Taking the rural stop train tour: 'There’s something remarkable about everywhere.'

Big sky and wide open spaces in Rugby, North Dakota (Photo by Travis Brown, Unsplash)

American songs are replete with tunes about trains. There's "Love Train," "Peace Train," "Girl on a Train, "Crazy Train" and "Stop This Train," to name only a few. But what about "Rural Train"? There doesn't seem to be a song about what happens to a reporter who takes an Amtrak across the United States and has some great times getting off and exploring rural stops. Luckily, there is a newspaper story on just such a journey. 

"If you ride the railroad’s Empire Builder route from Chicago to Seattle and back, as I did recently, you’ll watch the scenery evolve. . . . My pass entitled me only to one coach seat. No bed; no shower; shared bathrooms that, more often than not, looked long overdue for a cleaning," reports Richard Rubin of The New York Times. "But I also met a lot of interesting people on the train. . . . Most memorably, I visited six American places that I would never otherwise have experienced. Or even known about."

Here are a few of his favorite stops.

A view at Glacier National Park
(Photo by M. Kirchman, Unsplash)

Rugby, N.D., population: 2,509
"If the sight of endless prairie doesn’t convince you that you’ve reached the heartland, Rugby will: It is, as signs all over town will tell you, 'the geographical center of North America,'" Rubin writes. "Whether or not this is true, or whether such a status can even be mathematically determined, is disputed. . . . Down Second Street, I found the florist in the spot it has occupied since at least 1903. The 1938 WPA Guide to North Dakota notes that the shop’s founder, Nels Lindberg, is credited with coining the phrase 'Say it with flowers.'"

Cut Bank, Montana, population: 3,056
Cut Bank is the last stop before the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and Glacier National Park. The town provides "splendid vistas of the Rockies — without crowds," Rubin writes. The town includes unique lodgings, including "oil workers’ houses, a recreated homesteader’s cabin, or a genuine caboose at the Glacier County Historical Museum, . . ."

Sandpoint, Idaho, population: 8,639
"The Empire Builder stopped at 11 places in Montana, but I saw nothing at any of them that topped Sandpoint — Amtrak’s only stop in Idaho — for raw beauty," Rubin adds. "It sits on Lake Pend Oreille (pondo-RAY), which is surrounded by verdant mountains and runs 43 miles long and nearly 1,200 feet deep. 'The Navy tests stealth submarines in it,' one gentleman told me. (It’s true.)" To read Rubin's complete account of his "Rural Train" adventure, click here.

The seemingly endless coastline of Sandpoint, Idaho (Photo by Backroad Packers, Unsplash)

 

 

Free webinar on Friday about demystifying LexisNexis for research-based reporting; registration takes 2 minutes

The National Press Club Journalism Institute is hosting a learning webinar on accessing and customizing the LexisNexis database on Friday, May 17 at 11:30 a.m., E.T. 

Register here.

LexisNexis provides a library of legal, business, government, high-tech and news articles, which are starting points for researching story ideas. Its database also provides access to articles that are paywall-protected.

Because LexisNexis houses so much information, the database can be confusing. To teach reporters how to navigate this resource, award-winning investigative reporter and editor Brad Hamilton will walk participants through how to customize LexisNexis to source stories, find unexpected story angles, and identify and reach potential sources through LexisNexis’ "Contact References" database.

LexisNexis is a fee-based database service that some newsrooms provide staff access to. Most public libraries offer access to their communities, and National Press Club members have free access to the LexisNexis database as part of their annual membership. Hamilton will also provide journalists an avenue to access LexisNexis at a discount.

Thieves took most print copies of rural weekly with story on alleged rape at police chief's home; increased story's reach

UPDATE, Jan. 20: Mike Wiggins tells the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, "The thief returned all of the stolen newspapers to our office Thursday night, confessed to the crime and was cited for petty theft this morning." The Plaindealer reports that it is not disclosing the thief's relationship to the sexual-assault case, and "The theft was not connected in any way to the three defendants in the case, their families or the Ouray Police Department."

Front page of the latest Ouray County Plaindealer

By Corey Hutchins
Inside the News in Colorado

This week, a front-page story appeared in the small and mighty Ouray County Plaindealer about a 17-year-old girl’s allegations of being raped by teenagers at the home of a police chief.

What happened next? Papers started disappearing from newspaper boxes around the county, said the paper’s owners, Erin McIntyre and Mike Wiggins.

Here’s more from a note to readers in an email Thursday: "All of our newspaper racks in Ouray and all but one rack in Ridgway were hit by a thief who stole all the newspapers. From what we know so far, it seems this person put in four quarters and took all the papers at these racks. It’s pretty clear that someone didn’t want the community to read the news this week. … Whoever did this does not understand that stealing newspapers doesn’t stop a story. We’re not going to stop doing our job, which is to shine light on important issues in our community and keep you informed. This person is not going to shut down the freedom of the press by stealing a few hundred newspapers. Our community won’t stand for it and we won’t, either."

McIntyre also said the young newspaper publishers were working with a printing plant in Montrose to get another press run published on Thursday. “I'll leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions on which story they didn’t want you to read,” she wrote. Online, a backlash was surging.

When news of the alleged newspaper thefts hit social media Thursday afternoon, Colorado journalists began sharing a link to the online version of the rape allegations story, including an editor at the Colorado Sun, Denver Post staffers, prominent Denver TV anchor Kyle Clark, and others. (The Plaindealer made the story free to read on its website; other stories are not.) The Post ran details of the rape allegations, naming two suspects; the story led with news of the stolen papers.

Ouray County (Wikipedia map)

Clark also included a broadcast segment about it on his "Next" show Thursday evening, indicating the sexual assault story was the news someone was trying to suppress. “We have a link to the article at the Next section of 9News.com,” Clark told his audience Thursday evening. “I recommend you read it if for no other reason [than] that because somebody doesn’t want you to see it.”

If that was the case, the pilfered periodicals produced a classic Streisand effect. The online version prominently displayed mugshots of the three young men arrested for suspected sexual assault, including the Ouray police chief’s stepson; the front-page print story did not.

McIntyre said Friday she hadn’t looked at how much traffic the online story generated, but she said more than $2,000 in donations had flowed in to the newsroom since they publicized the thefts. “People are angry this happened,” she said in a text message Friday morning. “Law enforcement is going to catch this person and we plan on pressing charges.” (She pointed to a 2022 state statute that makes the act of interfering with the lawful distribution of newspapers a finable offense.)

“If you hoped to silence or intimidate us,” Plaindealer co-owner Wiggins said, “you failed miserably.”

The rural journalism business model hasn’t failed, but it needs updating; a nonprofit cooperative option beckons

By Al Cross
Director Emeritus, Institute for Rural Journalism

It’s become conventional wisdom that the advertising-based business model of newspapers has failed. But that is not true in many small communities, which could become the nuclei of a national enterprise of nonprofit newsrooms that will provide better journalism with sound business practices, including economies of scale.

So says Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, CEO and co-founder of the National Trust For Local News, who recently announced the creation of a third state-based nonprofit journalism company, in Georgia, adding to those it has in Colorado (24 newspapers) and Maine (22), and says “wild success” would be a total of 15 such companies in the next five years.

Shapiro was interviewed on the Nov. 1 edition of the “Local News Matters” podcast of Tim Regan-Porter, executive director of the Colorado Press Association. When he asked her a question that many journalism funders and advocates ask, “Why save a failing business model?” she said the question is based on “high-profile failings of metro newspapers,” which aren’t reflected in the smaller papers the Trust owns or is considering buying.

Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro

“We have profitable papers in our portfolio and we come across profitable papers every day!” she exclaimed. “This idea that the business model is forever and always broken just reflects a real lack of curiosity, and I would say empirics, on the part of its adherents.”

That sort of language reflects Shapiro’s background as an academic researcher of journalism, with a Harvard Ph.D. in business studies, but she has developed a deep appreciation of small community newspapers, and she has become one of their most knowledgeable and articulate advocates.

“Because I was not trained as a journalist and didn’t come through that system, I didn’t come to this work with, you know, sort of hierarchy in my mind of metro news above all,” she said. “Plenty of funders also share that orientation, of like, metro news is sort of the highest level of news and the rest of it is sort of service journalism or amateur hour, basically. . . .

“I see it as actually the highest form of local news, because I think it actually reflects what truly local means, and the way that I think everyday people experience what ‘local’ means . . . local as in, ‘I live in this neighborhood’ or ‘I live in this town.’”

Shapiro is trying to make a distinction that badly needs making, at a time when local news is in trouble and a lot of people who want to help it don’t fully understand that “local” depends on how the audience of a news outlet defines its community.

She told Regan-Porter that the fracturing and diversification of business models “based on place and economic inequalities between geographies” – primarily rural and urban – means that “there really is no one-size-fits all,” and “There’s gonna have to be different solution sets for different scales.”

There are many differences among localities, she said, and many rural communities still have many independent retailers who advertise in local papers; but overall, the rural-paper business model must also include subscriptions, events, donations and “anything you can get.”

On a company scale, the Trust’s state-based approach is not fundamentally different from newspaper chains that use economies of scale and shared services, but Shapiro said it wants to preserve newspapers’ local identities, which she said is essential for long-term success.

“These are deeply local institutions, and their value and their long-term success depends on that: the quality of local participation and local engagement,” she said.

That requires a quality product, and the Trust’s chief portfolio officer, Ross McDuffie, said recently that it has “quality local news as the North Star of decision-making,” not “profits or shareholder value.”

Of course, the Trust’s companies must stay in the black, but they have “longer time horizons,” Shapiro said, with the top goal being community impact, not profit.

“The path to impact has to be through disciplined management of the business, because without money you have no mission,” she told Regan-Porter, who then cited the maxim that nonprofit is not a business model, it’s a tax status.

For-profit chains do short-term things that reduce the quality of reader experience, Shapiro said: “We are long-term investors in the quality of the product, and a quality product and an engaged audience are the drivers of long-term success.”

One cornerstone of quality is accountability journalism, but that’s not the main reason people like their local paper, Shapiro said: “Our model focuses on strong communities and social cohesion.”

The Trust says its mission is to conserve, transform and sustain community news organizations, and ultimately build stronger communities by keeping small, traditional sources of local news in local hands.

Shapiro said the Trust is willing to buy papers that would have difficulty surviving on their own but “wouldn’t be replaceable by something else” and can thrive in a nonprofit group. She said the Trust’s goal is “sustainability across a network so that we can serve larger communities and smaller communities.”

Shapiro said the Trust is still figuring out how to integrate the operations of its Maine papers, which it bought in August, and in other states wants to find publishers who can make strong anchors in a scaling-up strategy. “The good news is, we hear from those kind of folks every day,” she said.

The bad news, she said, is that time is short.

“Rural news publishers, in particular independent rural news publishers, are at risk of extinction, either getting bought by political forces or just closing because of really difficult economics in small places,” she said. “I think we are really in a race against time.”

Al Cross edited and managed rural newspapers before covering politics for the Louisville Courier Journal and serving as president of the Society of Professional Journalists. This is his latest column for Publishers' Auxiliary, the monthly newspaper of the National Newspaper Association.

Post office employees say they have been banned from mentioning Amazon deliveries as a cause of mail delays

Around 65 people gathered for the listening session.
(Photo by Annalise Braught, Bemidji Pioneer)

One of the U.S. Postal Service's greatest strengths -- connecting every delivery point in the United States to every other delivery point -- is what made a company like Amazon possible. But now, the massive task of servicing Amazon's contract is pushing some rural post offices to the brink.

Even limited research on Amazon packages and rural post offices shows how hard rural post office employees must work to fulfill the sheer number of Amazon packages and overall "last mile" package deliveries. Articles and petitions addressing the issue include details on how stressed postal employees are, including The Washington Post's recent story with this headline: "Rural post office was told to prioritize Amazon packages. Chaos ensued."

Since the Post article was published, mail carriers in their featured small town, Bemidji, Minnesota, say they have been censored for speaking out. "Mail carriers in a rural Minnesota post office [Bemidji] overwhelmed by Amazon packages say they've been warned not to use the word 'Amazon,' including when customers ask why the mail is delayed," Caroline O'Donovan of The Washington Post reports. "'We are not to mention the word Amazon to anyone,' said a mail carrier. . . . 'If asked, they're to be referred to as Delivery Partners or Distributors,' said a second carrier. 'It's ridiculous.'"

The directive was "passed down Monday morning from U.S. Postal Service management and comes three weeks after mail carriers in the northern Minnesota town staged a symbolic strike outside the post office" to protest "the heavy workloads and long hours caused by the sudden arrival of thousands of Amazon packages, O'Donovan reports. "On Tuesday, staffers from the offices of Democratic Minnesota senators Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar hosted a 'listening session' with Bemidji residents to "discuss ongoing postal issues related to package and mail delivery."

"In addition to being banned from saying 'Amazon,' postal workers have also been told their jobs could be at risk if they speak publicly about post office issues," O'Donovan adds. "Staffers were told they could attend Tuesday's meeting only on their 30-minute lunch break if they changed out of uniform, mail carriers said. One mail carrier said he'd been warned there could be 'consequences' for those who showed up."

"Tuesday's meeting in Bemidji lasted over an hour. Fifty people attended in person, and more than 180 watched a live stream on the website of the local newspaper, the Bemidji Pioneer," O'Donovan reports. "Multiple postal workers who recently quit or retired due to the ongoing issues attended, including one who identified herself only as Shelly, and received a spontaneous round of applause when she began to speak. . . . 'I worked at the post office for 30 years. . . Never in my life have I been treated so poorly. I go home at night crying. . . I was forced to retire.'"

To read the Bemidji Pioneer's coverage, click here.

Op-ed argues that the popular narrative about rural Californians is false; in fact, rural communities are doing well

Lounging dairy cows in Kern County (Photo by Brian van der Brug, L.A. Times)

Many rural Californians don't fit the current narrative of conservative, angry Americans who feel left behind. Elizabeth Currid-Halkett and Marley Randazzo encourage readers to take a closer look at how rural is socially and politically defined and what that might mean more broadly for rural America in their Op-Ed for the Los Angeles Times, "Rural California isn't what you think it is."

A popular rural narrative, they contend, is that rural Californians voted for Trump in 2020, because "they are poor, angry and feel left behind by the political establishment and educated urban elites." But, scrutiny dispelled much of this storyline. "In fact, many rural areas in California are doing well economically. Also, their vote for Trump is misunderstood. With Trump again a viable presidential contender, politicians, policymakers and the public should shift their lens upon rural areas."

A more "nuanced" approach that reconsiders what many thought was rural California or even rural America would bring more understanding. "Rather than dismissing rural Americans and assuming their politics, we ought to take the time to understand these complex communities. Our country's future depends on it," Currid-Halkett and Randazzo write.

They note researchers and government policy writers use dozens of ways to define rural; however, "most folks think of places beyond the city limits, layered with farms, dirt roads and humble main streets," but in California, that's not the case. "Much of Fresno County may appear to Angelenos as rural with its expansive farmland. However, Fresno has an urban population of about 900,000, meaning the county qualifies as a medium-sized metropolitan area according to Department of Agriculture standards."

Nor does living in rural California mean barely scraping by. "Our analysis of recent census data reveals that rural Californians are substantially more likely than their urban counterparts to own their own home and be employed," Currid-Halkett and Randazzo add. "Rural California's unemployment rate is 3% compared with 4.2% for metro areas. Against the backdrop of a housing crisis, homeownership in rural California is more than 70%, while just 55% for our cities."

Political opinions about rural residents are also riddled with misconceptions. "Although Trump won 10 of California's 13 rural counties in 2020, the data show that some rural margins were razor thin," they note. "Over the past five years, one of us spoke to dozens of Americans, finding that not only are rural Americans not angry at liberal elites living in cities but that they share many of the same values. When asked about democracy, equality, immigration and other important issues of our time, rural Americans were in line with what their urban counterparts expressed. They conveyed, however, a wariness toward being told what they should think and say."

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

Reade Brower

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

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

Elisabeth Hansen Shapiro

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

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

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

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

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

Review of award-winning Demon Copperhead by a survivor of the opioid epidemic helps explain it, and Appalachia

Described by Appalachian journalist-author Beth Macy as "a voice for the ages—akin to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield—only even more resilient," the voice of Demon Copperhead could become an classic look at a slice of Appalachian life and spirit. It won this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Appalachia's first since James Agee's A Death in the Family in 1958, and has received accolades from The New York Times, Oprah's Book Club and The Washington Post. Although impressive, those praises lack the depth and personal perspective of a review by Appalachian Jessica Miller, writing for Youth Communication, a nonprofit publisher of teen-written stories and curricula to help educators strengthen youth's social and emotional skills. Here's an edited verrsion:

By Jessica Miller

Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver dedicates her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Demon Copperhead to survivors of the opioid crisis and foster care. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the book is dedicated to me: I am an Appalachian who was put in foster care thanks to, in part, my father's opioid addiction.

Reading the novel, I felt vindicated and relieved that the author voiced all the things I want to explain to people who don't understand where I come from. Transforming Charles Dickens's novel David Copperfield and its explorations of institutional poverty in Victorian England into a saga set in the beginning days of Appalachia's opioid epidemic, Kingsolver compassionately shows how exploitative industries—like logging and coal mining, big-box retailers like Walmart, and pharmaceutical companies like Purdue Pharma—have taken advantage of Appalachia for the sake of profit. The resulting opioid epidemic and poverty in the region have led to a child welfare crisis: Kentucky, my home state, had 8,863 youth in care in 2022, up 27 percent from 2012.

In the novel, the main character, Demon, is put into foster care because of his mother's addiction. His foster parents expect him to "pay his way"—either using his foster care stipend as family income or forcing him to work on farms and junkyards. In one house, he suffers from nicotine poisoning when he is forced to harvest tobacco crops. In another, a barely fed Demon is made to sleep on an undersized air mattress in a dirty laundry room. . . . Ultimately, Demon suffers from addiction himself. . . .  Kingsolver discusses not only the myriad ways people become addicted to opioids but also what opioids can do to a person—from constipation to prostitution.

Demon laments that "God made us the butt of the joke universe," but this is a situation both Demon and Appalachian people at large contend with through humor of our own. . . . That's also part of the reason, I think, Kingsolver emphasizes the colorful nicknames we rednecks end up calling each other: They're life-affirming. Hotmail Cox, Rat Hole, Cow Pen, and Snotty Nose are some nicknames from my family and friends. Kingsolver similarly bestows goofy nicknames on her characters, such as Fast Forward and Maggot. We may be a gaggle of people largely invisible to the outside world, but our nicknames assert that we are someone to our community, even if we—and our names—don't make much sense to anyone but ourselves.

It was a treat to read . . . because the adequate representation of Appalachian people is hard to come by. Appalachian people are portrayed as being crazy, stupid, and dangerous. Being the "dog of America," as Kingsolver puts it, has real consequences: Appalachian communities have been continually exploited and discriminated against. Once, while I was meeting a board member for one of my scholarships, he told me an unfunny joke about incest in Eastern Kentucky [which has no higher prevalance of reported incest than the rest of the nation]. It was frightening to know that I could have been denied a scholarship I desperately needed just because he has negative views about the Appalachian end of the state.

Dickens didn't write David Copperfield with Victorian England's most underprivileged audience in mind; they probably couldn't afford to buy the novel, even if they were literate and had enough free time to read it. . . . The wisdom of the book isn't meant for me. Many of the realities Kingsolver lays bare are ones I've already lived through. . . . Its power lies in Kingsolver's impressive ability to craft Demon's realistic interior and share it with readers who wouldn't otherwise have his firsthand experience.

My favorite part of the book is when Demon muses, at his biological mother's funeral, that people tend to withhold sympathy from those who are struggling in an attempt to build "a wall to keep out the bad luck." It can be difficult for people to recognize that their socioeconomic comfort is basically just a product of "luck"—the cards they were dealt at birth. Instead of acknowledging that the house always wins and that the game is always rigged, they imagine that they're winning the game of life by their own virtue and skill, or at least that the difference between winners and losers is fundamental and justifiable. Demon Copperhead allows readers to see a side of the wall they otherwise might not. More than that, it urges readers to tear down that wall, to stop "building the wall with [themselves] still on the lucky side." For 550 wild and wonderful pages, Demon's Western Virginian reality is your reality.

Winner of award for community journalism reminds us why we need it; he revealed hunger in an affluent region

Brian PJ Cronin (Photo by Beth Cronin, via Flagpole magazine)

Brian PJ Cronin is this year's recipient of the Rollin M. "Pete" McCommons Award for Distinguished Community Journalism from the University of Georgia's Grady School of Journalism and Mass Communications. He won "for his four-part series on food insecurity in the affluent New York state area covered by his paper, The Highlands Current, and entitled Hunger in the Highlands," reports Pete McCommons for Flagpole magazine in Athens, Ga. The award, affectionately dubbed "the Petebody," a la the university's Peabody Awards, was established in 2018 to celebrate the relationships and community efficacy good local journalism can create.

 

This Adobe Stock photo ran with each story in the series.

"We were impressed by the depth and richness of this reporting, and especially the time and resources he was given to carry out this project," Kyser Lough, the chair of the McCommons award committee, told Flagpole. "He used well-rounded sourcing to find the relevant data and people necessary to build a deeper narrative, which allowed him to thoroughly present the topic and then start exploring what people were doing about it. . . . His work highlights the need for in-depth coverage like this that can fully explore the nuance and context of a community topic and the importance of community news outlets."

In his brief acceptance speech, Cronin described his work as "a dicey gig," and  he reflected on journalists' unique bonds with fellow citizens and local businesses. "As I was told by my editor when I started writing for The Highlands Current, there is nothing quite like covering the community in which you live. One week you're walking down Main Street, and everyone is shaking your hand and thanking you for exposing government corruption, and the next week you're doing all your grocery shopping two towns away so that no one throws a punch at you in the check-out line. . . . It’s up to small, local, independent news organizations with boots on the ground and knowledge of their communities to keep their communities from crumbling. Big Tech is not going to do it for us. There may be publishers espousing the supposed benefits that A.I. will bring shrinking newsrooms and time-crunched reporters, but I can assure you, there is no chatbot that is willing to sit through a four-hour zoning board meeting. . . . Thank you for creating an award for community journalism."

The series also won the only Civic and Community Service Award that the National Newspaper Association gave last year. It won other NNA awatds, including one for a series in infrastructure.

Update: Deadline to apply is EOD Monday, May 8, for Solutions Journalism Network project designed for rural newsrooms

Solutions Journalism logo

"Are you looking for a new way to cover your community's chronic problems? Are you looking to meaningfully engage with your community (and staff) differently? How could this lens of reporting benefit Rural America — and specifically, your community?"

So asks the Solutions Journalism Network as it launches a new professional-development opportunity specifically for rural-serving newsrooms. The Rural Cohort is a seven-month professional development program designed to support and train newsrooms seeking to learn solutions journalism and put it into regular practice.

This isn't a program designed to add work to a newsroom's already full plate, SJ says. Instead, cohort members will learn how to convert some of the vital and valuable coverage they're already doing into a solutions framework. Examples: county commission agendas, school board meetings, press releases and regular beat coverage.

SJ hopes to to have 10 newsrooms in its first cohort and that each will produce at least six solutions stories for their communities. Cohort members will meet once a month for two hours of training and another hour a month with a partner newsroom and a coach for mentorship.

Those interested in learning more or asking questions are may want to watch the recorded information session here.  The passcode is: fb!H=JK8

 

If you have additional questions, reach out to Melissa Cassutt: melissa@solutionsjournalism.org

Feds slow to find suitable housing for hundreds displaced by planned Forest Service burn that got out of control

The Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire was easily visible from space. (NASA photo)

After two runaway fires set by the U.S. Forest Service destroyed 430 homes in rural New Mexico a year ago, the federal government acted so slowly that only a few people have been able to move into temporary housing, leaving others to dig into their own meager savings or stay on friends’ couches, reports Patrick Lohmann of Source New Mexico in partnership with ProPublica.

The Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire "rode 74-mph wind gusts, engulfing dozens of homes in a single day as it tore through canyons and over mountains," Lohmann recounts. "The blaze became the biggest wildfire in the continental United States in 2022 and the biggest in New Mexico history. And it was the federal government’s fault: An ill-prepared and understaffed crew didn’t properly account for dry conditions and high winds when it ignited prescribed burns meant to limit the fuel for a potential wildfire."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency found temporary housing to 140 households, but "The federal government has acted so slowly and maintained such strict rules that only about a tenth of them have moved in," Lohmann reports. "EMA says most of the 140 households it deemed eligible for travel trailers or mobile homes — essentially, people whose uninsured primary residences sustained severe damage — have found 'another housing resource.' What the agency doesn’t say: For some, that resource is a vehicle, a tent or a rickety camper. It’s a friend or relative’s couch, sometimes far from home. It’s a mobile home paid for with retirement funds or meager savings."

Lohmann tells several stories of residents suffering from the lack of permanent housing, writing, "The fire upended a constellation of largely Hispanic, rural communities that have cultivated their land and culture in the shadows of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains for hundreds of years. Many residents can find their family names on land grants issued by Mexican governors in the 1830s. Now they’re dispersed across the region, even out of state."

N.C. reporters and a freelancer for a nonprofit win this year's Thomas Stokes Award for energy and environment reporting

Reporters who investigated rural environmental issues share this year's Thomas L. Stokes Award for Best Energy and Environment Writing from the National Press Foundation.

The winners are Eli Cahan, a freelance writer for California-based nonprofit Capital & Main and the USA Today Network; and Gavin Off and Ames Alexander of The Charlotte Observer and Adam Wagner the Raleigh News & Observer, newspapers owned by The McClatchy Co.

In “We’re Losing Our People,” Cahan drew attention to Native Americans in Arizona, Utah and Colorado who face lung disease from regular exposure to toxic metals from mines and analyzed the disproportionate toll Covid-19 took on indigenous people with pre-existing lung problems. Judges praised the piece for its “poignancy and impact” and called it “beautiful storytelling providing a sense of place, historical context and giving a voice to people who have not been heard.”

The first installment of the three-part series was published Dec. 4.

“Big Poultry” was a three–part deep dive into an industry that in North Carolina anually raises over 1 billion birds and generates 2.5 billion pounds of manure, which can leach into nearby water sources and affect human health. The reporters found that the state does not oversee the industry’s environmental impact and that ammonia from chicken-farm waste spreads to Maryland through the Chesapeake Bay.

Judges said the two newspapers “teamed up on a true public service mission to give a literal scorecard on how the poultry industry is operating in North Carolina … [and] exposing how little neighbors have in terms of recourse.” They said the investigation features “impressive” animation and visualization of the densely built chicken farms in North Carolina for an “exemplary” package.

The Stokes Award was created in 1959 to honor the late Thomas L. Stokes, a national-affairs columnist interested in energy, natural resources and the environment.

White women in rural America are dying at accelerated rates; new memoir explores why this group 'feels forgotten'

Book cover via Amazon

"A New Divide in American Death" was a Washington Post headline in 2016. The article's research pointed to an only partially explained reality: "The most extreme changes in mortality have occurred among white women, who are far more likely than their grandmothers to be smokers, suffer from obesity or drink themselves to death," Joel Achenbach and Dan Keating wrote. "The statistics show decaying health for all white women since 2000. The trend was most dramatic for women in the more rural areas."

But why? Sometimes it takes a story rather than a study to show us. Journalist and author Monica Potts grew up in Clinton, Arkansas, a town of about 2,500. She left to pursue her dreams, but her best friend, Darci, stayed in Clinton. In an interview with NPR Host Scott Detrow, Potts discusses the two women's contrasting stories in her new book, The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir Of Friendship And Lost Promise In Rural America.

Detrow: Two best friends start with the same dream but grow up to live very different lives. It's the story at the heart of a new memoir about getting out of a small town and the crushing pressures to stay in it. . . .So you're the one who, as it were, got out. But let's start with this - your friend Darci didn't. Tell us about Darci, and tell us about when the two of you were really young, the type of dreams you shared.
Potts: Darci and I met when we were really young, like, 5 or 6. From that moment on, we were almost sisters. We grew up in a small town in the Ozark Mountains. . . . It's a strong evangelical community. When we were little, we would look through an old atlas and dream about getting away when we were older to a big place. . . . When we were older, we dreamed about going to concerts and listening to bands we liked instead of the country music we heard everywhere.
Detrow: Just focusing in on that marriage message, you also write about the hypocrisy and the confusion about, your life is about getting married; your life is about finding a husband; your life is about having children. And yet, if you have sex before marriage and if you get pregnant, that's a terrible, terrible decision - and just trying to make sense of all of these conflicting messages as a teenager.
Potts: Yeah. Well, it's a terrible decision, but the path to redemption is through the church.
Detrow: At the expense of your education in many examples, right?
Potts: Yeah.
Detrow: You write about people dropping out of high school their sophomore or junior year, even, and getting married once they become pregnant.
Potts: At the expense of your education and whatever else you might have wanted for your life. Your life becomes about being a mother, and everything else you might have wanted becomes subsumed by that.
Detrow: So you go to college. You begin a career as a journalist. Darci drops out of college relatively early. She stays in and around Clinton. She's in a series of abusive relationships. . . .has drug problems. . . but you ultimately reconnected as adults.
Potts: I was working as a journalist, and I had started to read a series of studies about white women with the least amounts of education - were losing years of life expectancy compared to the generation before. That felt very personal to me. . . .That group of women was similar to the girls that I had grown up with, and I wanted to report what was happening and across rural America. . . .While I was [in Clinton] in April 2015, Darci reached out to me for the first time . . . . We met up. . . . I told her the kind of book I wanted to write. . . And she said, well, maybe you should just write about me. From there, we started to talk more about her life.
Potts: We spent a lot of time together over the next few years.
Detrow: And she really struggled in those interactions with you.
Potts: It was really up and down, and it was often painful to watch. . . . But she thought that if her story might help other people, then it would be worth it.
Detrow: And what do you think the big picture lessons are?
Potts: I've spent about five years thinking about this. . . One of the things in rural America is this perception of scarcity. I think it's easy for people here to believe that they've been forgotten, that there's no help for them, that there are no options. . . . or life outside of the church and motherhood and marriage for girls is. . . .They're just not connected to those options. I think the first place to start would be expanding those worlds and connecting people to the broader world . . . . giving people the freedom to become who they are and who they need to be.
Detrow: Over the period where you began reporting this book and writing this book, you decided to move back there yourself. Why?
Potts: There was a moment when I started to come home in my mid-30s. . . . I just realized how beautiful this place was to me. I have really deep roots here. . . . And there are things about this place I love - the wildness, the mountains, the rivers, and some of the culture. I felt I needed to close the loop before I could move on with my adulthood and experience this place anew and with fresh adult eyes.

The Rural Blog's publisher wants to keep rural America a place where local news media fuel democracy for the future

Most daily joys like coffee and a newspaper (a physical paper or a digital subscription) take some cash. The Rural Blog is different. It provides rural news that you can look forward to reading, free of charge, almost five days a week. Sometimes it informs, encourages, or sheds light -- sprinkled with an opinion now and then -- on just about anything that's rural or has what we call rural resonance.  

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues publishes The Rural Blog. When Institute leadership looks at rural communities and their news media, a story emerges that needs immediate and consistent attention, nurturing, and funding. In the last 10 years, we have increasingly worked to help rural news outlets survive and serve, and our new focus is on the sustainability of rural journalism, threatened by newspaper closures that are spreading. More than 200 counties in the U.S. have no local paper, and many papers are "ghost newspapers" that fail to give their communities the news coverage they need. Many others struggle through adversity, but every month brings news of more closures or mergers.

Financial support for the viability of local news media not only helps their communities, but helps rural areas have a voice in our national direction. Giving to the Institute is an active way to support rural democracy. Our donors often leave comments; here are a few: "If you live in a rural place, journalist or citizen, you need this information. . . . I gave $200; good journalism is critical for our free society. . . . Excellent aggregator of critical rural news. . . . Rural journalism is critical if we are to have well-informed voters and engaged citizens. . . . I appreciate the caring conveyed in the articles."

We don't often ask for money, but today is "One Day for UK" at the University of Kentucky, where we are based, so we're being team players by asking you to make a donation that can help preserve rural news media and democracy. Your donation is tax-deductible. You can do it here.

N.Y. Times needs to do more to understand the country between the coasts, executive editor says at conference

New York Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn replies to a question from moderator Evan Smith at the conference in Texas.

The New York Times needs to do more to understand and report on the whole United States, its top editor said Saturday at the 23rd annual International Symposium on Online Journalism in Austin.

"We have too many people on the coasts," Executive Editor Joe Kahn said. "We want to invest more in understanding what's happening around the country."

That includes hiring people from diverse geographies, Kahn added later. "We want to have a newsroom that looks like the country and increasingly like the world," because the Times is a global enterprise, he said. It has 10 million digital subscribers and is aiming for 15 million.

A questioner in the audience at the University of Texas asked how important ideological diversity is to the Times newsroom. "It's very important," Kahn replied, not by asking applicants about their political opinions, but seeking them "from a variety of geographies" where they are exposed to a wider range of views than on the coasts. He mentioned "places like Ohio" and hiring of people from "evangelical backgrounds," as well as military veterans.

Kahn said the Times continues to pursue journalism with a sense of objectivity, but in support of democracy, saying that in a non-democratic system, "The New York Times does not exist. . . . We are on the side of democracy" and against misinformation and manipulation of elections.

He said the paper is "going hard" after threats to democracy, "trying to understand the political motives of a rising class of Republicans," but doesn't want to "preach" about it. "I think we probably contributed to the results we saw in the midterm election," he said. "The people who were the most virulent election deniers tended to lose." He said that was not a motive for the coverage.

'Covering Mental Health Issues' webinar at noon ET Thurs.

Investigative reporter Brett Sholtis will discuss "Covering Mental Health Issues" in a one-hour GoToWebinar session at noon ET Thursday, March 23. Registrants must have a computer and audio/phone to participate. There is no cost for members of the Pennsylvania Newsmedia Association, which is sponsoring the training; for non-members, it's $20. Click here to register.

Mental illness is a delicate and powerful topic that touches almost all Americans," PNA says. "This webinar is an opportunity to learn how to report on the issue with care and impact.

Sholtis was the 2021-2022 Reveal Benjamin von Sternenfels Rosenthal Grantee for Mental Health Investigative Journalism with the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism. He was a health reporter for WITF-TV until early 2023 and now reports for Lancaster Online, focusing on extremism, voting systems and threats to democracy.

'Unpacking Food and Ag Reporting' livestream at 2 ET Tues.

Agriculture reporters Chris Clayton, Claire Carlson and Tom Philpott will talk about "Unpacking Food and Ag Reporting" in a livestream at 2 p.m. ET Tuesday, March 21.

The event is a chance to discuss food and ag stories and issues we should be paying attention to, how they approach the beat, the way food production and consumption influences many aspects of rural life, and more.

Clayton is the ag policy editor for Progressive Farmer. Philpott is a former food and ag correspondent for Mother Jones. Carlson is a staff correspondent for The Daily Yonder, which is presenting the event with its partner the Rural Assembly. For more information or to register, go here.

Newspaper publisher 'knew it was wrong,' used the law to be her own attorney and won her case

Darla Downs of the Northern Plains Independent in Wolf
Point, Montana. (Photo by Darrell Ehrlick, Daily Montanan)

Follow the law. Seems pretty straightforward, but in many cases, systems need astute citizens to get that job done. Darla Downs, owner and publisher of Montana's Northern Plains Independent, is a determined journalist who "took on the election of now-former Roosevelt County Attorney Frank Piocos. She couldn’t afford an attorney, so she filed a lawsuit pro se," reports Darrell Ehrlick of the Daily Montanan. "After both parties presented their cases, Judge Katherine Bidegaray ruled that Piocos was not a resident of the county when he ran for election in 2022, and therefore, he was ineligible for the office. She also ordered a new special election."

“This was outside my normal wheelhouse," Downs told Ehrlick. "I knew the law was on my side, and I had the help of plenty of county residents who were on my side. I believe in watchdog journalism, and people knew it was wrong and wanted me to do something.”

Ehrlick explains the conflict: "Piocos had previously been an assistant county attorney, which is not elected. Bidegaray’s decision said under the law, a qualified elector meant a person who has residence in a particular county. Residency is determined largely by where the person lives. . . . . Piocos had even rented office space in the county, but the judge said renting space is not the same as establishing residency, and therefore Piocos was not qualified to run for office in 2022. . . . . Piocos defended his win by claiming that Downs had not challenged his election properly. . . . the judge did not find that point persuasive."

Roosevelt County will now plan its special election, but meanwhile, "Roosevelt County Commission Chairman Gordon Oelkers said he’s been surprised at the number of people coming forward to either help in the interim, or consider running." Oelkers told Ehrlick, "There are not a lot of lawyers up here in this corner of the state. But I’m pleasantly surprised by the number who are willing to help provide guidance and move us in a positive direction."

Ehrlick noted that Downs presented and won her case as her own attorney. Downs told Ehrlick, "I wasn’t not surprised. I was relieved."

The Northern Plains Independent's main office is in Wolf Point, Montana, pop., 2,500. The paper reaches Roosevelt, Daniels, Mc-Cone, Valley, Sheridan or Richland counties.

Many coroners lack training, raising doubts in Pennsylvania on whether the local office should still be an elected one

Many of Pennsylvania's county coroners and medical examiners "lack adequate funding, transparency, and training," Ashad Hajela reports for Spotlight PA, in the latest of many such stories from many states over many years. Most Pennsylvania coroners, are elected but only five of the state's 67 counties have an accredited coroner or medical examiner. In many rural counties, "challenges are exacerbated because many coroners don’t have access to the labs and specialists who help investigate deaths," Hajela writes.

The rural coroners are less likely to have accreditation than their urban counterparts, a study from the state-run Center for Rural Pennsylvania finds. Those rural coroners also often have to "bear the burden of additional costs of transportation and lack of personnel because of their location," Hajela writes. 

Experts have long debated whether coroners should be elected. Christina VandePol, a former coroner and one of the study's authors, said elected coroners are able to work independently from counties so they're not always at the whim of district attorneys or county officials. "This autonomy can be important for investigating deaths like those in county jails. VandePol explained that because of her office’s independence, she was able to release the names of nursing homes that had more Covid-19 deaths while she was under pressure not to," Hajela reports. Conversely, elected coroners may be unqualified for the job. If a medical examiner was hired in they wouldn't have to meet residency requirements needed to run for office, "which allows counties to attract applicants beyond the county’s boundaries."

Quick hits: New 'Battery Belt' jobs, declining snowmelt, spooky rural tales, dams that are 'drowning machines' . . .

Santa Claus, Ind., has put up a roadblock for a proposed plant that would make diesel fuel from Illinois Basin coal, reports Rebecca Thiele for Indiana Public Media.

The new "Battery Belt" brings jobs to smaller cities, Joann Mueller reports for Axios.

As snowmelt becomes uncertain, grit and tradition prevail in the Pacific Northwest, Ruth Fremson and Kirk Johnson report for The New York Times.

Low-head dams, called "drowning machines," claim lives across Kentucky and the U.S., Sarah Hume reports for the Louisville Courier Journal. 

Liz Carey and Adam B. Giorgi write up rural America's spookiest stories for the Daily Yonder.