Major (William) of West Hartford, Conn.; an “adopted” son, Huaming Gu of Shanghai, China; and his sister, Robin Burrow, of Abilene, Texas. He is also survived by five grandchildren, Evan and Connor (Ikue) McCarty, Lauren Hancock, and Susannah and Ava Major; and numerous cousins.

A memorial service will be held at a later date. The family suggests instead that memorial contributions may be made in Al’s honor to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, 343 S. Martin Luther King Blvd., #206 BLD, Lexington KY 40506-0012, and to The Hope Center.

Reporter and wife leave $3 million to community foundation

Carol and John Willard

A longtime newspaper reporter in the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois and his wife have left a $3 million estate with their local community foundation to benefit nine local organizations.

John Willard of Davenport, Iowa, retired in 2007 after 34 years at the Quad-City Times, and died unexpectedly in November 2017. His wife Carol died in July. "Those who knew the quiet and soft-spoken Willards are surprised by the amount of the bequest, but not by the entities they chose to befriend, as they had a wide range of interests and causes," Alma Gaul reports for the newspaper.

One of the beneficiaries was a hospice program where Willard volunteered, interviewing veterans and writing stories their military service, which were presented to each veteran in a ceremony. "With his professional skills, as well as his military skills — he was a Vietnam veteran — it was a natural fit for him," said Lori Bruning, volunteer coordinator at Genesis Hospice. "What made him especially good at what he did is that he was a listener, not a talker. He really listened to what people said." 

Other beneficiaries are the Davenport library; the Iowa PBS Foundation; a park the couple loved; their alma maters, George Williams College of Aurora, Ill., and the University of Illinois; Grace Lutheran Church of Davenport; the Humane Society of Scott County, and the community foundation itself, to use at its discretion. Community foundations are increasingly used by donors to help their hometowns by leaving their money to a local organization they trust.

"People who knew the Willards were unaware of their substantial wealth because the couple did not live a showy lifestyle," Gaul writes. "Carol Willard worked as an administrative assistant and they shared one car, with Carol often taking the bus or John dropping her off and picking her up. . . . The couple did not have children; survivors were a brother for John and a sister for Carol. That is a big reason the Willards came to the foundation," according to President and CEO Sherry Ristau.

RTDNA's Murrow Awards have many rural winners

The Radio Television Digital News Association recently presented its Edward R. Murrow Awards, which are categorized by market size. The rural winners included:

The Eastern whippoorwill (AllAboutBirds.org)

Vermont Public Radio, for overall excellence in small markets; coverage included a series on mental health care, the governor's reversal of a pledge to oppose more gun controls, a look at which towns issue the most speeding tickets, a comparison of dairy farmers in the state and adjoining Quebec, and a feature on the plight of a threatened bird species, the whippoorwill.

Marfa Public Radio in Texas, for feature reporting ("Without Hospice, Who Gets To Die In The Big Bend?) and for coverage via social media and multimedia.

Montana Public Radio, for a documentary titled "Cold Comfort" about climate change in the Arctic.

North State Public Radio in California , for continuing coverage of the Paradise wildfire.

Wyoming Public Radio, for excellence in sound in its coverage of scientists racing to research a stonefly species threatened by climate change.

Maine Public Radio, for excellence in video in a story about the Mount Washington weather station.

Some large-market winners covered rural topics. KARE-TV in Minneapolis won for hard news with a story on the troubles of dairy farmers, and NPR and PBS "Frontline" won for investigative reporting with "Coal's Deadly Dust," based on the reporting of Howard Berkes, who retired from NPR early this year. The complete list of winners is here.

Some states consider ways to fund local news, but critics worry it could undermine the news media's watchdog role

U.S. news deserts (University of North Carolina map; click it to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.)

As newspaper numbers decline, rural areas have been and are more likely to lose local coverage than their suburban and urban counterparts, April Simpson reports for Stateline, a publication of The Pew Charitable Trusts. "More than 500 of the 1,800 newspapers that have closed or merged since 2004 were in rural communities," she writes, citing the 2018 report, "The Expanding News Desert," by Penelope Muse Abernathy of the University of North Carolina's Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media."

The loss of local coverage often makes it difficult for rural residents to find out about local news or relevant state issues. It also means less accountability for local officials and less-informed voters, Abernathy said in her report. On top of that, for more than a decade rural areas have been losing coverage by metropolitan media, as newspapers close their regional news bureaus.

Some states are considering funding efforts to support local news, but critics worry that doing so might undermine the press’s role as a government watchdog. Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and publisher of The Rural Blog, told Simpson: "There’s this adversarial relationship that exists and needs to exist."

In Massachusetts, one proposal "would establish a commission to study journalism in under-served communities and make public policy recommendations. Similar conversations are happening among advocates and legislators across the country, including in New Jersey, New York and Ohio," Simpson reports. "Potential solutions include more money for public broadcasting, providing tax incentives to persuade media outlets to close local news gaps and following the path of New Jersey, which in 2018 created a fund to bring news and information to under-served communities."

At the federal level, one proposal would amend the federal tax code to make it easier for news organizations to achieve nonprofit status, which could be important to smaller news outlets, and another (more important for large companies) would allow them to collectively negotiate content distribution with news aggregators like Google and Facebook, Simpson reports.

Some caution against allowing the government to have so much input in the news. New Jersey established an independent nonprofit in 2017 meant to strengthen local news coverage, but has barely funded it since then. The fact that the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium's "ruling body is top-heavy with government leaders and employees should give us pause," media writer Jack Shafer writes for Politico. "How can a nonprofit news organization directed by people in the government even pretend to be independent?"

"Nevertheless," Simpson writes, "the Colorado Media Project earlier this month pointed to New Jersey as a model in a report that proposes four strategies to close local news gaps: increasing government transparency, increasing support for libraries and higher education, empowering communities to raise taxes to pay for local news, and helping commercial media outlets convert to a nonprofit model."

Though Cross said the CMP report had good ideas, it goes too far, he told Simpson: "It’s highly unlikely that the public policymakers in Colorado or any other states are going to adopt these types of recommendations because they’re too far-reaching for a lot of policymakers to swallow." (Cross believes that any news organization getting taxpayer money needs a strong structure to gather taxpayers' opinions about how their money is being used; he also thinks preservation of public-notice advertising laws has become as important to small newspapers as it was in their early days.)

Other possible solutions for rural news deserts include expanding public broadcasting or leaning more on philanthropic funding of nonprofit news organizations, Simpson reports.

UPDATE: New York legislators are pushing a bill that would require cable TV companies in the state to provide independently produced news and public-affairs programming, The New York Times reports.

Friday PBS documentary traces history of bluegrass music

Bill Monroe at the first multi-day bluegrass
music festival, in 1965 (Ron Petronko photo)

PBS viewers have been bombarded with reminders that Ken Burns's "Country Music" documentary will begin on the network Sept. 15, but have gotten relatively little notice of a similar film on bluegrass music, which will air Friday at 9 ET.

Big Family: The Story of Bluegrass Music "joyfully reaffirms" the genre's wide appeal, taking viewers from its Kentucky roots to the surprising global locales that have made it their own, Walter Tunis writes for the Lexington Herald-Leader. It's narrated by actor Ed Helms, a bluegrass enthusiast who played the banjo-playing character Andy Bernard in "The Office."

"Along with the international fascination, you’re left with the sense of how deeply a part of the American cultural fabric the music has become. Banjoist Graham Sharp of the Grammy-winning Steep Canyon Rangers states as much at the film’s onset," Tunis writes.

Sharp says, "I think of bluegrass as one of those very sort-of-ingrained American things. Like baseball."

"Big Family" was a mammoth undertaking for Kentucky PBS affiliate KET. It has footage shot over three years, including interviews with more than 50 luminaries such as Jeff Hanna of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Del McCoury, J.D. Crowe, Ricky Skaggs and Bela Fleck.

Condensing more than nine hours of material down to two hours was agonizing, according to KET producers Matt Grimm and Nick Helton, Tunis writes. Grimm told him, "We wanted to be true to the story but include all that we could. At the same time, we wanted it to have broad appeal. We wanted those who are not bluegrassers to be able to relate to it."

Helton added that they also wanted to debunk stereotypes about bluegrass musicians and show the genre's connection to American culture. "They’re serious musicians doing things most musicians can’t do. There’s the speed with which they play, the rhythm," Helton said. "One of our biggest points was to show this rich history that really does weave itself through American history, as well. I think a lot of people don’t realize how much bluegrass music played a part in pop culture."

World culture, too. Grimm told Tunis that he and Helton got an unexpected ovation in a small music club in Tokyo where a Japanese bluegrass band was about to play. When the audience members heard the two were from KET, they applauded because they recognized the station's name from its old bluegrass programming. "We couldn’t have felt more welcome," Grimm said.

New FCC order limits local and state authority over cable companies, possibly endangering public-access channels

A recent Federal Communications Commission order that limits state and local authority over cable companies could endanger the existence of public-access channels, which help keep many small-town residents informed about meetings of town councils and school boards.

"The order, which has been under consideration for months, spurred thousands of comments. State and local leaders told the agency that it could jeopardize the public-access stations that communities count on to get out local news, religious services and emergency broadcasts, as well as 'institutional networks' (I-NETs) that many municipalities use to provide cable, phone and internet services to government buildings," Laura Maggi reports for Route Fifty.

Local or state governments can charge cable providers a franchise fee of up to 5 percent of television gross revenues from TV service. The new order allows companies to deduct from those fees the fair-market value of in-kind services that many provide as part of their agreements, including public-access channels, discounts for seniors and the I-NETs, Maggi reports. The measure passed 3-2, with both Democratic commissioners voting against.

"In another part of the order, the FCC says local and state governments can’t regulate the broadband networks being rolled out by cable companies, which are an increasingly large component of their businesses," Maggi reports.

FCC Chair Ajit Pai argued that reducing the regulatory burden on cable companies will help them expand broadband service, and that the savings will be passed on to customers. But Angelina Panettieri, a technology specialist for the National League of Cities, noted that the order doesn't require providers to spend the savings on network buildout or price reduction, Maggi reports.

Another Republican FCC commissioner, Brendan Carr, said he supported the new measure because some local governments have "taken advantage" of cable companies by making them provide free service to "municipal liquor stores and government-owned golf courses," Maggi reports.