Knight Foundation pledges $300 million over next five years to help local journalism, lists recipients of first $100 million

"As newsrooms across the country face massive staff layoffs and dwindling revenue, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced Tuesday that it will spend $300 million in the next five years to help bring life back to a dessicated local-news landscape," Laura Stampler reports for Fortune magazine. "The organization has decided to double its monetary investment in journalism in the coming years—with a particular focus on local reporting."

The foundation said in a release, "Newsrooms across the nation have been decimated by the collapse of traditional business models brought on by the impact of digital technology and social media, which have drawn readers and advertisers to other information sources on the internet. As a result, many communities have turned into news deserts, with little or no local reporting."

Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen said, “Without revenue, you can’t pay reporters. Without reporters, you can’t develop consistently reliable news reports about what’s happening in your town. Without that reliable news report, you can’t figure out how to run local government. It isn’t rocket science. We’re not funding one-offs. We’re helping to rebuild a local news ecosystem, reliable and sustainable, and we’re doing it in a way that anyone who cares can participate.”

Knight announced recipients of the first $100 million:

• American Journalism Project ($20 million), a new venture-philanthropy initiative that will make grants and provide support to "local, nonprofit civic news organizations to ensure their long-term sustainability."
• ProPublica ($5 million), to strengthen local investigative reporting, data-driven reporting and audience engagement. The support will also help expand ProPublica's Local Reporting Network, allowing it to hire local reporters.
• Report for America ($5 million), a national service program that places journalists in understaffed newsrooms across the country and trains the next generation of journalists working in local news.
• "Frontline" and PBS ($3 million), for high-quality documentaries and multimedia approach to reporting on local issues, creating up to five geographic hubs involving partnerships with local newsrooms.
• NewsMatch ($1.5 million), a national matching-gift campaign to grow fundraising capacity in nonprofit newsrooms and promote giving to journalism among U.S. donors.
• Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press ($10 million), to help local newsrooms defend the First Amendment and hold decision-makers accountable. The committee will triple the number of lawyers working on local issues and expand its network of local attorneys providing free legal support.This initiative "recognizes that today’s journalists, and local news organizations in particular, are less able to pursue legal cases around free speech and freedom of the press due to a lack of resources and support."
• Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund ($10 million), a partnership with the Lenfest Institute for Journalism to fund digital transformation of local news organizations.
• The News Literacy Project ($5 million), a nonpartisan nonprofit that empowers educators to teach news literacy to middle- and high-school students, especially in communities where the Knight brothers had newspapers and the foundation makes investments.
• Solutions Journalism Network ($5 million), which advances community engagement and civic dialogue to produce rigorous reporting that highlights solutions, rather than problems. The initiative will help bring the network to more communities, including those where Knight invests, and encourage collaboration with newsrooms in the American Journalism Project.
• Cortico ($2 million), which has a listening system — the Local Voices Network — that uses machine learning to analyze online and offline community conversations to help journalists build trust by better understanding the communities they serve and the issues people care about.
• Finally, Knight is investing $35 million in research to support creation and expansion of research centers around the United States. This research will study the changing nature of an informed society in America and will help build an emerging field of study to address pressing questions about the health of an informed society and citizenry in the digital age.

ProPublica creates Local Reporting Network position for Youngstown, Ohio, which will lose its daily Aug. 31

ProPublica announced today that it is creating an immediate position in its Local Reporting Network for a local news organization to cover accountability issues in Youngstown, Ohio. Youngstown's paper, The Vindicator, announced recently that it will issue its final edition on Aug. 31, which will leave it the largest U.S. city without a daily newspaper.

"What’s going on in Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley cries out for solid investigative reporting," said Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica’s editor in chief. "We created the Local Reporting Network to fill that critically important need."

Under the Local Reporting Network, ProPublica pays the salaries and provides benefits stipends, as well as editing and production assistance, for selected full-time reporters to work on accountability journalism projects for one year. The program is in its second year, and this year is working with 20 partners across the country.

Applications for the Youngstown post are due by July 22; applicants must describe what they want to investigate. Freelance reporters can apply, but must first find an Ohio-based news organization willing to run their work.

ProPublica announces six distinguished fellows for longer projects, including some who write about rural issues

ProPublica announced Monday the names of six local reporters who have been chosen as the inaugural members of its Distinguished Fellows program. Several of the names will be familiar to long-time readers of The Rural Blog.

"The program will fund the reporters’ salaries and benefits for three years as they produce important investigative projects from their home newsrooms on topics affecting their communities," ProPublica says. "An outgrowth of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network — which since 2018 has similarly funded local accountability reporting projects for one year across more than 40 local newsrooms to date — the longer-term Distinguished Fellows program will enable reporters to pursue a broad range of stories while deepening ProPublica’s relationship with the partner newsrooms and their communities. These partnerships will start on Jan. 1, 2021, and run through Dec. 31, 2023."

Here are a few of the newly announced fellows who write about issues with rural resonance:

• Ken Ward Jr., who left the Charleston Gazette-Mail this year and joined ProPublica to co-found the investigative news non-profit Mountain State Spotlight. Ward won a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" and the Institute for Rural Journalism's Tom and Pat Gish Award.
• Kyle Hopkins, special projects editor of the Anchorage Daily News and a member of the Local Reporting Network, who worked for small-town newspapers across Alaska. The ADN's investigation into the sexual assault crisis in rural Alaska, mainly led by Hopkins, won the paper and ProPublica a Pulitzer Prize in 2020.
• Molly Parker, a reporter for The Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale, has been a member of the Local Reporting Network since 2018, and has written about failures in government oversight of public housing. "In her continuing work in partnership with ProPublica, Parker plans to focus on challenges facing the diverse rural communities that make up the Mid-South Illinois region she calls home," ProPublica reports.

Reporters covering rural communities and issues in ProPublica's new Local Reporting Network

Seven local newsrooms and reporters, several of them covering rural communities and issues, have been picked from 239 applicants to start the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

The nonprofit, investigative news organization created the network "to support investigative journalism at local and regional news organizations, particularly in cities with populations below 1 million," it says. "ProPublica will reimburse the newsrooms for salary for the selected reporters and provide extensive support and guidance for their stories. . . . The projects selected by editors should surprise and probe deeply, with the potential to spur positive change."

The network members include the Malheur Enterprise, a weekly newspaper in Vale, Ore., which will hire Jayme Fraser, now a reporter with The Missoulian in Montana, as a third reporter. "Fraser will build on the Enterprise’s work investigating the circumstances of the release by state officials of [a man] accused of murder and assault following his release," the Enterprise reports. "Fraser will delve into Oregon’s system for dealing with those guilty of crimes but insane."

Others whom ProPublica selected for the reporting network are:

Molly Parker, a reporter for The Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale. She "plans to focus on issues related to low-income and federally subsidized housing, particularly, she said, where it concerns the health and safety of residents and the viability of the surrounding communities and neighborhoods in high-poverty areas," the SI reports. "For the past two and a half years, Parker has reported on severe mismanagement of funds and facilities and the neglect of Alexander County's housing projects, which led HUD to take over the local housing authority. HUD is relocating residents from complexes known as McBride and Elmwood and plans to demolish them once everyone has moved."

Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette-Mail, the leading environmental reporter in Appalachia, "will be investigating the effects of West Virginia’s economic transition as the coal industry declines and natural gas has become a more dominant industry," the newspaper reports. ProPublica reports, "In 2014, when a chemical leak contaminated the drinking water of hundreds of thousands of people, Ward exposed significant flaws in federal safety guidelines for the chemicals and in the state’s water sampling program. His disclosures led to the appointment of an independent scientific team to examine the spill’s impacts." He told the Columbia Journalism Review a few years ago,“I can’t think of many places that are in need of good journalism more than West Virginia is, or what higher calling journalists have than to try to write stories that make their home a better place.”

Rebekah Allen, a reporter for The Advocate in Baton Rouge, La., which also covers New Orleans. The newspaper hasn't reported what she will be working on. ProPublica reports, "She is a member of the paper’s small team of reporters focused on investigative projects and enterprise stories. Last year, she produced a three-part series highlighting how the state’s powerful nursing home lobby fought off efforts to make it easier for the elderly and disabled to receive care in their homes."

Rebecca Moss of the Santa Fe New Mexican, "who has covered energy and environment issues for the paper since 2015," it reports, also without revealing what she and ProPublica will investigate. ProPublica reports, "Last year, she co-wrote an article about how a company that processes and distributes fertilizers and other agricultural products had found a friendlier regulatory climate under the state’s Republican governor than under her predecessor. And this year, she wrote about how a New Mexico town had stepped up to be part of a nuclear waste disposal experiment, even as other states and towns had balked."

Abe Aboraya, a Health News Florida reporter based at WMFE in Orlando. "Aboraya has covered the deadly shooting at the Pulse nightclub and produced an hour-long documentary and podcast on the health care workers who responded to the massacre," ProPublica reports. "Aboraya has also looked at HIV’s impact in Florida and how state budget cuts have reduced access to prenatal care."

Christian Sheckler of the South Bend Tribune, who has covered police and public safety stories for the northeast Indiana paper "and recently took on a new assignment covering education," it reports, without revealing what he will work on. His executive editor told him recently that there are two types of police reporters: "Those who try to make friends with officers and get rewarded with juicy tips about crimes, and those who press for answers on such thorny topics as civil rights, misconduct and accountability." He has chosen the second approach, and “That hasn’t gotten me invited to any barbecues,” he wrote in his application, “but I believe I’ve better served my readers with aggressive reporting on issues such as excessive force, the imperfect protective order system for domestic battery victims and policies on deadly high-speed police chases.”

Local journalism, or its absence, helps cover and shape Atlantic Coast Pipeline development, journalist reports

As the U.S. Supreme Court mulls a pivotal case involving the construction of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, one journalist considers the role local journalism can play in shaping local opinions about pipeline construction.

Many of the North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia counties the pipeline will cross are poor and rural, and some have large minority populations. Many do not have a strong local-news ecosystem, either because metropolitan papers have cut back coverage or local newspapers have shuttered, never existed or fell down on the job, Lyndsey Gilpin writes for the Columbia Journalism Review. Gilpin is the founder and editor of Southerly, an independent media organization that covers ecology, justice and culture in the American South.

According to the University of North Carolina's Penny Abernathy's research on news deserts, "in about half of the 25 counties along the Atlantic Coast Pipeline route, print news comprises a single weekly paper; several weekly or daily papers cover more than one county," Gilpin reports.

When the pipeline was first proposed in 2014, local and regional newspapers reported on it (some still do) and several nationwide news publications covered it, but comprehensive coverage has mostly faded as the process wears on. Local and regional news coverage is often the only way such places receive any press attention; national media mostly tends to "parachute in to cover major updates or catastrophes or if they need a tie-in to President Trump’s policies—a dynamic that can perpetuate inaccurate stereotypes about these places," Gilpin writes.

Meanwhile, the absence of local news media "leaves ample space for powerful campaigns by [Duke Energy] and [Dominion Energy], the pipeline’s developers and buyers of its natural gas, as well as industry-aligned lobbyists and politicians, to shape the pipeline narrative," Gilpin writes. "Another result is misinformation and confusion about the status of a massive energy project that affects tens of thousands of people, several endangered species, and a variety of fragile ecosystems. The number of permanent jobs the pipeline is estimated to create varies, depending on whom you speak with. In some cases, property owners have been caught unaware of their rights or legal options when Dominion came knocking to claim eminent domain."

Local reporters who would like to do in-depth reporting on the pipeline often have little time and few resources to do so, though projects like ProPublica's Local Reporting Network have helped, Gilpin writes. Most local reporters only have enough bandwidth to focus on reaction stories.

Independent journalist Mason Adams of the Roanoke area, who has covered pipelines for various news outlets over the past few years, said such coverage is complicated, and local reporters need more training to deal with Freedom of Information Act requests, regulatory agencies, major companies, and court reporting. "Smaller papers can’t set aside an entire body to cover this, much less over five to six years," Adams told Gilpin.

First story from ProPublica's Local Reporting Network says nuclear lab workers may have been exposed to toxin

Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, may have exposed workers to harm after failing to keep track of a toxic metal used in nuclear weapons production. "The New Mexico lab’s failure to adequately track beryllium — small amounts of which can cause lung disease and cancer — violates federal regulations put in place to prevent worker overexposure, according to a report last week from the Department of Energy’s inspector general," Rebecca Moss reports for The Santa Fe New Mexican and ProPublica.

The story is the first from a year-long project, the Local Reporting Network, which ProPublica launched to support local and regional investigative reporting. Moss will be examining workplace safety issues at Los Alamos and other national laboratories that develop nuclear weapons for the DOE.

Los Alamos has had safety problems in the past. In October 2017, an independent federal safety board found that the lab's emergency preparedness plan was inadequate. Soon afterward the DOE investigated an incident in which a worker responded to an alarm by walking into an oxygen-deprived room, which could have killed the worker.

Los Alamos, which employs more than 11,000 workers, told the inspector general that the insufficient oversight is a result of staffing problems and the sheer number of the programs it oversees, but added that it is not aware of any workers having been exposed to beryllium. "Over the last decade, the inspector general has found issues with beryllium protections at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California," Moss reports.

Rural Western residents say local papers need more economic news, rigorous reporting

Only 21 percent of people in a sample of the rural West believe their local news is reliable and consistent, says a study by Solutions Journal Network for the LOR Foundation. The study consisted of a focus group (164 people) and a Google survey (1,540 people) in 10 communities in Colorado, Montana and New Mexico and analysis of a week's worth of stories—900 in all—from local and regional outlets in the targeted area, Leah Todd reports for Solutions Journal Network.

The survey found that 52 percent of respondents said "their local news is, at best, sometimes valuable, and a significant number said their local news is rarely or never relevant," Todd writes. Still, newspapers are the No. 1 source for local news, with 81.7 percent of respondents from the focus group saying they get local news from the newspaper, 63.4 percent from interactions with other people, 44.5 percent from local government and community organizations and 40.8 percent from social media. Newspapers also tied with television for top news source among rural respondents to the Google survey.

Respondents were mostly unhappy with coverage of the local economy, Todd writes. Nearly every focus group said jobs and the local economy were the biggest concerns. "Yet very little — just 8 percent — of the news coverage we analyzed focused primarily on the economy ." There was a discrepancy between coverage and perceived coverage. Respondents said they wanted more education coverage, which analysis showed to be the second most covered topic, after crime.

Many people complained that news coverage is too negative, Todd writes. In some areas, such as Española, N.M. respondents "complained bitterly about what they saw as the local paper’s relentlessly negative slant on news — but nearly all admitted they still read it religiously." Española is home to the Rio Grande Sun, whose owners won last year's Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism, given by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog.

"People said they want more rigorous reporting that exposes the context of complex issues, and more stories about how their communities and others are responding to problems, in addition to spotlighting the problems themselves," Todd writes. One Whitefish, Mont. respondent said, “If there’s one thing that’s missing, it’s the in-depth reporting or the enterprise-type reporting that goes beyond…what was stated at last night’s council meeting or what we send out in a press release, and tries to get to the root about the issue and have impact on it." A respondent in Anaconda, Mont. said, “I get to the bottom of an article and I say, ‘Where’s the rest?’”

Lee Enterprises organizes veteran reporters into regional teams to help local newsrooms with accountability projects

Lee Enterprises says it is now has a "public service journalism" team to collaborate with its local newsrooms on accountability journalism projects. The team comprises 12 veteran reporters in three regional teams that will help local reporters access "public records, track taxpayer money and government spending, examine data related to health, crime and safety issues, and serve as watchdogs for communities across the county," the company said in a news release run as a story.

Lee has 152 newspapers, third most of any U.S. company, about 75 of them dailies. It announced in May that it would lay off 400 people at 19 papers and its corporate offices, and the news release didn't mention the hiring of any new reporters, so the public-service team appears to be a way to use the chain's size for greater impact, much as No. 1 U.S. newspaper owner Gannett Co. does with its USA Today Network.

Team members have expertise in beats such as public safety, public health, government, social justice and the environment, the release said: "In their previous reporting roles both inside Lee newsrooms and in other news markets, these team members’ work has helped free the innocent, put the guilty behind bars and change laws. Work by these teams has already begun, with in-depth reporting on leading causes of death throughout more than a dozen Lee markets publishing in recent weeks and a recently published investigation, in partnership with ProPublica, on a systemic pattern of abuse and mistreatment of mental health patients in a state-run facility in Illinois."

The release didn't mention any team members by name, but said they include "a Pulitzer Prize finalist; three members of the nationally renowned ProPublica Local Reporting Network; a grant recipient from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting; a regional Edward R. Murrow Regional Award winner; top national award recipients from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the national Society of Professional Journalists; and an investigative reporter and researcher for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Better Government Association in Chicago."

Culture wars fill vacuum left by weakened local journalism

"Weakened local journalism has created space for the modern culture wars," says the Los Angeles Times headline over a piece by Jan-Werner Mueller, a professor of politics at Princeton University and author of the 2021 book Democracy Rules. For his general audience, Muller touches many bases familiar to journalists, but makes some points that are worth repeating:

"For local government to work properly, there must be local journalism to hold politicians and policymakers to account. . . . Social scientists who study the issue have demonstrated clearly that less local journalism results in higher levels of corruption, undermines political competition and reduces citizen engagement. . . . Local problems that could have wider significance go unreported, and many of the on-the-ground effects of national policies are unrecognized. . . . Making matters worse, the vacuum created by the absence of local news is often filled by national culture wars."

Muller says "Experiments in different countries suggest ways to revitalize local reporting," and mentions States Newsroom, which "focuses squarely on state-level policies that affect citizens in ways that are not obvious even to the relatively well-informed," and Report for America, which places young reporters in local newsrooms, often to cover underreported issues. "The Documenters Network trains and pays people to report on local government meetings that otherwise would go unobserved. The BBC, for instance, has partnered with local newspapers to increase the quantity of local reporting, sending a clear signal that decisions on the ground matter."

Muller favors direct government support of local journalism and says "Mechanisms for insulating journalists from political pressures have long been available in public-service broadcasting. There is no reason why they can’t be extended to local journalism as well."

Program finalized for National Summit on Journalism in Rural America, July 7; hotel deadline extended one week

The program for the National Summit on Journalism in Rural America, July 7 in Lexington, Ky., and online, includes some of the latest research on rural journalism; and the experiences of some successful rural publishers and start-ups, both digital and print; philanthropy for rural jouranalism; efforts to change state policies to help local news; and university programs to fill gaps in local news coverage.

The summit will be a hybrid event, but most presenters will appear in person. Registration is free, and required; register here. The summit will be held at the Campbell House Curio Hotel, 10 minutes from the Lexington airport. A block of rooms at $139 per night has been extended to Friday, June 30.

The summit is sponsored by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues (publisher of The Rural Blog) at the University of Kentucky. Here's a closer look at the program:

The state of rural newspapers and the rise of ghost newspapers: Zachary Metzger, Northwestern University, will report on the latest data in the Medill School's continuing State of Local News study.

Rural publishers’ and readers’ views of alternate-revenue models: Nick Mathews, University of Missouri, will report on a study he did with Teri Finneman of the University of Kansas and Pat Ferrucci of the University of Colorado, which included an ongoing intervention with rural papers.

What it's like to be the subject in an alternate-revenue research experiment: Joey Young of Kansas Publishing Ventures, partner in the interventional research, will give his perspective on the study.

What rural publishers think about the future: Ross McDuffie, chief portfolio officer of the National Trust for Local News, will report on a survey of rural publishers that is now in the field.

Finding alternative-revenue success at a twice-weekly: David Woronoff, publisher of The Pilot in Southern Pines, N.C., will explain how his newspaper has broadened its revenue base.

Finding alternative-revenue success at a small daily: Jack Rooney, The Keene Sentinel, Keene, N.H., will do likewise, following up on the Sentinel's presentation at last year's summit.

Reviving Gannett ghosts: Jeremy Gulban, CEO of CherryRoad Media, owner of many former Gannett Co. papers, discusses the difficulty of reviving rural newspapers that lost most of their circulation and revenue under ownership of the nation's largest chain.

Rural journalism as a community builder: Bonita Robertson-Hardy, co-executive director, of the Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group, will discuss how accurate narratives, including high-quality journalism, help build trust and advance equitable rural prosperity.

Philanthropy for local news: Duc Luu, a jouralism officer at the Knight Foundation, moderates a panel with Richard Young of CivicLex, a local digital startup that focuses on local government and civil society; and Lillian Ruiz of Ci-X Strategies, which helps develop thriving public squares that communicate harmony, resilience and cohesion.

Broader rural news: Tim Marema, editor of The Daily Yonder, and Alana Rocha, editor of the Institite for Nonprofit News’s Rural News Network, will discuss how their online platforms bring a focus to broader rural issues and topics by exploring local examples.

Solutions journalism: Mary Steurer, government reporter for the Casper Star-Tribune, will discuss will for solutions-journalism reporting projects and beats in rural news deserts that have few existing resources. as well as ideas on how solutions journalism can be used to build trust in rural communities. Also participating: Melissa Cassutt, rural media manager of the Solutions Journalism Network.

Turning readers into correspondents and reporters: Lindsey Young of Kansas Publishing Ventures will discuss "Earn Your Press Pass," a program that she developed and is being used by state newspaper associations to help newspapers members fill gaps in local reporting.

Digital start-ups going against chain-owned small dailies: The experiences of Lynne Campbell of the Community News Brief in Macomb, Ill.; Jennifer P. Brown of the Hoptown Chronicle in Hopkinsville, Ky.; Debra Tobin of the Logan-Hocking Times in Logan, Ohio; and Nicole DeCriscio Bowe, who is just starting The Owen News in Spencer, Ind.

Seeking state policies to help local journalism: Anna Brugmann, director of policy at the Rebuild Local News Coalition, will discuss how it has turned its attention to state governments, and report on some legislative successes, including a tax break in Washington state and California House passage of a bill that would require tech platforms to give publishers money to hire journalists.

Retreating to Facebook: What do you do when you publish one of the best small weeklies in America but have reached a turnign point in life and have to give up printing your newspaper? Laurie Ezzell Brown of The Canadian Record in Texas and Ryan Craig of the Todd County Standard in Kentucky talked about how they still report on Facebook, and Craig reports on his growing audience. 

Bringing students into communities to report local news: Richard Watts of the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont moderates a panel with Alan Miller of Denison University in central Ohio and Christopher Drew of Louisiana State University.

Maintaining and growing print circulation: Patrick Schless of the Lewis County Press's Community Journalism Project says, "Strengthening community newspapers starts with print first; it is what the staff believe in, what the current subscribers know, and what the small-town advertisers understand." He's working with 70 rural papers to strengthen print product while building a bridge to a hybrid future.

Where do we go from here? Concluding roundtable, moderated by Benjy Hamm, incoming director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.

The day will conclude with a cash-bar reception and optional dinner, which carries a $50 fee. The rest of the day is free of charge, thanks to the Institute and its parent units: the UK School of Journalism and Media and the College of Communication and Information.

Top West Virginia journalist Ken Ward Jr. will head up a nonprofit news venture in the state with his former editor

Ken Ward Jr.

Top West Virginia journalist Ken Ward Jr. followed his editor Greg Moore out the door at the Charleston Gazette-Mail a month ago. Now they will lead a nonprofit newsroom in the state. "The not-yet-named news outlet (candidates include 'Mountain State Muckraker') will begin with a staff of about 10, seven of them journalists, a news team on the same scale as the diminished local paper," Ben Smith reports for The New York Times. The new project will receive support from Report for America, which sends fledgling reporters to newsrooms in underserved areas.

The project is the brainchild of journalist Elizabeth Green and investor John Thornton, who co-founded the American Journalism Project, which "aims to create a huge network of nonprofit outlets, some organized around subjects like education or criminal justice, others focused on covering a town, a city or a state," Smith reports. Green, a former reporter, created the nonprofit education news organization Chalkbeat after she was laid off; she believes nonprofit news ventures are the future and that hedge fund-owned chains are bleeding local papers dry, Smith writes.

"There’s all this 'doom and gloom for local journalism stories' that have happened in the last week or so, and I hope that other people see what we’re doing and understand that the important thing is the journalism — it’s the stories, it’s the investigations — that’s what matters," Ward told Smith.

In addition to his role in the new initiative, Ward has signed on as a full-time ProPublica staffer, he told The Rural Blog in an email. Ward had been part of ProPublica's Local Reporting Network, a project that supports investigative journalism at smaller papers, since its inaugural class in 2018. That same year, he won a MacArthur Foundation fellowship based on his investigative reporting. And in 2019, Ward was one of three winners of the Tom and Pat Gish Award, presented by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues (publisher of The Rural Blog), for his tenacious reporting on coal and other rural topics.

Coal reporters Howard Berkes, Ken Ward Jr. and the late Paul J. Nyden win 2019 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism

Left to right: the late Paul Nyden; Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette-Mail; and Howard Berkes of NPR

Three reporters whose outstanding careers have revealed much about the coal industry in Central Appalachia are the winners of the 2019 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism, presented by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.

They are Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette-Mail; his mentor, the late Paul J. Nyden of the Charleston Gazette; and Howard Berkes, recently retired from NPR, who nominated Ward for the honor several years ago.

“Each in their own way, they overcame adversity in reporting on coal and other topics in rural America, where doing good journalism often requires more courage, tenacity and integrity than in urban areas,” said Al Cross, director of the institute, based at the University of Kentucky, and publisher of The Rural Blog. “Extractive industries do most of their extracting in rural areas.”

Paul Nyden chronicled a reform movement in the United Mine Workers of America, and wrote a dissertation on it that earned him a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University in 1974. After teaching at the University of Pittsburgh, he came to southern West Virginia and reported for the Gulf Times before being hired at the Gazette in 1982 by the late W.E. 'Ned' Chilton III, “whose philosophy of ‘sustained outrage’ journalism Nyden personified,” Ward wrote in Nyden’s obituary in January 2018.

"Nyden defended the public’s interests by consistently taking on powerful state businesses and challenging political leaders across West Virginia," Ward wrote. "He exposed deadly safety violations, renegade strip-mining and unscrupulous tax scams in a career that spanned more than three decades.” Nyden retired in 2015 when the Gazette merged with the Charleston Daily Mail.

Ken Ward graduated from West Virginia University in 1990 and joined the Gazette in 1991. In 2018 he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship that was based on his investigative reporting for the newspaper. The foundation said Ward was chosen because he excels at “revealing the human and environmental toll of natural-resource extraction in West Virginia and spurring greater accountability among public and private stakeholders.”

Ward said when he received the $625,000 fellowship that it was “a strong vote of confidence in local journalism, and more to the point in local journalism that doesn’t just parrot the official line, but questions and holds accountable powerful people, industries, governments and other institutions that might not be acting in the public interest.”

For the last year and a half Ward has been working for the Gazette-Mail as part of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. Last year, his focus was the impact on rural West Virginia of the booming natural-gas industry, which has gained much economic and political influence in the state, partly at coal’s expense.

Howard Berkes retired at the end of 2018 after 38 years in public media, much of it reporting from rural America. His reports on the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens for KLCC in Eugene, Oregon, took him to NPR, where he covered the interior West and later became the network’s rural correspondent.

After covering the Upper Big Branch mine disaster in West Virginia in 2010, Berkes began investigating workplace safety, and discovered an epidemic of black-lung disease among coal miners in Central Appalachia that federal regulators had ignored or even denied. His work was the basis for “Coal’s Deadly Dust,” a documentary for “Frontline” on PBS.

“Howard spent weeks in rural Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky visiting lung clinics and persuading sick miners to talk with him,” said his editor, Bob Little. “I have plenty of reporters who would not take on an issue like that and choose to put themselves out there in that kind of environment; it does require you to pay a personal price; you have to own your belief in this story. He is inspired by nothing other than wanting to right a wrong.”

Tom and Pat Gish

The Central Appalachian coalfield also birthed the Tom and Pat Gish Award. It is named for the late couple who published The Mountain Eagle at Whitesburg, Ky., for more than 50 years and became nationally known for their battles with coal operators and politicians, and the firebombing of their office by a Whitesburg policeman. Their son, Eagle Editor-Publisher Ben Gish, is on the award selection committee, with other selected members of the rural journalism institute’s national advisory board.

The Gish awards will be presented Sept. 26 in Lexington, Ky., at the Al Smith Awards Dinner of the institute and the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Their Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism by a Kentuckian will be presented to Kentucky Press Association Executive Director David Thompson, the longest-serving executive of a newspaper association in the United States and a winner of many battles for open government.

Chuck Todd

The keynote speaker at the dinner will be NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press” and “MTP Daily” and author of The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House. On election night 2016, as he watched the county-by-county map of the U.S. go mainly red, Todd told viewers, “This is rural America saying, ‘Stop ignoring us!’”

Tickets to the dinner, which is the annual fund-raiser for the institute and the SPJ chapter, are $125 each. Reserve here.

Past winners of the Gish award have been the Gishes; the Ezzell family of The Canadian Record in Canadian, Texas; Jim Prince and the late Stan Dearman, publishers of The Neshoba Democrat in Philadelphia, Miss.; Samantha Swindler, columnist for The Oregonian, for her work in rural Kentucky and Texas; Stanley Nelson and the Concordia Sentinel of Ferriday, La.; Jonathan and Susan Austin for their newspaper work in Yancey County, N.C.; the late Landon Wills of the McLean County News in western Kentucky; the Trapp family of the Rio Grande Sun in Española, N.M.; Ivan Foley of the Platte County Landmark in Platte City, Mo.; the Cullen family of the Storm Lake Times in northwest Iowa; and Les Zaitz of the Malheur Enterprise in eastern Oregon.

Nominations for the 2020 Gish Award may be emailed at any time to al.cross@uky.edu.

Local journalism is focus of study on political polarization, which has advice for news media

A study of political polarization in a Kentucky city and a neighboring rural county aims to identify ways local news outlets and community members could engage with each other to build trust and find solutions to community issues. In its early findings, the study recommends "solutions journalism" – which emphasizes reporting on responses to problems to improve public discourse and strengthen democracy – as one method to help rebuild the public's trust in local news media at a time when many Americans perceive biased news reporting, especially from national news outlets.

"From Polarization to Public Sphere" is a project of Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism. In a report, the study's co-leaders, Andrea Wenzel and Sam Ford, outline the project conducted in Bowling Green, the third largest city in Kentucky (pop. 65,000) and rural Ohio County (pop. 24,000). Ford, an independent media consultant, lives in Bowling Green. He is a research affiliate with MIT and teaches in the Popular Culture Studies Program at Western Kentucky University. Wenzel teaches journalism at Temple University in Philadelphia. 

In addition to political polarization in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, the study explores trust issues with the news media, how people engage through social media and in community groups and social networks, challenges that exist for local media with small newsrooms and limited resources, and opportunities for new journalism practices and strategies for community engagement.

"People interpret what they find on Facebook pages or television screens from within a network of interpersonal relationships, community groups, and media – what we call a local storytelling network," Ford and Wenzel write. "We wanted to understand whether the current political environment is changing these networks and, if so, how residents in politically mixed communities are adapting their news engagement and communication practices."

They wondered, "Do residents with different backgrounds and beliefs still read the same local papers, go to the same churches or social functions, or have conversations that break the ranks of the culture wars, online or off?" They chose Bowling Green and Ohio County to "understand what polarization looked like in rural communities and smaller cities where pockets of blue and purple were woven into a sea of red." 

The authors note that Donald Trump won 59 percent of the vote in Warren County, where Bowling Green is the county seat and home to WKU, which attracts diverse political attitudes. The city is at least 10 percent Muslim, they report; through the International Center of Kentucky, Bowling Green has resettled 10,000 refugees since 1981, including many from Bosnia. In Ohio County, 76 percent voted for Trump; many employees of a large chicken processing plant there commute from Bowling Green.

Twenty-one participants in the study were invited to keep a "story diary" for one week to illuminate their media habits and their impressions of particular stories.  Ford and Wenzel also conducted in-depth interviews with the participants and met with representatives of six local media outlets. 

The study, which began in April, revealed that political polarization affected family relationships and social networks. "Participants shared stories of lost friendships and alienated family members. One participant even reported breaking up with their romantic partner due to disagreement over Trump," Ford and Wenzel write. "For most participants, dealing with this new polarized climate in relatively small towns meant self-censorship was a necessity." 

As one participant said, "It's better to censor yourself and have friends from a limited pool of people around you than to not do that, to have no friends."

And even though people in smaller communities with a limited number of public places might be more likely to cross paths with people who have different political views, the study indicated that "shared spaces" don't always lead to "meaningful interactions." However, participants did point to connections being made at the university where students made friends with people from different backgrounds. 

The study's authors see opportunities to bridge political division through local issues. "For example, residents across ideological divides expressed an interest in solutions-oriented stories and followed stories about issues such as local development and tourism."

Despite some distrust of the news media, a weariness with so-called negative news and tendencies to limit engagement with people with opposing political views, participants indicated they are willing to address political polarization: "Almost every resident we spoke with was open to learning more about potential initiatives that would seek to build connections across difference," Ford and Wenzel write.

The researchers provide several recommendations for local news media, community organizations and foundations. In addition to more stories reported from a solutions angle, the study recommends providing a local lens to national stories; collaborations between local outlets; news media providing spaces for community engagement across divides; and getting community members involved with news organizations.

Local journalism needs bolstering, but the authors note, "Much more research and work is needed to develop models for sustainable local journalism, particularly in rural communities, coming out of work like the projects in which we've engaged." A workshop for news media, residents and community groups is planned Friday to react to and continue the work outlined in "From Polarization to Public Sphere" and to develop "experiments these outlets can conduct with one another, and with outside partners, to test potential solutions," the researchers write.

Help crashing bird populations with local reporting, which can find answers and improve awareness; here are tips

The Kirtland’s warbler is one of the rarest songbirds in North America.
(Photo by Ian Davies, Cornell University Lab, Macaulay Library)

Bird populations are struggling worldwide. In North America, a "key 2022 report found that more than half of U.S. and Canadian bird species have suffered dramatic drops in population, reports Joseph A. Davis for The Society of Environmental Journalists. "Local and regional developments make this a story for environmental journalists to explore."

Birds matter. "They pollinate plants (many of which people enjoy and/or depend on). They eat things we often wish not to have around, such as insects or carrion. Also, they may feed us," Davis writes. "They may spread disease (and often suffer from disease). And they are (no apologies for the pun) the 'canary in the coal mine' when it comes to habitat loss or toxic substances in the environment."

Along with their importance in nature, birds provide people "with joy and wonder almost everywhere we encounter them in our world. They are beautiful. They are capable of incredible feats. And their songs and calls brighten and beautify our lives," Davis adds. "Birds are awesome."

Birds are declining for many reasons, but the meta-reason is "human action," Davis writes. "As European settlers to North America cut forests, drained wetlands, plowed grasslands, built reservoirs, dug up minerals and paved much of what remained, birds have had a tougher time finding homes and food — and raising their young. . . . It's not just that. A lot of birds eat insects, and insect populations are also declining dramatically. So that may be part of the explanation. Behind that decline may be the massive agricultural use of pesticides."

Davis offers these story ideas:

• Find local birding clubs (see link below), attend meetings, talk to leaders, go on walks and ask about local species, local declines and local threats to birds.
• Are there unique habitats in your area? Species specially adapted to those habitats? Dramatic changes to those habitats?
• What birds migrate through your area? Are their food sources and resting places under threat?
• What diseases afflict what birds in your area? Those could vary from bird flu to West Nile virus. Do human activities promote the spread of disease?
• What is the role of backyard bird feeders in your ecosystem? Some call them "cat feeders." Do they help or hurt? Spread disease?
• What is the role of "outdoor" or feral cats in the decline?
• What is the role of big buildings and glass windows in the decline?
• What is going on with tree cover and wetlands in your area? Is climate change a factor?

He also offers these reporting resources:
Cornell Lab of Ornithology: This institution, part of Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has all kinds of bird-related resources.
National Audubon Society: A premier national nonprofit for conservation and policy and just birding. It has a network of local and regional affiliates.
The Great Backyard Bird Count: Join the world in connecting to birds – February 16–19, 2024.
Christmas Bird Count: A long-standing tradition in many places that can give some unscientific sense of population trends. Organized by National Audubon. Ask your local chapter about its results.
Local/regional birding and conservation groups: Start here. There are probably others not on the list.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: The federal agency most active in bird conservation. Find a refuge near you and talk to the staff. You can also reach out to managers of your state, local and private wildlife refuges.
National Wildlife Health Center: This unit of the U.S. Geological Survey is an authoritative source on bird disease.
North American Bird Conservation Initiative: The consortium of researchers, government agencies and cnservation groups that produced the 2022 report mentioned above.
Ducks Unlimited: Yes, its members do hunt ducks — but they work very hard for conservation. Check in with your local chapter and talk to them about migratory birds.
State conservation agencies: Terminology varies, but a good directory can be found here.
People who maintain local backyard bird feeders: One way to find them is to go to a hardware store where feeders and seeds are sold. Talk to customers.

Society of Professional Journalists announces winners of Sigma Delta Chi Awards

The winners of the Society of Professional Journalists' 2014 Sigma Delta Chi Awards for excellence in journalism have been announced and feature plenty of stories by rural journalists or about ideas important to rural communities.

Newspaper/Wire Service

Winner for Deadline Reporting for non-daily publication went to Ann McCreary and Marcy Stamper of the Methow Valley News for their story about firestorms that raged through the Methow Valley in Northern Washington.

Reuters won for Non-Deadly Reporting for daily circulations of 100,001 or more for its series called "Water's Edge" by Ryan McNeill, Deborah J. Nelson, Duff Wilson, Alister Doyle and Bill Tarrant. The series looked at an increase in flooding on the coastline.

Mary Beth Pfeiffer of the Poughkeepsie Journal won for Non-Deadline Reporting for daily circulation 1-50,000 for "Killers & Pain" about painkiller abuse. Also writing about drug abuse, Jeffrey Gerritt of The Blade won for Editorial Writing for daily circulation of 1-100,000, non-daily, for "Prescription: Addiction."

Winner in Investigative Reporting for non-daily publication was The Times-Tribune in Scranton, Pa., for "Pensions in Peril" by Terrie Morgan-Besecker.

Sam Venable of the Knoxville News Sentinel won for Feature Reporting for daily circulations of 50,001 to 100,000 for "Fragments of Hate," a story about an integration pioneer who was shot in East Tennessee just days after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.

The Alaska Dispatch News won for Public Service Journalism for daily circulation 50,001 to 100,000 for its series "State of Intoxication: FASD" by Marc Lester, Kyle Hopkins, Patrick Dougherty, Pam Dunlap-Shohl and Anne Raup.

Public Service  Journalism for daily circulation 1-50,000 went to the staff of The Clarion-Ledger for its series "Hard Look at Hard Time," looking at incarceration in Mississippi.

Ashley Powers of The California Sunday Magazine won for Magazine Writing for regional/local circulation for "Their Town," which is about Mormon fundamentalists living on the border of Utah and Arizona.

Consumer Reports won for Public Service in Magazine Journalism for national circulation for “The High Cost of Cheap Chicken” by Christie Aschwanden, Ellen Kunes and Urvashi Rangan.

Radio

Maine Public Broadcasting Network won for Breaking News Reporting in 1-100 market or network syndication for its series “Ebola Healthworker Defies Quarantine,” by Patty Wight, Susan Sharon and Mal Leary.

Breaking News Reporting for 101+ market went to Sandy Hausman, Hawes Spencer and Connie Stevens of WVTF Public Radio at Virginia Tech University for “The Disappearance of Hannah Graham" about the missing University of Virginia student.

Sean Sandefur of KMUW 89.1 in Wichita won for Investigative Reporting in 101+ market for “Dangerous Chemical Invades West Wichita Drinking Water” about private water wells contaminated with chemicals.

Grace Hood, of KUNC-FM in Northern Colorado, won in Feature Reporting in 101+ market for “Finding Soldierstone” about a hidden war memorial in a remote part of the Rio Grande National Forest.

Winner of Documentaries in 101+ market was KBIA 91.3 at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo., for “Heartland, Missouri” by Abigail Keel, Ryan Famuliner, Janet Saidi and Casey Morell.

Television

For Breaking News Coverage in small markets KRGV-TV in Rio Grande Valley, Texas, won for “Gun Battle in La Joya, Texas” by staff and Jenny Martinez.

WVUE-TV in  New Orleans for Documentaries, small market for “Holding Officials Accountable” by Lee Zurik, Tom Wright, Jon Turnipseed and Greg Phillips.

Public Service in Television Journalism for small market went to WLTX-TV in Columbia, S.C., for “SCDSS: The System Failed” by Clark Fouraker, Jennifer Bellamy, Darci Strickland and Marybeth Jacoby about the death of a child.

Kate Snow of NBC News won Public Service in Television Journalism for network, syndication or program service for “Hooked: America's Heroin Epidemic.”

Online reporting

Stephen Rynkiewicz, David Craig and Casey Bukro of Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists won for online column writing by an independent source.

Local foundations back $660K rural journalism collaborative in Mountain West, where Facebook rules the news

As lower advertising revenues force cuts in local news media, philanthropists are showing increasing interest in funding local journalism. "But media philanthropy, like most everything else about media, is still largely centered on the coasts and in major metropolitan area," Christine Schmidt reports for Harvard University's Nieman Lab. "A handful of local foundations (along with Report for America and Solutions Journalism Network) are now upping their commitment for a journalism collaboration across the Mountain West . . . especially on rural issues and Native American stories."

The group has committed $660,000 for a one-year initiative to expand SJN's local engagement training in newsrooms and hire seven journalists funded by Report for America. The collaboration began with a 2015 survey the LOR Foundation and SJN conducted of Mountain West residents; only 20% of respondents deemed local news "consistently relevant and valuable," Schmidt reports. Nearly 80% "said they found most of their local news on Facebook; others named friends and even tavern hearsay as more useful sources than the local newspaper or TV station."

In 2016 LOR and SJN launched a pilot with seven New Mexico and Colorado newsrooms, and in 2017 shifted and expanded to 12 newsrooms each in New Mexico and Montana. The groups partnered with 50 newsrooms, but found there weren't enough reporters for in-depth local coverage. Other foundations got involved, culminating in this year's $660,000 commitment, Schmidt reports.

Some of the foundations are local, which SJN president Keith Hammonds says bodes well for the project and similar efforts. "I think it’s incredibly important that local and regional foundations see the importance of local media as part of the infrastructure of civic life in their communities and also see the indelible importance, the relationship between high quality local reporting and the rest of civic life they are funding," Hammonds told Schmidt. "Whatever a foundation’s local interests are, it cannot advance without the free flow of quality info that keeps businesses informed engaged and activated. I think that that piece of this may be the most critical of all."

Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette-Mail wins a MacArthur Foundation 'genius grant' of $625,000

Ken Ward Jr.

Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette-Mail, for years the leading reporter on extractive industries in Appalachia, is among this year's 25 winners of fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The fellowship, generally known as “the genius grant,” carries a stipend of $625,000 over five years, with no strings attached, to give fellows "maximum freedom ... to follow their creative vision, whether it is moving forward with their current activities, expanding the scope of their work, or embarking in entirely new directions," the foundation says.

MacArthur looks for exceptional creativity; promise for important future advances based on a record of significant accomplishments; and potential that the fellowship will spur further creative work. It said Ward was chosen because he excels at “revealing the human and environmental toll of natural-resource extraction in West Virginia and spurring greater accountability among public and private stakeholders.”

Ward sees the fellowship as "an indication that the reporting done here is valuable," the Gazette-Mail reports, quoting him: “This shows the importance and value of the kind of journalism I believe in, and that most of us have been trying to do for decades here. This incredible honor from the MacArthur Foundation is a strong vote of confidence in local journalism, and more to the point in local journalism that doesn’t just parrot the official line, but questions and holds accountable powerful people, industries, governments and other institutions that might not be acting in the public interest.”

"Ward, 50, is the only journalist in the group of 25 fellows announced today, a group that includes scientists, artists, authors, scholars and advocates," the paper notes. "Ward is the first person to be living in West Virginia at the time he received his MacArthur grant; the previous three had moved away." One was Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard University, who was in the first class of fellows, in 1981. "He and Gates share a hometown, the small town of Piedmont in Mineral County. As a boy, Ward and his family moved to nearby Keyser." He graduated from West Virginia University in 1990 and joined The Charleston Gazette in 1991. For the past year, he's been in ProPublica's new Local Reporting Network, "working on longer-term stories on the natural-gas industry," the paper reports.

Ward told the Gazette-Mail that he plans to continue working there, "but that the MacArthur fellowship gives his family a safety net -- and challenges him to perhaps explore some new ways to ensure local news reporting remains strong." He said, “It's great to have some financial security. It's great to have this recognition, but … it seems very clear that this is not a lifetime achievement award. This is supposed to help you do more to realize some potential. I feel a lot of responsibility and pressure to figure out things to do to live up to that. What is it that these people saw in me that they think I can somehow go and do to make life better for people in West Virginia? I gotta figure out what that is and go do it.”

ProPublica program helps local papers tell big stories without parachuting in; apply for next year by Sept. 14

ProPublica has announced it will continue its grant-funded Local Reporting Network program for another year. The foundation-funded nonprofit will pay salaries and benefits allowances for full-time reporters at seven local or regional news organizations, and give them professional support in an investigative reporting project. Though the projects for this first round of the LRN have covered diverse subjects, the second round will have a special focus on state-government accountability reporting. The deadline to apply is Sept. 14. Click here for more information.

The seven local news outlets participating this year say they like the way ProPublica has helped them tell in-depth stories without overshadowing them, Christine Schmidt reports for the nonprofit.

Ken Ward Jr., an environmental reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail in West Virginia, told Schmidt that "It’s nice when you’re in a small newspaper in a little place like Charleston to feel like you’ve got a literal army of people at ProPublica that are on your side, trying to help you take these stories to the next level."

Carbondale, Ill.., reporter Molly Parker said "We’re really proud of our work at the Southern Illinoisan, but we have a flashlight, not a lighthouse . . . Giving some of these issues that we’ve been seeing a national spotlight or introducing them to a national audience might help change the nature of the conversation."

'60 Minutes' report on crisis in local journalism gives local media opportunity to elaborate and reinforce the message

Five Report for America reporters were interviewed by CBS for a "60 Minutes" story on the crisis in local newspapering. Back row: ChrisAnna Mink and Camalot Todd; front row: Chris Jones, Gracyn Doctor and Amelia Ferrell Knisely.

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

The local news crisis got its biggest play yet to an American audience Sunday night, as CBS's "60 Minutes" did a story that reached perhaps 9 million viewers. It didn't make the best case ever for local journalism, but as the show usually does, it told the tale through some compelling personal stories.

Most of those stories, and the belief that "Journalism is essential for the survival of American democracy," as one former reporter put it, are familiar to readers of The Rural Blog. But they are not well known by many Americans, so for local news media, the network report is an opportunity to reinforce the message, and elaborate on it.

The story's only evidence of "increased corruption by local officials," was a rather old story: the 2010 revelation by the Los Angeles Times (uncredited by CBS) that officials in the small L.A. County city of Bell were paying themselves exorbitant salaries after "the local newspaper there shut down," as CBS put it. Actually, the area had a paper, but it was covering so many municipalities that Bell got little attention.

There's plenty of other evidence that lack of local journalism is bad for taxpayers, such as studies showing higher interest rates for bond issues, fewer candidates for local office, and more straight-ticket voting and political polarization. But those points didn't have compelling video, like the footage "60 Minutes" used, showing enraged citizens at a meeting of the Bell City Council.

Beyond academic studies, in other places with shriveled journalism we have seen the election of bigoted but unprofiled candidates, parroting of politicians' press releases, and use of disaster funds with little oversight. And lawsuits to get public records are no longer filed mainly by the news media. Meanwhile, partisan websites, often masquerading as news media, fill the vacuum. Even some politicians have voiced concern about reduced coverage of elections.

At the same time, local reporters have also exposed such evils as pharmacies' role in the opioid epidemic and ripoffs by contractors, forced resignation of corrupt officials, and there are examples of newspapers that have improved their bottom lines through accountability reporting. So, there's a much larger story to tell about local news than CBS did, but its report tees up the ball for local news media to remind their audiences of their value to their communities.

Steven Waldman

For some of us in journalism, the headline on the story could have been what Steven Waldman of Report for America said near the end of the report: "We need a dramatic increase in the commitment of foundations, and philanthropists, and donors like you and me, to actually supporting local news."

Waldman elaborates on that in a two-part essay for Columbia Journalism Review, in which he writes, "Our goal should be to create a better local news system than we had in the past, including far better service for communities of color and for rural areas. To make that local news system a reality, I believe that we need to add 50,000 local reporters." He also calls for better business models, enlightened public policy and creating new methods of financing news operations, such as tax credits for organizations that take over local newspapers.

The more philanthropy the better, from big grants to small donations, reader memberships and so on. That said, grants have a way of running out, so they are more likely to be bridges to transformed business models for newspapers as they shift to an online existence -- gradually, so they can still enjoy the revenue generated by print, their main revenue source, as print fans gradually leave the scene. And that's a reality of the newspaper business that papers need to explain to their readers -- and potential readers, using social media.

For those who didn't see "60 Minutes," here are a few excerpts:

The first protagonist was Evan Brandt, sole reporter at the Pottstown Mercury, which has won two Pulitzer Prizes and "at one time had dozens of reporters;" anyone in the town of 23,000 could walk into the newsroom and give a tip for a story to hold local officials and institutions accountable. Now Brandt covers 21 eastern Pennsylvania towns and nine school districts from home.

Evan Brandt of the Pottstown Mercury works from home.

"He says the worst culprit is the hedge fund, Alden Global Capital," the second largest owner of U.S. newspapers, which "has been called a vulture, bleeding newspapers dry." Brandt said he went to Alden CEO Heath Freeman's home on Long Island to ask "What value do you place on local news? And I'm not talking about money." But Freeman walked off before Brandt could pose the question.

As the industry shrinks, correspondent Jon Wertheim asked, "to what extend does democracy shrink with it?" 

Former Chicago Tribune reporter Gary Marx said, "This is an attack on our democracy," which papers serve by "holding our leaders accountable." He and colleague David Jackson investigated Alden before it bought the paper and found profit margins as high as 30 percent in one market. "We felt that Alden didn't realize the civic trust that's embedded in this profit-making machine," Jackson said. 

CBS paraphrased Freeman as saying that "Alden is committed to providing robust, independently minded local journalism and that it's time for tech giants to start paying for the 'billions of dollars' they're making off of news publishers' content."

The story had five RFA reporters in a group interview, including Chris Jones of 100 Days in Appalachia, who covered the Jan. 6 riot because he had developed sources among extremists. The former Marine has a community journalism ethic: "These are our neighbors, you know? We're not writing about someone I'm never gonna talk to again. They're people before they're interview subjects."

Gazette-Mail's owner is in gas industry but praises reporter's work on it; says he seeks balance of readers' wants, needs

Reporter Ken Ward Jr.

When reporter Ken Ward Jr. drove five hours from Charleston, W.Va., to Richmond, Va., to hear oral arguments in former coal operator Don Blankenship's appeal of his conviction for violating health and safety standards at a coal mine that blew up, he met relatives of some of the 29 dead miners. He recalls, "One of them saw me and said, 'We knew the Gazette would be here.'"

Ward's voice cracked as he told that story to Brent Cunningham, executive editor of the Food & Environment Reporting Network, for a long story in Pacific Standard about the Charleston Gazette-Mail, the merger of the business-friendly Charleston Daily Mail, for which Cunningham reported, and the Charleston Gazette, whose unofficial motto was "sustained outrage," as defined by late publisher Ned Chilton. The story's protagonists are Ward, and Doug Reynolds, the Huntington lawyer who bought the paper in bankruptcy last year. Asked to describe his journalism philosophy, Reynolds said, "You've got to kind of balance what people want to hear with what they need to hear."

Paper owner Doug Reynolds
(Beckley Register-Herald photo)

"It wasn't 'sustained outrage,' but it wasn't the rapacious indifference of the vulture capitalists either," Cunningham writes. "Finding that balance, never easy, will be even harder in a newspaper business that continues to struggle. It will be harder still given that Reynolds is entangled in what could be the biggest economic shift in the state since industrialization: the pursuit of shale gas. . . . He is president and chief executive officer of Energy Services of America, which makes natural-gas pipelines. Brian Jarvis, another principal in the group that bought the Gazette-Mail, also is a two-way player. He is president of NCWV Media, which owns newspapers in the north-central part of the state, and also of Hydrocarbon Well Services, an oil and gas service operation."

Recently, Reynolds started Daily Mail WV, "which offers a mix of business-focused opinion pieces and features that is singularly bullish on the future of West Virginia," one of the nation's most rural states. He says he's doing it for revenue to support the newspaper. He also owns the Herald-Dispatch in Huntington and some smaller papers. A Democrat, served in the state legislature until making an unsuccessful race for attorney general in 2016.

As for Reynolds' best-known reporter, Cunningham writes: "If there is one person who embodies the complexity Reynolds faces in trying to strike the balance he seeks in the Gazette-Mail's coverage, it is Ken Ward Jr., the paper's 51-year-old environmental reporter. . . . Ward, as much as anyone, helped ensure that 'sustained outrage' continued to define Gazette journalism. He embraced Paul Nyden's belief that journalism's highest calling was not some feckless notion of 'objectivity,' but rather to follow the paper trail and expose the many ways the powerful exploit the powerless." (Ward and Nyden are recipients of this year, along with NPR retiree Howard Berkes, of the Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism, given by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog.)

"In 2018, Ward was selected for the inaugural class of ProPublica's Local Reporting Network, an effort to support investigative journalism at smaller papers around the country by paying reporters' salaries for a year, helping them develop stories around a theme, and then co-publishing those stories," Cunningham writes. "Ward's project was to scrutinize the state's natural-gas boom from a provocative standpoint: Is West Virginia making the same regulatory mistakes with gas that it made more than a century ago with coal?" Reynolds called Ward's series "The most important thing we've done in my short time here. There's a huge change happening, and an incredible amount of wealth is being created. So the logical question is, where are we going to be at the end of all this?"

Asked about Ward's contention that the state could lose out on its fair share of that "incredible wealth" the gas boom is generating, as it did with coal, Reynolds said, "There is not a doubt in my mind that the state, in this current environment, will take less than other states are going to take." Why? "Because the people who run the gas industry have more influence here. The public decides the kind of people they want running the state. They want less regulation, less environmental regulation . . . No one has won elections in West Virginia lately saying they're going to make sure these mining permits are held to the highest standard."

Cunningham concludes, "Doug Reynolds is not Ned Chilton. But maybe Ned Chilton wouldn't be the same newsman today as the one we celebrate. After all, Chilton's conviction that a newspaper's pursuit of profit could and must coexist with its commitment to public service is a far more difficult proposition now. Reynolds is clear that he intends to profit from journalism. And he seems fine with the public-service end of that equation, as long as it can be monetized. 'The bottom line," he told me, "is I don't care if people are happy or sad about our coverage, as long as they aren't ambivalent.' Maybe that's the best we can hope for these days. I worry, though, that it won't be enough. West Virginia is at a crossroads. With coal in decline, the state has a chance to diversify its economy, to build a future that is environmentally sustainable, one in which opportunity and prosperity are more broadly shared. But for that to happen, it needs leaders who actually put the public interest first—and a vigorous watchdog to make sure they do."