Some rural areas are slow to embrace legal marijuana

Michigan voters will decide in November whether they want to legalize recreational marijuana. Supporters of the initiative say it could help the economy in rural parts of the state, but it's been a "mixed bag" for other states, Steve Carmody reports for Michigan Public Radio.

Pueblo County (Wikipedia map)

In Pueblo County, Colorado, so many cannabis businesses have opened in recent years that local lawmakers have put a moratorium on new licenses. "The growing marijuana industry is changing people’s perception of Pueblo County. For many years, steel mills and agriculture – in particular green chiles – defined the county. But now the county is becoming synonymous with cannabis," Carmody reports.

Marijuana has brought more jobs and business investment to Pueblo, but some say it has brought problems too. Rod Slyhoff, CEO of the Greater Pueblo Chamber of Commerce, said people more frequently fail local employers' drug tests. "Since legalization, the county has seen an increase in property crime and homelessness," Carmody reports. "There has also been an increase in seizures of drugs like heroin and amphetamines. And in the first six months of this year, Pueblo County sheriff’s deputies busted more than 40 illegal grow operations." Some Pueblo residents tried and failed to make recreational cultivation and sales illegal in 2016.

Rural Nevada is also slow to embrace recreational marijuana. Representatives in several rural counties said "they either have ordinances on their books that prohibit marijuana sales locally or have not seen any interest in local sales," Wade Millward reports for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Other counties and towns said they allow medical dispensaries but no cultivation or sales of recreational marijuana. And some rural Californians protest legalized marijuana, saying that cultivation will damage the land, use up scarce water and bring crime.

Transportation agencies' electronic messaging devices may feature some of the best one-liners in America

Electronic billboard slogans from the Utah Department of Transportation (Photo by Utah DOT)

On long stretches of rural road in states that limit billboards, sometimes the most entertaining signs are the official messaging devices of state highway departments. "As summer car travelers are noticing, state transportation officials have become a bit of a trip," Jennifer Levitz reports for The Wall Street Journal. "Traffic specialists who once stuck to dispatches like 'Westbound I-70 left lane closed at Wentzville Parkway' are spicing up electronic billboards with snark, dad jokes and the occasional eyebrow-raiser."

Examples include an admonition to "Get your head out of your apps" or warnings that "Santa sees you when you're speeding". It's unclear how well the eye-catching slogans help with road safety, but in a Federal Highway Administration-sponsored survey, respondents said roadside safety messages are more likely to change their driving behavior than other kinds of messages, Levitz reports.

Electronic message screens were originally used for more staid reminders about lane closures and reminders to use your seatbelt. But about five years ago, an Iowa Department of Transportation employee helped start the trend toward wit, Levitz reports. Traffic-safety engineer Willy Sorenson was assigned to come up with slogans for times no urgent messages were needed, and decided to have some fun. He and colleague Tracey Bramble brainstorm slogans twice a year, then run their ideas past a committee to make sure the slogans are suitable for use.

Other states' highway agencies decided to get in on the fun, and now have a Facebook group to trade ideas, according to Sam Cole, the traffic safety communications manager for the Colorado Department of Transportation. The Missouri DOT recently solicited ideas from the public. Spokesperson Taylor Brune said "Don't be a tool, buckle up, fool," was one entry rejected. "That was was an obvious no for us," he told Levitz.

Rural job growth outpaces urban job growth since 2016 election; Trump earns some credit, but it's complicated

Compound annual employment growth rate by county. (Brookings Institution map)

Rural voters came out for President Trump in record numbers in 2016, partly because he promised to improve the economy. Since the election, employment in rural areas has grown faster than in big cities, according to the Brookings Institution. Rates of growth aren't the same thing as employment levels, "but assuming that overall, downtrodden rural Americans are seeing an upswing under Trump, how much credit can the president really take?" Jeff Spross writes for The Week.

The answer is complicated, Spross writes. Though Trump's environmental deregulations likely helped the mining industry, and much of the recent rural job growth is in industries like logging, mining, oil and gas, and construction, Brookings notes that such industries tend to have cyclical growth patterns. A cyclone that temporarily destroyed Australia's ability to export coal also helped.

The trade war with China has also had a complicated fallout: the tariffs on steel help steel manufacturers, but they hurt manufacturers who buy steel. And retaliatory tariffs from China and other nations on U.S. farm products were calculated to hurt rural areas, Spross writes.

The most likely explanation for why rural job growth has outpaced urban job growth is that the recovery from the Great Recession "has simply gone on long enough to reach rural America," which was slower to recover, Spross writes. "If rural America is finally getting its share of the recovery, that's certainly good news. And Trump deserves some credit. But he's also the beneficiary of good timing and circumstance."

Florence floods some N.C. hog manure pools, kills chickens

"North Carolina officials are monitoring swine-waste lagoons that were overrun or threatened by floodwaters after then-Hurricane Florence dumped more than 30 inches of rain on parts of the state — and as rivers there continue to overflow," Ryan McCrimmon reports for Politico's "Morning Agriculture" summary. "Environmental and public health groups have warned that bacteria-filled waste from flooded lagoons could contaminate water supplies, though local pork groups argue the safety risks are overstated.

The state Department of Environmental Quality said Monday that lagoon breaches have been reported from one in Duplin County, and in Jones County two flooded lagoons as well as five "overtops," which is when some waste spills over the side of the lagoon. Reports are still coming in, McCrimmon reports. The North Carolina Pork Council stressed that more than 3,000 active lagoons in the state have been unaffected.

Florence has also hurt the state's poultry industry. "Sanderson Farms said Monday that about 1.7 million chickens had been killed by flooding at contractor farms in the state, and another 30 farms — housing a combined 6.3 million birds — were surrounded by floodwaters and couldn’t be reached by feed trucks," McCrimmon reports.

Challenges of rural retailing are balanced by advantages, including connections with the community

Running a retail establishment in a rural area can be tough: store owners must compete with big-box retailers such as Walmart and online sources like Amazon. But rural retailing can have some big advantages, Melanie Plenda reports for The Sentinel in Keene, N.H.

One of the biggest advantages is how invested owners are in the local community. They appreciate the quality of life rural living brings, and are actively involved in their communities, one store owner told Plenda. That's good for the community and good for the store owners, since such involvement makes for a loyal customer base.

But the lack of foot traffic can make running a rural store challenging. Rural retailers are trying to offer more incentives to keep customers coming, like in-store order pickup, rewards programs, and customer appreciation events. But the best thing they offer is customer service, Plenda reports.

"It's understandable in today's world that many retail stores have become discouraged by Amazon and the online sellers," said Elizabeth Hamshaw, owner of pet and farm supply store The Cheshire Horse in Swanzey, N.H. "But there are certainly plenty of ways to compete and remain a business of choice for your customers."

The Sentinel and Keene will host the Radically Rural Summit Sept. 27-28 to explore innovation in rural communities.

Atlantic Coast pipeline construction allowed to resume

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has allowed construction on the controversial Atlantic Coast Pipeline to resume Monday, a month after a federal court revoked some of the project's permits.

"In early August, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Fish and Wildlife Service needed to revisit a key endangered species permit," Brittany Patterson reports for West Virginia Public Broadcasting. "It also ruled the National Park Service needed to reissue a right-of-way approval to allow the pipeline to pass under the Blue Ridge Parkway."

On Sept. 17, FERC sent a letter to pipeline officials saying construction could continue since both permits had been received. Environmental groups, which have repeatedly challenged the pipeline in court, are not happy. D.J. Gerken with the Southern Environmental Law Center said in a statement: "Rather than taking the time to address the major problems we have seen in federal agencies' reviews of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, these agencies continue to rush through a rubberstamp process that ignores legal requirements – not to mention the public interest."

Outdoor recreation can bring more money to Eastern Ky., especially if locals welcome it, researcher finds

RRGToday.com map

Eastern Kentucky is known for coal production, but as that industry declines, outdoor recreation is becoming a more important part of the regional economy. It can become even bigger if local, regional and state officials can be convinced that preserving the environment will yield big bucks in tourism, contributing columnist Tom Martin writes for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

James Maples, an associate professor of sociology at Eastern Kentucky University who has done the bulk of his research on the economic impact of outdoor recreation, said rock climbing can become a major source of regional income. His focus has been Red River Gorge, where honeycombed sandstone cliffs have created a world-famous mecca for climbers. He found that climbers spend $3.8 million a year in the gorge area, which has six of the nation's poorest counties, and could spend a lot more. But first the locals needed to get more comfortable with that prospect.

James Maples

"For quite a long time, we saw that outdoor recreation is something that was largely not favorable amongst local residents. Rock climbers weren’t particularly well thought of in the community," Maples said. "But having some basic research on them has helped to change that. Also, we met with Lee County’s tourism board a couple of years ago to talk about the demographics of who these climbers are and they were blown away that they’re these very educated individuals. We found that not only did the community members want to talk to these people, but they wanted to know what is it that you like about these areas. And it turns out that rock climbers and outdoor recreationists love Lee County and these areas for the same reasons that the people who live there do. In the end, they were able to find a lot of common ground and the meeting went about two and a half hours longer than planned. It was one of the highlights of my career as an applied sociologist."

Maples said some in the region think tourism development should shoot for "the next Dollywood," but "We’ve got a Dollywood," in his native county in Tennessee, he said. "We don’t need two of those in the world. . . . The balance is really all about finding the ways to preserve these outdoor recreation areas. We have to think of them as a resource that can be damaged by overdevelopment. If we try to put too many outdoor recreation users into a space and it’s not made sustainable, then we can lose those places and those economic resources. On the flipside, if we can get good policy to make sure these places aren’t overdeveloped and are carefully maintained, then it can be not only a healthy part of our economy, but a healthy part of our community."

Starting a pre-election series via FactCheck: Trump and Obama have both played fast and loose with facts lately

At a time where accusations of the oxymoron "fake news" run rampant and news outlets are under the microscope, it's more important than ever for everyone to get their facts right. That's why each Monday from now until Election Day, and perhaps more often, we will list a few of the most relevant items from FactCheck.org. It's a well-sourced, non-partisan service run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. We encourage you to subscribe to their alerts, which you can do here, and republish their findings, which you can do for free with credit to them.

As Hurricane Florence ravages the mid-Atlantic states, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said the federal government shifted nearly $10 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Robert Farley reports for Fact Check. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both agencies, denied the accusation and said the money represented savings from FEMA's routine operating expenses that came in under budget, and was not taken from hurricane disaster response. But FEMA's Operations and Support fund, from which the $9.8 million was transferred, plays a role in disaster response, Farley notes. In the end, whether the $9.8 million could have helped with hurricane response, it's a tiny fraction of the $26.5 billion in FEMA's disaster relief fund, he concludes.

In two early-morning tweets, President Trump rejected research that estimated 2,975 Puerto Ricans had died because of Hurricane Maria, and he made some false and misleading claims, FactCheck reports. Trump said the hurricane-related death toll in Puerto Rico was from 6 to 18, but the Puerto Rico government's earliest estimate of the toll was 64. Trump claimed that the higher estimate was done by Democrats to make him look bad, but it was found by an independent study commissioned by Puerto Rico and done by George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health. Trump said the study counted deaths for unrelated causes such as old age, but that was untrue.

FactCheck called out former President Barack Obama, too. In a Sept. 7 speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Obama said Republicans' changes to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act had caused more than 3 million Americans to lose health insurance. "That’s according to one estimate, but another found no significant change in the rate or the number of uninsured from 2016 to 2017," Lori Robertson reports. "As politicians are wont to do, Obama cherry-picked the higher figure that more strongly supported his point."

In the same speech, Obama said it's important not to threaten the freedom of the press, and that even though he complained about Fox News, he never threatened to shut it down or called its staffers enemies of the people. But FactCheck's Eugene Kiely notes, "The Democratic president did more than complain. His administration at times took action against the cable network. The Obama Justice Department surveilled one of Fox News’ reporters, and a White House spokesman acknowledged excluding Fox News from interviews. And while he may never have called Fox News 'enemies of the people' — a phrase President Donald Trump has used repeatedly for the media at large — Obama did say that its 'point of view' was 'ultimately destructive' to the U.S."

In an Aug. 30 rally in Evansville, Ind., Trump made three unsubstantiated claims about wind turbines: that a single turbine can kill thousands of birds, that wind not blowing causes "problems," and that living near turbines is noisy enough to make someone "go crazy after a couple of years," Jessica McDonald reports for FactCheck. She notes that a 2013 study estimated that each turbine causes about five bird deaths per year, power grid operators can easily handle sporadic periods without wind, and people living near turbines are rarely exposed to sound levels above 45 decibels, which McDonald says is about as much as a humming refrigerator.

Corn futures drop as yield estimates hit record high

U.S. Department of Agriculture map shows estimated bushels of corn per acre in the Corn Belt, with 300 in purple

Citing ample rain, the U.S. Department of Agriculture increased its national average yield estimate for corn to a record high of 181.3 bushels per acre. "Because the market had been expecting a smaller number and not a larger one, prices dropped by double digits following the report, and December corn futures came within 1/2 cent of the life-of-contract low set back in July," Alan Brugler reports for DTN/The Progressive Farmer.

Study: Rural areas hard to count in census will lose funding

Rural areas are likely to be undercounted in the 2020 census and may lose federal funding for needed programs, says a study by the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy.

In an effort to save money, the Census Bureau will try to get people to fill out forms online and use door-to-door census workers mostly as backups. "Many people in already hard-to-count populations do not have internet access, meaning they are even less likely to get counted, said noted demographer Bill O'Hare," Susan Milligan reports for U.S. News and World Report. "Since federal dollars are allocated according to formulas based on census data, that could mean substantial losses to rural states that shared $30 billion in rural-targeted programs in fiscal year 2016."

The census was going to test its new system earlier this year in four locations: Providence, R.I., rural West Virginia, Puerto Rico, and tribal lands in Washington state. But only Providence ended up getting the dry run, which means the bureau doesn't have data on how its new system will do in areas that are rural, tribal, and/or mostly Spanish-speaking.

Some worry that a proposed new question that asks respondents if they are citizens could scare off Latinx residents. "While census forms, by law, cannot be shared with law enforcement or immigration, state officials and advocates believe the question is designed to undercount Hispanics," Milligan reports.

Small towns face rough road in disaster recovery

When natural disasters strike, cities usually have resources ready to respond and rebuild, But "nearly everything about recovery for small and sparsely populated places in the United States is harder," Terrence McCoy reports for The Washington Post. "Residents are more likely to be poor or disabled and contribute less in taxes to local governments. They’re comparatively isolated and can lack the prominence and political clout of their big-city counterparts that can help facilitate the flow of needed funding. When disaster strikes, even small-town residents’ credit scores take a greater beating, according to a Moody’s report last year on Harvey’s aftermath."

Sperling's Best Places map

That's how it was in Nichols, S.C., a town of 400. Many chose not to come back after Hurricane Matthew destroyed the town in October 2016, and other residents say they've only finished rebuilding recently. Nichols Mayor Lawson Battle told McCoy that the town felt "forgotten" during recovery efforts, and said that Florence could be "catastrophic."

Almost all of its residents evacuated this weekend after learning that flooding was likely imminent, Kirk Brown reports for the Greenville News. It's unknown how Nichols is faring now, but a but mid-Atlantic states are still struggling with heavy rains and flooding from Florence. In North Carolina, where a third of the population is rural and more people live outside of metro areas than in any other state but Texas, a meteorologist said "the worst is yet to come," Reuters reports.

"The soil is soaked and can’t absorb any more rain so that water has to go somewhere, unfortunately,” said Zach Taylor, a meteorologist with the U.S. National Weather Service. "Those rivers are going to start to crest later today and Tuesday and maybe longer."

One bright spot for small towns: they know how to lean on each other in tough times, according to Jerry Mitchell, a geography professor at the University of South Carolina and an expert on environmental hazards and vulnerability. "There is evidence of a tighter community structure that can add to resiliency for rural populations that may be harder to come by in a diverse and disconnected urban population, Mitchell told McCoy. "Isolation may help to breed this resilience as the population is used to 'being on their own.'"

But a close-knit community may not be enough. Leroy Green, a Nichols resident whose house was just repaired from Matthew in July, said he doesn't know what he'll do if his home floods again. "I ain’t got that life savings this time," he told Brown. "I don’t know what I’ll do."

Mayor in town GateHouse abandoned says she won't put legal ads in new paper to be called Uranus Examiner

The rash of rural newspaper closings by giant GateHouse Media has spawned at least one replacement paper and controversy about its name. But it shows that people want local newspapers.

In June, before the company closed the Waynesville Daily Guide in south-central Missouri, Natalie Sanders quit as managing editor "to start what she calls a 'fun' paper for marketing the businesses and attractions at the tourist town" of Uranus, six miles east of Waynesville, Andrew Havranek reports for KYTV in Springfield. Sanders announced at last week's local Chamber of Commerce lunch that the operation would be expanded to "a regular newspaper for local news, legal notices, and other things you'd find in a normal local newspaper, to be called the Uranus Examiner.

Waynesville and Uranus are in Pulaski County. (Wikipedia base map)

The "town," which is actually the northeastern arm of the City of St. Robert, "is pronounced the way any self-respecting class clown would say it," The Associated Press reports. "Cue the giggling." (Astronomers pronounce the planet "YOUR-uh-nus.") KYTV notes, "Uranus sits along historic Route 66 and is known for quirky attractions."

Waynesville Mayor Luge Hardman asked for the microphone at the meeting and said, "No. I'm sorry. But, the innuendo of that title puts my city up for public ridicule, and I will not be a part of it," meaning that the city's public notices won't be published in a paper with that name. "Right now, the city will have to publish them in the Dixon Pilot [in the northeast corner of Pulaski County] or the Laclede [County] Record" in Lebanon, to the southwest, KYTV reports.

Hardman said, "I think that the 'Pulaski County Examiner' would have been a real hit, and I don't believe it would've been a problem for the cities. But if you're going to place this innuendo on your name, it's not going to fly, at least for the city of Waynesville and the City of St. Robert," which lies between Waynesville and Uranus. KYTV says the Examiner's first issue is planned for late October, with free circulation to 15,000 postal patrons in the couinty.

"Darrell Todd Maurina, owner of the online newspaper Pulaski County Daily News, says despite being the new newspaper's competitor, he's also concerned about the name," KYTV reports. He said that if Uranus businessman Louie Keen "wants to pick up the slack and provide a media product to people in this community who want print media, I want to see that happen. I want to see it succeed. That name does not indicate a serious newspaper."

New TV series explores history of rural Georgia churches

Stinchcomb Methodist Church in Elbert County, Georgia. (Photo by Randy Clegg)

Rural churches were once central to their communities, but many have been abandoned as people move to cities. Georgia Public Broadcasting has started a six-part series called Saving Grace, which explores Southern history through the lens of rural churches with interviews, first-person accounts, old maps, photos and engravings, and roots music. The full episode of the first part is available here.

The GPB series is based on the work of Sonny Seals and George Hart. In 2012 they made it their mission to chronicle and preserve historic rural churches across the state. Their website, Historical Rural Churches of Georgia, documents more than two hundred churches with gorgeous photography and carefully researched histories. It's worth a read.

Daily webinars on farm safety scheduled next week, which is National Farm Safety and Health Week

Next week is National Farm Safety and Health Week, and the AgriSafe Network is observing the occasion with free webinars each day on topics related to farm safety:

• Monday: New Immigrants in the Midwest and Agricultural Health Implications
• Tuesday: Respiratory Health and Personal Protective Equipment for Ag Producers
• Wednesday: Children and Tractors: Myths, Facts, or “Other”
• Wednesday: Train the Trainer: Hazard Mapping in the Ag Classroom
• Thursday: Safe and Healthy Recovery After a Farm Flood
• Thursday: Confined Space - Grain Bin Entry
• Friday: Optimizing the Health of the Female Agricultural Producer

Click here for more information about the webinars, including how to register. Click here for more resources on National Farm Safety and Health Week.

Committee increases education spending for 2019 budget, doesn't ban schools from using grant money for guns

A committee of House and Senate members struck a deal Sept. 13 that would increase funding to the U.S. Department of Education by $581 million and give more funding to programs for vocational education, special education, Head Start and charter schools. The committee agreed to set total spending for education at almost $71.5 billion in fiscal 2019. It did not ban schools from using Every Student Succeeds Act grants to pay for firearms or firearms training, as Democrats wanted.

"In general, the spending deal rejects the Trump administration's fiscal 2019 proposal that calls for slashing the department's overall budget, the elimination of several programs, and the creation of school choice initiatives," Andrew Ujifusa reports for Education Week. "The budget deal does rescind $600 million in previously appropriated reserve funding for Pell grants. If you include that figure in the calculations about decline or growth in spending, then the deal would keep Education Department funding virtually flat compared to current levels. The agreement must now be approved by both the full House and Senate" before going to President Trump.

GateHouse Media's closure of twice-weekly newspapers in two Arkansas county seats runs contrary to industry trend

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

For all the ink and electrons used to lament the shrinking of the newspaper business, most newspaper closures in the United States in the last 15 years have been among small weeklies in towns that are not the largest town in their county or its seat. That's why GateHouse Media's closure of twice-weekly papers in county seats in southwest Arkansas stand out among the company's recently announced cuts.

Today will see the final editions of The Hope Star, a twice-weekly in Hempstead County, and The Daily Siftings-Herald of Arkadelphia, in adjoining Clark County. GateHouse also closed the weekly Nevada County Picayune Times. Earlier, the news-media giant closed papers near Little Rock, the state capital.

The Star's circulation was down to 930, in a town of nearly 10,000, but it was the only paper in the county of 22,000. GateHouse's regional vice president, Matt Guthrie, wrote this week that the Star had fewer than 500 subscribers, in a county with 9,000 homes. (He didn't mention single-copy sales, which often constitute a majority of a rural paper's circulation.) He said Clark County had about the same number of homes, and the Siftings-Herald had about 900 subscribers.

Shifting blame from his company, which is owned by venture capitalists, Guthrie wrote, "In order for a local newspaper to survive it must have the support of the community. . . . The loss of revenue and subscribers was just too much to surmount." He said a new management team brought in a year ago was "saddled with a long history of unprofitability."

Guthrie added, "We have received inquiries from individuals interested in purchasing the papers we are closing and we will explore options there. We have also received calls and comments from disappointed customers expressing concerns for the loss of community coverage; unfortunately, some have included inexcusable hate speech directed to our staff."

In Hope, the news "caused our community to be flooded with emotions," Beckie Moore, executive director of the Hope-Hempstead County Chamber of Commerce, told Jim Williamson of the daily Texarkana Times, in adjoining Miller County. "Those who grew up in Hope remember the newspaper as their lifeline to the community. . .. The Hope Star, as with any local paper, was the community welcome mat. You could read the paper and sense that our town mattered."

Moore told Williamson, "The loss of a news source is a great loss, no matter how you look at it. Not everyone has a phone or Internet service readily available in order to 'view' online news. . . . We are fortunate to have radio stations in Hope for those who are not receiving online news. Our stations will continue providing the 'hometown connection,' and for that we should be grateful. That being said, there is something to be said about holding print and reading articles while viewing pictures." (Read more)

Bristol paper, Montana Public Radio, V.I. paper among small-newsroom winners in AP Managing Editors awards

This year's small-newsroom winners in the Associated Press Managing Editors Awards for Journalism Excellence and Innovation included the Bristol Herald Courier, serving Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee, Montana Public Radio and the Virgin Islands Daily News.

The Herald Courier won the small-newsroom public service prize for “Addicted at Birth,” which the judges called "a smart, deeply reported and accessibly presented examination of a little-noticed angle of the opioid problem: babies affected by their mother's use while pregnant. The presentation – from the writing to the headlines to all the visual elements – commanded attention. It was packaged in a very reader-friendly format, offering numerous podcasts, glances, graphics, lists and other chunky bits to both convey key points and pull readers in. Exceptional work." The series also won the Scripps Howard Award for community journalism.

MPR, based in Missoula, won the small-market storytelling award for Nicky Ouellet's “SubSurface: Resisting Montana's Underwater Invaders,” which the judges called "an intelligent and compelling examination of how invasive species threaten Montana’s fisheries, and how various agencies and interest groups are not always on the same page in fighting them."

The Daily News won the small-newsroom award for news reporting for its coverage of hurricanes. The judges called it "amazing, brave journalism by a newsroom working through back-to-back Category 5 storms that literally destroyed the island. In the midst of it all, the Virgin Islands Daily News produced compelling stories, incredible photography and strongly designed work."

In most categories, the contest considers a newsroom to be small if it has 25 or fewer people. For a full list of the awards, go here.

In the First Amendment Awards, there was no small-newsroom winner. The grand prize went to The Kansas City Star for "Why So Secret, Kansas?", which the judges lauded for "exposing the pervasiveness of secrecy in Kansas state government and how that culture subverts the democratic process. The impact of the Star’s work was swift: In a 12-week span, 32 transparency measures were proposed, and the speaker of the House ended the practice of allowing bills to be introduced anonymously."

Meanwhile, APME and the American Society of News Editors (originally Newspaper Editors) are merging into the News Leaders Association, which "is expected to be in place by the 2019 News Leadership Conference Sept. 9-10 in New Orleans," they said in a news release.

Sept. 17 deadline to apply for expense-paid fellowships to attend juvenile-justice reporting conference in NYC

The Center on Media, Crime and Justice at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City has extended to Sept. 17 the deadline to apply for its juvenile justice reporting fellowships.  Details, applications forms are available here. On Oct 4-5, fellows will attend "a special conference to help journalists cover the latest developments in juvenile justice, and engage with some of the leading players and experts in the field," Center Director Stephen Handelman says.

The conference, called “Unfinished Business: Juveniles and Justice,” will provide useful background and story ideas for journalists. Fellows will be chosen on a competitive basis, based on their interests, proposed projects, and editors’ support. The fellowship includes travel to NYC and accommodations.

For more information email Handel or Joe Domanick, journalism coordinator (phone 310-435-4007) or Ricardo Martinez, project administrator (phone 646-557-4690).

Study: Rural childhood makes future success more likely, but rural and urban areas need different strategies for kids

Impact of county residence on children's future earnings
Daily Yonder map by Dave Mistich of 100daysinappalachia.com with data from Equality of Opportunity Project

Last year a Stanford University study found that children who grow up in America's most rural areas are more likely to earn more money as adults. A recent Penn State study corroborates the Stanford findings, reports Kristen Devlin of Penn State News: "The farther away from a city a person is raised, the more likely they are to climb the economic ladder."

The study also found that five "community characteristics associated with upward mobility have different effects in rural and urban locations." Kids are more likely to succeed if they live in a community with fewer single-mother households, a lower high-school dropout rate, lower income inequality, a greater share of jobs with commutes of 15 minutes or less, and more social capital (loosely defined as the networks of relationships in a community).

The researchers found that short commutes helped rural counties much more than they helped urban counties, while higher dropout rates hurt urban areas more than rural ones. But "the researchers found that there are different factors at work in the metro counties, such as better public services, including child care and transportation, that are helping to buffer the negative effects of single-mother households and income inequality," Devlin reports. Only social capital helps rural and urban counties at about the same rate.

Stephan Goetz, a Penn State professor of agricultural and regional economics, director of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development, and study co-author, told Devlin the study proves that different approaches are needed to help children succeed: "There are different factors at work in rural and urban places . . . If we want to enhance the upward income mobility of low-income youth, we need place-based policies that specifically address these differences."

The study used data from the Equality of Opportunity Project, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development. Bill Bishop reported on the Stanford study for The Daily Yonder, which highlights the Penn State study today.

Schools in Washington state get creative to help homeless students find a ride to school

With class back in session, school districts across the nation struggle to make sure homeless students -- many of them rural -- can get to class. In suburban and rural Washington state, the number of homeless students doubled between 2012 and 2017, and school districts are tackling the problem.

Rural districts worry they don't have enough resources to ensure all students have a ride. They have cause to worry: "Last year, barely more than half the state’s homeless students graduated from high school on time, compared to 81 percent of their peers," Neal Morton and Scott Greenstone report for The Seattle Times.

Higher rental prices are part of the problem; in Washington, they're fueled by people priced out of Seattle and moving to ever-smaller cities and towns. As a consequence, the cheapest rents have gone up the most. That can push people into homelessness if their finances are dealt a sudden shock, Morton and Greenstone report.

Serving homeless students starts with identifying which families qualify for limited quantities of state and federal support. Some parents don't want to identify children as homeless, which is required to get the aid, some "as a matter of personal pride. Others fear their tenuous living situation might risk their children being taken away. And, more common now, immigrant families with mixed legal status hesitate to submit any official government forms," Morton and Greenstone report.

Some Washington schools have gotten creative to address the problem, offering funds to help pay for homeless parents' car repairs, or credit repair to help families qualify for an apartment rental. One county offers to send students to a host family to house the student. Jim Theofelis, who has worked with homeless Washington youth for more than 40 years, told the Times, "It's not schools' problem . . . It's all of our problem. But schools, given the resources, can be part of the solution."