A digest of events, trends, issues, ideas and journalism from and about rural America, by the Institute for Rural Journalism, based at the University of Kentucky.
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Wall Street analysts downgraded $28 million in bonds funding South Georgia State College in Coffee County, a small school that rural Georgians had hoped would help rejuvenate the local economy.
The move is "is the latest indicator of the difficulties of maintaining communities in parts of the state that today’s economy is leaving behind," and rural Georgia has been declining rconomicalluy for years, reports David Pendered of Atlanta-based Saporta Report. Financial challenges have caused six hospitals in rural Georgia to close since 2012, and young adults are steadily leaving for more urban areas, a trend seen nationwide. Coffee County leaders hoped the college would keep teens closer to home, providing them with skills for higher-paying jobs they hoped to attract to the region.
The college's financial outlook is stable, but not healthy, according to Wall Street analysts who downgraded the bonds. "The downgrade reflects ongoing enrollment challenges, decline in debt service coverage and need to tap system reserves to meet debt service commitments," they wrote.
The college was created in 2012 when the University of Georgia System consolidated Waycross College and South Georgia College. The college serves about 2,650 students from all over Georgia, 22 other states and 13 countries, according to the school's website. College leaders have planned to renovate two dorms and a student center, and build a large dining hall with a convenience store, bookstore, and cafe inside. Now the work is up in the air, but the college itself should survive as long as the University System continues to support it.
John and Faith Wylie, publishers of one of the best weekly newspapers in America, the Oologah Lake Leader, have sold it, citing health reasons. "They plan to rest and travel after retiring, although John will continue working as a writer," reports The Oklahoma Publisher, monthly newspaper of the Oklahoma Press Association.
The buyer is Maria Laubach, who was managing publisher and owner of The Hennessey Clipper and published three other Oklahoma weeklies. "We believe she will be an incredible asset to oologah and someone who Will Rogers would thoroughly enjoy knowing," the Wylies said. Oologah is Rogers' birthplace.
"The Wylies represent the best of quality journalism in Oklahoma," said Terry Clark, director of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, when they were inducted in 2012. John M. Wylie II, who studied at Grinnell College in Iowa, was part of the Kansas City Star team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Hyatt hotel disaster in 1982. He and his wife bought the weekly Leader in 1984. "His investigations for the Leader and national and international publications of McGraw-Hill have concentrated on energy regulation, attracting national attention" and winning many awards for their accountabilty journalism, the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors reported in 2012. Faith Wylie has a degree in graphic design from the University of Kansas and won an ISWNE editorial writing award in 2014.
The Wylies have also been civic leaders and have received several local awards. John Wylie discussed their public service and approach to publishing in remarks prepared for the 2007 National Summit on Journalism in Rural America, titled "Independent Publishing Today: Thriving in a world of box stores and chain papers." He wrote, "Some publishers believe that the local newspaper should carry only good news and never offend anyone. We say a good local newspaper should carry all the news, and provide quality coverage of the good, the bad and everything in between. . . . You are the only newspaper in the world that gives a diddly about your town. Act like it. Your town includes the preacher and the pauper; the millionaire and the welfare mom; the teacher and the mentally handicapped child. Speak for all of them, meet their needs, help them realize their dreams and you will prosper." (Read more)
Rural health care and related jobs will take a huge hit if Congress rolls back the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as Republicans have proposed, says an analysis from the Chartis Center for Rural Health, part of a national health-care advisory firm.
The report says 41 percent of the nation's 2,200 rural hospitals already lose money and any revenue loss "will further weaken their tenuous financial position." It estimates that the proposed cuts to Medicaid would push the percentage of rural hospitals operating in the red up to 48 percent. Further, it says hospitals will be forced to cut employees and costs to adjust to the decreasing revenue.
The analysis of the House and Senate bills estimates that between 34,000 and 37,000 health-care and related jobs would be lost as a result. It also estimates that proposed cuts to Medicaid will result in an annual$1.4 billion lossof revenue to rural health providers if the House bill is enacted, and an annual $1.3 billion loss under the Senate bill.
Most of the Medicaid cuts would come from phasing out the extra funding for the Medicaid expansion. Under the ACA, the federal government pays 90 to 95 percent of expansion funding. The House bill phases this out in 2020; the Senate bill keeps it until 2021, but then cuts it back to the traditional Medicaid level over the following three years. The federal government pays an average of 57 percent of Medicaid costs, but the rates vary between 50 and 75 percent, with poor states getting a higher percentage.
Long-term cuts to Medicaid would come from a change in how traditional Medicaid funding is calculated. Both bills would move funding to a formula that is based on population instead of reimbursing a state a percentage of what it spends, based on a formula that gives poorer states more money. The Senate bill could change on that point to get the votes needed for passage.
"Both pieces of legislation make significant cuts to Medicaid, which will have far reaching implications for the neediest communities and the providers who serve them," Michael Topchik, national leader for the Chartis center and senior vice president at iVantage Health Analytics, said in a news release.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2026, Medicaid spending under the Senate bill would be 26 percent less than projected under current law; the House bill would reduce it by 24 percent.
States that chose to expand Medicaid under the ACA would see nearly double the cuts in states that did not; states with larger Medicaid programs and larger rural populations would see a greater impact from the proposed cuts.
Independent research from NPR shows that black-lung disease is still an epidemic among coal miners in Appalachia, despite much lower official numbers from federal officials.
NPR recently reported 1,000 new Appalachian cases of the most advanced form of black lung, progressive massive fibrosis. That brings its total findings to 2,000 cases diagnosed in the region since 2010, reports Howard Berkes for NPR. He uncovered the new cases by collecting data from black lung clinics, doctors and attorneys in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia; it notes that the numbers are probably higher because many clinics couldn't provide data.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reported only 99 cases in the entire country for the same time period. NIOSH is reviewing medical records at four clinics in Virginia and Kentucky to begin getting a better idea of the true number of black lung cases. After members of Congress became worried about the spike in cases, NIOSH, the Labor Department and the Department of Health and Human Services promised to work together to get a more accurate number.
Sliced lung sections of lungs show exposure to coal and silica dust. The middle slide indicates simple coal workers' pneumoconiosis, or black lung. The right slide shows hardened and blackened tissue when the disease reaches its most advanced stage.
(Slides from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, via NPR)
"There's a great deal of evidence ... that definitively demonstrates that we are in the midst of an epidemic of black lung disease in central Appalachia," epidemiologist Scott Laney said in a presentation to a National Academy of Sciences committee in Morgantown, W.Va. The committee is investigating efforts to keep miners from breathing in the coal mine dust that causes black lung.
Gregory Meikle of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration said almost all mining companies have been compliant with tougher coal dust exposure limits for the past decade in an effort to keep miners from developing the lethal disease, according to NPR. Meikle acknowledged that a case of black lung can take longer than 10 years to show symptoms, though.
Laney said that mines may not be as compliant with safety measures as the books suggest. "I don't think there's any reason for me to believe that there's any exposure measurements on the books that can account for that level of impairment," he said in the NPR story.
A federal appeals court ruled 2-to-1 Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency can't delay the effective date of an Obama-era rule restricting methane emissions from new gas and oil wells on federal and tribal land.
EPA administrator Scott Pruitt had imposed a 90-day (later changed to two-year) moratorium on enforcing the methane regulation, arguing that his actions weren't subject to court review, reports Lisa Friedman of The New York Times. But the appeals court for the District of Columbia ruled that Pruitt didn't have the authority under the Clean Air Act to block the rule. In May, the Senate had voted to uphold the Obama-era rule.
The ruling serves as a signal to Pruitt and other Trump administrations that delaying a rule's effective date may be viewed by courts as tantamount to revoking or amending a rule. In their ruling, Judges David Tatel and Robert Wilkins said that the agency could change the methane regulations but would need to create a new rule to undo the old one, and couldn't delay the effective date of the old law while seeking to rewrite it.
Trump's administration has used the delaying tactic on other rules as well. The Interior Department declared a two-year delay on a rule limiting methane emissions from wells on federal and tribal lands, the Times notes. It also reports: "The administration has also used the delay tactic to stop a Food and Drug Administration rule requiring restaurants to list the calories in the food they sell and a Labor Department regulation mandating that financial advisers put consumers' best interests ahead of their own."
Some states have pushed back against the current EPA's decisions. After they green-lighted the use of chlorpyrifos, a pesticide found to be harmful for children, California and six other states challenged the rule.
While the lodging service Airbnb "is often associated with a cheap lodging alternatives in major cities, those in rural areas seem to benefit almost equally," and perhaps even more so, Fortune magazine reports, citing a report from the San Francisco-based firm. It said the average yearly earnings for a rural host was $6,776, a bit more than the $6,674 median for hosts in urban areas. Part of that difference could be driven by a large rural-urban differential in Hawaii.
Airbnb says its hosts in U.S. rural areas grew by 1,800 percent since 2012, faster than in urban areas. "In the past year, rural hosts earned a total of $494 million by renting out their homes to strangers," Fortune reports. It says that offers economic-development opportunities for rural areas, which have lagged urban areas in recent job creation.
Fortune cites a study at University College London that concluded, “Airbnb can be used as an economic development tool. It has been shown that Airbnb guests spend a considerable part of their money in the hosting communities.” Fortune produced a chart showing the top 10 states where rural hosts make the most money:
Fortune chart of top 10 rural Airbnb states based on data from Airbnb
Tennessee prosecutors have dropped charges against the two teenagers accused of setting the deadly fire in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park last November, reports Jamie Satterfield of The Knoxville News Sentinel. However, they could still face federal charges.
Defense attorney Gregory P. Isaacs, who represents one of the boys, said the state could not prove that the teens, ages 15 and 17, started the fire. District Attorney Jimmy Dunn wrote in a statement that he couldn't pin the fire on the boys, citing high winds that accidentally spread embers into Gatlinburg.
Dunn has been at the center of increasing controversy in the case, since critics say that local and state agencies have used his prosecution of the teens to keep from having to release public records about fire and emergency response to the disaster, the News Sentinel notes.
Furthermore, the newspaper found records showing that state authorities have not had the legal authority to prosecute crimes in the park since 1997. "Those records show the park was left out of a 1997 agreement giving both state and federal agencies authority to prosecute crimes committed on federal lands," reports The News Sentinel.
Two weeks ago, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin's chief of staff sent the state's newspapers a column accusing the two largest papers of working "in tandem" to promote "fake news" to "end Kentucky's progress" brought about by the Bevin administration, which began in 2015.
"It was just the latest salvo in a war the governor’s office has been
waging against the Lexington Herald-Leader, The Courier-Journal and
other media outlets that cover Frankfort and state government," wrote Forrest Berkshire, editor of The Kentucky Standard, a thrice-weekly in Bardstown. "Bevin’s
administration has actively worked to circumvent reporters’ pesky
questions about his actions by refusing to respond to specific
journalists, attacking them on social media . . . and taking his message “direct to the people” on
platforms like Facebook and Twitter."
To some, the column from the governor's office appeared to be an attempt to get the state's rural papers to side with the governor against the metropolitan papers. If so, it failed, according to Berkshire: "After we received the submission, I emailed every editor on the
email list for the Kentucky Press Association and asked them if they had
received the column and if they were running it," Berkshire reported. "Only one respondent said they would publish it. Every other said they would not." The Courier-Journal published excerpts, interspersed with its replies.
UPDATE, July 7-12: The governor's office says several papers ran the column, including dailies in Owensboro and Bowling Green. Weekly publisher Jeff Jobe, a Bevin ally, said his six Southern Kentucky papers ran it. So did the daily Frankfort State Journal and the twice-weekly Grayson County News-Gazette. The thrice-weekly Sentinel-Echo in London ran it, along with a column saying it was off base. John Shindlebower of The Spencer Magnet ran the column by his neighbor and Landmark Community Newspapers colleague Berkshire with a contrary one of his own, saying "Some in the state media have seemingly made it their objective to go after Governor Matt Bevin. It’s led Bevin to strike back and now he’s adopted a practice of avoiding some in the media. That’s not good for the Governor, not good for transparency, and ultimately, not good for Kentucky. There needs to be a truce in this battle, but Governor Bevin is not the only one who needs to come to the treaty table with a willingness to concede."
Berkshire wrote, "Perhaps the governor’s communications team thought they would find a
sympathetic ear among the community newspapers located in Kentucky’s
120 counties. Most of them cover rural counties that are politically
conservative, and so are their readers. What they might not realize, though, is that our reporting on local
issues has angered powerful individuals in our communities. Many of us
have been targeted in just the same way for nothing more than doing our
jobs, asking tough questions and holding the powerful to account. It’s
not about party affiliation or even political ideology. It’s what we do,
and what our readers expect. Or, maybe the governor’s office thought us journalists in small
towns don’t know how to ask probing questions, that we are just a bunch
of unsophisticated hacks who will take any manure they shovel our way."
Earlier, there was a similar column from Steve Wilson, executive editor of The Paducah Sun, the main daily in far Western Kentucky, which usually has good things to say about Republicans. Not this time. Wilson wrote that the proffered column was "a gross distortion of the way journalists work," and "In Bevin's ideal world, journalists would do no critical reporting. They wouldn't question his decisions. . . . They would behave like reporters in Russia and North Korea and other nations with state-run media who tell citizens only what their government officials want them to know."
The Sun ran the column from the governor's office, but Wilson reported that the office had cut off Louisville's WAVE-TV after it aired two stories that annoyed Bevin, and had earlier done likewise with Ronnie Ellis, the statehouse reporter for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., which has dailies in Ashland, Richmond, Corbin, Somerset and Glasgow, a thrice-weekly in London, a twice-weekly in Morehead and three other weeklies. The column from the governor's office criticized two of Ellis's stories but didn't name him or CHNI, perhaps an indication of its strategic intent.
The Todd County Standard, published by Kentucky Press Association President Ryan Craig, ran Wilson's column. Berkshire wrote, "It seems the journalistic community in Kentucky largely remains united,
and will not aid a governor intent on undermining independent
accountability reporting."
From its early days, the group has conducted small-group critiques of editorial pages.
Journalists from five countries got sources for health coverage, learned about the state of newspapers in Canada and a nonprofit's support of a weekly newspaper, handed out awards and critiqued each other's editorials last week at the annual conference of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors. Editors from the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland and Nepal spent five days at the University of Maryland and in Washington, D.C., where they also toured the Newseum and the Library of Congress.
The group's main awards, the Golden Dozen for editorial writing, topped by the Golden Quill, were reported here Sunday. The group presented its Eugene Cervi Award to Bill Miller Sr., editor and publisher of The Washington Missourian for more than 60 years. Miller, 87, said he had lost advertisers because of his editorial stands, but "You've got to write editorials. That's the heart of a newspaper." Miller discussed editorial writing with Hank Waters, former editor of the Columbia Daily Tribune, at the 2015 ISWNE conference in Columbia. The 45-minute video is on the ISWNE site via YouTube:
The award, named for the late publisher of a weekly newspaper in Denver, recognizes careers of outstanding public service in community journalism that adhere to the highest standards of the craft, including the conviction that good journalism begets good government. Gateway Journalism Reviewprofiled Miller in 2014.
The Don Brod Award, named for the only person to serve as ISWNE executive director and president, went to Bill Reader, a journalism professor at Ohio University in Athens, a specialist and researcher in community journalism and very active member of the "hotline" list-serve for ISWNE members.
Health coverage, Canadian papers, nonprofit help
The group heard from several speakers. Rob Logan of the National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, listed several useful websites, including MedicinePlus.gov, a gateway to information on more than 1,000 diseases and conditions, every drug and supplement, and how to sign up for clinical trials; and PubMedHealth, which reviews recent medical research and shows "the state of the art," Logan said.
Gordon Cameron talked about Canadian newspapers.
At the Newseum, the group heard from Gordon Cameron, group managing editor of Hamilton Community News, a group of four papers in the city at the west end of Lake Ontario, and past president of the Ontario Community Newspapers Association. He said most Canadian papers are making money, thanks mainly to advertising inserts, but circulation and run-of-press advertising continue to decline.
Canada's Public Policy Forum issued a "Shattered Mirror" report on the country's news media in January, saying "Real news is in crisis. Canadians need — and want — real news to make educated decisions about their governments and to keep the powerful accountable. Without it, we’ll be in the dark about our communities and our country. Without it, democracy itself is at risk." The report recommended more favorable tax treatment for news outlets, easing philanthropic support of news outlets, a fund to support digital innovation (already being done in a small way for community newspapers), a legal advisory service for small news operations (to encourage more aggressive journalism), and funding of 60 to 80 reporters for a new local service of the Canadian Press news service to provide more coverage of local governments (see Page 98 of the report). Cameron said the Canadian News Media Association has proposed tax credits for reporter salaries, "fairly broadly defined," but many publishers are wary and "concerned about the optics." Still, "Everyone agrees something needs to be done."
Nonprofit involvement in rural journalism is being pioneered by The Rappahannock News and the Foothills Forum in Rappahannock County, Virginia. The Rural Blog has reported on this project; the organizers reported that it has overcome initial skepticism. "The more we do, the more the community accepts that we don't have an agenda," said Larry "Bud" Meyer, president of the nonprofit and former vice president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. "Some form of nonprofit partnership might work in your community."
Lucy Dalglish, dean of journalism at Maryland, welcomed the group.
In another presentation in a Senate office building, Tonda Rush, chief lobbyist for the National Newspaper Association, urged the editors to get involved with NNA and its efforts on postal reform and other issues. "People in this building don't have any idea what you're about, and you may have more power than you realize," Rush said "The interesting thing about community newspapers in Washington is, if we can find a way to connect you, things happen."
In official business, ISWNE members changed the group's mission statement to include "support of research that improves community journalism." Some academic journalists are members, including David Gordon, a retired journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, who was president in the past year. The new president is Steve Ranson of the Lahontan Valley News in Fallon, Nevada.
The organization has 283 members, 39 outside the U.S. Executive Director Chad Stebbins of Missouri Southern State University told his board of directors that membership has declined in Canada and the United Kingdom due to a decrease in the number of independent, family-owned newspapers.
The group's next conference is set for July 11-15, 2018, in Portland and McMinnville, Oregon. At least four Pulitzer Prize winners are signed up for the program, Stebbins said. It will meet in the Atlanta area in 2019, Reno in 2020 and the Montreal area in 2021. Last year's meeting was in Australia.
Lincoln Community Hospital in Hugo, Colo., is exemplary of rural hospitals across the country. Residents are proud of their hospital, but changes to the Medicaid program could reduce its funding and force it to cut back services, reports John Daley of NPR.
"From the outside, Lincoln Community Hospital looks more like a small 1960s-era apartment building," Daley reports. "But it has all the essential high-tech health care equipment: modern imaging machines, tele-medicine links — even an AirLife helicopter. Rachel Smith, the assistant director of nursing, says the thing that really sets the hospital apart is the quality of its care."
Smith said, "It's definitely not treat 'em and street 'em. It's definitely somebody you're going to see — maybe even later that day, later that week."
Half of the hospital's patients are covered by Medicare, according to Daley. "One chronic problem for the hospital is that its reimbursement from Medicare doesn't cover the full cost of the services it provides.
The hospital also receives — and depends on — Medicaid payments, and that program is facing deep cuts under the Senate health bill now under consideration," Daley writes.
Making the financial puzzle pieces fit is tricky for rural hospitals. "As Congress works to change the health system once more, many small town facilities like Lincoln Community Hospital are on thin ice," Daley says.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration enhanced image shows Mississippi River watershed and the "dead zone" from fertilizer runoff in the Gulf of Mexico.
This year's "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, caused by fertilizer runoff from farms in the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio River watershed, is forecast to be the third largest ever. An editorial in The Des Moines Register shows how farmers in Iowa and other states can mitigate the problem.
Iowa farmers typically plant a field in corn one year and soybeans the next. Research at Iowa State University has studied "a three-year system that adds a cool-season small grain (such as oats) with a cover crop of red clover that acts as a 'green manure,' and a four-year system that includes a small grain (again, oats) with a green manure of alfalfa, followed by a second year of alfalfa for harvest," says the Union of Concerned Scientists. "The researchers have found that the longer rotations enhanced yields and profits while reducing pesticide use and pollution."
As an example, the Register cites Iowa farmer Seth Watkins, who said at the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation's "Ocean Week" in Washington, D.C. last month, "My job as farmer is not to produce; my job is to care for the land. And when I do this properly, this provides for all of us." The Register says governments must provide better incentives to farmers who want to follow in his footsteps. "Federal farm policy got us into the two-crop system, and it can help get us out," the newspaper says. "Politicians and ag leaders claim that Iowa farmers are making progress in addressing water pollution, but too much evidence shows it’s shamefully inadequate."
Oregon now has a minimum wage that divides the state into urban, standard, and rural areas, with different minimum wages for each area. The wage increased July 1 for the second year in a row, part of a multi-year plan to gradually bring up the minimum wage to account for cost-of-living increases, Anna Marum reports for Oregon Live.
In the Portland metropolitan area, where living expenses are higher, the wage increased to $11.25. In small city and suburban areas, called "Standard," the wage increased to $10.25. And in rural areas, the wage went up to $10.
Farmers are concerned about the wage increase, saying that they can't raise prices since their crops are part of a slumping global commodities market. Jenny Dresler, director of state public policy for the Oregon Farm Bureau, told Marum in an interview that many farmers have been trying to cut costs since the first minimum wage increase under the tiered system in 2016.
"Some are scaling back employee hours and turning to family to pitch in, or doing more of the work themselves. Others have given up on crops that need to be hand-picked, such as tree fruits and berries, in favor of those that are less labor intensive," Dresler told Marum. "As the cost of production increases and the cost of commodities stays flat, they're going to have to automate more, or they're not going to make it."
Citing significant scheduling delays, malfunctioning equipment and cost overruns, The Southern Co. suspended the coal gasification portion of its Kemper, Miss., power plant on June 28 and will run solely on natural gas.
The plant was meant to be a showpiece for proponents of clean coal, as well as bring thousands of jobs to rural Mississippi, but "equipment meant to turn the coal into gas and remove at least two-thirds of the carbon dioxide from it to keep it out of the atmosphere never worked as designed," reports Henry Fountain of The New York Times.
The plant had been running mostly on natural gas while engineers attempted to fix the coal gasification equipment. Because of that and other delays, the project was three years behind schedule and cost $7.5 billion, $4 billion over budget. Southern tried to secure additional funding with electric-rate increases, but regulators blocked the move, reportsNasdaq.
Southern announced the suspension of the project in the wake of last week's ultimatum from the Mississippi Public Service Commission to redesign the project's plans and run the plant solely on natural gas, according to Nasdaq.
Southern CEO Tom Fanning said he stands by the project. "Carbon capture works; we've proved it," he said in an interview with E&E News. "While we've had a lot of financial challenges there, when you think about it, the technology works."
Ayaz Virji and his wife, Mussarrat (Post photo by Salwan Georges)
When a Muslim became the third doctor in a small Minnesota town, “It felt right,” to him, he told The Washington Post's Stephanie McCrummen. "But that feeling
began to change after the election of Donald Trump," McCrummen writes, in a story that puts you inside the head and heart of Ayaz Virji, "the first Muslim to ever live in Dawson, a farming town of 1,400," she reports.
When Virji moved with his wife and three children from Harrisburg, Pa., "No one seemed to care that he was Muslim, of Indian descent, born in Kenya and raised in Florida. They just needed a good doctor," McCrummen writes. "He never thought Trump would win, much less in Dawson," which Barack Obama had carried twice. But Trump won the town by 6 percentage points and Lac qui Parle County in a landslide.
Virji was "shocked and angry . . . saying he hoped people realized that they just voted to put his family
on a Muslim registry, and how would he be treated around here if he
didn’t have M.D. after his name," McCrummen reports. He and his wife thought about leaving, but decided to stay, "and he tried to transform his anger into understanding." Then a patient asked him to talk about Islam at her Lutheran church, and 400 people came. In a county of 7,300. He won a semi-standing ovation.
Virji spoke in Dawson (green dot), Montevideo (B)
and Granite Falls, Minnesota. (Map Quest image)
But a few weeks later, in Montevideo, pop. 5,200, the seat of Chippewa County, pop. 12,500, which also flipped from Obama to Trump, things were different. "They yelled that they were praying for his salvation and called him the Antichrist. Their tone became so hostile that Musarrat, who had brought
their 9-year-old daughter, moved to the back of the room, closer to the
exit," McCrummen reports. "In the days after, people wrote letters to the local paper saying
how embarrassed they were at the doctor’s reception, but Ayaz decided he
was done with trying to explain Islam to rural Minnesota. Except that the invitations kept coming."
McCrummen went with Virji to Granite Falls, pop. 2,900, the seat of Yellow Medicine County, pop. 12,500, which voted Republican in 2012 and 2016. She describes in great detail his preparation, thoughts and his presentation, which was angry at times. During the question time, one man said, "I hear a lot of pain from you this evening. . . . I'm sorry." Virji won applause, but as he arrived back in Dawson, "He still felt different, more and more like a stranger in a rural Midwestern town," McCrummen writes. "He didn’t want to feel that way. He hoped in time he wouldn’t. He turned onto Pine Street, and then he was home."
Kentucky, perhaps more than most states, has a stark rural-urban split that experts are working to mend with the Rural-Urban Exchange.
With only two cities of more than 100,000, the rest of the state is dominated small, cozy towns and rural farmland and forest. The exchange, or RUX as it is informally known, works to bring people together from across the state in an effort to build a more connected Commonwealth, reports Jacob Ryan of WFPL, a Louisville Public Radio station.
"The group, in its work, examines the divisions that dissect the state – divisions that are rooted, largely, in perception . . . But whether they’re real or perceived . . . these divisions are barriers that impede progress for communities across Kentucky," Ryan reports. Savannah Barrett, a member of the RUX steering committee, told Ryan, "It’s a really unfortunate cartography of belonging."
The program got organized in summer 2014 and hosts three sessions each summer for 70 or so people who come from all over the state to participate at three locations, this year in Lexington, Bowling Green and Harlan.
This month, participants will learn about folk studies at Western Kentucky University, tour a farm where organic produce is grown and visit the town of Horse Cave, Tonya Grace writes for the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville.
The last session, in Harlan, is scheduled for Sept. 29 through Oct. 1.
Barrett said there are people in Louisville, the state's largest city, who voted for Trump, "just as there are people out in deep rural areas that advocate for LGBTQ rights and arts programming," Ryan writes. "The two areas depend on each other, too, she said.
Louisville depends on (rural) Kentucky for fresh food and energy and cultural aspects, she said. Rural Kentucky depends on Louisville for its economic contribution.
Without one, the other will falter, she said." Barrett added, "The idea that Louisville is some way removed from the state of Kentucky is ludicrous. It is a shared future."
Samuel A. Girod of Bath County, Kentucky, was sentenced to six years in prison on Friday for selling homemade herbal health products that investigators say were sometimes dangerous, reports Greg Kocher of The Lexington Herald-Leader.
Girod, 57, a member of the Old Order Amish Faith, was convicted March 13 on charges of making misbranded products, impeding an investigation, and witness tampering.
From his Bath County business, Girod made and sold herbal medicines and salves, including one that he claimed cured cancer. One product, TO-MOR-GONE, contained an extract of bloodroot that was corrosive to skin, Kocher reports.
Prosecutors alleged that Girod refused to obey court orders to stop selling the products and would not allow Food and Drug Administration officials to inspect his business, notes a report from The Associated Press. Girod had been ordered by a Missouri judge to stop selling his products until he complied with federal labeling and advertisement guidelines.
Many people see Girod as a symbol of government overreach; more than 27,000 people signed a petition asking to have him released from jail. According to Kocher, about 75 of his supporters gathered outside the federal courthouse in downtown Lexington the day of the sentencing.
Girod, who represented himself in court, argued that requiring FDA inspection of his products is a violation of his religious freedom, since Amish people try to shun the modern world, including modern medicine. He also said that herbal remedies are not drugs, and therefore shouldn't be subject to FDA inspection.
Editorials criticizing police behavior in rural areas took the spotlight at the annual Golden Quill Awards ceremony of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors at the group's annual conference Saturday night. Awards concluded the group's conference at the University of Maryland.
Peter Weinschenk accepts his award.
Peter Weinschenk, editor of The Record-Review in western Marathon County, Wisconsin, became the first three-time Golden Quill winner in the competition's 56-year history, ISWNE says. His winning editorial criticized the county Board of Supervisors for "automatically" denying the abuse claim of a man who had been mauled by a police dog, noting that dash-cam videos showed the county sheriff's department had violated its own policy on the use of dogs. "We can't look the other way," the editorial concluded.
Weinschenk wrote in ISWNE's Grassroots Editor journal that the editorial "wrote itself" because of the life experiences he brought to it: "The issue, I said, was not whether you think Black Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter. It was only whether the police . . . followed their own rules. The stakes in such a case, I said, were whether we are willing to tolerate a police state where the Constitution is violated."
Murray Bishoff
Another opinion piece about rural police behavior was one of the 11 runners-up in the "Golden Dozen" of the contest. Murray Bishoff, news editor of The Monett Times in Missouri, wrote that an Aurora police officer shouldn't have shot and killed a fleeing suspect outside his jurisdiction, that the officer was "let down by his training," and "the Highway Patrol has taken too long to release information on this incident."
The entries were judged by Mary Kimm of Connection Newspapers in suburban Washington, D.C., who recently led an award-winning "multi-year editorial effort in support of police reform in Fairfax County, Virginia," and serves on the "implementation team" for the local Police Policies Review Commission, Grassroots Editor notes.
"These entries were evidence that weekly newspapers and weekly news editors are actively informing, protecting and bettering their communities, with a powerful connection to readers," Kimm wrote. "Many editorials spoke truth to power, holding public officials and law enforcement accountable to the people."
Other editorials in the Golden Dozen, some of which also touched on law-enforcement behavior, and one on an editor's civil disobedience, are:
• Marcia Martinek, editor of The Herald Democrat in Leadville, Colo., for an editorial replying to criticism of her for reporting 14 felony charges against the former police chief.
• Steve Bagwell, managing editor of the McMinnville News-Register in Oregon, for an editorial about the Yamhill County sheriff's complicity in the suicide of a jail inmate.
• John Hueston, publisher of the Aylmer Express in Ontario, for his second editorial objecting to the cutting of trees along a highway, which began with the fact of his arrest for joining a community protest that attempted to block the cutting.
• Diane Chiddister, editor of the Yellow Springs News in Ohio, for an editorial challenging the small town to welcome refugees from Syria.
• Melissa Hale-Spencer, editor of The Altamont Enterprise in New York, for an editorial saying that the issue of placing cell-phone towers should be decided on its merits, not "political maneuvering."
• Brian Hunhoff, contributing editor of the Yankton County Observer in South Dakota, for a column demanding that the state fix a highway that had been the site of many accidents.
• Bill Tubbs, publisher of the North Scott Press in Eldridge, Iowa, for an editorial explaining a complex zoning issue.
• Janine Kock, editor and publisher of The Observer in Westside, Iowa, for an editorial showing how school-funding mechanisms harm small, rural schools.
• Steve Bonspiel, editor and publisher of The Eastern Door in Kahnawake, Quebec, for an editorial about unequal treatment of First Nations children in Canada and news-media treatment of the issue.
• Declan Varley, editor of the Galway Advertiser in Ireland, for an editorial honoring a local fallen hero, a coast-guard officer on a mission.
ISWNE said the contest received 115 entries from 62 people, more than double last year's totals. The editorials and the judge's comments appear in the latest quarterly edition of Grassroots Editor, which is available to ISWNE members. Membership is $60 a year; a Grassroots Editor subscription is $25 a year.
Climate change will make the U.S. poorer and will further inequality, with the South hit hardest, a new study shows.
"The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, calculates probable economic harms and benefits for the more than 3,100 counties in the United States under different possible scenarios for worldwide emissions of heat-trapping gases," writes Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press. Researchers looked at agriculture, energy costs, labor costs, coastal damage from rising seas, crime and deaths. They then estimated the effect on average local income by the end of the century.
The team created an interactive map of their findings. "The county hit hardest if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated is tiny and impoverished Union County in Florida, where median income would take a 28 percent hit. And among counties with at least 500,000 people, Polk County in central Florida would suffer the most, with damages of more than 17 percent of income. Seven of the 10 counties with the highest percentage of projected county income losses from climate change are in Florida, along with two in Texas and one in Georgia. Half of these are among the poorest counties in the country," Borenstein reports.
The poorest third of U.S. counties could sustain economic damage that costs as much as 20 percent of their income if warming proceeds at its current rate, writes Doyle Rice of USA Today. For each degree rise in the Earth's temperature, scientists believe the U.S. might see damage equal to 0.7 percent of the Gross Domestic Product annually by the 2080s, Rice reports. Researchers analyzed production of four different crops: soy, wheat, corn and cotton. Much of the Midwest could endure "the type of productivity losses we saw during the Dust Bowl," said Solomon Hsiang, lead author of the study.
Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann told AP that it's "a fascinating and ambitious study." However, because many extreme weather factors weren't or can't yet be calculated, he said the study "can at best only provide a very lower limit on the extent of damages likely to result from projected climate changes."
Why is Appalachia losing population, and how can the trend be reversed?
An editorial from The Roanoke Times notes that it's tied to both economics and demographics: young people are moving away to find jobs elsewhere, especially in coal country where there are fewer jobs than in years past.
When young adults leave rural areas, the median age of the remaining population goes up. Because coal counties now have some of the highest median ages in the country, that means that more people are dying than being born. For example, "In 2015, there were about 1,800 babies born in Virginia's coalfields. But about 2,400 people died," the editorial reports.
This gap will only grow in coming years as Baby Boomers begin to die off in greater numbers and young people continue to move away. According to demographer Hamilton Lombard of the University of Virginia, rural Southwest Virginia's population goes down by about 600 people a year just from locals giving birth or dying, without even accounting for anyone moving away. That deficit is likely to increase.
Proposed improvements to infrastructure, such as a proposed $5.1 billion highway through Southwest Virginia, might only serve as a stopgap solution, says Lombard. "It was hard to convince [community leaders] that the expressway would only likely slow population loss rather than by itself generate a boom in growth," he says.
So how does coal country create a baby boom? In terms of pure numbers, Lombard says young adults need to stay put, and women would need to have 3.5 to four children each over the next decade. If people could not be convinced to stay put, the birth rate would need to be markedly higher.
Such an outcome is simply not feasible, the editorial notes, advocating instead for a possibly less-palatable strategy: encouraging immigration.
"One of the great ironies of our current political situation is that anti-immigration sentiment runs highest in rural areas," the editorial says. "Yet it's rural areas that logically should be the loudest champions for increased immigration."
In some rural Canadian towns, reports Alia Dharssi for The Calgary Herald, community leaders are aggressively encouraging immigrants to settle down. Their approach is noteworthy because they are actively seeking large numbers of blue collar workers to increase their tax base; traditionally immigrants are more easily admitted when they are highly skilled "white collar" workers.
Some Canadian immigrants have chafed at blue collar work, though; in another story for The Calgary Herald, Dharssi writes about highly educated immigrants who took rural restaurant or retail jobs simply as a way to get into Canada. Once there, many try to get accreditation and find jobs in their profession, often in more urban areas where those jobs are readily available. Because of language barriers and bureaucracy, not many succeed.
One question to consider then, is how many blue collar jobs immigrants would attract to rural America and whether enough immigrants would stay put to create a net population gain.
It's a little-known fact that around 2,000 judges in mostly-rural New York are presiding without a law degree or any legal training whatsoever.
Joe Sexton of ProPublicasurveys the recent repercussions of this practice in a new piece prompted by the recent resignation of Justice Gary M. Poole of the Rose Town Court in Wayne County. Poole, who is not an attorney, agreed to resign effective July 1 and never again seek judicial appointment after the New York State Commission on Judicial Conductbegan investigating claims that he screamed at and threatened a former girlfriend and her new boyfriend in court.
In 2006, state officials promised reform after The New York Times published a series condemning the practice of allowing non-attorneys to preside as judges.
"The examination found overwhelming evidence that decade after decade and up to this day, people have often been denied fundamental legal rights," writes William Glaberson of The Times. "Defendants have been jailed illegally. Others have been subjected to racial and sexual bigotry so explicit it seems to come from some other place and time. People have been denied the right to a trial, an impartial judge and the presumption of innocence."
This week, in reviewing recent commission reports, Sexton reports that non-attorney judges are still being frequently disciplined for unprofessional conduct. One justice, for instance, was ordered to be removed from office in May after trying to have his daughter's traffic ticket removed, as well as trying to influence the decisions of the judge who was handling appeals of his decisions.
The practice of appointing non-attorney judges arose from the high cost to small communities of hiring qualified judges and lawyers, as well as frequent rural anti-lawyer sentiment, reports Glaberson, noting also that non-attorney judges tend to be powerful players in local politics.
To reduce misconduct and increase accountability, the Commission has recommended several reforms. "The court system has supplied every town and village court with laptops that have audio capability," commission administrator Robert Tembeckjian writes to ProPublica. "And a rule of the Chief Administrative Judge requires all proceedings to be recorded and maintained, and more extensive ethics training for judges."
