April 7 webinar will provide information about new federal infrastructure funds for plugging orphan oil and gas wells

Environmental Defense Fund map locates abandoned oil wells. To enlarge any image, click on it.

The National Conference of State Legislatures is hosting a webinar series that can help you study up on policy issues that can affect your readers (along with its target audience of state legislators). The webinars are free, and will be recorded for those unable to attend. 

"Orphaned No More: Federal Oil and Gas Well Reclamation" is the first in the series, and starts at 3 p.m. E.T. on April 7. From the website: "States across the country face a backlog of orphaned oil and gas wells, which can continue to emit methane and other pollutants if left unaddressed or improperly sealed." They also pose safety risks. "However, the costs of plugging and reclaiming oil and gas well sites often exceeds the amount available for reclamation. Further, many older wells have long been abandoned, and their owners no longer exist. It is often unclear who can or should be responsible for paying the plugging and reclamation costs. Recognizing these challenges, Congress included $4.7 billion for orphaned well plugging, remediation and restoration in the federal infrastructure bill. This webinar will educate state legislators on this new program, how their states can obtain funding and their options for directing these funds to meet their states’ needs and reclamation priorities." Register here.

Quick hits: Appalachian businesses sought for local food guide; webinar covers public transit's role in rural health-care access; exposé prompts Ala. police chief resignation

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

The Agriculture Department has announced 11 regional positions, including three Farm Service Agency state executive directors and eight Rural Development state directors. Read more here.

Here's a great example of a metro paper doing due diligence in rural accountability reporting: In Brookside, Ala., pop. 1,253, a police chief hired in 2018 spearheaded an effort to bring in more revenue through fines and civil forfeitures. Revenue from such tactics increased by 640% from 2018 to 2020. Meanwhile, the town's part-time municipal judge and prosecutor also got outsized pay raises. The police chief resigned in January after AL.com published the first story about the issue. Read more here.

Appalachian Sustainable Development is seeking farmers, food producers, breweries, wineries, restaurants, farmer's markets, food pantries, small businesses, and more to add a free listing to its Local Food Guide. Read more here.

A recent Rural Health Information Hub webinar explored the role of public transportation in rural health-care access, especially for seniors and those with disabilities. Listen to the recording here.

Sunshine Week webinars on March 14 and 16 will discuss how to use government data and bring it to life in stories

For Sunshine Week, coming up March 13-19, the National Freedom of Information Coalition and Uncovered: A Cold Case Platform will present two webinars discussing how technology can help or hinder government transparency. Admission is free, but NFOIC welcomes donations.

At 2 p.m. ET on March 14, data journalist Lam Thuy Vo will present "Igniting Inspiration: Using Freedom of Information to Bring Data to Light and to Life." The Sunshine Week website says: it "will focus on FOI and data possibilities — accomplishments via scraping and reporting using FOI requests." Register here.

At 3 p.m. ET on March 16, David Cuillier, Grace Cheng and Ashlee Fujawa will present "Sparking Discovery: Using FOI and Big Data to Tell Stories, Build Community, and Solve Problems." Cuiller is NFOIC's board president and a University of Arizona associate professor; Cheng is the director of government practice and practical law at Thomson Reuters; and Fujawa is the co-founder and head of community at Uncovered. From the website: "The panel will cover the basics of making open records requests, how to deal with denials, and how to present data in ways that engage and empower the public." Register here.

Rural poverty, economic development and race are topics of Aspen Institute webinars scheduled Wednesday, Oct. 13

Two Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group webinars on Wednesday, Oct. 13 will discuss different aspects of rural economic development through the lens of race:

The first, at 11:30 a.m. ET, is "Shared Prosperity: Building Power Towards an Equitable Rural Economy", held in conjunction with the Rural Local Initiatives Support Corporation's annual National Seminar. It will explore the positive economic and social potential that comes with improving racial equity in rural places. From the website: "Come hear stories of power and capacity building at the community level and take away lessons on how rural places have united to become more inclusive and economically vibrant." Register here.

At 2:30 p.m. ET, the Urban Institute and leaders from six community development financial institutions will share opportunities for transforming poverty into opportunity in rural and Native communities in "What Does It Take to Transform Persistent Rural Poverty Into Opportunity?" From the website: "This virtual event will cover broad and diverse regions of rural America, discussing the critical role that CDFIs play in bringing capital and capacity to marginalized communities and towns." Register here.

Rural Women Everywhere virtual conference Oct. 19-20

There's still plenty of time to register for Rural Women Everywhere, a free virtual conference to be held Oct. 19-20 celebrating rural and Native American women and what they bring to their communities.

The programming will include roundtable conversations, breakout sessions spotlighting women's experiences and reflections, and a keynote address from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a Native American. According to the website, you'll also "hear from women journalists, organizers and activists, indigenous leaders, artists and poets, lawyers and professors, faith leaders, and young women, who are building bridges and crossing borders to connect us to one another and the places we call home."

The event is sponsored by the Rural Assembly, a Center for Rural Strategies program that produces the twice-yearly Rural Assembly Everywhere conference.

Trusting News founder Joy Mayer, to be at Radically Rural Sept. 22, says newsrooms must build trust or lose readers

Lack of trust in news organizations is a major challenge for journalism these days, and newsrooms must figure out how build trust with readers, listeners and viewers or lose their place in the community, says a key speaker for the Community Journalism track at next week's Radically Rural conference in Keene, New Hampshire.

"You can’t change what people think in general about journalism, but you can recognize that peoples’ suspicions about and frustrations with national journalism are often valid," longtime journalist and professor Joy Mayer. told Annika Kristiansen of the Keene Sentinel, an annual summit of rural stakeholders. It will be held online and in-person in Keene Sept. 22-23. Mayer will kick off the community journalism track at 10:30 a.m. Sept. 22. 

Meyer organized Trusting News, a collaboration of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and the American Press Institute that seeks to increase trust between newsrooms and readers. "During her extensive years working in newsrooms and talking to her students, Mayer has watched as the narratives surrounding the media became more and more muddled in the minds of consumers across the country," Kristiansen reports. "The national political landscape and perception of national media have become increasingly polarized and tense. As a result, the burden has fallen on local journalists to take into account and be responsible for what their readers, viewers and listeners think about what journalism is."

Four-part webinar series on rural-urban divide starts tonight

A free, four-part webinar series about the rural-urban divide kicks off tonight from 7 to 8 p.m. ET. Register here. From the description: 

The rural-urban divide is deep, it’s widespread, and it’s getting worse. Liberal people from cities and suburbs think most rural folks are ignorant, racist, stuck in the past, their communities heading towards oblivion. Many in the countryside view urban people, academics, and the government as elitist, contemptuous of rural ways, and dismissive of the people living there. While race and racial resentment play major roles in this polarization, the divide between urban and rural is perhaps the most poorly understood component of our divisions. And it’s killing us, enabling the richest people and biggest corporations to dominate our democracy while the great majority of us fight amongst ourselves. How did we get here, and how do we begin to overcome the divide? More to the point, what role has those who espouse a fair and just world played in exacerbating the divide, and what must we do differently?

Future Generations University, LiKEN Knowledge, and Appalachian Voices are hosting the webinar series and say they'll discuss:

• Six underlying causes of the divide and how they reinforce each other
• How the neglect of rural development has enabled the divide and how effective, bottom-up rural development strategies can help reverse it
• Better, more accurate ways of understanding rural perspectives on regulations, the environment, and the role of government
• Much better ways to talk about and talk to rural communities
• Other tools and strategies for overcoming the divide

Free webinar at 1 p.m. ET Thursday, June 3, will show how rural employers can strengthen local vaccination rates

A National Rural Business Summit webinar on Thursday, June 3, will discuss how major rural employers and small businesses can engage with employees and residents to play a meaningful role in increasing the rural coronavirus vaccination rate. Strategies include sharing fact-based information, sharing personal vaccination stories, and supporting community vaccination efforts.

The free webinar will begin at 1 p.m. ET and is presented by the Rural Assembly in partnership with the Health Action Alliance, The Daily Yonder, the National Rural Health Association, The Rural America Chamber of Commerce, and other organizations. Click here to register.

In related news, a new episode of the Rural Assembly's Everywhere Radio show is all about how to overcome vaccine hesitancy in rural America. Host Whitney Kimball Coe, director of the Rural Assembly, talks with Jeff Eastman, CEO of Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit that provides free health care to those in need. Listen to the episode here.

Quick hits: register for Agri-Pulse Ag & Food Policy Summit March 22-24; programs help young rural entrepreneurs

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Two programs from Kansas and Mississippi are noteworthy examples of how to help young rural entrepreneurs thrive with training and tools. Read more here.

Fires, deteriorating infrastructure, and unusually cold weather strain rural Alaska's already-fragile water systems. Read more here.

Congress is launching an investigation into the "clean-coal" tax credit after evidence emerged that coal plants using the chemically treated fuel produce more smog than others. Read more here.

There's still time to register for the 2021 Agri-Pulse Ag & Food Policy Summit, coming up on March 22-24. Guests include Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and American Farm Bureau Federation president Zippy Duvall. Read more here.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice's companies owe millions more in environmental fines. Read more here.

The Rural Health Information Hub has updated its information guide on rural long-term care facilities, including a new FAQ on how the pandemic has affected such facilities. Read more here.

A recent book discusses the reasons estrangement commonly happens in farming and ranching families and how to find a way to reconcile. Read more here.

The Brookings Institution has an in-depth analysis of how an Office of Management and Budget proposal to redefine metropolitan statistical areas would affect rural America. Read more here.

An artist explores the intersection of Black culture and Appalachia. Read more here.

The Women of Appalachia Project dispels stereotypes with poetry, visual art and song. Read more here.

A new report from the Anti-Defamation League found that efforts to spread white supremacist propaganda almost doubled last year in the U.S. Read more here.

Seed and fertilizer make up more than half of the operating costs for corn and soybean producers, according newly released Agriculture Department data. Read more here.

Webinar with House Agriculture Committee members at 11 a.m. ET Friday will discuss rural issues in Congress

At 11 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 12, Agri-Pulse will host a bipartisan virtual discussion about the major rural issues before Congress, including the pandemic, unemployment, broadband, farming, and the environmental impact of natural disasters and wildfires. 

The free webinar, which will last about an hour, will feature House Agriculture Committee members Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., and Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., with lobbyist Kip Eidberg of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (which is sponsoring the webinar). Agri-Pulse managing editor Spencer Chase will moderate. 

Spanberger and Johnson both serve on the committee's Commodity Exchanges, Energy, and Credit subcommittees. Spanberger chairs the Conservation and Forestry Subcommittee, and Johnson serves on the Nutrition, Oversight, and Department Operations Subcommittee.  

Click here for more information about the webinar or to register. Pre-registration is required.

New online course aimed at making mental-health care more accessible to farmers and other rural residents

A new online course, Rural Resilience, aims to make mental-health care more accessible to farmers and other rural Americans. The program, created by the Michigan State University and Illinois State University Extension programs, "helps participants learn to recognize signs of stress, identify effective coping strategies, respond to suicidal behavior, and connect with appropriate resources," Foodtank reports. "The course also offers specialized mental health crisis training for employees of institutions with direct contact with farmers, such as unions, insurance companies, and credit servicers."

The majority of rural counties, home to 273,000 small farms, don't have enough mental-health care practictioners, according to a 2018 report from the University of Michigan's School of Public Health. "Compounding the problem, some farmers lack health insurance coverage for mental health care. Instead, these services can require out of pocket payments, which 87 percent of farmers agree is a barrier to treatment, according to a survey from the American Farm Bureau Federation," Foodtank reports.

Stigma can also prevent many farmers from seeking help, but leaving mental-health problems untreated can be deadly: farmers have a higher suicide rate than the general population, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Foodtank reports.

Four panelists from tomorrow's Radically Rural summit featured in article about community journalism

A recent article about the issues facing community journalism features four of the panelists from the Community Journalism track at the Radically Rural virtual summit on Thursday, Sept. 24. Tickets are still available.

Liz White, publisher of the Record-Journal in Meriden, Conn., says her paper was doing well before the pandemic, and thanks to the federal Paycheck Protection Program and grants from Facebook and Google, has been able to avoid staff layoffs, Susan Geier reports for the Granite State News Collaborative in New Hampshire. 

"All newspapers are challenged, but if you have an innovative culture and mindset, you can see a lot of opportunity for growth. I think what it has done, in general, is spark us to act even faster," White told Geier. Because the Record-Journal has little debt and no corporate bureaucracy to deal with, they can make decisions quickly, White said. Though they've embraced digital content, she said it's still a challenge converting viewers into paying subscribers.

Kristen Hare, who reports on the state of the newspaper industry for the Poynter Institute, told Geier that local journalism must pivot to new revenue models to survive. Cash-strapped small papers are increasingly snapped up by newspaper chains, which are increasingly controlled by hedge funds that don't have an incentive to innovate and ensure the long-term survival of journalism. 

Meanwhile, newspaper advertising revenue has dropped nearly 70 percent since 2004 because of social media. When the pandemic hit, newsrooms that diversified their revenue streams fared better, Hare said. Some promising new revenue models include seeking sponsors to fund different kinds of coverage (for example, a sporting goods store might sponsor high school sports coverage). Newspapers could also directly appeal to the community in a fundraising effort, she said.

Many small local newspapers are also at the mercy of disasters, just like other small businesses. The News Reporter, a twice-weekly paper in Columbus County, N.C., has suffered damage from three hurricanes in the past five years, and on top of that is dealing with the economic fallout from the pandemic, according to publisher Les High. 

He told Geier that the paper has been able to stave off layoffs by aggressively seeking grants, adding an online newsroom with help from an innovative partnership with the University of North Carolina. "We’ve learned a lot about change," High said. "We’ve moved a lot more to a digital model. If it goes online, you pay for that. We’ve also made key hires with a director of marketing and a super young editor. They are both digitally savvy and understand what it takes to make this model work."

Les Zaitz, editor and publisher of the Malheur Enterprise in Vale, Oregon, said that his paper is very rural and relies disproportionately on ads from local businesses. When the pandemic hit, "traditional advertising vaporized for about a month," Zaitz told Geier. He was worried the paper would have to shutter, but it helped to focus on increasing digital subscriptions and remain clear in communicating with the town. The paper put out a call for financial aid and says readers responded immediately. 

After the paper stabilized, Zaitz shifted his attention to helping local businesses with advertising deals, saying that he believes the newspaper is a community partner. "The community needs essential information about the pandemic, and the newspapers can provide it for free with the community’s support," Zaitz told Geier. "It’s not just 'here’s our tin cup.' That just won’t work, nor should it."

Don't forget: Radically Rural virtual summit is Sept. 24

This year's Radically Rural Summit, an all-day, online-only event, is coming up on Sept. 24, and tickets are still available. 

The summit features six programming tracks: Main streets, community journalism, entrepreneurship, arts and culture, land and communities, and clean energy. The community journalism track includes these sessions:

What's at Stake? Newsrooms increase online revenue and readership using data: What causes a non-reader to subscribe? What can be done to better retain existing readers? Who is having success among small news operations using research? And how are reporters and editors leading the effort? With traditional advertising in sharp decline, community news organizations are using research and data to find ways to increase paid readership and membership. Amy Kovac-Ashley of the American Press Institute will lead a panel of Autumn Phillips, managing editor of the Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier; Les High, publisher of The News Reporter in Whiteville, N.C.; and Liz White, chair of the Record-Journal Media Group in central Connecticut. (9-10:45 a.m. ET) 

Transformation: Rural news breaks out in all sorts of new ways: New journalism models with promise – digital start-ups, non-profit and co-op ventures, radical new thinking at small news organizations – are springing up across the country, suggesting ways these can be replicated at the small-town level. Kristen Hare of the Poynter Institute leads a panel of Jim Iovino, assistant professor of media innovation at West Virginia University; Larry Ryckman, editor and founder of The Colorado Sun; Les Zaitz, editor and publisher of the Malheur Enterprise in eastern Oregon; and Tamika Moore, managing producer of Red Clay Media in Alabama. (11 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. ET)

Crazy Good: 50 idea that will make a difference: A romp through some of the best ways to increase audience and revenue from game-changing news organizations, with a lively show-and-tell on tactics, techniques and products (including examples of outstanding covid-19 coverage). "You will leave with a magazine profiling new approaches and ideas," the website says. "Looking for an ROI on attending Radically Rural? This is it." Led by Linda Conway, executive director of the New England Newspaper and Press Association, and Terrence Williams, CEO of the Keene Sentinel, co-sponsor of the conference. (2-3:45 p.m. ET)

Here's a Sentinel update on the program, the technology and more.

A Sentinel story about White, High and Zaitz examines some of their strategies.

'Success Stories in Rural Journalism' webinar highlights reader support for local news outlets, good work that earns it

By Al Cross
Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

A new maxim – or is it a mandate? – of the newspaper business is “Get more revenue from your audience.” But that doesn’t have to come entirely in the form of higher subscription or single-copy prices; if you produce good journalism, you can get direct contributions from readers, and some community newspapers have proven it.

That was the big headline from “Success Stories in Rural Journalism,” a webinar the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues held with four community editors on July 30. The frame for it was our belief that the two main solutions to challenges facing the news business are quality journalism, and helping people understand what it is – distinguishing journalism from other kinds of information, and helping people realize its value.

That’s why two of our webinar guests were from papers whose readers have shown with donations that they know their papers’ value: John Gregg, news editor of the daily Valley News in West Lebanon, N.H., and Laurie Ezzell Brown, editor-publisher of The Canadian Record, a Texas Panhandle weekly. We also heard success stories from Landmark Community Newspapers Executive Editor John Nelson and Jennifer P. Brown of Hoptown Chronicle, a digital startup in Kentucky.

Direct reader support is helping the Valley News thrive, and it’s helping the Canadian Record survive.

John Gregg

When the pandemic suppressed advertising and the Newspapers of New England chain decided to appeal for reader donations, the News set a goal of $50,000. “Within five days we got that from about 600 contributors,” Gregg said. “By early June we had raised $155,000 from about 1,500 people.” It made The Rural Blog, at https://tinyurl.com/y2tuorvy.

Residents of the 40 Upper Connecticut River Valley towns covered by the Valley News clearly wanted to keep reading a first-class small daily. The paper emphasizes local news but also is part of the Granite State News Collaborative and uses material from VTDigger, a Vermont investigative newsroom.

Valley News readers, who Gregg said “vary from fifth-generation dairy farmers to school bus drivers to heart surgeons,” surely appreciated the News’s comprehensive coverage of the pandemic, which Gregg discussed on the webinar and was exempted from the daily’s five-story paywall. “It was so clear that people were really dependent on us for news and were, you know, stuck at home, and all the more we were their connection to the community.

Coronavirus news made Brown publish more pages in her weekly than she probably should have, but people in Hemphill County are accustomed to extra effort from the Record, which has been in her family for 75 years. But the last three years have been hard, she said.

Laurie Ezzell Brown

“We've survived crippling ice storms, devastating drought, deadly wildfires and tornadoes, and dramatic downturns in our two main industries . . . oil and gas, and cattle ranching,” Brown said. “It doesn't even hold a candle to the impact of the virus has had on the small businesses that . . . had been our essential partners in in the business of delivering the news to our readers.”

But two years ago, a seed was planted that has helped the paper survive. When a county commissioner said at a meeting, “Nobody reads the newspaper anymore,” Brown wrote an editorial explaining how wrong he was an inviting him to read the paper. “The response to that was pretty immediate, and very emotional,” she recalled.

As the economy worsened, Brown was frank with her readers: “The Record is facing an uncertain financial future.” She said in the webinar, “I worry that we've written too much about the difficulty newspapers are facing today. I have never wanted to make us the story. But I realized at some point that it IS the story, that it’s one that’s crucial to our communities and that needs telling, and that what happens next will reshape the future of our communities.”

As the pandemic made Brown wonder if she could keep publishing, she got a letter from “a well-seasoned rancher” who “announced that he was writing $1,000 check to start a fund to help keep the Canadian Record going and invited others to do the same. This was completely unsolicited; it came out of the blue,” and more donations came. “The fund that Jerry established has been the thing that's kept us going for at least two months; we're not paying the bills any other way.”

Landmark papers haven’t asked for donations, but have kept up their editorial quality, as John Nelson made clear with examples on the webinar, such as in-depth coverage of opioids by The Lancaster News in South Carolina, Missouri River floods by the Opinion-Tribune of Glenwood, Iowa, and proposed “guardians” of schools by the Citrus County Chronicle in Florida.

Screenshot of Ben Carlson column; for a readable image, click on it

The example from Nelson that really rang our bell, though, was a column by Editor-Publisher Ben Carlson of The Anderson News in Lawrenceburg, Ky., in Landmark’s company newsletter. It told how a man whose 14-year-old son had drowned refused to talk with TV reporters because “He did not want anyone to tell the story but the Anderson News.”

Carlson wrote that he shared the story “for those of you who feel beaten down by circulation struggles, revenue concerns and the constant drumbeat about how our industry is not only dying, it has become irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes. We'd like to sell more papers and advertising, but the value of our newspapers is more than the amount of money we deposit in the bank each week. To the communities we serve, we are where they come when things go right, but more importantly when things go horribly wrong. They trust us because they know us and that isn't something that any month in recap or spreadsheet can ever reflect.”

Nelson said, “I think I think Ben speaks for all of our committed rural editors.”

Jennifer Brown is editor and publisher of the Hoptown Chronicle, a digital startup in Hopkinsville, Ky. She provided another example of how giving readers news they need and want can pay off. When the pandemic hit, she converted the startup’s weekly newsletter (“almost like they were having a weekly paper delivered to them digitally”) into a daily coronavirus report, and her readership more than doubled. “Our coronavirus coverage really transformed Hoptown Chronicle and made many more readers aware of what we could do for them,” she said.

Watch the webinar here. We hope to have more such webinars as we build a national community of rural journalists. If you have ideas for them, let us know.

Radically Rural goes online this year; Sept. 24 program will include sessions on community journalism, other topics

This year's annual Radically Rural Summit in Keene, N.H., is being condensed to an online, one-day event on Sept. 24 with a registration fee of $59. It includes six programming tracks: Main streets, community journalism, entrepreneurship, arts and culture, land and communities, and clean energy. The community journalism track includes these sessions:

What's at Stake? Newsrooms increase online revenue and readership using data: What causes a non-reader to subscribe? What can be done to better retain existing readers? Who is having success among small news operations using research? And how are reporters and editors leading the effort? With traditional advertising in sharp decline, community news organizations are using research and data to find ways to increase paid readership and membership. Amy Kovac-Ashley of the American Press Institute will lead a panel of Autumn Phillips, managing editor of the Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier; Les High, publisher of The News Reporter in Whiteville, N.C.; and Liz White, chair of the Record-Journal Media Group in central Connecticut. (9 to 10:45 a.m. ET)

Transformation: Rural news breaks out in all sorts of new ways: New journalism models with promise    – digital start-ups, non-profit and co-op ventures, radical new thinking at small news organizations – are springing up across the country, suggesting ways these can be replicated at the small-town level. Kristen Hare of the Poynter Institute leads a panel of Jim Iovino, assistant professor of media innovation at West Virginia University; Larry Ryckman, editor and founder of The Colorado Sun; Les Zaitz, editor and publisher of the Malheur Enterprise in eastern Oregon; and Tamika Moore, managing producer of Red Clay Media in Alabama. (11 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. ET)

Crazy Good: 50 idea that will make a difference: A romp through some of the best ways to increase audience and revenue from game-changing news organizations, with a lively show-and-tell on tactics, techniques and products (including examples of outstanding covid-19 coverage). "You will leave with a magazine profiling new approaches and ideas," the website says. "Looking for an ROI on attending Radically Rural? This is it." Led by Linda Conway, executive director of the New England Newspaper and Press Association, and Terrence Williams, CEO of the Keene Sentinel, co-sponsor of the conference. (2 to 3:45 p.m. ET)

The opening keynote speaker, at 8 a.m. ET, will be Becky McCray, a lifelong small-town entrepreneur (business owner and cattle rancher), co-founder of SaveYour.Town, operator of the Small Biz Survival site and author of the award-winning book, Small Town Rules. She’s been featured and quoted in books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, podcasts and university publications. She lives in Hopeton, Oklahoma, population 30. "Her goal is to deliver practical steps you can put into action right away to shape the future of your town," the Radically Rural site says. The closing keynoter will be John Molinaro, a consultant who founded the successful Appalachian Partnership in southeast Ohio after working on community development for 27 years in west-central Minnesota and six years with the Aspen Institute's Community Strategies Group.

Tuesday, Friday webinars set on ethanol and pork industries

The Farmdoc project at the University of Illinois will host two webinars this week to discuss timelyagricultural economics issues. Click here for the overall schedule.

On Tuesday, May 19, at 11 a.m. CT, they'll host a webinar about the outlook for the ethanol industry. Demand for ethanol has plummeted because of reduced energy consumption, and many plants have shuttered. The webinar will examine the financial damage to the industry and what the rest of 2020 could look like. UI agricultural economists Scott Irwin and Todd Hubbs will discuss the issue with Eric Moseby, general manager of LincolnLand Agri-Energy in Palestine, Ill.

On Friday, May 22, at 11 a.m. CT, the webinar will cover the pandemic's effect on the pork industry. UI agricultural economist Gary Schnitkey will discuss the issue with Bradley Wolter of The Maschhoffs, an Illinois pork production company.

The webinars are expected to last about 45 minutes each. Participation is free, but pre-registration is required. Click here for more information or to register.

USDA to take applications for rural broadband loan and grant program starting January 31

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will begin accepting applications for loans and grants under the ReConnect Program on Jan. 31. This will be the second round of applications for the program, which aims to increase broadband buildout in rural areas, according to the USDA website.

The USDA will provide up to $200 million in grants, $200 million in low-interest loans, and up to $200 million for 50/50 loan/grant combinations. Applications must be submitted by March 16.

Telecommunications companies, rural electric cooperatives and utilities, internet service providers and municipal governments are eligible to receive the funding. The agency will award funds to projects with financially sustainable business models that will bring high-speed internet to rural homes, businesses, farms and community facilities such as health care sites and schools.

The USDA is hosting technical assistance and training webinars and workshops all over the country to help applicants learn more and complete their applications correctly. Click here for more information about workshops and webinars.