Finalists announced for Livingston Awards for outstanding work by young reporters; four have rural resonance

The University of Michigan has announced the finalists for its 2021 Livingston Awards, which honor outstanding reporting and storytelling by young journalists. Here are some with rural resonance:

• Samantha Hogan of The Maine Monitor and ProPublica's Local Reporting Network for "Defenseless: Investigating the Only State Without Public Defenders." Hogan noted in a tweet that she was the Monitor's only full-time reporter when they pitched a series on Maine's lack of public defenders to ProPublica. "I'm still humbled by their belief in small, local newsrooms and the outcome it can have," she wrote. Hogan received a rural computer-assisted reporting fellowship from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.
• Elizabeth Dias of The New York Times for "America's Soul," a three-part series about the intersection of faith with politics and the pandemic. One story, about the "complete fusion of evangelical Christianity and conservative politics," was excerpted on The Rural Blog.
• Jessica Contrera of The Washington Post for "The Pandemic's Human Supply Chain," which illustrated pandemic supply-chain problems by following a restaurant hamburger on its journey from a cattle rancher to the plate.
• Joshua Sharpe of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for "The Imperfect Alibi: The forgotten suspect, the DNA, and the church murders that haunted a detective," a two-part series about a pair of murders in rural Georgia and the man wrongfully convicted for them.

Opioid epidemic accountability trial begins; states try to block Purdue Pharma owners from legal immunity

The opioid epidemic has hit Appalachia particularly hard, so it's perhaps fitting that the first federal trial against drug companies in the epidemic began Monday in West Virginia. "Cabell County and its seat, Huntington, will test a legal claim made by thousands of cities, counties, Native American tribes and other plaintiffs that drug companies ignored red flags and flooded their communities with addictive pain pills, causing a 'public nuisance' and fueling an epidemic of substance abuse, overdoses and deaths," Meryl Kornfield reports for The Washington Post. "The landmark trial in West Virginia against drug distributors known as the 'Big Three' — AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson — comes after an 11th-hour settlement averted an Ohio trial in October 2019 and coronavirus-related delays stalled opioid cases across the country."

In the trial, described as the most complex civil case in the nation, "Thousands of local governments and jurisdictions are arguing that the companies had a responsibility to ensure that the billions of pain pills pumped into their communities were not diverted for illegal use," Kornfield reports. "The distributors say they complied with the law, delivering drugs approved by the government to pharmacies." The verdict could lay the groundwork for settlements in other such cases.

There's only been one other opioid epidemic trial: in 2019 in a Cleveland courtroom, Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay $465 million after the other defendants, Teva Pharmaceuticals and OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma settled, Kornfield reports.

Speaking of Purdue, attorneys general from 24 states and Washington, D.C., are trying to block the Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, from gaining legal immunity from future opioid lawsuits. "In exchange for what amounts to a legal firewall for the Sacklers and their remaining empire, members of the family have offered to forfeit control of their bankrupt drug company and pay $4.2 billion from their private fortunes," Brian Mann reports for NPR.

Though such a settlement could prevent years of expensive litigation and get struggling communities financial aid more quickly, "a growing group of public officials and activists is mounting a last-ditch effort to derail the plan, describing it in legal briefs as an unethical, and possibly unlawful, use of the bankruptcy court's power," Mann reports.

Nation's school chiefs offer advice for how to help students make up for pandemic learning loss

After more than a year of classroom disruptions due to the pandemic, a paper highlighting ways states and educators are accelerating student learning was released by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers," Brent Woodie reports for Route Fifty. "The preliminary analysis shows ways states and school leaders have helped K-12 students make up for gaps in learning. Available state plans, websites, media reports and gubernatorial State of the State addresses for most states were reviewed."

The report highlights four major steps some states are taking to accelerate learning:

• Getting organized and understanding what needs to happen. States and educators are encouraged to communicate their plans and engage key stakeholders.
• Start or enhance summer programs to help students catch up.
• Provide more overall support to help students better learn. That includes using new federal funds to strengthen learning time, both during and after school, to address students' academic and overall needs.
• Strategically use one-time federal funds to address future issues that will crop up because of pandemic-related learning loss. That includes recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers at the schools that need them most, and identifying and supporting struggling students.

U.S. chicken shortage due to pandemic and fast-food demand

You may have difficulty getting chicken in grocery stores and restaurants these days; pandemic supply-chain problems and a nationwide craze for fast-food fried chicken have caused a nationwide shortage.

"Chicken has for years been the most popular meat in the United States, and experts and analysts have cited several reasons for the current deficit," Reis Thebault reports for The Washington Post. "Some are related to the coronavirus — pandemic-spurred disruptions in the market and supply chain and an increased demand for a comfort food that is takeout- or delivery-friendly. Others, industry watchers say, include increased competition, volatile feed prices and even the deadly winter storms that swept over the South in February, halting the work of chicken processors."

Fast-food trends are partly responsible for the shortage, after some major chains increased their chicken-sandwich offerings in 2019. But pandemic pressures on meatpacking plants are another major cause. "Nearly 60,000 meatpacking workers have tested positive for the coronavirus and at least 291 have died, according to data compiled by the Food and Environment Reporting Network," Thebault reports. Industry lobbying kept poultry plants open, but increased line-speed limits meant to boost production made social-distancing more difficult for workers and appears to have accelerated coronavirus spread.

Florida passes big slash to public-notice ads; newspaper-backed compromise has breaks for smaller papers

The Citrus County Chronicle in Crystal River, like
most newspapers, also puts public notices online.

The Florida Legislature has passed "the most significant piece of public-notice legislation in modern history," reports the Public Notice Resource Center, an advocate for the "legal ads" that have become a much more important revenue source for local newspapers as their advertising bases have shrunk. Even journalists sometimes forget that the ads and open-records and open-meeting laws are the "three-legged stool" of open government, says the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog.

Florida is the first state to "significantly dilute the statutory requirement that notices must be published in print newspapers, but there’s a lot for the newspaper industry and residents of the state to like about the bill," PNRC reports. An alternative "would have moved public notice in the state from newspapers to government websites." The compromise bill passed the Senate bill Thursday and Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign it. The Florida Press Association supports it.

    

The Senate bill "authorizes state and local governments in Florida to publish most notices on newspaper websites in lieu of their print editions. Notices relating to property rights, like foreclosure and self-storage notices, must still be published in print," PNRC reports. "Before they can move their notices to newspaper websites, though, government agencies must first hold a public hearing and determine whether there is sufficient broadband access in the area to ensure that 'internet-only publication of governmental-agency notices would not unreasonably restrict public access' to the notices. Moreover, after an agency decides to move its notices to a local newspaper website, it still must publish a weekly notice in the print version of the paper informing readers that the notices can be accessed online."

The bill also allows publication of public notices in free-circulation newspapers, with "rigorous standards," PNRC reports. To qualify, they "must have a combined print and online audience equaling at least 10 percent of the households in the county or municipality publishing the notice. In addition, at least 25% of the audited print editions must be delivered to homes or offices and the newspaper must also must be available for pickup in at least 10 public outlets in the region. Newspapers must also be published for at least two years before they can qualify to publish notices.

"The bill gives a leg up to small papers by exempting newspapers in 'fiscally-constrained counties' from having to meet the audience requirements as long as they maintain a periodical permit issued by the U.S. Postal Service. But even newspapers outside of those 30, mostly rural, counties, will have more than two years before their periodical permit will no longer qualify them to publish notices and they will be required to meet the 10 percent audience standard instead."

NPR stations' bureau in Mountain West shares content with smaller stations, papers in areas less served by news media

A collaboration of radio stations in the Western U.S. aims to bring more local and regional news coverage to areas poorly served by other news media.

Finding an analog radio station has always been a challenge in the Mountain West, partly because of sparse population and partly because of Federal Communications Commission rules that once limited how many stations a company could own. "But as the events of the past year have shown, when people need information about what’s happening in their communities, radio is one of the first places they’ll go. Kate Concannon, managing editor of the Mountain West News Bureau, a consortium of NPR stations that serve New Mexico, Nevada, Montana, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming, cites the region’s 'shared issues' as the reason why her team has found success and relevance across such a broad area," Rachel Del Valle reports for Harvard University's Nieman Lab. "She manages six reporters embedded in public radio stations, plus one roving reporter who travels the region, sometimes by bike."

During the pandemic, the bureau began making its content free to smaller, community radio stations without a news budget and with small newspapers; small affiliates that want access pay for content on a sliding scale. "We’ve continued that," Concannon told Del Valle. "We’re really trying to get the content out, we’re all about collaboration and sharing."

It's an ideal partnership for news media in the rural Mountain West. "Despite the trend toward syndication nationally, a localized approach really does play to FM radio’s strengths, both for advertisers and listeners," Del Valle reports. "By design, it’s a localized medium — signals can only travel so far. As a technology, radio matches the expectations the internet has set for modern media consumers. It’s free to use and — in most parts of the country — easy to access. You don’t even need an internet connection to consume it. You just turn on the tap and it’s there. In this way, radio is uniquely positioned to fill in local news gaps. And when shared on digital platforms, stories can go beyond individual communities and into larger regional and national conversations."

When rural Americans hear the term 'diversity' they should realize they are part of that, rural Iowa editor writes

Rural Americans put off by the increased push for diversity in public life and all facets of society should think again, writes Doug Burns of the twice-weekly Carroll Times Herald in Carroll, Iowa.

"For too many rural Americans, the term diversity is synonymous with otherness because residents of remote regions don’t realize that we, too, are underrepresented and misunderstood. Policies and structures strand and marginalize us," Burns writes.

"We rural Americans need to focus on correcting this, finding allies in other demographics who are similarly left out of the modern American economy and higher education and top levels of the judiciary — and yes, even my profession, journalism, where rural voices can be absent or hard to find in key power centers. Rural Americans served in wars and farmed and mined coal and built the manufacturing base, and increasingly there is little, if any, role for them in the new economy — one in which wealth is scooped and segregated to coastal tech clusters."

Burns goes on to note the lack of news-media coverage and academic and legal scholarship of white poverty, his conversation with Barack Obama about the need for a rural voice on the Supreme Court, and his newspaper's collaboration with a Spanish-language paper and its preparation of journalism students as rural interns for jobs in big cities and national media.

"They bring an understanding and empathy of rural Iowa to decisions on how we will be covered at the national level," Burns writes. "By embracing diversity as a community with these student journalists, we help to form world views in which we are considered beyond easy-reach rural stereotypes — for the diversity we bring to the American experiment. That’s not zero sum. It’s new math that adds up to good things for us."

In upholding FCC rule on broadcast and newspaper ownership, Supreme Court expands list of possible buyers

The Supreme Court last week unanimously upheld a Federal Communications Commission decision to deregulate ownership of television stations, including the ownership of a station and a newspaper in the same market. For newspapers looking to sell, the ruling expands the list of potential buyers.

"The commission proposed the rule change in 2017 under Trump-appointed FCC chair Ajit Pai," Jody Simon reports for JDSupra. A lower court overturned the changes, saying the FCC didn't adequately consider the effect its changes would have on broadcast media ownership by women and racial minorities. but proponents of the changes "argued that they were long overdue," Simon reports. "Local TV and newspapers have long been facing stiff headwinds, first from cable competition and now from hyper-targeted digital advertising on Google and Facebook. The mom-and-pop broadcast outlets and local station groups would be doomed unless they can join deep-pocketed national station groups."

However, Simon writes, "the argument for continued diversity has its appeal, however, when one looks at Sinclair Broadcasting, a large station group that made headlines for forcing the news broadcasts of its stations to run right wing segments. Even short of a conservative takeover of local news, widespread consolidation could result in homogenization and the loss of independent voices."

Rep. Cheri Bustos, whose rural strength made her a useful adviser to other Democrats, says she won't seek re-election

Rep. Cheri Bustos

U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos of northwest Illinois, a leading voice for rural interests in the Democratic Party, surprised her colleagues Monday by saying that she would not seek an sixth two-year term in 2022.

“As I turn every corner on each decade of life, I take time to reflect and evaluate what my next chapter might bring,” Bustos said in a prepared statement. “That’s how, 10 years ago, I decided to run for Congress. And it’s why, today, I am announcing I will not seek re-election.”

As campaign chair for House Democrats in the last election cycle, Bustos tried to increase the party's appeal to rural voters but came up short. "Democrats expected to expand their majority. Instead, they lost 13 seats," notes Chuck Abbott of Successful Farming. Bustos resigned as campaign chair but stayed on Speaker Nancy Pelosi's leadership team as co-chair of the caucus Steering Committee.

Bustos, of East Moline, was re-elected in the 17th District "by 4 percentage points, compared to a 24-point romp two years earlier," Abbott notes. "The race — a prime target of Republican campaign operatives — reflected the surprisingly tight margins in many races, particularly in rural areas, around the country," Politico notes. Her 2020 foe, Republicam Esther Joy King, is running again.

"Her decision also reflected the shrinking influence of the farm and industrial heartland in the House," Abbott writes. Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia writes, "Her strength with rural voters made her insights valuable to both Democratic leadership and other candidates; she won her first three reelection campaigns by double-digits in an Obama-to-Trump district."

Bustos, 59, is a former reporter and editor for the Quad City Times, based in Davenport, Iowa. She worked in health-care public relations for a decade and was a council member in East Moline (which makes the Quad Cities really the Quint Cities; the others are Rock Island, Ill., and Bettendorf, Iowa.)

Use World Press Freedom Day and #followlocaljournalists hashtag to remind readers where to get reliable information

Today is World Press Freedom Day, an annual celebration of free, independent media worldwide. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization first observed it 30 years ago after the Windhoek Declaration, which stated that an impartial press was vital to the public good.

Some news organizations, including Gannett and McClatchy, are promoting use of the Twitter hashtag #FollowLocalJournalists to spotlight the work of local journalists they respect and rely on. Jon Allsop, editor of Columbia Journalism Review, writes, "Twitter, for one, is right to observe that local reporters merit a national spotlight. They need an awful lot more than new followers, though. #FundLocalJournalists."

You can use the hashtag and World Press Freedom Day as a news peg to remind readers of the value of local news media in your community. Research shows that when local newspapers shrink or close, fewer people vote or run for local office, and people are more likely to vote straight-party ticket.

UNESCO says the day "acts as a reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom and is also a day of reflection among media professionals about issues of press freedom and professional ethics. Just as importantly, World Press Freedom Day is a day of support for media which are targets for the restraint, or abolition, of press freedom. It is also a day of remembrance for those journalists who lost their lives in the pursuit of a story. This year’s World Press Freedom Day theme 'Information as a Public Good' serves as a call to affirm the importance of cherishing information as a public good, and exploring what can be done in the production, distribution and reception of content to strengthen journalism, and to advance transparency and empowerment while leaving no one behind. The theme is of urgent relevance to all countries across the world. It recognizes the changing communications system that is impacting on our health, our human rights, democracies and sustainable development."

Find out more about World Press Freedom Day here, including a press kit and information about the 2021 Global Conference. 

Two stories from Appalachia show the challenges facing vaccine advocates and journalists who report on the topic

Appalachian Regional Commission map, highlighting Harlan and Greene counties

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

Jan Hoffman of The New York Times spent a week in Greene County, Tennessee, to report on resistance to vaccination for the coronavirus. Such "parachute journalism" exercises are fraught with pitfalls, but her story rang true for me, as someone from the region.

Hoffman turned up some nuggets that vividly illustrate the problem with vaccination in a significant segment of rural America: A nurse practitioner who says she's still undecided about vaccination and doesn't mention it to her patients. A retired professional couple who still haven't been vaccinated even after a discussion with their doctor, which Hoffman witnessed and quotes from.

That's the end of her story, which begins with another conversation, more uncomfortable: among a new pastor's wife and members of her church, one of whom greeted her by asking, “So, have you gotten the vaccine yet?” She “fumbled through a non-reply . . . sensing a chilly blast of judgment from a never-mask, never-vax companion.”

Hoffman's long story is a stark contrast to another recent long dispatch from another, even more rural county on the coal-bearing side of Appalachia's 100-mile-wide Ridge and Valley Belt: Alex Acquisto's report for the Lexington Herald-Leader about pastors in Harlan County who are gently working to get their parishioners vaccinated. In Greene County, the pastor in question told Hoffman, “Honestly, I wish people wouldn’t ask. I think it’s none of their business. And it’s just dividing people.”

The stories are two sides of the same coin. We need stories that tell both sides of the coin. That is especially true for community newspapers, which have a higher level of trust than their national or metropolitan counterparts but are typically reluctant to do enterprise reporting about deeply divisive issues, or lack the time do do it. But I think most community newspapers, after a few weeks of listening to their neighbors, could write the sort of summary paragraph that Hoffman did:

"People say that politics isn’t the leading driver of their vaccine attitudes. The most common reason for their apprehension is fear — that the vaccine was developed in haste, that long-term side effects are unknown. Their decisions are also entangled in a web of views about bodily autonomy, science and authority, plus a powerful regional, somewhat romanticized self-image: We don’t like outsiders messing in our business."

The other side of the coin is science and public health, which say we need to get as many people as possible vaccinated to reach herd immunity, which will provide a significant level of protection even for those who are unwilling or unable to be vaccinated. That's how Melissa Patrick of Kentucky Health News, another of our publications, began her main vaccination story last week. She included many of the concerns (which include myths) and the experts' responses to them.

But as I told Kentucky news outlets in our weekly KHN update, "We offer you this story with the knowledge that many vaccine-hesitant people are not likely to take the word of experts, but at our level, that’s the best we have. At your level, you have more trusted sources: physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, health-department leaders, local officials, civic leaders, faith leaders and more, so we urge you to do your own story, with what such folks have to say about Covid-19 vaccination."

Appeals court gives EPA 60 days to either ban or better regulate a pesticide linked to brain damage in children

"After blasting the Environmental Protection Agency for '13 years of interminable delay,' the federal appeals court in San Francisco on Thursday set a 60-day deadline for the agency to either ban agricultural use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos or set newer and safer exposure levels for the chemical. The dissenter in the 2-1 decision said the short time frame 'virtually guarantees' a ban.

Chuck Abbott reports for the Food & Environment Reporting Network, "Regulators cut off residential use of the organophosphate pesticide two decades ago. First marketed in 1965, chlorpyrifos is commonly used in agriculture, most prominently on corn but also on soybeans, cotton, vegetables, and fruit and nut trees. It has been linked to learning disorders and can cause nausea, dizziness, and confusion." Read more.

FactCheck.org sets the record straight on its funding, and Biden's positions on guns and meat

FactCheck.org has a trio of recent posts worthy of mention here. 

The first involves FactCheck.org itself, or more specifically, a feature called SciCheck launched in 2015 to help the public better understand scientific research, Eugene Kiely reports. SciCheck began a Covid-19 Misconceptions page in December, funded by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky, recently alleged in a tweet that FactCheck.org presents biased information about coronavirus vaccines because the late Robert Wood Johnson II was president of Johnson & Johnson for decades, and because the foundation still holds stock in the company. 

"Contrary to Massie’s suggestion, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — as is the case with all of our funders — has no control over our editorial content. Period. Full stop," Kiely writes. "As with our funding, we are also transparent about our editorial process for selecting, researching, editing and, if necessary, correcting our articles." Kiely notes FactCheck's financial transparency policies and briefly discusses where its writers get their facts. 

Conservative news sources, politicians and social media accounts have accused President Biden of seeking to force Americans to mostly stop eating red meat to help the environment, but that's false, Robert Farley reports. 

The rumor stems from Biden's opening remarks at the Virtual Leaders Summit on Climate on April 22, where he talked about how parts of his American Jobs Plan would help the U.S. cut greenhouse-gas emissions in half by the end of the decade. He mentioned that farmers could deploy "cutting-edge tools" to reduce carbon emissions, but didn't mention beef or cattle ranching (which Farley notes does account for some greenhouse-gas emissions). 

Afterward, British publication the Daily Mail ran a story with an alarmist headline: "How Biden’s climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH, cost $3.5K a year per person in taxes, force you to spend $55K on an electric car and ‘crush’ American jobs." The story cites a University of Michigan study showing that Americans could cut its diet-related greenhouse-gas emissions in half by 2030 if they cut their red-meat consumption to about four pounds per year. "But again, nothing in Biden’s stated plans mentions anything about reducing beef consumption," Farley reports.

But conservative news outlets, social media accounts and politicos boosted the signal on the story, insinuating or outright stating that Biden sought to force Americans to cut meat consumption. For example, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., said in a tweet that "Joe Biden’s climate plan includes cutting 90% of red meat from our diets by 2030. They want to limit us to about four pounds a year. Why doesn’t Joe stay out of my kitchen?" On April 26, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack categorically denied that the Biden administration has any plans to reduce beef consumption.

And finally, President Biden "opposes the sale of assault weapons, and he supports a mandatory federal registry and a voluntary buyback program for all legally purchased assault weapons. But a video shared on Twitter by Sen. Ted Cruz leaves the false impression Biden wants to confiscate all guns," Farley reports.

The April 27 video, released the night before Biden's first address to a joint session of Congress, includes a clip in which Cruz accuses Biden of seeking to "erase the Second Amendment," Farley reports. Then the video shows a clip of CNN's Anderson Cooper prompting Biden: "To gun owners out there who say, well, a Biden administration means they're going to come for my guns." Then, the video shows Biden answering, "Bingo."

"Left out is Biden’s full answer, which makes clear he was referring only to the purchase of semi-automatic firearms, or so-called assault weapons," Farley reports. In the interview, Biden explicitly says he would not try to confiscate legally purchased assault weapons.

If it sounds like FactCheck is unfairly coming down on Republicans, we would note that the site has plenty to say about Biden administration claims, including a thorough fact-check of his recent address to Congress (The Rural Blog ran a similar one).

Rejection of Biden's election is becoming an unofficial litmus test for Republicans, with much pressure from rural areas

Rejection of the 2020 presidential election result "has increasingly become an unofficial litmus test for acceptance in the Republican Party," The Washington Post reports, with small-town examples.

Reporters Ashley Parker and Marianna Sotomayor note the division among Republicans in Congress, but report local and state officials "are facing censure and threats" as "local party organizations have fervently embraced the falsehood" of Donald Trump that he lost unfairly.

They begin their story with Debra Ell, Republican precinct delegate from Frankenmuth, Michigan, a town of 5,200 near Saginaw: “I think I speak for many people in that Trump has never actually been wrong, and so we’ve learned to trust when he says something, that he’s not just going to spew something out there that’s wrong and not verified,” so she's circulating a petition to remove the state Republican Party's executive director, who told Politico that “the election wasn’t stolen” and that “there is no one to blame but Trump.”

Grassroots embrace of what Democrats call "the Big Lie" was seen at Utah's Republican convention Saturday, where a resolution to censure Sen. Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, for voting to convict Trump on impeachment charges got 47 percent of the vote, losing 798-711.

"Several local Republicans have either stepped down or been forced out of their party positions for not supporting Trump’s baseless election claims or for criticizing the former president’s role in inciting the deadly Capitol riot," the Post reports. "In Iowa — after telling a local newspaper that Trump should be impeached for his 'atrocious conduct' in egging on the Jan. 6 attacks — Dave Millage was called a 'traitor' and forced to step down as chair of the Scott County Republican Party."

Virus spread more slowly in counties without interstates

The coronavirus spread primarily along interstate highways, according to a study published in the Journal of Rural Health. That could explain why its major impact in remote rural areas came late in the pandemic.

"Counties that are intersected by interstates had an earlier arrival than non‐intersected counties," the researchers report. "The arrival time difference was the greatest in the most rural counties, and implicates road travel as a factor of transmission into rural communities."

The study was done by two professors at West Virginia University and one at the University of Texas. They looked at data through May 17, 2020 and concluded, "Interstate travel restrictions and road travel restrictions would have supported stronger mitigation efforts during the earlier stages of the Covid‐19 pandemic and reduced transmission."

Because of pandemic, Appalachia unseated the Permian Basin as the biggest methane-emitting region in 2020

The Appalachian Basin surpassed the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico to became the biggest source of methane emissions in the U.S. last year, according to analytics firm Kayrros. That's largely because falling energy demand hit the Permian a little harder than Appalachia: emissions fell by 20 percent in Appalachia and 26% in the Permian in 2020, Jamison Cocklin reports for Natural Gas Intel. It's the first time methane emissions from coal have been comprehensively quantified.

"Kayrros said recent data show emissions from fossil fuel production in the Appalachian Basin hit 3 million tons (Mt) in 2019 and 2.4 Mt in 2020," Cocklin reports. "Excluding emissions from coal mines, emissions from natural gas produced largely from the Marcellus, Utica and Upper Devonian shales declined from 1.9 Mt in 2019 to 1.4 Mt in 2020. Methane from oil and natural gas production in the Permian declined from 2.7 Mt to 2.0 Mt over the same time." Some of the methane is from oil and gas, but some is from coal. It's tricky to figure out the source of Appalachian methane emissions since coal, gas and oil extraction sites are intermingled throughout the basin. 

The analysis shows "Large methane emissions cannot simply be considered as an unavoidable side effect of production but rather the avoidable consequence of various factors such as insufficient or poorly maintained infrastructure for natural gas gathering, processing, and transportation," World Oil reports. 

The report coincides with the Senate vote this week to restore regulation of methane emissions, as well as a major United Nations report calling for deep cuts in methane emissions to slow global warming.

USDA research agencies to stay in K.C., Vilsack confirms

"One and a half years ago, the Trump administration controversially relocated two Department of Agriculture research agencies out of the Beltway—a move that many suspected was an attempt to undercut their findings, which at times conflicted with the president’s political stances," Jessica Fu reports for The Counter. "Now, the Biden administration has announced that it will not reverse the move: Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said this week that USDA will keep the agencies headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, to maintain stability for staff."

Vilsack said the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture will stay put in order to minimize further disruption to staff. After the move, ERS lost two-thirds of its staff. Representatives for the union representing ERS employees said Vilsack's decision was "well-received" and said they hoped work-from-home agreements during the pandemic could be extended, Fu reports.

Plight of pregnant Native women in Montana is one of the worst cases of poor access to obstetric care in the rural U.S.

Native American women in Montana were 20 times more likely than white women in the state to give birth at a hospital without obstetric services, and they had less access to complex obstetric care. So says a study in the Journal of Rural Health, which looks at birth data in the state form 2014 through 2018. It's one of the worst manifestations of an increasing problem in rural America.

"Pregnant women across the rural United States have increasingly limited access to obstetric care, especially specialty care for high‐risk women and infants," the researchers wrote, noting that there has been little research on obstetric access for rural American Indian and Alaskan Native (AIAN) women, "a population warranting attention given persistent inequalities in birth outcomes."

The researchers put their work into context, noting that Black and AIAN women "are two to five times more likely to die from a pregnancy‐related complication compared to white women. Over 2.2 million childbearing‐aged women live in maternity care deserts (a county bereft of a birth center, obstetric provider, and hospital‐based obstetric unit), and another 4.8 million women live in counties with limited access to maternity care. . . . Access to obstetric services has declined, particularly in rural counties with a higher percentage of racial minority women of childbearing age."

AIAN women are in some ways the worst off, the researchers write: "Compared to women of other racial backgrounds, AIAN women comprise the smallest percentage of childbearing‐aged women who live within an hour of their nearest hospital‐based obstetrics services (83.2%, compared to 97.3% for the overall U.S. population of childbearing‐aged women), and that nearest hospital is often one that provides only basic perinatal care." The Indian Health Service "is severely underfunded, contributing to AIAN health disparities." Montana has seven reservations with 12 Native nations.

The research was done by three professors at Montana State University, one at the University of Missouri and an obstetrician-gynecologist for Kaiser Permanente Northern California.

Covid roundup: Rural readers share vax experiences; rural vaccine hesitancy narratives may be over-simplified...

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

Idaho public-health districts are trying to boost rural vaccination efforts by targeting hard-to-reach populations. Read more here.

Rural vaccine providers worried about vaccine hesitancy caused by the Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause. Read more here.

News media narratives about rural vaccine hesitancy are over-simplified and don't tell the whole story about supply chains, poverty, lack of access to resources, and more, writes a researcher. Read more here.

Lower rural coronavirus vaccination rates may be due to logistical issues such as transportation or broadband access as much as fears or antipathy toward the vaccine, writes a bioethicist. Read more here.

Rural readers share their vaccination experiences with The Daily Yonder. Read more here.

The public's concerns about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are widespread, a poll found. Read more here.

Public health officials in rural Minnesota work to assuage locals' concerns about the coronavirus vaccine. Read more here.

Quick hits: Supreme Court to hear major gun rights case; thieves use drones to case farms and ranches...

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

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a case about the right of licensed gun owners to carry a firearm outside the home. It's the first major Second Amendment case the court has taken up in more than a decade. Read more here.

A New Yorker who moved to rural Vermont during the pandemic reflects on what she loves about her new home. Read more here.

At a recent hearing, tribal officials spoke to the House Natural Resources subcommittee about lack of access to broadband, utilities and other infrastructure on reservations. Read more here.

Thousands of tourists head to Tennessee, North Carolina and West Virginia year to see Appalachia's synchronous fireflies. Ecologists and park officials are trying to figure out how to protect the beetles from harm while letting tourists enjoy the display (and help local economies). Read more here.

For decades, some flood-damaged communities were deemed too poor to receive federal flood protection, but a new section of the federal water law could change that. Read more here.

The Society of Environmental Journalists is now accepting applications for environmental journalism grants. The deadline is June 15. Read more here.

Drones now help some thieves survey rural farms and ranches to find their next target. Read more here.

THC potency is the next big debate in legalizing marijuana. Read more here.