Appalachian nurses fight Covid-19 and community mistrust

Abingdon, Va. (Wikipedia map)

During the pandemic, some Central Appalachian hospital employees have endured "the traumas known to ICU workers across the world: days filled with death, nights ruined by dreams in which they found themselves at infected patients’ bedsides without masks. But they were also enduring a trauma that many doctors and nurses elsewhere were not: the suspicion and derision of those they risked their lives to protect," Peter Jamison reports for The Washington Post. "Conspiracy theories about the pandemic and lies recited on social media — or at White House news conferences — had penetrated deep into their community. When refrigerated trailers were brought in to relieve local hospitals’ overflowing morgues, people said they were stage props. Agitated and unmasked relatives stood outside the ICU insisting that their intubated relatives only had the flu. Many believed the doctors and nurses hailed elsewhere for their sacrifices were conspiring to make money by falsifying covid-19 diagnoses."

The Post interviewed registered nurse Emily Boucher and some of her co-workers in the Johnston Memorial Hospital ICU in Abingdon, Va. Boucher told Jamison that she and her colleagues were fighting not just for their patients' lives, but "against misinformation and reckless practices that have led to this virus getting so out of control. . . . It is like having fought in a war that many believe never took place."

Jamison does note: "Not everyone dismissed the suffering and death caused by the coronavirus. Churches and community groups had sent food and homemade masks to Johnston Memorial, and families had tearfully thanked Boucher and her co-workers for saving lives."

New rural coronavirus infections up 11% from week before

New coronavirus infections, in ranges by county, June 27-July 3
Daily Yonder map; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

"New Covid-19 infections inched up for the second week in a row in rural counties last week, while deaths related to the coronavirus continued a five-week decline," Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. That's similar to the trend in metropolitan counties.

Rural counties saw 15,471 new infections during the week of June 27 to July 3, an 11 percent increase from 13,983 two weeks ago. "A total of 324 Covid-related deaths were reported in rural counties last week, a decline of 16% from two weeks ago, when rural counties reported 387 Covid-related deaths," Murphy and Marema report. The Midwest and South saw the biggest increase in rural infections, with Arkansas and Missouri at the epicenter.

Click here for more charts, regional analysis and an interactive county-level map from the Yonder.

Quick hits: Appalachian man rescues over 1,000 'lost' apple varieties; Purdue Pharma closer to settlement...

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 heather.chapman@uky.edu.

As many as one-third of Wisconsin's gray wolves likely died from hunting and poaching in the months since the federal government ended legal protections for the species, according to a newly published study. Read more here.

Climate change has worsened flooding across the Midwest, and is linked to a rise in rare crop diseases. Read more here and here.

Purdue Pharma is moving closer to a $4.5 billion court settlement as the attorneys general in 15 states drop their objections to the proposal. Read more here.

A new report highlights the best practices for building and maintaining more environmentally sustainable rural road infrastructure (a particularly timely consideration, since infrastructure spending is on deck in Washington). Read more here.

A retired North Carolina man has rescued and catalogued more than 1,000 "lost" apple varieties. Read more here.

One reason rural areas face health-care professional shortages: many general surgeons in rural America are getting older and retiring, and not enough younger ones are taking their places. Read more here.

It's sometimes difficult to be young and LGBTQ+ in rural areas; teens and experts offer ideas on ways to make it easier. Read more here.

Rural editor jailed over reporter's use of recorder in court

Gavin Stone

"A North Carolina Superior Court judge put a small-town newspaper editor behind bars last month after one of his reporters used an audio recorder for note-taking purposes at a murder trial — a punishment the paper and media rights groups consider excessive," Bryan Anderson reports for The Associated Press. "Judge Stephan Futrell sentenced Gavin Stone, the news editor of the Richmond County Daily Journal, to five days in jail before having the editor hauled off to jail. Stone was released the next day but still faces the possibility of more time in lockup. 

The Superior Court's rules allow electronic media and photography of public hearings, but judges may prohibit them on a case-by-case basis. A different judge sent Stone a letter in January 2020 reprimanding him for taking a photo in a courtroom, so he was aware that cellphones, cameras and other recording devices were not allowed without the judge's permission, Anderson reports. 

Stone only remembered the cellphone ban, so he told reporter Matthew Sasser it would be OK to bring an audio recorder to court. Sasser did so on June 21 and 22. When Futrell found out Sasser had the recorder, he told the reporter to take it out of the courtroom. After Sasser went back to the newsroom, a bailiff told him to come back to court to talk to the judge. Stone went with him. The judge found Sasser and Stone in contempt of court, sentenced Stone to five days in jail, and fined Sasser $500.

"Brian Bloom, the paper’s publisher, acknowledged that his reporter shouldn’t have had the recorder in court because it was not allowed but criticized the judge’s move to imprison an editor for a minor infraction committed by a colleague," Anderson reports. "The newspaper’s appeal is scheduled to be heard July 16. Futrell has removed the original penalties on Stone and Sasser and is allowing an appeals court to decide whether to make the editor and reporter pay as much as $500 each and serve up to 30 days in jail."

Fresh analysis of 2020 votes shows Trump got a bigger slice of rural votes than exit polls had shown

A detailed analysis of votes in the 2020 election gives a more accurate picture than exit polls of the Republican party's increasing rural popularity, writes William Galston of the Brookings Institution.

The Pew Research Center analyzed a huge sample of "validated" voters, or those whose participation has been independently verified. According to those numbers, President Trump was favored by 65 percent of rural voters, up from 59% in 2016—a larger bump than the 62 percent found in exit polls.

Other findings with rural resonance:

• Rural voters were less likely than their suburban or urban counterparts to have voted absentee or by mail ballot.
• The political split between rural areas and suburban and urban areas remained substantial in 2020, especially among white voters. Trump got 71% of the vote from rural white voters, compared to 62% in 2016.
• Overall, Biden voters were younger, more racially and ethnically diverse, and less likely to live in rural areas than Trump voters.

Feds offers grants for police body cameras in rural areas

The Justice Department announced Wednesday that it will release $7.65 million in competitive microgrants to fund body-worn cameras to small, rural and tribal law-enforcement agencies. 

The funds must be used to buy or lease body-worn cameras, and can include reasonable related expenses. Funds can also be used to support body-cam pilot programs, establish new implementation, or expand existing programs. Click here for more information or to apply. Applications are due Aug. 31.

"The grant solicitation today will help law enforcement agencies and their communities improve evidentiary outcomes, and enhance the safety of, and improve interactions between, officers and the public," Bureau of Justice Assistance Acting Director Kristen Mahoney in a press release. "Importantly, this grant program will make it easier for small, rural and Tribal law enforcement agencies to apply for funding. It’s an online application that will streamline the grant process for these agencies."

Coal bounces back, probably briefly, as economies rebound

"Coal use is surging in some of the world’s largest economies as electricity demand rebounds from the pandemic, illustrating the challenges to countries looking to wean themselves off the dirty but reliable fossil fuel," Sarah McFarlane and Katherine Blunt report for The Wall Street Journal. "Coal was in decline for years in many countries, but its use is now picking up in the U.S., China and Europe despite growing pressure from governments, investors and environmentalists to curb carbon emissions. The leading reason for the uptick—which has pushed coal prices to multiyear highs—is rising power demand as economies reopen rapidly from pandemic hibernation."

Analysts and executives agree that coal's resurgence probably won't last, but it highlights the world's continued reliance on fossil fuels while renewable-energy capacity hasn't yet grown robust enough, McFarlane and Blunt report.

"Countries have spent billions adding renewable-power capacity at record rates, but solar and wind projects generate electricity only when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, and can’t be ramped up when demand rises," McFarlane and Blunt report. "Those limitations mean the world is still reliant on fossil fuels, especially when there is a surge in electricity demand. Analysts say this will remain the case until more renewable capacity is added, along with storage such as batteries."

This month, TCM spotlights films about small-town America

Meet Me in St. Louis, a 1944 Christmas film, features
classic Judy Garland hits such as "The Trolley Song."

Turner Classic Movies is celebrating films about small-town America in a special series airing each Wednesday in July. If you have a cable package that includes TCM, you can watch all the films in the series online. If you don't have a cable package with TCM, you can watch all the films listed with a subscription to Sling TV, Hulu, or YouTube TV.

The first Wednesday of the "From Hollywood to the Heartland" series was all about drama, with films such as Peyton Place, East of Eden, Picnic, and Our Town. The second week lightened things up with beloved small-town comedies such as The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Theodora Goes Wild.

Next week's theme is "Small Town Musicals," featuring classics such as The Music Man, Bye Bye Birdie, and Meet Me in St. Louis. The final night of the series is five critically acclaimed films full of crime, drama and betrayal, with hits like Bonnie and Clyde, The Last Picture Show, and Paper Moon.

In a video made for TCM's series, singer John Mellencamp, a native of Seymour, Indiana, reflects on portrayals of small towns on the silver screen. Watch it here:

Pro-Trump sites masquerading as local news push election misinformation, which gets picked up by news organizations

Conservative websites that aim to look like local news sites are publishing false and misleading content about the election and other hot-button political issues—content that's often picked up by real news organizations.

The Star News Network is an "expanding network of pro-Trump sites seeking to influence local politics with conservative opinion by mimicking the look and feel of local newspaper sites. The group operates eight state-focused news sites, including in key Electoral College states such as Michigan, Arizona, Ohio and Florida," Stephen Fowler reports for NPR. "The Star News sites are part of a larger pro-Trump media ecosystem that emerged over the course of his four years in office. Since last year's election, some of those sites have spent months churning out false content suggesting Trump won the election and claiming that massive electoral fraud will be uncovered. Many of the Star News sites have been around for a while, but the 2020 election — and an intense focus on swing states like Georgia — has helped the sites' stories reach a much a larger audience."

Such sites, often called "pink slime journalism" after the iffy ground-beef additive, have proliferated in recent years, exploiting growing local news deserts to sow misinformation.

Star News Network sites are published by Star News Digital Media, owned and operated by conservative activist and talk radio host Michael Patrick Leahy, whose HarperCollins author bio touts him as "an innovative leader in both the tactics and strategy of grassroots conservative new-media activism." Both Leahy and Star News co-founder and executive editor Christina Botteri are early organizers of the Tea Party movement.

Rural labor force is 2% under pre-pandemic levels, and is bouncing back more slowly than in metropolitan areas

May 2021 employment as a percentage of May 2019 employment; the greener the better
(Daily Yonder map; click the image to enlarge it or click here to view the original)

The nation is almost back to pre-pandemic employment levels, but rural areas are lagging in several ways, according to a Daily Yonder analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Essentially, metropolitan counties lost a greater share of the labor force in the early months of the pandemic than rural counties did, but metro counties gained back a greater share of jobs than rural counties did, Bill Bishop and Tim Marema report.

"In metropolitan counties, the size of the labor force bounced back from May 2020 to May 2021 and is now only 0.9% lower than it was in May 2019, before the pandemic," they report. "In rural counties, however, the size of the labor force took a similar nosedive in May 2020 but barely grew in the subsequent year. The May 2021 rural labor force was down 2.1% compared to the pre-pandemic level. That’s more than twice the rate of decline in the metropolitan labor force." The labor force includes people who have a job or are unemployed and job-seeking.

Click here for more charts, analysis, and an interactive county-level map from the Yonder.

Black farmers the least likely to get USDA direct loans over past three years, also got lower share of pandemic relief

Black farmers were denied USDA loans at higher rates than
other groups in 2020 (Politico chart; click to enlarge it)

"Not only have Black farmers received the least amount of direct loans of any ethnic and racial group over the past three years, but also that the number and share of direct loans hit a 10-year low last year," Ximena Bustillo reports for Politico's Weekly Agriculture. That matters because Agriculture Department direct loans "are supposed to be a sort of last resort for farmers who cannot get credit elsewhere. Yet, white farmers have an acceptance rate that is nearly twice as high."

The issue goes beyond loans. Also, though farmers of color represent about 5 percent of American farmers, they got less than 1% of Coronavirus Food Assistance Program funding, according to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Bustillo reports.

"The department continues to fight legal battles in multiple courts to ensure that a congressionally authorized program to provide about $4 billion in debt relief to farmers of color is carried out," Bustillo reports. "But advocates for Black farmers say USDA needs to take steps beyond debt relief to address barriers at the Farm Service Agency level including racial bias, inexperienced personnel and lack of bandwidth to help with applications. Farmers recalled FSA agents misleading them about available loan applications and being overall absent to help guide the process."

White farmers have voiced widespread resentment of the program, who say they are also suffering during the pandemic. Under the plan, a farmer who meets the 1990 Farm Bill's definition of "socially disadvantaged" could be paid 120% of the amount owed on a USDA loan (the extra to cover taxes on the money) without having to prove discrimination.

"USDA is conducting internal and external investigations, which are supposed to review all programs and agencies of the department to pinpoint where access may be lacking not just for Black farmers, but all producers including beginning farmers and other socially disadvantaged producers and ranchers," Bustillo reports. "USDA has previously said it plans to start reviews with the consumer-facing branches, which includes FSA. The external review is not expected to start until the fall, but the internal one is underway and is expected to wrap up over the summer."

Biden executive order to give farmers more clout in livestock negotiations, right to repair farming equipment

"President Joe Biden wants to give U.S. farmers more power in negotiating the sale of livestock to big processors and in deciding who repairs their tractors, the White House said on Tuesday," David Shepardson and Diane Bartz report for Reuters. "The executive order, expected within days . . . would encourage the Federal Trade Commission to limit the ability of farm-equipment manufacturers to prevent tractor owners from using independent repair shops or repairing their own equipment."

Right-to-repair legislation has been long-coveted by farming advocates, and in 2020 was a policy goal for both the American Farm Bureau Federation and the Democratic Party.

Farmers have grown increasingly exasperated at the proprietary software on tractors and other large farming equipment that leaves them unable to make even simple repairs. Instead, a dealership must access the machine and diagnose the problem—often costing farmers extra time and money. Many farmers have resorted to hacking their tractors with black-market software, or buying tractors made in the 1970s and 1980s that can be repaired locally.

A John Deere representative said the company doesn't support right-to-repair laws because they could be unsafe for farmers, reduce engine performance, and make machinery noncompliant with emissions standards, Shepardson and Bartz report. The representative also said that farmers can make most repairs easily, and that less than 2 percent of all repairs to its machinery require a software update.

"Separately, Biden plans to direct the USDA to write rules to boost competition in agricultural industries, including one under the Packers and Stockyards Act making it easier for farmers to bring claims, the White House said," Shepardson and Bartz report. "There will also be anti-retaliation protections for farmers who raise concerns about bad practices."

The four major meat processors in the U.S., Cargill, JBS, Tyson Foods and National Beef, are under investigation for allegedly colluding to boost beef prices while livestock farmers barely profited.

NNA webinar on newspaper sample copying Thursday

Sample copying, a key audience-building tactic for newspapers that could become much more important, will be the topic of a National Newspaper Association webinar at 3 p.m. ET Thursday.

"The nonsubscriber rules in the Domestic Mail Manual are there to allow you to promote your newspaper to nonsubscribers and grow and maintain your mail delivery, but too many papers fail to use this tactic," NNA said in announcing the webinar. "You need to provide your advertisers and potential advertisers with more reasons to spend their dollars. A regular sampling program increases your distribution and your worth to advertisers. A program of total market sampling at key times of the year can also be a good advertising tool. This could be to your entire county or to key Zip codes within the county."

NNA is supporting postal-reform legislation that would allow up half of a newspaper's annual home-county circulation to be mailed to non-subscribers at subscriber rates. The current limit, more than a century old, is 10 percent.

The panel will be NNA Postal/Government Relations Chair Matthew Paxton, publisher of the News-Gazette in Lexington, Va.; Max Heath, postal consultant and former executive editor, Landmark Community Newspapers; Brad Hill, CEO of Interlink Inc.; and Tonda Rush, NNA public-policy director.

The webinar is free to NNA members, and $30 for non-members, but only NNA members will have access to the recording of it. Register here.

Bipartisanship alive in Washington as Congress works to help farmers, others hurt by pandemic, writes rural editor

Art Cullen

Though Democrats and Republicans are often miles apart in their ideology (and say so loudly, for the benefit of their constituencies), bipartisanship is alive and well in Congress as lawmakers work together on pressing issues such as climate change, writes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Art Cullen for The Washington Post. Cullen co-owns and edits the Storm Lake Times in northwest Iowa.

For example, the Biden-supported Growing Climate Solutions Act passed the Senate 92 to 8 last week, co-sponsored by Mike Braun, a conservative Republican from Indiana, and supported by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "The bill paves the way for a national carbon-credit trading market, something that Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) has pursued for years," Cullen reports. "The bill, which enjoys bipartisan support in the House, directs the Agriculture Department to establish a framework based in science by which polluters could buy offset credits from farmers and foresters to plant crops that sequester carbon."

But such widespread support wasn't always feasible, he writes. "What changed? In a word: farmers. They’ve been buffeted by floods, devastating spikes of heat and drought all in the span of a year, for several seasons now. They’re ripping out crops in California. Cattle herds are thinning in the parched Dakotas. Iowa producers are digging deeper wells to slop 23 million hogs as aquifers drop. Drought stalks half the country," Cullen writes. "The Senate Agriculture Committee has always been driven more by regional interests than party allegiance. The South protects cotton and rice, the Upper Midwest corn and ethanol, the Great Plains wheat and water. Now, almost everyone is climbing aboard the climate action wagon because time is short, and they recognize it."

In 2017 Cullen and his family won the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues' Tom and Pat Gish Award for excellence in rural journalism.

Amendment to ban horse transport across state or federal lines for consumption passes in House infrastructure bill

Last week the House passed a $715 billion infrastructure package with an amendment to ban the transport of horses across state or federal lines for slaughter for human consumption.

Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., was the lead sponsor of the bipartisan amendment, first conceived by nonprofit organization Animal Wellness Action.

"This is not a new issue for Congress," Carter said in a press release. "A lot of work has been done by great members on both sides of the aisle to put an end to this horrible practice, and a lot of ground has been gained. However, a legal loophole allowed tens of thousands of American equines to be exported each year to Canada and Mexico for slaughter. The conditions on these journeys are particularly inhumane, with horses crammed inside trailers for long journeys without adequate water, food, or rest. I offered this amendment because it was a chance to end this heinous practice once and for all and I am glad to see its successful passage."

Marty Irby, executive director of Animal Wellness Action, told The Rural Blog he has discussed the amendment with several high-ranking senators and believes there's a "very good chance" it may be included in the final Senate bill.

Rural vaccine resistance goes beyond politics and media, to class, access and distrust of system that has let them down

The resistance of many rural Americans to coronavirus vaccines is often attributed to their politics (support of Donald Trump) or their media habits (skepticism of science), but it has deeper, wider roots, Timothy DeLizza writes for Undark, which defines itself as a foundation-funded "non-profit, editorially independent digital magazine exploring the intersection of science and society."

"Many poor, rural whites have legitimate reasons to distrust the health care system — and real barriers to access," Undark says in its subhead on DeLizza's story, which says, "Vaccine hesitant conservatives are also disproportionately rural. This creates unique access problems, including shortages of health-care workers to administer the vaccines and long driving distances to vaccination sites."

Also, "Class is far more predictive of vaccine hesitancy than either politics or race, with working-class white people being twice as likely to be hesitant as White college graduates," DeLizza reports, citing polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

"Poor White people expressing hesitancy typically have strong religious beliefs, face disproportionate economic and access barriers to vaccination, and have legitimate reasons to mistrust the medical system," DeLizza writes. "Historically, the same sterilization programs that the Nation of Islam members evoke also purposefully targeted poor white people. When Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote “Three generations of imbeciles are enough” in a [1927] Supreme Court ruling upholding Virginia’s involuntary sterilization law, he was describing a poor White woman with no mental impairment."

Screenshot of top part of NYT graph; click to enlarge. For interactive version, click here.

DeLizza also notes the opioid epidemic, which was disproportionately rural and caused by elements of the health-care system "pushing painkillers like OxyContin," and has left a legacy of distrust. The health-care analytics firm Surgo Ventures found that "Arkansas, the state with the most 'Covid skeptics' . . . "is second in the nation in dispensing opioids. Other states such as Alabama and Louisiana also significantly exceed the national average on both lists," DeLizza reports. (Surgo's research and the Kaiser polling were reported in May in The New York Times.)

DeLizza concludes, "The suspicions felt in Black and brown communities likely aren’t all that different from the suspicions felt by white people. In each case, focusing on outlandish vaccine conspiracy theories glosses over genuine underlying concerns. In each case, vaccine hesitant Americans are being asked to take a drug developed at unprecedented speed under unfathomable pressure using novel techniques based on short-term studies. Taking such a vaccine requires trust in the medical system and in society more broadly. Most unvaccinated groups have been let down by both."

USDA wants your feedback on how its programs can best advance racial justice deadline is July 15

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is seeking public feedback on how its programs can best advance racial justice. The request is meant to help implement an executive order President Biden signed on his first day in office that aims to promote racial equity in underserved communities. The deadline is July 15. Click here to read more about why USDA is seeking feedback, and click here to leave feedback.

Teresa Purcell, a consultant who works primarily in rural America with people of color, writes for The Daily Yonder that most people don't learn in school about the racist policies that have long held back non-white Americans. "Our family is an example of what some people think of as “living the American Dream” — the ability to lift your family out of poverty in just a few generations due to things like public education and effective government programs," Purcell writes. "The mythology of the American dream passed down in families and in history classes is that if you worked hard and accessed things like the GI Bill and other government programs, you could achieve anything. While that was true for white families like mine, most families in communities of color were not able to live this same dream."

Such policies factor into modern rural poverty, she writes, citing USDA data showing that every U.S. county experiencing extreme poverty in 2018 was rural, and that a disproportionate share were in areas with large populations of racial minorities. 

Court nixes year-round sales of gasoline with 15% ethanol

A federal appeals has thrown out a Trump-administration Environmental Protection Agency rule change that allowed sale of a 15% ethanol gasoline blend in the summer. "The decision deals a significant blow to the ethanol industry and corn farmers who grow the crop from which the fuel additive is made. They had anticipated increased ethanol demand through year-round sales of the higher blend," David Pitt reports for The Associated Press.

Most gasoline sold in the U.S. has 10% ethanol, but the EPA changed the rule in May 2019 to fulfill Trump's promises to Midwestern corn farmers. "Provisions of the Clean Air Act have prohibited the sale of certain fuels with a higher volatility from June 1 through Sept. 15 to limit smog," Pitt reports. "Congress has allowed 10% ethanol, and the EPA in its 2019 ruling revised the interpretation of the exemption to federal law to include the 15% ethanol blend."

Hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas created fewer jobs than anticipated in Appalachia, and most of them are gone

The hydraulic fracturing boom is waning in Appalachia. Though advocates have touted fracking as a manufacturing-jobs booster in recent years, it created "startlingly few" jobs in the region, and most no longer exist, Colin Jerolmack reports for MIT Technology Review. Jerolmack is a New York University environmental studies and sociology professor and author of the new book Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town.

"What happened? As a Bloomberg report put it, 'The numbers never added up.' Fracking has always been expensive; extraordinarily generous fossil-fuel subsidies helped hide the true cost. With new wells facing average production declines of 60 percent in the first year, petroleum companies had to frantically drill more of them. The entire model was premised on high oil and gas prices. But nationwide, the glut of gas (and, to a lesser extent, oil) precipitated by the fracking boom depressed prices to their lowest levels since the 1990s," Jerolmack reports. "The result? Frackers pumped the brakes. A wave of consolidations and bankruptcies swept across the sector. The stock prices of premier energy firms like Chesapeake Energy Corp. crashed (it declared bankruptcy in 2020). Some, like Anadarko Petroleum Corp., liquidated their shale gas holdings. Chevron announced in December 2019 that it would write down up to $11 billion in shale-gas assets."

More than 100,000 oil and gas jobs were lost in 2020, and about 70% of them may not come back this year or ever, according to a Deloitte report. And even those jobs may not have helped local economies the way fracking supporters promised. A recent Ohio River Valley Institute report "details how fracking boosters’ promise of jobs and prosperity for the broader Appalachia region was a mirage," Jerolmack reports. "In the 22 Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia counties that produce most of America’s natural gas, economic output grew by 60% from 2008 to 2019, but little of the income generated by that growth stayed in local communities. The region saw only 1.6% job growth, compared with 9.9% nationally; its share of the nation’s population fell by 11%."

Fracking is still a major factor in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, but wastewater disposal problems may hinder its growth.

Tyson recalls 8.5 million pounds of frozen chicken for listeria

"Tyson Foods is recalling approximately 8.5 million pounds of frozen, cooked chicken products for possible listeria contamination. The company and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced the recall Saturday night. The recall includes Tyson branded products and private label products for restaurants, which include Jet’s Pizza, Casey’s General Store, Marco’s Pizza and Little Caesars," Kelly Tyko reports for USA Today. "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also issued a food safety alert saying the products – which were shipped nationwide to retailers and institutions including hospitals, nursing facilities, restaurants and schools – may be linked to a listeria outbreak that has caused three illnesses and one death."

The products were produced at a Dexter, Mo., plant between Dec. 26 and April 13. "Each package of the recalled products has the establishment code P-7089. A full list of the recalled products is posted on the USDA website and Tysonfoods.com," Tyko reports. "The USDA said consumers should not eat the products and should throw them away or return them."

The recall comes after three people were sickened with listeriosis, two in Texas and one in Delaware. All three patients ate chicken from the Dexter plant at a hospital or long-term-care facility between April 6 and June 5, Tyko reports. It can take up to 10 weeks to show symptoms after eating contaminated food, though most severe food poisoning or listeriosis symptoms show up in one to four weeks.

Trump boat parades last summer resulted in injuries and accidents; some boaters want to organize more this summer

A 2020 rally at Lake Travis in Texas, where five boats capsized
(Photo by Bob Daemmerich)

Trump supporters across the nation staged many boat parades in lakes and rivers last summer, but law-enforcement officials, rally organizers and boaters say the events were often disorganized and a major source of boating accidents, Jose Pagliery reports for The Daily Beast. That could happen again this summer.

"In Tennessee alone, the state’s database shows that Trump flotillas made up a third of all 'congested water' accidents there last year," Pagliery reports. "National figures aren’t available that identify events as Trump flotillas, but a state-by-state review of incident reports in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas showed that most accidents never made the news." 

It's been difficult to find information on Trump boat parade accidents because "some government agencies claim to be missing records of publicly reported disasters. One docked boat sank into the St. Croix River in Wisconsin during a Labor Day weekend parade there, according to the local CBS Minnesota station, but the state’s Natural Resources Department said it has no log of an incident there that day," Pagliery reports. "The vast majority of the parades we reviewed took place on dammed bodies of water managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which issues permits. But it did not respond to questions or provide data."

Inexperienced or inattentive boaters were a big part of the problem, according to Rob Crafa, the waterfront director at the State University of New York’s Maritime College. "When you have boat parades like rallies, the energy there creates a different vibe," Crafa told Pagliery. "People standing in parts of the boat where they’re not supposed to, flags that may limit visibility for the operator of the boat, and if there’s loud music, bright sun, maybe alcohol involved … all these factors contributed to dangerous situations."

The choppiness of the water is another culprit, said George Birdwell, an investigator with Tennessee's Wildlife Resources Agency. "Big boats show up, and they try to go slow. But they’re still throwing a big wake, and small boats show up too, and they have to deal with those large wakes," he told Pagliery. That has caused injuries—some requiring hospitalization—and damage to boats. 

The boat parades, which President Trump reportedly loves, are still happening and may continue. Every Trump boater Pagliery interviewed said they're working on bringing them back.

Health experts worry about rural summer surge of Covid-19

Rural/urban vaccination rates as of June 28, compared to national average and adjusted to account for vaccinations not assigned to specific counties. Map by The Daily Yonder; click the image to enlarge it or here for the interactive version.

Lower coronavirus vaccination rates in rural America and the increasing threat of the Delta variant could lead to a summer surge in the disease, Margy Eckelkamp reports for AgWeb.

As of June 28, only 34 percent of eligible rural Americans are vaccinated, compared with a national average of 67% and a 44.3% rate in metropolitan counties, Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. The rural vaccination rate rose only 0.6 percentage points from the week before, compared to a 1.1 percentage-point increase in the metro vaccination rate.

The lower rural vaccination rate goes hand-in-glove with higher hospitalization and death rates, National Rural Health Association CEO Alan Morgan said in a recent AgriTalk podcast. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that rural Americans face a 28% higher mortality rate from Covid-19 compared to urban counties, he said, and noted rural hospitals consistently tell him that unvaccinated people account for nearly all of the hospitalized Covid-19 patients in their small towns.

Any summer surge will likely be regional, not nationwide, and worse in areas with a vaccination rate under 35%, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on NBC News' "Meet the Press" on Sunday. He noted that 99.2% of people who have died Covid-19 were unvaccinated.

"No vaccine is perfect," Fauci said. "But when you talk about the avoidability of hospitalization and death ... it’s really sad and tragic that most all of these are avoidable and preventable." Fauci and Morgan say higher vaccination rates are the best way to head off a potential surge, and also urge people to wear masks indoors if they're unvaccinated or living in an area with a low vaccination rate.

Sunday special: Writer tells of visit with unvaccinated kin

By Teri Carter

Seven of us are crowded around a table for six in a packed Missouri restaurant called The Southerner, waiting for entrees that are taking forever to arrive. “Aw, they can’t help it, that’s for sure,” Dad says. “Nobody wants to work.”

I take a sip of Diet Coke and ask what I’ve been wanting to ask since we got here: “So, are all of you guys vaccinated?”

My brother Chuck is sitting across from me. “Hell, no,” he says. I ask why not. “Because it’s bull, that’s why,” he says (but more profanely). “These vaccines ain’t even approved, and coronavirus ain’t new. They ain’t sticking that thing in me. Who knows what’s in it.”

Map on Cape Girardeau floodwall

I am visiting my hometown of Cape Girardeau, Mo., having dinner with my family. I know Dad is vaccinated but have no idea about anyone else. My brothers and I were separated by divorce when we were little — I went with Mom, they went with Dad — and we are far from close. At 55, I’m the oldest. Butch, 53, and his family aren’t here. This is the first time I’ve seen Chuck, 48, since our grandfather’s 2011 funeral, where we did not sit together. Tonight, Chuck has brought his new girlfriend, his 19-year-old daughter and his 25-year-old daughter and her husband.

I look to the girlfriend next. “Oh, I am,” she says, holding up both hands. “But not by choice. My former employer made us.”

A busboy arrives to refill our water glasses. At the other end of the table, my nieces shake their heads no, and my niece’s husband says to me: “I’m not an anti-vaxxer or anything. I get a flu shot every year. This is just stupid and there’s no science. It’s all politics.” Then he turns to the whole table: “Hey, is this where we get to talk about how Biden’s not the real president?”

“Don’t start,” Dad says, and soon enough the waitress arrives with an armful of plates to put us out of our misery.

It is June 24. A day before, The Associated Press had published a story reporting: “Missouri is becoming a cautionary tale for the rest of the country: It is seeing an alarming rise in cases because of a combination of the fast-spreading delta variant and stubborn resistance among many people to getting vaccinated. Intensive care beds are filling up with surprisingly young, unvaccinated patients, and staff members are getting burned out fighting a battle that was supposed to be in its final throes.”

I live in rural Kentucky, so Covid denial and vaccine refusal are no surprise. But other than my husband, I have no family in Kentucky. Which means we have no required gatherings there. If I go to a restaurant, I go by choice and with people I know, and those people are vaccinated.

When I arrived in Missouri, I’d thought my dad and I were having dinner alone, just the two of us. After all, it was the first time I’ve been home — the first time I’ve seen him — since November 2019. He would meet me at The Southerner, he had said, next to my hotel. It wasn’t until I arrived at the restaurant that I saw the reservation was for seven — Dad being our dad, hoping not-for-the-first-time that getting us in the same room might miraculously fix us.

Sadly, on top of our already fractured and dyspeptic personal history, my family has added Trumpism and a global pandemic to the long-standing influence of local-boy-done-good Rush Limbaugh — dead now but lionized here in our shared hometown — who spent decades sowing falsehoods, selling victimhood and convincing southeast Missourians like my family that Democrats are big-government, baby-killing socialists who can’t be trusted. And now their president wants us to take a brand-new vaccine?

My family should be eager to take the shot: Missouri reportedly had the highest share in the nation of the new delta variant among its coronavirus cases late last month. But in Cape Girardeau County, another stat may be more relevant: Trump won Missouri with about 57 percent of the vote last November, but he got almost 72 percent in the county.

That was no surprise. I recall the time in 1999 that I flew home from Minnesota, where I was living then. My luggage got lost. I woke up in my hotel and went straight to the beauty supply store across the highway to get some basic toiletries. Limbaugh’s radio show was playing loud behind the counter. As she checked me out, the clerk swooned, “Don’t you just love Rush? I could listen to him all day. He says everything I think.”

The Southerner restaurant

As our family dinner at The Southerner comes to a close, everyone stands, and Dad nudges me with his knuckles: “Come with me a sec. I found one of your scrapbooks.” On the way out, Chuck says, “We’ll see y’all Saturday.”

It is 90 degrees, and a hard, hot wind whips at us the instant we step outside. In the full parking lot, we stand behind Dad’s truck, and I wait while he struggles with a tiny lighter to light his Marlboro. When it finally catches, he takes a long draw, and I ask what Chuck meant. I thought my dad and I were driving over to Illinois on our own to see more family. But it turns out Butch and his wife Donna are coming, too, and Dad thinks we should ride with them for the 90-minute drive each way.

I haven’t seen or heard from them in about a decade, so it seems like that would be weird. But I have another question: “Are they vaccinated?”

The hot wind continues to blow in all directions. We are both sweating. I have to keep pushing my hair out of my face. Dad flicks his ashes at the parking lot.

They’re not vaccinated, he explains, because they already had it, and so did one of their kids — back in September, Dad thinks. But they didn’t get all that sick.

I tell him I wouldn’t choose to get together in a big crowd of unvaccinated people, even though I’m vaccinated myself. Dad shrugs, flicks his cigarette into the wind and lights another. I am trying not to cry. We continue to stand in the full parking lot, cars pulling in and out, him smoking, me stewing. We are silent. I wonder if it sounds petty that I don’t want to share meals or ride in a car for three hours with a brother and sister-in-law whom I barely know anymore and who refused to be vaccinated.

Of course it sounds petty. Because it is petty.

But then I think about the 14 months that my cancer-surviving husband and I took the virus seriously, followed guidelines, stayed home, never ate at a restaurant (even outside), refused invitations from good friends, missed every holiday and birthday with our kids and two baby grandsons. I think about how we struggled online to get vaccine appointments and how I stood in that long line, twice, to get shots. I think about how excited we were to finally get out in the world again, to get on with our lives.

Until today, until this family dinner, I did not realize the depth and breadth of the envy and resentment I still hold for those like my own brothers and their families — the Covid deniers, the willfully unvaccinated, who spent those same 14 months going happily and carelessly about their lives as 600,000 died.

Even as I understand the toxic and steady influence of professional prevaricators like Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh, I want to place blame on the familiar. I wonder when we will get past all this. And if.

“All right, kiddo,” Dad says, taking his last drag, hugging me with one arm, and climbing into his truck. Through the window he hands me my scrapbook, which looks to be from about eighth grade. “Good God,” I exclaim, “where’d you find this?”

Teri Carter

He asks me if I remember that time I was in college and my car wouldn’t start, so he had to come meet me at the crack of dawn to help me get to class.

I do not remember, but I say yes anyway. “Come on over Saturday,” he says, pulling away, “and we’ll figure all this out.”

Teri Carter lives near Lawrenceburg, Ky. This was first published in The Washington Post.

Map of state vaccination rates shows clear partisan divide; stronger Delta variant is dominant in Ark., Colo., Mo., Utah

Screenshot of interactive CDC map; click in to enlarge. Mississippi has the lowest rate. Interactive site has rates by county. 

"The vaccination gap still looks a lot like America’s political divide," Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann report for NBC News. "There continue to be Two Americas when it comes to the country’s race to get vaccinated against Covid-19. You have the blue, highly urban and mostly college-degree-heavy states that have met – or exceeded – President Biden’s goal of 70 percent of adults having at least one dose by July 4. And you have the red, highly rural and mostly college-degree-light states that have come up way short."

Of the 19 states (including the District of Columbia) that have already hit the President Biden's goal of 70 percent vaccination by July 4, Biden carried every one of them, they note. "And of the 17 states that have yet to surpass even 60 percent, Donald Trump won them all with one exception: Georgia."

Lack of vaccination gets riskier daily because the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus is spreading rapidly, health experts warn. The variant "represents about one-quarter of all confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States, and is now the predominant variant in Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri and Utah, say public health experts," reports Dan Diamond of The Washington Post. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Thursday, “In some regions of the country, nearly one in two sequences is the delta variant.”

Feds not keeping up with wildfire prevention and firefighting; folks on the ground say policies need revamping

Washington Post map shows extent of Southwest drought. Click on it to enlarge.

"On the heels of one of the worst wildfire years on record, the federal government is struggling to recruit and retain staff as firefighters grapple with low wages, trauma and burnout from increasingly long and intense fire seasons," reports Sarah Kaplan of The Washington Post.

Firefighters are already battling 48 big blazes over more than half a million acres in 12 states, as "land management agencies are carrying out fire-mitigation measures at a fraction of the pace required, and the funds needed to make communities more resilient are one-seventh of what the government has supplied," Kaplan reports.

Fire experts told Kaplan that the federal government needs to transform its land-management and firefighting polices. “As our seasons are getting worse and worse … it feels like we’ve reached a tipping point,” said Kelly Martin, a wildfire veteran and president of the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters. “We need a new approach.”

The federal government is the nation’s largest employer of wildland firefighters, Kaplan reports: "Most are temporary workers, their salaries as low as $13.45 per hour for a starting forestry technician. They spend summers traveling the country, working 16-hour days, 12 days at a time, often relying on overtime and hazard pay to make ends meet. For decades, they’ve relied on a months-long offseason to rest and recover. But now there is no offseason; one fire year simply bleeds into the next, as winter rain and snow is delayed and diminished by climate change."

Rural coronavirus cases keep falling, but there are hot spots

Rate of new coronavirus cases, June 20-26
Daily Yonder map; click on it to enlarge, or click here for the interactive version.

With major exceptions such as southwest Missouri and the Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains, the coronavirus continued to ebb in the last full week of June, according to The Daily Yonder.

From June 20 through 16, new cases in rural counties dropped 2 percent, from 14,200 two weeks ago to 13,983 last week, Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report: "Covid-related deaths in rural counties also declined, falling by 20%, to 395 – the lowest number of fatalities since the earliest days of the pandemic in March 2021."

Missouri's rural infection rate climbed 17%, driven by an outbreak of the Delta variant in counties near Springfield and Joplin. "Cases also climbed in nearby Arkansas," the Yonder notes.

Quick hits: Libraries lining up 'digital navigators' for telehealth; FactCheck delves into origin of the coronavirus

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 heather.chapman@uky.edu.

"Digital navigators" may soon be available at rural libraries to help residents access telehealth services. Read more here.

Many rural communities are celebrating Pride day/week/month for the first time. Read more here.

FactCheck.org says it has "a detailed and authoritative piece" from its science editor, who has a Ph.D. in immunology from Yale University, about the origins of the coronavirus in China.

Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance enters Ohio Senate race

Vance announced at Middletown Tube Works, in front of an
Ohio state flag. (Cincinnati Enquirer photo by Jim Didion)

Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance made his expected entry into Ohio's U.S. Senate rate Thursday.

Vance, now a venture capitalist, "joins a slew of other Republicans clamoring for the chance to replace retiring Sen. Rob Portman, including former Ohio Republican Party chair Jane Timken, former state treasurer Josh Mandel, car dealer Bernie Moreno and investment banker Mike Gibbons," The Cincinnati Enquirer reports. Running so far on the Democratic side is U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan."

Vance, 36, "is a difficult candidate to pin down," Haley BeMiller and Jessie Balmert write. "He can often be seen on Fox News or voicing conservative talking points on Twitter [but] is best known for his memoir depicting his family's struggles in Appalachian Kentucky and his mother's addiction during his childhood in Middletown," where he made his announcement at a plant where family members worked.

"Natives of Appalachia have criticized Vance's take as inaccurate and exploitative," the Dispatch notes. "Supporters who gathered Thursday to cheer on Vance's announcement said they appreciated his perspective on economic issues and wanted to support a candidate with local ties." 

Venture capitalist and Vance mentor Peter Thiel has put $10 million into a super PAC to support Vance's campaign, but former president Donald Trump looms over the race, and "Vance has a complicated history with Trump," the Dispatch notes. "He was publicly critical of Trump during the 2016 election cycle — calling him noxious in an interview with NPR — and ultimately voted for independent Evan McMullin." In October 2016, he said, "Trump makes people I care about afraid: immigrants, Muslims, et cetera. Because of this I find him reprehensible." But this year, "Vance courted Trump at Mar-a-Lago and attended his rally in Lorain County in the hope of securing his support."

Rural publisher: Newspapers are democracy's clean energy; they don't pollute public knowledge as social media do

By Reed Anfinson

Print is dead. We've heard it too often.

We've heard dinosaurs mentioned in the same sentence as print. Buggy whips, too. Print is obsolete, having outlived its usefulness in the face of the digital revolution, it is said. Social media — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram — are now the primary source of "news" for many young people.

Reed Anfinson

A friend of ours recently asked a group of young people if they read the local newspaper. The looks on their faces communicated a single message: "You're kidding, aren't you?" Facebook. That's where they get their news.

Obviously, we in the industry don't believe print is dead. Nor do we think that a person can get the news needed to be an informed citizen through social media. What passes as news today is entertainment, gossip, rumor and the latest crime news. Give a person who doesn't read the local newspaper a quiz on the most important news stories in their community, and they will fail miserably.

Not all old technology is buried by innovation. In its simplicity, the windmill remains relevant through refinement. At its core it is the same, but with enhanced productivity. Drive around the countryside, and you will see giant windmill blades sweeping slowly in circles pushed by the wind, creating clean energy that feeds into the nation's electric grid.

Standing windmills have been used for more than 800 years. They are an ancient technology that provided water for human consumption, as well as for livestock and crops. They were used to grind grain into flour. It was in 1888 that the windmill was first used to generate electricity.

As the nation turned to coal, hydroelectric dams and nuclear energy, with a nationwide grid connecting their power to homes and businesses, windmills disappeared from the landscape. Why the resurgence of this ancient technology? Because its simple design has been improved to provide cheap, clean energy at a scale that allows it to replace more expensive and polluting sources of power.

We like to think of print newspapers as windmills. Print is still relevant.

Print book sales continue to rise, having gone up every year since 2013, while sales of digital books have flattened out. Even with significant price breaks on the digital books, people still want the print edition.

Studies have shown that while students prefer to get their textbooks digitally, they do better when their books are in print. Multiple studies have shown reading print increases a person's retention and understanding of what they have read. At the same time, digital reading leads to shallow comprehension.

Then there are all those catalogs you get in the mail.

There is a reason L.L. Bean relentlessly sends you catalogs in the mail. It knows that if it stops sending magazines and relies on e-mails or its website to try to get you to buy its products, you'll soon forget about it. Competitors like Eddie Bauer will then dominate the market.

The people who run L.L. Bean know they must constantly keep their brand fresh in your memory. They know you will page through their magazine and maybe see something you like, then go to their website to buy it. They know their magazine on the counter is a constant reminder to shop with them.

While the wind is free, the technology to turn it into renewable energy is not. Windmills cost money. They must be repaired when their generators or gears wear out. The powerlines that bring electricity to homes and businesses must be serviced.

Essential to providing the information crucial to an informed electorate is revenue earned through advertising and subscriptions. They are the wind, the water and the sun that support us.

Today, Google, Facebook and other internet sites hoard and block our sources of energy. They are a blight on democracy, eroding our sources of reliable news. Rather than creating a sense of community, they isolate and divide us.

Covid-19 was devastating to our already financially wounded newspapers. As businesses shut down or dramatically cut back on expenses, they eliminated or reduced their print advertising. Newspapers suffer "long-hauler" symptoms today, weakened further by the virus' lingering economic impact even as the disease recedes.

The accelerated loss of community newspapers due to the pandemic underscores the imperative to separate newspapers from reliance on subscribers and advertising. Newspapers are a public good and must be financed with the help of citizens.

We are not self-sustaining in today's digital world, though we remain the most important source of newsgathering and reporting in America. In many of our communities, we are the only source of local news.

Like newspapers, democracy is not self-sustaining.

"We also may have become too complacent, too sure of democracy's robustness or of its long-term viability," Margaret S. Branson and Charles N. Quigley wrote in a piece for the Center for Civic Education. "History, however, teaches us that few countries have sustained democratic governments for prolonged periods, a lesson which we as Americans are sometimes inclined to forget."

They paraphrase the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, a French student of American democracy in the 1830s. "Each new generation is a new people that must acquire the knowledge, learn the skills, and develop the dispositions or traits of private and public character that undergird a constitutional democracy," they write. "Democracy is not a 'machine that would go of itself,' but must be consciously reproduced, one generation after another."

We are clean energy for democracy — we don't pollute citizen knowledge with false information. We don't print vitriolic rants filled with bitterness that polarizes friends, neighbors and fellow citizens. We inform, educate, entertain, and hold power accountable.

What happens to democracy without us?

Reed Anfinson is a past president of the National Newspaper Association and owns the Swift County Monitor-News in Benson, Minn. This was first published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

See how far American Rescue Plan aid goes in your state

How ARPA aid compares with the size of states' budgets (Pew Charitable Trusts map; click the image to enlarge it.)

States are starting to receive some of the funds from the $193.5 billion in state aid in the American Rescue Plan Act. But the money isn't split equally, nor will it affect states equally: States with higher unemployment rates are getting more aid, and the aid makes up a larger share of some states' budgets, Barb Rosewicz, Mike Maciag, and Melissa Maynard report for the Pew Charitable Trusts.

"For states such as South Dakota and Wyoming, the federal aid represents a huge boost for their budgets—about one-fifth of what they spent in fiscal year 2020," Pew reports. "In states where the aid equates to a low of about 5% of state spending, such as Oregon and Wisconsin, the infusion of federal cash is still significant, enough to offset most pandemic-driven general fund revenue declines so far. Plus, the money positions some states to make investments with large price tags, such as broadband, water system, and sewer upgrades, or to address issues such as depleted unemployment insurance accounts."

When calculated as a share of state budgets, it becomes clear that "ARPA provides critical breathing room that was rare in the slimmed-down budgets that lingered after the Great Recession, which started at the end of 2007," Pew reports. "For states that entered the pandemic-driven downturn with robust reserves or otherwise escaped significant budget squeezes, the aid offers even more: an unexpected one-time investment opportunity."

However, the funding doesn't take revenue losses into account, so the states getting the most funding as a share of state spending aren't necessarily the ones hurting most, Pew notes.

Pandemic roundup: some moms having trouble returning to work; state incentives to boost vaxes have mostly failed

Here's a roundup of recent news about the pandemic and immunization efforts:

Many moms left the workforce during the pandemic. But many find it difficult to return to work because of issues like a lack of childcare. Read more here.

Rural coronavirus vaccinations continued at roughly the same pace in late June, The Daily Yonder reports. Click here for an interactive map, regional analysis and more.

State efforts to increase coronavirus vaccination rates via lotteries and other incentives have mostly failed to do the trick. Read more here.

President Biden said he doesn't expect the emerging delta variant to force another lockdown, but said he worries that areas with lower vaccination rates "will be very hurt" by it. Read more here.

The Chamber of Commerce in a rural Tennessee county encouraged locals to get vaccinated because (among other benefits) a lower infection rate helped businesses reopen. Read more here.

The Washington Post extrapolated current vaccination rates to estimate when each state will hit the 70% vaccination rate. Read more here.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may provoke an immune response that protects people against the coronavirus for years, according to a new study. Read more here.

Opinion: Mainstream media should cover Indian Country's good news more, including recovery from the pandemic

Kyle Edwards

The mainstream news media frequently did stories about pandemic disparities faced by Native Americans; they ought to cover tribes' recovery from the pandemic just as much, Kyle Edwards writes for NiemanReports. Edwards is a 2021 Nieman Visiting Fellow and managing editor of Native News Online.

"It’s no secret that Native Americans receive very little national news coverage and are often simply erased from nationwide conversations about race in this country. (Take CNN’s usage of the phrase 'something else' to refer to voters who are not white, Latinx, Black or Asian during last year’s presidential election, for instance.)," Edwards writes. "But even when Native Americans do make national headlines, the reporting often relies on age-old stereotypes. The story becomes about our suffering, about all the problems that exist in our communities, or about how we stand in the way of America’s pipelines and its future." Read more here.

Feature article lauds Institute for Rural Journalism

Al Cross speaks to Latin American journalists visiting Bardstown,
Kentucky, in 2019. (Photo by Forrest Berkshire, Kentucky Standard)

A new feature article from the University of Kentucky provides a lovely retrospective on, and overview of, the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.

UK co-founded IRJCI in 2004 with Al Smith, longtime friend and mentor of political reporter Al Cross who became director and started The Rural Blog shortly thereafter. "Hampered by socioeconomic conditions and population decline, local newspapers in Central Appalachia had been weakened," Akhira Umar reports for UKNow. "Cross saw the need for reliable journalism that provided leadership on local issues. Shortly after its inception, Cross broadened the reach of The Rural Blog to rural journalists across the nation, who were feeling the same pressures as those in Eastern Kentucky."

"I can’t overstate the value of the IRJCI and the impact it has on rural newspapers and rural journalists,” Kentucky Press Association President Sharon Burton told Umar. Burton, of Columbia, Kentucky, is the publisher of the Adair County Community Voice and The Farmer’s Pride, a statewide agricultural newspaper. "I’ve attended seminars; I’ve picked up the phone because I needed sound advice from a trusted friend; I’ve learned of news topics of interest to my community — all through the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. When rural journalists are invited to the table, it reminds us that what we do is just as important as providing national or state news coverage."

The story also highlights IRJCI's other publications. Kentucky Health News, launched in 2011 with funding from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, "has been an invaluable source of information to the entire state throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. This publication focuses on health issues in a state that is one of the nation’s least healthy," Umar reports.

In 2008 Cross began the Midway Messenger, a mostly online newsroom for nearby Midway, Kentucky, run entirely by journalism students. "It’s hard to overstate the importance of The Midway Messenger to our community,” Midway Mayor Grayson Vandegrift told Umar. "While we get good coverage from The Woodford Sun, The Midway Messenger has become our paper of record. I can tell anecdotally that more people in Midway are getting their local news from the Messenger than from the Sun."

"Having led the IRJCI from its inception, Cross has ensured a solid foundation for the benefit of rural communities across the nation and for a healthier Kentucky," Umar writes. "Although he does plan to reduce his numerous responsibilities in his phased retirement starting in the 2021-2022 academic year, his effect on rural journalism through the IRJCI will be his legacy."