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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Journalists can apply by Dec. 7 to attend program on "Saving Local News: A Practical Guide"

Kiplinger Fellows 
(Photo from Kiplinger website)

Journalists can apply for a 2026 Kiplinger Fellowship by Dec. 7 to join journalists from across the United States and around the world for a week of learning with top industry leaders and professionals.

The focus of the Kiplinger Fellowship will be on "Saving Local News: A Practical Guide" and will be held at the Scripps College of Communication on the Ohio University campus in Athens, Ohio, May 11-14, 2026.

The Kiplinger Fellowship is a program that trains journalists to tackle critical issues that impact the industry. Fellowships provide lodging, most meals, free training and include a travel stipend.

The Institute for Rural Journalism at the University of Kentucky and the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism will be helping with the program as well. 

Application instructions are found here. Click here to apply.

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

Photo by Mark Sabbatini, Juneau Independent

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

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

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

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

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

A stop in Rock County, Minnesota, reignites memories of a dynamic war-time reporter that comes with a twist

Al Cross

During a trip to the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors conference, Al Cross stopped to pay tribute to the late Al McIntosh, a World War II reporter and local newspaper publisher. The trip yielded some surprising connections.

Luverne, Minnesota, is in Rock County, the southwest corner of Minnesota, just east of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. When I saw Sioux Falls consumed one day’s itinerary of the annual conference of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, which recently elected me to its board of directors, I planned a side trip to Luverne – for reasons that started out esoteric but turned out to be quite meaningful.

I was interested in Luverne and its newspaper because Ken Burns and Tom Hanks had told me a lot about them – in Burns’ 2007 documentary “The War,” about the American home front during World War II. Burns focused on four towns: Mobile, Ala., Waterbury, Conn.; Sacramento, Calif.; and Luverne, a county-seat town of 5,000 on the Rock River (the one in the Missouri River basin).

The unexpected star of the documentary, at least for me, was Al McIntosh. He was editor of the Rock County Star Herald before, during and after the war. He chronicled the home front in such compelling detail that Burns said his team’s discovery of the newspaper’s carefully stored bound volumes (dating to 1873) was “in some ways . . . the single greatest archival find that we have ever made.” Hanks, who voiced McIntosh’s writings for the documentary, was so taken by them that he pushed Burns to use more of them, and Burns did.

“He had this task of explaining the unexplainable to his fellow neighbors,” Burns said. “He did so magnificently, and wrote as beautifully as any editor I’ve ever come across."

Al McIntosh at his desk (PBS website photo)

McIntosh started his war journalism even before the U.S. entered the fight, with a piece about a woman who had survived the blitz of London and was visiting her brother in Rock County: “She has had her best friends killed. Looking out at the peaceful countryside from the Thompson porch, she said it was hard to believe the rest of the world was at war.” That was in the first written quotation of the show, which introduced McIntosh as a North Dakotan who “had turned down big-city jobs to run his own small-town paper. He would soon find himself trying to explain the unexplainable to his new neighbors.” 

When the documentary premiered on PBS, I wrote a short story for The Rural Blog, a publication of the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Rural Journalism, which I ran at the time. As I watched the show and heard Hanks read McIntosh’s evocative writings, I got choked up. Here, in what most Americans might call the middle of nowhere, a weekly newspaper editor was capturing the courage, loss, sacrifice, resolution, pathos and daily grind of being a small-town American in our most demanding war.

So, if I was going to Sioux Falls, I was going to Luverne, at least to pay my respects at the grave of Al McIntosh, who died in 1979. When I looked it up on Findagrave.com, a wonderful resource, I found something flabbergasting. McIntosh’s obituary, posted on the site, revealed that he was the author of an editorial column that formed the basis for the first speech I ever gave, in 1965, when I was 11 years old. 

Desperate for a topic for the 4-H speech contest, I saw the headline “I Am a Tired American” in one of the many newspapers that reprinted the editorial, originally titled “A Tired American Gets Angry.” A few weeks after I gave the speech, I became the official scorer for the local baseball leagues, which included writing them up for the weekly Clinton County News, where I got my first byline.

Al McIntosh’s editorial was a reactionary screed against a host of things that he thought were wrong with the country and its critics (mostly the latter), and young Al Cross parroted most of the complaints. My meager effort earned me third place in the contest, but the experience gave me enough confidence to enter and win the following year, then become a color commentator on baseball games, which led to me becoming a licensed radio announcer at the age of 13. (In those days you had to get a license, by passing a test.) I kept my hand in journalism, and edited and managed weekly papers before spending 26½ years as a reporter at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, the last 15½ as political writer and columnist, then 20 years at the University of Kentucky.

I still write occasional political columns for the Northern Kentucky Tribune and other news outlets. As a political observer, I see McIntosh’s most-published piece as a harbinger of today’s tribulation. “I am a tired American,” he wrote, “choked up to here on this business of trying to intimidate our government by placard, picket line and sit-in by the hordes of the dirty unwashed who rush to man the barricades against the forces of order, law and decency.” 

But he also was “sickened by the slack-jawed bigots who wrap themselves in bedsheets in the dead of night and roam the countryside looking for innocent victims.” And he said he was “real tired of those who are trying to sell me the belief that America is not the greatest nation in all the world, a generous-hearted nation, a nation dedicated to trying to help the 'have nots' achieve some of the good things that our system of free enterprise brought about.”

In Al McIntosh’s day, it was not unusual for weekly editors to editorialize about state, national and international questions. Now most papers, even weeklies, are owned by chains, most of which think too much opinion is bad for business. Even many independent papers shy away from publishing letters and columns about President Donald Trump, for fear of having to play referee in a mudball contest. So we don’t read much in weekly papers about national protest campaigns, racial issues, foreign aid and the like.

McIntosh has had some fine successors, including Michelle Erpenbach, who runs a major nonprofit in Sioux Falls, and Lori Sorenson, a Rock County native who has been at the family-owned paper for 33 years. She told me that she delves into national issues from time to time.

“Where appropriate and if it has bearing on our readers in Rock County, I will use our opinion page to voice concern about national issues,” Sorenson said in an email. “Rock County is a very RED and very religious county, and many are eagerly lapping up the disinformation that circulates on social media. I have written more than one editorial encouraging readers to be judicious about their ‘news’ sources and to remember that we are ‘community first’ despite occasional disagreements about national issues.”

Good for her. If we are to overcome the partisan and cultural divides that are bedeviling this country, I think it will most likely start in small towns like Luverne, where people know each other as neighbors and are still mostly willing to listen to each other, and agree to disagree.

Local newspapers have long been one of the best forums for a community to have a conversation with itself, but in many small towns, papers no longer play a leading civic role, for a host of reasons: they have failed to maintain circulation and household penetration, have owners who don’t want to make anyone mad, have smaller staffs with less time and talent for commentary, or they may even lack a local editor because the chain owner runs several papers as a group. All this has added to a shortage of local news, while news media and social media are dominated by national news, opinion and misinformation.

Every county in America deserves to have a news outlet that can help its audience be better citizens of their state and nation, not just their locality. Our nation would be a lot better off if we had lot more editor-publishers like Al McIntosh. May his example never be forgotten. 

Al Cross lives in Frankfort and Albany, Kentucky, and is on Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, BlueSky and @ruralj. The Minnesota Newspaper Association presents the Al McIntosh Award to those who dedicate themselves to their communities through their reporting, editorials and columns. 

A new study shows the 'surprising breadth of student reporting' in the United States

College students are working to keep American journalism connected and relevant in the communities they serve. A recent study by the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont used "FCC data, original research and outreach to stations to map the extraordinary overlap between America’s colleges and its public media outlets," reports CNN. Their research shows the "surprising breadth and scope of college student journalism at public media organizations." A few research highlights include:

• 88% of public media organizations provide opportunities for college students to help cover their community (282 of 319 NPR and/or PBS affiliates.)
• 59% of public media organizations provide intensive, regular and ongoing opportunities for college students (188 of 319 stations.)
• Some public media organizations (41 of 319) make teaching students their core mission.
• Students at these public media organizations serve rural, suburban and urban audiences, many in news deserts. Public radio signals reach over 95% of Americans.
• 50% of all public media organizations are licensed to a college or university (161 of 319 stations.)

Yellow circles indicate some level of student reporting. Grey circles indicate little or no student reporting. Eighty-eight percent of NPR stations provide opportunities for college students.

Study researchers suggest that "even more student journalists could contribute to public media organizations through deeper news/academic partnerships involving both internships and in-class production."

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

Jeremy Gulban

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How much referral traffic to publishers do AI chatbots provide? Practically zero.

'AI presents an existential threat to the news and
media industry.' (AI image by AI)

AI chatbots steal and repost news created and paid for by humans while failing to refer any meaningful traffic to the publications, a new report finds. Chatbot click-through rates, or CTRs, to original content, are abysmal.

"Tollbit, an analytics and licensing platform for publishers and AI companies, has released its first AI User Agent Index, a quarterly report that tracks overall trends in the scraping habits of the AI industry," reports News/Media Alliance. "The report details that the click-through rates for AI chatbots are 95.7% lower than traditional Google search, with a referral rate of just 0.37%." According to industry figures, 3% is considered the average CTR from a Google search, and anything above this is good.

For many publishers and writers, AI content theft is not surprising; however, "Tollbit's data confirms what publishers have known for years — generative AI chatbots are not providing anywhere near the amount of traffic as traditional search," News/Media Alliance CEO Danielle Coffey said in a statement. "By illegally scraping our content, repackaging it and giving it to consumers without adequately directing them to our sites, AI companies are using our own content to undermine our businesses."

When chatbots "redeliver" news via the web without a click-through to the original publication, news and media organizations miss out on subscription and advertising income. In essence, bots steal original content, which costs publications what a consumer may have paid to read it, and they remove to possibility of future income when no click-through traffic is provided.

“With AI click-through rates almost 96% lower than traditional search, which we believe is already at inadequate return rates, the shift to AI presents an existential threat to the news and media industry," Coffey said. "Something has to change. But that doesn’t mean we want to stop the growth of AI. . . .We’re just asking for responsible AI. Artificial intelligence companies must compensate publishers for the content they use, for the long-term health of both of our industries.”

Hillman Prizes honor reporting that leads to public policy changes; deadline to enter is Jan. 30

Since 1950, the Sidney Hillman Foundation has honored journalists who pursue investigative reporting and deep storytelling in service of the common good. (Hillman Foundation photo)

Journalists can enter a national contest that honors “the excellence in investigative journalism and commentary in service of the common good.”

The Hillman Prizes celebrate print, digital and broadcast reporting and commentary in the public interest that exposes injustice and leads to meaningful public policy change.

The deadline to enter is Jan. 30, and winners will receive a $5,000 honorarium at an event in New York City on May 13. There is no fee to enter.

The 2025 Hillman Prizes includes awards for:

• Newspaper Reporting (story/series/multimedia — may include photo, video, graphics)
• Magazine Reporting (longform; print/online)
• Broadcast Journalism (TV, radio, podcast; at least 20 minutes in total package length)
• Opinion and Analysis Journalism (commentary and analysis in any medium)

Entries must have been published or broadcast in 2024 and made widely available to a U.S audience. Submit nominated material and a cover letter here.

For more information, visit hillmanfoundation.org

Report for America offers dozens of positions for passionate journalists. Application deadline is Feb. 3.

Report for America, the national service program that places service-minded journalists and photographers in local newsrooms, is accepting applications for new corps members.

The application deadline is Feb. 3, with references due by Feb. 10. Apply here.

RFA is a two-year program, with an optional third year. Applicants need a minimum of 1 to 3 years of local news experience. Recent graduates may apply if they’ve had local newsroom internships or journalism leadership experience in college. The upcoming service year begins on July 7, and runs through July 6, 2026.

RFA corps members are part of a national movement to strengthen communities and democracy through truthful, fair local journalism. The program offers members a range of media placements, including digital startups, daily and weekly newspapers, and radio and TV stations.

To view RFA's interactive database of job openings, newsrooms and beats, click here. For more details about joining RFA, upcoming informational sessions can be found here.

Report for America is a national service program that places early-career and experienced journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered topics and communities across the United States and its territories.

Report for America is an initiative of The GroundTruth Project, a nonprofit journalism organization dedicated to rebuilding journalism from the ground up.

AI news: Humans write the news only to have bots steal and repost it 'under stolen or assumed identities'

AI "reporters" plagiarize stories from real publications
written by humans. (Graphic by AI robot, Adobe Stock)

Artificial intelligence bots revived a closed small-town newspaper site using culled stories and stolen reporters' names. "The defunct Daily Tidings was alive and kicking, sending out fresh stories again," reports Danny Westneat of The Seattle Times. "The site’s masthead showed eight reporters — a ton for tiny Ashland, Oregon. . . . As Oregon Public Broadcasting revealed this past week in an investigation, the entire site now is reported and written by artificial intelligence bots, under stolen or assumed identities."

"One 'reporter' they tracked down actually lives in the United Kingdom and had no clue he was practicing journalism in southern Oregon," Westneat explains. "The site pumps out about five stories a day — most of them cribbed from real publications, such as Ashland News or The Oregonian, and rewritten by AI programs." The site boasts ads and videos from "big ad-streaming companies such as Google."

The Daily Tidings past owner "told OPB he looked into suing the AI operation — whoever or whatever it is," Westneat reports. "His lawyers though said it’s coming from outside the United States, likely China. It would be 'pursuing a phantom.'"

Ashland's robot news spot isn't unique. "Sites are popping up everywhere using AI bots to create the vague appearance of journalism, usually by rewriting or repurposing articles culled from the real local media," Westneat reports. "AI tools have been developed, such as one depressingly called Spin Rewriter, that can digest an article and convert it into 1,000 'human-quality' facsimile articles."

In Seattle, the "Hoodline" news site produces stories by bots. A former human Hoodline employee, who lost her job to AI, told Westneat, "Old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting has been replaced by fake people who’ve never set foot in any of the neighborhoods they write about — because they don’t have feet."

The editor of the Ashland News, Bert Etling, "says that in Ashland, the scam journalism has been mostly just annoying," Westneat reports. "It’s a plagiarism operation, so the real town news source, his Ashland News, isn’t at much risk of getting scooped. . . . But it isn’t helping that gnawing sense that nobody believes anything anymore."

Opinion: Reporter's shield law needs to be extended to the federal level: 'The PRESS Act is needed now.'

Shield law protections by state (Graph by the Reporters Committee
for Freedom of the Press)

The New York Times editorial board offers a compelling piece on the importance of a reporter's shield law and why its protections need to be extended to the federal level. "Safeguarding the anonymity of reporters’ sources is essential . . . . It has been recognized by governments or courts in 49 states and the District of Columbia as a form of protection for journalists and news outlets against unfair or overbearing efforts by the government to ferret out their sources. . . There is nothing of the sort, however, on the federal level, where the need is arguably greatest."

A bipartisan bill representing those federal protections, known as the Protect Reporters From Exploitative State Spying Act, or PRESS Act, has already moved through the House of Representatives and is awaiting release by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The editorial board writes, "It would shield reporters from court-ordered disclosure of their sources of information, except in the rare cases in which disclosure is necessary to prevent an act of terrorism or imminent violence."

Freedom of speech and whistle-blowing protection remain essential parts of a healthy democracy. The editorial board adds, "Leaks and whistle-blowers have often proved essential to the public’s understanding of major events and the workings of government at all levels. There is nothing ideological about their usefulness; they can be just as effective in exposing the unwelcome truth about Democratic administrations as Republican ones. By protecting reporters from having to reveal their sources, the bill would ideally encourage more whistle-blowers to help shine a light on government abuses."

Some members of the House having been "targets of sharp investigative reporting or frequent critics of the news media," the editorial board adds. Still, every member has "supported swift passage of the PRESS bill. . . Nothing in the PRESS Act would prevent the government from prosecuting leakers, and the government has vast powers to monitor its officials without demanding that reporters divulge the information they seek. . . . The PRESS Act is needed now."

Rich rural reporting ditches the cliches and dives into 'rural stories that reflect the full range of rural experience'

Carlson, left, interviews an artist about using eucalyptus
bark for screen printing. (Photo by Joel Cohen via SEJ)

Rural places aren't cliche or boring and reporting on them shouldn't be either. If you're a rural reporter, you already know that part, but what can journalists from all walks of life do to make the diversity of rural Americans come to life for non-rural readers?

First off, ditch the political stereotypes, writes Claire Carlson for the Society of Environmental Journalists. She writes that rural voters are often blamed for "today’s particular brand of right-wing extremism, as embodied by Donald Trump. . . Yet data shows that arrestees from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection . . . were no more likely to be from a rural area than an urban or suburban location."

Rural folk aren't one-dimensional white Republican-leaning voters any more than city folk are all mindless, liberal Democrats. For reporters who want to get past the cliches, Carlson suggests, "We can start by talking to rural residents about the issues they’re facing rather than only going to the academics and professionals. . . . If you don’t know how to make those local connections, ask your expert sources for suggestions on who from the community you should talk to."

If you want to explore rural life, reporters can "seek out and tell rural stories that reflect the full range of rural experience," Carlson explains. "East Palestine, Ohio, is a good example of this. The 2023 train derailment that spilled hazardous chemicals in this community inundated national headlines. . . . The town became known for its tragedy. But what was this place before a train derailment defined it? None of the stories I read ever told that part of the story." Find that angle. 

"Good and interesting things happen in rural places just as often as in urban ones," Carlson adds. "It’s up to us to tell those stories, too, if only to offer people an understanding of rural America that reflects the nuance and diversity that has always been there."

A one-person newsroom in Pennsylvania was first with key details of the Trump assassination attempt

Vranesevich, left, is known for his local investigative reporting.
(Beaver Countian photo)

With his internal compass focused on news that isn't being shared, John Paul Vranesevich, the owner and only full-time reporter for the Beaver Countian, in western Pennsylvania, scooped key details of the Trump shooting story before national media could confirm it. While his stories revealed "some of the U.S. Secret Service’s most dramatic failure in decades," he credits his nimble reporting to his community connections, reports Elahe Izadi of The Washington Post.

"He said that some of those long-standing sources contacted him after the rally shooting to share some of the details of what had happened that day because they were concerned that the national narrative unfolding about the shooting was inaccurate or incomplete," Izadi explains. "That it would lead the public to believe that local law enforcement had failed to do its job and had put the former president at risk."

As Vranesevich was about to publish his scoop for Beaver Countian readers, he wanted the nation to hear the details, so he "tipped off contacts on CBS’s news desk," Izadi reports. "He knew his sources would want to get their story out to a national audience. CBS News published its story hours later, crediting the Beaver Countian’s original work."

Unlike many local reporters, Vranesevich's career started with bigger name recognition as an international computer security expert and then as a writer. "After his work got the attention of the New York Times, Vanity Fair and other national press, he started the Beaver Countian as a 'one-person guerrilla journalism venture,'" Izadi writes. "He now has the help of four or five freelance editors and contributing reporters."

Bill Vidonic, a Beaver Countian freelancer, noted that "Vranesevich is seen as somewhat of a 'renegade who 'doesn’t always have to play by the rules,'" Izadi adds. Vidonic told her: “He’s been an outlier in terms of media, and I think that’s where his strength has been. A lot of people reach out to him because they don’t think he’s part of the establishment. He’s one of them.”

Series of columns, "What I learned from dying," by rural weekly journalist Dave Taylor is now a book

Taylor’s book is available on Amazon.com.

In spring 2021, Dave Taylor found out he had Stage 4 esophageal cancer. The veteran journalist and editor of the weekly Hancock Clarion in Hawesville, Kentucky, began writing about the experience the week afterward in a column series called "What I Learned From Dying."

"If things go well this will be a long-term column that could serve as catharsis for me or a peek behind the gown for those who are curious," Taylor wrote in the first column. "If things don’t go as well, then maybe it’s just a long, rambling goodbye."

Taylor's columns weren't destined to remain a rambling goodbye. Instead, his widow Jamie D. Taylor re-released the entire collection as a softcover book available on Amazon.

Taylor told Jennifer Wimmer of the Clarion, "I believe what Dave achieved with his columns every week was amazing. . . . I saw how hard it was for him, physically and emotionally, to write those columns. . . . For him to go from being so very black and white to putting his heart in these columns and being completely vulnerable. . . I was just so proud of him. . . . He always wanted to publish a book, and I just feel like this was my way of making sure that his dream came true."

The book's cover also has a story. Dave commissioned the artist just 10 hours before his death. "Dave had texted Aaron Kizer, the artist who created his portrait," Wimmer writes, "asking him about painting it for him. That text is included in the book. Aaron also kindly accepted a commission to complete Jamie’s portrait, which was completed with Dave’s ashes."

As Dave faced cancer, he leaned on his faith in God, and Jamie Taylor hopes these shared details might help others. She told the Clarion: "I just hope that people who have cancer or love someone with cancer can pick it up and relate to it, and just understand that you can live a good life while you’re going through these things. . . . If there are any book clubs or churches that would like me to come and talk about the book, our prayers and our experience with cancer, I’m willing to do that. I want to share how faith can get you through these really hard times."

You can contact Jamie Taylor with any questions, or to schedule a speaking engagement at: davetaylorproject@gmail.com

Looking for a fresh way to look at common community coverage? Check out Solutions Journalism support.

If you're a community journalist who wants to add solution-seeking depth to your reporting tools, consider joining the Solutions Journalism Network's next Rural Cohort. The deadline to apply has been extended to April 2.

Journalists from any rural-serving news organization are welcome to apply to be part of this year's cohort, which will teach participants how to incorporate solutions journalism into regular practice. All cohort members will receive professional development from the Solutions Journalism Network and support from each other.

Solutions Journalism training includes two-hour monthly meetings that focus on how journalists can find meaningful solutions to journalism stories in coverage such as county board meetings, press releases and regular beat coverage. Training will show editors and journalists how to evaluate story ideas, spot solutions opportunities, and effectively execute solutions stories while meeting deadlines.

Solutions Journalism isn't a program designed to add work to a newsroom's already full plate. Instead, cohort members will learn how to convert some of the vital and valuable coverage they're already doing into a solutions framework.

The initial application takes less than two minutes to complete and is due by April 2. Click here to explore.

For additional information, please contact Rural Media Manager Melissa Cassutt at melissa@solutionsjournalism.org

Report for America will no longer work with newspapers owned by hedge funds; it's 'not a model we support'

Report for America journalists report on under-covered
places and issues. (RFA photo)

Report for America supports local newsrooms struggling to cover their community's issues by recruiting and matching hardworking journalists with papers in need and then subsidizing reporters' salaries. 

But the initiative, which is part of the nonprofit media organization The GroundTruth Project, has taken a stand on which organizations it wants to support. "It has decided to stop working with one growing category of newspapers — those backed by hedge funds or private-equity firms," reports Jeremy Barr of The Washington Post. Kim Kleman, Report for America's Executive Director, told Barr, "Hedge fund ownership of local newsrooms is not a business model we support. America has seen the results: an axing of staff and also local news coverage."

Report for America's choice means "some major chains — including Gannett and Tribune Publishing — will no longer receive new reporters from the Report for America corps, though those currently placed in newsrooms will be able to finish their service," Barr explains. "Some journalists and industry-observers cheered the decision. American University journalism professor Margot Susca said 'it was a long time coming.'"

Still, the decision sparked controversy because some journalists felt the removal of Report for America reporters would further damage the profession and the quality of news coverage. Barr reports, "[They] expressed concern that journalists working at hedge fund-associated newspapers would be hurt by the disappearance of corps members, who fill staffing gaps and report on under-covered issues and communities."

As news outlets wrangle with shrinking profits and staff, Report for America journalists are in high demand. "To date, Report for America has placed 607 journalists in some 339 newsrooms, including nonprofit organizations, locally owned businesses and public media outlets," Barr reports. "Some 15 percent of those corps members have worked at news organizations owned by or associated with hedge funds, including 21 current journalists."

Wealthier, more metro residents have access to local news, while lower-income communities often live in news deserts

Medill Local News Initiative map, from Local News Initiative data

As local news outlets dwindle, lower income residents are more likely to live in a news desert than wealthier residents, who are more likely to live near or in a metro area. "The State of Local News Project at Northwestern University documents the changing local news landscape across the country. Our latest report shows that where you live and how much money you make affect whether you live in a news desert or a news oasis," reports project director Sarah Stonbely for The Conversation, a journalistic platform for academics. "This divide is related to other factors affecting the health of our democracy, as analysis of our data by the nonprofit Rebuild Local News showed."

The expansion of news deserts means areas have no outlets reporting on local news or civic meetings that help residents stay informed and involved in the democratic process. Regional news revenue has shrunk as social media has taken chunks of advertising dollars without investing in local communities.

Without ad revenue, "Many outlets rely on audience funding, philanthropy, cost-cutting or some combination of the three," Stonbely explains."In communities with little disposable income for news subscriptions or donations and no local philanthropies, cost-cutting becomes the only option. This creates a self-reinforcing spiral of lower quality and declining readership and, ultimately, closure."

Right now, the determining factor between news haves and have-nots is money. Stonbely writes, "Wealthier communities do better sustaining local news organizations. . . . An example is the Moab Sun News, which is thriving in the rural rocky highlands of Utah, thanks in part to a robust tourism industry and retail base. Though it serves a relatively small permanent population of 5,321, the Moab Sun News has built a sustainable business model."

For some news outlets, the current market is not sustainable. "All told, 1,558 of the nation's 3,143 counties have only one news outlet, while 203 are news deserts with zero, meaning there are likely thousands of communities that simply do not have access to local news," Stonbely reports. "For example, Texas and Tennessee had four counties lose their only remaining newspaper last year. All eight papers were independently owned."

Despite the tough market, ways to help sustain local journalism -- especially in challenging markets are emerging. Collaboration is one way. "In Colorado, the national nonprofit news outlet The Daily Yonder has hired a reporter based in a rural community to write stories about life there and share them out with both local and national organizations," Stonbely reports. Another option is philanthropic support. "Public policy should also play a role. At the state level, policies to support local news have seen success in New Jersey, California and elsewhere, and more bills are working their way through state legislatures."

A story of hope: Rosalynn Carter's mental health advocacy 'changed journalism — and journalists'

Carter's advocacy created a framework for much of the
progress on mental illness in America. (Photo by Ric Feld, AP)

One reporter's journey to understanding the role journalism could play in improving Americans' lives began with Roslyn Carter's mental health advocacy. A condensed version of Aaron Glantz's NPR story is shared below.

"So much of who I am today is the result of receiving a Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship from The Carter Center 15 years ago.

"When I met former first lady Rosalynn Carter in Atlanta in 2008, I was accomplished — having written one book and under contract for a second — but I was also broken after three years reporting in Iraq and an equal amount of time chronicling challenges veterans faced back home. I wrote without purpose, drifting from story to story and full of rage at what I saw as the U.S. government's failure to take seriously the human consequences of the war it began.

"Mrs. Carter was the first person to ever ask me how my journalism would make an impact. It was such an obvious question that it changed my life.

"These days, the question of impact is regularly discussed in newsrooms, especially on investigative desks. But at the time, considering the purpose of one's journalism was often considered taboo. . . .Her challenge, laid out softly in her gentle Southern drawl, gave me a way to channel my trauma. I could deploy it, and the entire journalism toolbox, into making people's lives better.

"All my work since and the change it has made — the fact the VA now tracks veteran suicides in an effort to prevent them, that 500,000 fewer veterans are waiting for disability benefits, that 100,000 fewer are on government-prescribed opioids, and more — can all be traced back to Mrs. Carter and her vision that journalism should have a greater purpose, to fight stigma and make change.

"As she did with her other fellows, she watched my work closely, sending congratulatory letters when my reporting won major journalism awards. She took me seriously, which made me take myself seriously. . . . Since Carter's death, I've been crying — as I share memories with some of the more than 200 other journalists who have held the fellowship that bears her name. Even those who held the fellowship after Mrs. Carter's health began to slip when she could no longer attend in person and provide notes spoke of the impact she had on them.

"Carter was a visionary. When she established the Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship in 1996, the entire conception of mental health as a journalism beat was not well established. Screaming headlines in newspapers and chyrons on the nightly news proclaimed people to be 'crazy' or 'insane.' The idea of reporting with the expressed purpose of fighting stigma and improving conditions for people with mental illness was foreign to most editors and publishers. . . . Through deliberate work over more than two decades with hundreds of reporters; Carter changed that." 

Some 'ghost' newspapers owned by large companies no longer have even one local reporter

The Gleaner in Henderson, Ky., used to have a newsroom
staff of about 20. (Photo by Donna Stinnett via WSJ)

With the severe cutbacks at some news organizations, your local newspaper may not have any reporters, writes Alexandra Bruell of The Wall Street Journal. "The Gleaner, the local newspaper in Henderson, Ky., has sections focused on features, sports, news and opinion. What it doesn't have: a single reporter on staff."

How could a once-bustling, energetic community newspaper like The Gleaner, which employed about 20 staffers, now have zero reporters? "The publication is one of the 'ghost newsrooms' that increasingly dot the American media landscape — newspapers that have little to no on-the-ground presence in the localities whose name they bear," Bruell writes. "It is a sobering development in an industry that has been brought to its knees by the rise of digital media and large technology companies."

Penny Abernathy, a visiting professor at Northwestern University and lead author of a recent report on the state of local news in the United States, told Bruell: [Many newspapers] "are so depleted in staff, or maybe have no staff, that they're not able to provide the sort of communication the residents in that community need to make wise decisions."

The surge of free internet news alongside online advertising behemoths such as Google and Facebook have continued to "hollow out local newsrooms as waves of consolidation and layoffs significantly changed the country's news landscape," Bruell reports. "Smaller outlets were hit particularly hard by sharp declines in circulation and incursions into their online advertising businesses."

Northwestern's study about "the state of local news cited research showing that about half of the 70 smallest papers owned by Gannett and Lee Enterprises — two of the nation's largest local news publishers — had no listing of any local journalists on staff," Bruell writes. "Abernathy said the study only looked at extremely small publications and that there are likely to be ghost newsrooms among larger local papers."

Roughly 2½ newspapers close each week, according to the study, and "the country has lost almost two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005," Bruell reports. "The decline of local news is having an outsize impact on the entire media industry because the study said that until recently, as much as 85% of the news that ultimately made national headlines was first published in a local newspaper."