Author: Al Cross

Al Cross edited and managed weekly newspapers before spending 26 years at The (Louisville) Courier-Journal and serving as president of the Society of Professional Journalists. Since 2004 he has been director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky. See www.RuralJournalism.org.

A print-only version of this blogpost ran originally in Publisher’s Auxiliary. It is used by permission of Pub Aux and the National Newspaper Association.

Categories
community issues Localizing the news political coverage

National politics generate local story ideas

As newspaper publishers worried about tariffs on newsprint, farmers and others in rural America worried about tariffs on other products that could spark a trade war. The Rural Blog is keeping its readers current on trade and many other issues; here’s a sampling of stories from the last couple of months.

One-third of U.S. soybeans go to China. The president of the American Soybean Association called President Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum “a disastrous course of action,” and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said farmers have “legitimate anxiety,” not just about retaliatory tariffs on products, but on the steel tariffs’ effect on farm-equipment costs. See our report at bit.ly/2FNbCEl.

In mid-March, the last U.S. maker of steel beer kegs, in Pottstown, Pa., laid off one-third of its workers. We reported that at bit.ly/2FMNC45. The Brookings Institution calculated the impact of the tariffs on each state and produced a good chart, which we ran at bit.ly/2DF7ZKL. The Washington Post produced a chart showing how Republican opinions on trade have shifted to match Trump’s; we ran it at bit.ly/2FMsmvo with a Politico report saying agriculture is “particularly vulnerable” to retaliatory tariffs.

Double whammy

In February, Perdue told Congress that the rural economy is fragile, and as he was speaking, the American Farm Bureau Federation was publishing a warning from a Tennessee farmer about another big issue facing rural America: the opioid epidemic. “Our focus on national regulations and global trade are real issues that need to be addressed, but the future of farming and ranching may be just as dependent on our awareness of curbing the opioid dependency in our grassroots communities where individuals influence national changes,” he wrote. See bit.ly/2u25GSr.

New research from the University of Kentucky shows that the opioid epidemic isn’t disproportionately rural, but rural areas have a tougher time dealing with it because of limited access to treatment. We reported it at bit.ly/2IyiD9H. Research by Penn State and Texas A&M concluded that the crisis may be exacerbated by declining farm income, extreme weather and other natural disasters. Read about it at bit.ly/2GarNuS.

One challenge to dealing with the opioid epidemic is the stigma still attached to addiction in many rural areas, but that can be countered with reporting of success stories about people who overcome addiction, according to recent research we reported at bit.ly/2HPzVOB. Stigma is also an obstacle to mental-health treatment in rural areas, we reported at bit.ly/2tYjYmU.

Your local health

The annual County Health Rankings, released March 14, are a snapshot of each county’s health factors and outcomes, compared to other counties in the same state. They are something of a blunt instrument, but sometimes that’s what it takes to get people’s attention. Our research in Kentucky shows that newspapers are increasingly reporting their county’s rankings. Read our story, with a link to them, at bit.ly/2G636zv.

When it comes to health care, the Medicaid program is the main linchpin for rural areas, partly because of the support it provides for hospitals and clinics. It pays for more than half of rural births, Kaiser Health News noted in its “Medicaid Nation” series, which we gave a glimpse at bit.ly/2FVVs7M. The rural benefits of Medicaid are not widely known; rural residents tend to vote Republican even as GOP lawmakers vote to reverse Medicaid’s expansion.

Maps with local data

If you read The Rural Blog regularly, you know that we love maps with local data, usually at the county level. There’s enough interesting data out there for every newspaper in America to publish a significant data point in every edition, but not enough of them do it. Here are some maps we’ve run lately.

An interactive map with local data showed the level of economic distress in every county, and some may surprise you: bit.ly/2DFYuLa.

Politico did an interesting story about financial guru Dave Ramsey, in which he said he sees more people worrying about their finances. It included a map showing, in ranges, the percentage of people in each county who are the targets of debt collectors. We shared it at bit.ly/2DFf6Tt.

A national study with an interactive map found that, in 99 percent of U.S. counties, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food-stamp) benefits are not enough to cover the full cost of an inexpensive meal, even for those who have no net income. See bit.ly/2DFUeLW.

Also on the food front, a study found that independent grocery stores in rural areas were hit harder by the Great Recession than those in urban areas. It included a county-level map showing the number of independent groceries for every 10,000 people. See bit.ly/2pnybV4.

The lack of healthy grocery supplies in some rural areas may be less about supply than demand, according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. We reported it, with a county-level map, at bit.ly/2pofvWe.

A study of deaths due to alcohol, drugs, suicide, and interpersonal violence included a county-level map: bit.ly/2ppV9vD. Your county’s number of drug-overdose deaths may surprise you, because most don’t make the news, but the number shouldn’t be a surprise of you are keeping up through your local coroner or medical examiner.

Something else that often goes unreported, but your coroner can tell you about, is suicide. The more rural a place, the higher its suicide rate is likely to be. An interactive map from Governing magazine tells the story, and we shared it at bit.ly/2FM5093.

If you see stories, maps or anything else with rural resonance that belong on The Rural Blog, let me know at [email protected].

Categories
political coverage

Trump owes his victory to rural America

Sixteen months ago, Donald J. Trump surprised most of the world and probably himself by winning the presidential election. He couldn’t have done it without rural America.

The numbers in the exit polls were clear.  Trump won 62 percent of the rural vote, more than any modern president.  And here’s the statistic that shows just how rural his victory was: If you divide up the vote by the rural continuum of the Department of Agriculture – which has nine steps, from most rural to most urban – the smaller a place’s population, the stronger its vote for Trump, with one very small exception inside the error margin.

Trump’s percentage continued a recent trend of Republicans winning more and more of the rural vote. The biggest gain was actually made when Mitt Romney ran, but rural turnout was down significantly in 2012, especially among Democrats, so that boosted Romney’s percentage. But there was a better rural turnout in 2016 – and that was a key to Trump’s victory in the big swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

That surge in turnout, and rural America’s choice of a man who is probably our most urban president ever, suggest that some big and bad things have been going on in our rural communities – some things that made them vote for him.

There are many was to measure those things, but the most important may be the simplest: Each year from 2012 through 2016, fewer people lived in rural America than the year before. Those losses were pretty small, but there had never been a decline in the total number of rural people, just in the rural percentage of the U.S. population.

Rural America is losing population mainly because it lost, during the Great Recession, jobs and businesses that have not come back. On Election Day 2016, employment in metropolitan areas was almost 5 percent higher than in the first quarter of 2008, the official start of the recession. But outside metro areas, employment was about 2.5 percent less.

We have seen that decline all over rural America, in closed factories, vacant storefronts and streams of workers commuting to more urbanized places. In many places, there is also a social and cultural decline, indicated by above-average drug use and divorces, poor health, increasing mortality rates among middle-aged whites, and a workforce that shrinks as disability payments expand. The Wall Street Journal did a good job documenting this several months ago in a package that said the statistics of rural America resemble those of inner cities 30 years ago.

This isn’t just about statistics.  It’s about feelings, which are usually more influential in an election.  In rural America, there is a documented resentment of urban elites, including the news media — reflecting a feeling that rural areas aren’t getting a fair shake from government and its trade deals, and are looked down upon.

So onto this landscape strode a brash billionaire whose TV reality show and business career had made him a household name, offering few specifics but promising to “make America great again” and acting as a tribune for disaffected people who were hungry for a politician who would improve their daily lives. In more than 40 years of covering politics, I have never seen a candidate who generated the reaction, depth of support and enthusiasm as Donald Trump, especially in rural areas.

There were half a million more rural votes last year than in 2012. In urban areas, there were two and a half million fewer votes. That second number illustrates the low enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton.

Some have also argued that Trump’s victory had a lot to do with race and ethnicity, and there was evidence of that in rural areas, mainly dealing with immigration.

Rural Midwestern towns that have attracted many more immigrants—particularly Latinos—were Trump strongholds in the primaries and caucuses.  Just before the general election, Gallup polls showed Trump doing well in racially isolated white communities, and the pollsters concluded that Trump voters in those places appeared to be less motivated by economic concerns than by issues of race, ethnicity and immigration. Other researchers before and after the election came to the same conclusion about the national vote.

One thing last year’s election did was wake up a lot of national journalists to the problems of rural America. The Wall Street Journal is not the only national news outlet that’s paying more attention to rural places and their problems. My friend Chuck Todd of NBC told his audience on election night, as Trump began to win, “Rural America is basically screaming at us, ‘Stop overlooking us!’”

So rural issues should get more attention, especially with a president who owes his victory partly to rural America. But politicians sometimes have to be reminded who they owe, and I think that is the case with rural America, because it is so diverse – too diverse to have a strong lobby that speaks for it.

Agriculture interests can help, but they can also hurt, by focusing more on increasing farmers’ wealth and just paying lip service to the needs of rural communities. There is a bipartisan Congressional Rural Caucus, but it has only 43 members – almost exactly 10 percent of the House of Representatives. Rural America is 15 percent of the population, and it needs a stronger voice. Rural newspapers could help provide it.

This column is adapted from a chapter written by Al Cross in “The Trump Presidency, Journalism and Democracy,” published in February by Routledge.

Categories
the future of community journalism

Looking at the future of community newspapers

Editor’s Note:  This blogpost was a speech given by Al Cross at a meeting of the Texas Press Association in January 2018 in Galveston.

. . . First time I’ve been to Galveston, but have been to Texas many times, and always feel at home here; maybe it’s because your state was settled mainly by people from Tennessee, my native state, and Kentucky, my home state.

Y’know, we share a lot of the same sayings: all hat and no cattle (my states are the biggest cattle states in the East), hot as a two-dollar pistol; old as dirt, rough as a cob, cold as a well-digger’s knee (or a certain larger body part). Close enough for government work; handy as a pocket on a shirt; I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck; and he’s one brick shy of a load. Some of my favorites involve animals: rode hard and put up wet; like a duck on a June bug; that dog won’t hunt; fine as frog hair; as independent as a hog on ice; look what the cat drug in; crooked as a dog’s hind leg; if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas; even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then; and: there’s more than one way to break a dog from sucking eggs.

I have never figured out what that last one really means, except there’s more than one way to do some things, and different approaches may be needed. And that’s what I want to talk with you about tonight.

When Ed Sterling called to invite me to speak to you, he asked what I would like to talk about, and I immediately replied, “The future of community journalism” – I guess because I wonder about it a good bit, and I’ll bet many of you do, too. Not much is clear, the major exception being that different approaches are needed. Every market, every newspaper, is at least a little bit different, so you must write your own future.

You can’t talk about the future of community journalism without discussing the future of journalism. I think it’s important to remember that we will always have journalism, because we will always need storytellers.

So many times when people say they’re talking about journalism, what they’re really talking about is the news business, which pays for journalism. And the news business is in trouble, because its economic model – mass circulation that drew advertising, which paid 75 to 80 percent of the bills – has been crumbling for more than a decade. Perhaps the best example in the weekly newspaper trade is that if you see a grocery ad in a paper, it’s probably an insert, and those are becoming less common as grocers find other ways to reach customers.

From what I can tell n my own research and discussions around the country, weekly newspapers’ circulation and household penetration, generally speaking, are declining 2 to 5 percent a year, and that trend is not sustainable.

Increasingly, the response to these existential threats has been to live with less revenue but get a bigger share of it from the audience. That’s why paywalls have become common, as newspapers finally discovered that enough people were willing to pay for access. Some community newspaper companies say they want to get 50 percent of their revenue from the audience. They think it can work because there are enough people willing to pay for unlimited access and special benefits for subscribers. It might work in some markets, but I have my doubts when it comes to the smaller, less-well-off markets that community newspapers typically serve.

he idea of getting more revenue from the audience has come more slowly to community journalism, which has been the healthiest part of the traditional news business because it usually doesn’t have competition. You are probably the only reliable, consistent, professional, comprehensive source of news and information for your locality. You probably don’t compete with a television station, and radio news in most places is a ghost of what it once was.

But you are still in competition, with every other source of news and information, for people’s time and attention. There is only so much time the audience can spend with media. It’s more time than it once was, because of smartphones, but those devices are used mainly for social media, not news media.

So you are, for the first time, in a battle with competitors you don’t know or see. And some you may not have even imagined, because local news is becoming less important to some people.

That’s partly because people are paying more attention to national news than they once did, thanks to last year’s unusual presidential election and our very unusual president. One community newspaper chain even put a President Trump button on all its home pages to drive traffic.

A bigger factor, I think, is that people now spend time online, in virtual communities, that they once spent engaging with their geographic communities, like those you serve. That probably makes them less interested in local news.

And another factor, in rural areas, is that your readers – or your former readers – increasingly commute to jobs in more urbanized places. We’ve some research in rural Kentucky and found that the longer someone’s commute to work, the less likely they are to subscribe to, or regularly buy, their local paper.

And these folks are commuting because of a lack of jobs, or good jobs, in the communities where they live. One big reason Donald Trump won the election was a sense in many rural communities they are being left behind. And in many places, they are. They see the shuttered factories, the vacant storefronts and the high-school commencement exercises that amount to a mass farewell to what could have been a big part of a community’s future. That is not good for local businesses, including the newspaper.

So, if we were doing a SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, those would be among the weaknesses and threats. We would also have to include the growing impact of social media, which usually give people notice of a news event but not a real news story, unless the post includes a link to one and they click on it.

I think one of our weaknesses is that we have not done a very good job of helping our readers understand better what real journalism is, and the difference in the three types of media: Strategic media, which could also be called message media: essentially, public relations, advertising and marketing; News media: that’s us, who practice journalism, the essence of which is a discipline of verification; we’re mainly about facts; and social media, which have little of any discipline, and certainly no discipline of verification.

Too often, we just say “media” when we mean “news media.” We need to use the phrase, not the word, to remind people that journalism is different – we have a discipline and a mission: searching for truth to serve the public.

Beyond that broad mission, every news outlet has its own priorities, but they are rarely shared with the audience. I wish every newspaper regularly published a statement of principles – what it stands for – and asked readers to hold it to account if they think it hasn’t lived up to them.

We need to explain these things to our readers, and to former readers and prospective readers, using social media and other platforms. We need to explain how we go about our work, and invite readers’ involvement and feedback. Ask them what they want to read about, and what they think of your work.

Here’s an example, from the Sunbury Daily Item in central Pennsylvania. The editor is Dennis Lyons, who took a buyout as managing editor of USA Today but came out of retirement to edit this small daily. He has a Community Advisory Board that generates good story ideas and sources, and he holds roundtable discussions with community stakeholders before starting to report major enterprise stories, to point the projects in the right direction and identify sources. These things are not wastes of time; they save time, because they are in effect the beginning of the reporting process.

Dennis Lyons talked about his work on a trip he and I made to China a few months ago, to talk about community journalism. That country has a very different political system, but its newspapers have many of the same concerns we have here – an audience that is going elsewhere for information. That shows the depth and breadth of the changes in the news and information business. It’s one of the greatest changes in the history of the world, not too far behind the invention of the printing press.

At the same time the world has changed, and journalism is under attack, most notably by the president of the United States. You might think that has nothing to do with your journalism, but I have heard editors all over the country say it is casting a shadow on their work.           They have begun to feel the sting of the anti-journalism message – yes, it really is a message against journalism as it should be practiced – and they have begun to realize that in a larger sense, we are all in the same boat; that they have an important role to play in restoring, building and maintaining the reputation of, and belief in, journalism.

And this has serious implications beyond our business; this week the RAND Corporation issued a 324-page report about the decay of truth in our society, the lack of agreement on basic facts – partly because people don’t understand what sources are valid, but also because news media have blurred the lines between fact and opinion. Strategic media, or message media, are using social media to trump (no pun intended) the news media.

As you defend journalism, you don’t have to defend the networks or the big papers; you can use some of their failings to explain what journalism is supposed to be. But you are journalists, or employers of journalists, so I think it is in your interest to defend journalism – and to help people understand that it has standards and principles, and that it is to be held accountable, just as it holds others accountable.

But the most important thing you can do for journalism, and the news business that pays for it, is to show its value to your community. That means you must produce journalism that helps set the public agenda for your community; that holds public officials and institutions accountable; that provides a fair forum for debate; and that acts as a leader in the community.

These are not easy things. And, I’m sad to say, a lot of community newspapers fall short. Editorial timidity is a common characteristic in community journalism, and it’s understandable. I teach my students that the fundamental conflict in community journalism is between the personal and the professional – the desire to fit comfortably into a community, and the responsibility to sometimes make others uncomfortable.

One way to successfully manage this conflict is to have a set of clear principles that not only guide your work but let the public know how you think you are supposed to do that work, and invite them into the discussion.

So, in our SWOT analysis, those are some opportunities – most of which, as they often do, are responses to threats. What about the strengths of community newspapers?

The biggest is that in most markets, you have a local-news franchise that no one has really invaded. Now, don’t take it for granted; a newspaper I once helped edit got bought by a chain, its staff gradually lost the local people, and a former editor started an online site that wasn’t really about hard news, but mainly local features and sports. But those are things people wanted to read about, and they had a personal acquaintance with the publisher, so his site took off – and the local paper, once one of the best in the state, now has one of the lowest household penetrations in the state, about 30 percent.

In that story, of course, there’s a reference to another strength of most community newspapers: community connections. They help you understand your community, its needs, its wants, and its preferences. But they may also restrain your journalism, and you have to be careful about that. Always remember you are a public servant.

And in the age of social media, where many community conversations occur, you need to be part of those conversations, and your paper needs to have a presence. You must be where your audience is. They can provide story ideas and sources. And if they are participating in the news, that can make them advocates for your paper.

This doesn’t have to be all that complicated, especially at small newspapers, where many of you are surely doing these things already. But I think it needs to be part of your fundamental approach to our journalism.

And more than ever, that journalism needs to be good.

Just about every manager in journalism or the news business realizes the importance of unique local content. That is nothing new to this crowd; unique local content is the main reason community journalism has been the healthiest part of the traditional news business. But now that you are in competition with every other information source, that content has to be quality content.

Newspapers need to step up their game and prove their value to their communities. That means fresh and helpful enterprise stories, with good storytelling that gives readers information an perspectives new to them. It means real watchdog journalism, which send the message: “We’re important to you because we’re looking out for your interests.”

You’ve got to take on the local bullies. Here’s just one example, from Texas: The Weatherford Democrat found that the county judge had hired his mistress, first as an office manager and assistant, though she was unqualified (no high-school diploma, and lied about it on the application), then gave her a raise and made her head of the emergency medical service.

Bill Ketter, the news vice president for CNHI, which owns the paper, shared with me a note from editor James Walker, who told him, “Circulation folks just told me that we had a guy renew his subscription this morning and urged us to “please, please keep covering our crooked judge.”

Quality journalism also means being careful, ethical, fair and respectful, especially on social media. You may not have any substantial competition for local news, but increasingly there are blogs and sites, groups and individuals, who have it in for you, or at least want to hold YOU accountable.

So, back to that old saying: There’s more than one way to do things. Each market is at least a little but different, but I think I’ve laid out a few principles, strategies and tactics to follow to make sure your community journalism has a bright future: Keep public service at the top of your mind, engage with your audience, defend journalism, prove your value by giving your neighbors coverage they can get nowhere else, and make sure that is quality coverage.

It’s a pleasure to be with you this evening. If I can help you, let me know. My short job description is “extension agent for rural journalists.” Good luck in your work!

 

 

Categories
the future of community journalism

New research study on issues facing community newspapers is worth reading

This column is usually about issues that rural newspapers can and should cover, but if you’re a rural editor or publisher, you have an issue of your own: adapting to the digital age.

The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism is exploring how technology is changing journalism and the news business, and recently interviewed more than 50 “experts from across the publishing industry, academia, and foundations” (I was one) to answer the question: How are small-market newspapers responding to digital disruption?

The first step in answering that query should be understanding that the conventional industry definition of “small market” – circulation under 50,000 – is a blunt instrument that avoids the distinctions among dailies, many of which have circulations under 10,000; weeklies, some of which exceed 10,000; and the diversity of rural America. To their credit, that is essentially the first finding listed by researchers Christopher Ali and Damian Radcliffe in their Nov. 15 report.

“We need to talk about the experience of local newspapers in a more nuanced manner,” they write. “There is a plurality of experience across the newspaper industry, not to mention across small-market newspapers operating in different towns across the United States. Overgeneralization about the newspaper sector loses important perspectives from smaller outlets.”

One pitfall of that overgeneralization is the widespread notion that newspapers are dying, and the researchers say “The newspaper industry needs to change the ‘doom and gloom’ narrative that surrounds it. . . . Outlets need to be honest with their audiences about the challenges they face, but they can also do more to highlight their unique successes, continued community impact, and important news value.”

I think community newspapers can reasonably assert that they are essential to local democracy and fostering a sense of community, and are the strongest part of the traditional news business, retaining a much larger share of their audience than metropolitan papers have in the last decade. The researchers don’t go that far, writing, “Local newspapers may be in a stronger position than their metro cousins.” (Emphasis added.)

The distinction may lie in the differences among communities, and between dailies and weeklies. Small dailies seem to have had a tougher time competing lately for several reasons; for example, many are close to larger dailies and serve communities that are covered by television stations, and many are owned by publicly held corporations or venture-capital firms that are more likely to put shareholders ahead of community service than local, independent owners.

Such ownership is less common among weeklies, few of which have TV competition and enjoy a local-news franchise that digital operations have not greatly invaded (though I do cite one example in the article, at http://bit.ly/2jteYSq). As the researchers note, community newspapers “experienced notable resilience thanks in part to exclusive content not offered elsewhere, the dynamics of ultra-local advertising markets, and an ability to leverage a physical closeness to their audience.”

But the health of a newspaper also depends on the health of its community, and almost half of America’s rural counties are losing population, as we reported on The Rural Blog at http://bit.ly/2AZ5KB3. That phenomenon is undermining many rural papers, and even in places where population is holding steady or growing, papers face challenges of change in local advertising markets.

The researchers write: “Although local businesses may be more likely to retain traditional analog advertising habits, the increasing homogeneity of our consumer experience (manifest, for example, in the rise of Amazon and Walmart) is reshaping local advertising markets. As local businesses are replaced by larger national chains with national advertising budgets, this reduces local newspapers’ advertising pools.” Walmart is infamous among newspapers for spending very little of its ad budget with them.

One point Ali and Radcliffe don’t mention is that many rural counties are becoming bedroom communities, which undermines commuters’ local connections. My research has found that the longer the commute, the less likely rural Kentucky residents are to subscribe to the newspaper where they live.

Like their metropolitan counterparts, “Small-market newspapers are experimenting with multiple means for generating revenue, including paywalls, increasing the cost of print subscriptions, the creation of spin-off media service companies, sponsored content, membership programs, and live events,” the researchers write. And they report that more papers are charging for obituaries.

Many such experiments are driven by corporate owners, but “There is no cookie-cutter model for success in local journalism,” the researchers write. “Each outlet needs to define the right financial and content mix for itself. This may seem obvious, but during our interviews some editors whose papers are part of larger groups were critical of corporate attempts to create templates—and standardize approaches—that remove opportunities for local flexibility.”

The report notes my concern that too many rural newspapers depend on single-copy sales rather than subscriptions, which may lead to sensationalizing front pages to generate sales and leave the papers more vulnerable to upstart competition, perhaps making them more editorially timid when it comes to local issues.

The comprehensive report deals with social media and other digital details, the changing nature of journalists’ jobs and their craft, and how small-market newspapers can prepare for the future. It’s a highly valuable report that should be read not only by publishers and editors, but by their staffs.

Any good piece of research recommends further research. Ali and Radcliffe note the lack of “a regular detailed census of local newspapers, split into different sub-markets, to understand and map a more holistic picture of the U.S. newspaper industry. Unfortunately, many existing surveys are being rolled back, meaning that our knowledge of this space will diminish unless others step in.”

Our Rural Blog item on the study, with links to it and a sidebar study, is at http://bit.ly/2AiSnQ0. If you do or see stories that belong on The Rural Blog, email me at [email protected].

Categories
community issues rural journalism

Community newspapers needed to provide a voice for rural America

A year ago this month, Donald J. Trump surprised most of the world and probably himself by winning the presidential election. He couldn’t have done it without rural America.

The numbers in the exit polls were clear.  Trump won 62 percent of the rural vote, more than any modern president.  And here’s the statistic that shows just how rural his victory was: If you divide up the vote by the rural continuum of the Department of Agriculture – which has nine steps, from most rural to most urban – the smaller a place’s population, the stronger its vote for Trump, with one very small exception inside the error margin.

Trump’s percentage continued a recent trend of Republicans winning more and more of the rural vote. The biggest gain was actually made when Mitt Romney ran, but rural turnout was down significantly in 2012, especially among Democrats, so that boosted Romney’s percentage. But there was a better rural turnout in 2016 – and that was a key to Trump’s victory in the big swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

That surge in turnout, and rural America’s choice of a man who is probably our most urban president ever, suggest that some big and bad things have been going on in our rural communities – some things that made them vote for him.

There are many was to measure those things, but the most important may be the simplest: Each year from 2012 through 2016, fewer people lived in rural America than the year before. Those losses were pretty small, but there had never been a decline in the total number of rural people, just in the rural percentage of the U.S. population.

Rural America is losing population mainly because it lost, during the Great Recession, jobs and businesses that have not come back. One year ago, employment in metropolitan areas was almost 5 percent higher than in the first quarter of 2008, the official start of the recession. But outside metro areas, employment was about two and a half percent less.

We have seen that decline all over rural America, in closed factories, vacant storefronts and streams of workers commuting to more urbanized places. In many places, there is also a social and cultural decline, indicated by above-average drug use and divorces, poor health, increasing mortality rates among middle-aged whites, and a workforce that shrinks as disability payments expand. The Wall Street Journal did a good job documenting this several months ago in a package that said the statistics of rural America resemble those of inner cities 30 years ago.

This isn’t just about statistics.  It’s about feelings, which are usually more influential in an election.  In rural America, there is a documented resentment of urban elites, including the news media — reflecting a feeling that rural areas aren’t getting a fair shake from government and its trade deals, and are looked down upon.

So, onto this landscape strode a brash billionaire whose TV reality show and business career had made him a household name, offering few specifics but promising to “make America great again” and acting as a tribune for disaffected people who were hungry for a politician who would improve their daily lives. In more than 40 years of covering politics, I have never seen a candidate who generated the reaction, depth of support and enthusiasm as Donald Trump, especially in rural areas.

There were half a million more rural votes last year than in 2012. In urban areas, there were two and a half million fewer votes. That second number illustrates the low enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton.

Some have also argued that Trump’s victory had a lot to do with race and ethnicity, and there was evidence of that in rural areas, mainly dealing with immigration.

Rural Midwestern towns that have attracted many more immigrants—particularly Latinos—were Trump strongholds in the primaries and caucuses.  Just before the general election, Gallup polls showed Trump doing well in racially isolated white communities, and the pollsters concluded that Trump voters in those places appeared to be less motivated by economic concerns than by issues of race, ethnicity and immigration. Other researchers before and after the election came to the same conclusion about the national vote.

One thing last year’s election did was wake up a lot of national journalists to the problems of rural America. The Wall Street Journal is not the only national news outlet that’s paying more attention to rural places and their problems. My friend Chuck Todd of NBC said on election night, as Trump began to win, “Rural America is basically screaming at us, ‘Stop overlooking us!’”

So, rural issues should get more attention, especially with a president who owes his victory partly to rural America. But politicians sometimes have to be reminded who they owe, and I think that is the case with rural America, because it is so diverse – too diverse to have a strong lobby that speaks for it.

Agriculture interests can help, but they can also hurt, by focusing more on increasing farmers’ wealth and just paying lip service to the needs of rural communities. There is a bipartisan Congressional Rural Caucus, but it has only 43 members – almost exactly 10 percent of the House of Representatives. Rural America is 15 percent of the population, and it needs a stronger voice. Rural newspapers could help provide it.

 

Categories
Branding Newspaper management

Newspaper mottoes and slogans: Helping to brand your editorial product

Does your newspaper have a motto? Or a slogan? Do you know the difference?

Mottoes, slogans and marketing pitches were common in the days when most big newspapers had competition, as they tried to give themselves a distinguishing character. As the big newspaper markets became monopolized, there was less need for them, but now, when every information source competes for audience with every other source, even in small towns, slogans and mottoes are worth reviving, and some papers are doing it.

The Washington Post’s nameplate got an underline on Feb.: the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” That’s the most prominent example of newspapers adding a promotional explanation of what they do or what they stand for. Two papers from Warren Buffett’s BH Media Group have similar slogans: The Bristol Herald Courier says it offers “Truth. Accuracy. Fairness” and the Omaha World-Herald says it is “Real. Fair. Accurate.”

Such slogans or mottoes are needed at a time when the very idea of independent, professional journalism is under attack from the highest levels of government and partisan media. Print circulation is down, but newspapers still have broad audiences and provide most of the accountability journalism that the writers of the First Amendment had in mind. Slogans and mottoes can not only remind the public of newspapers’ importance, but remind newspaper staff of ideals and principles they should follow.

Executive Editor Marty Baron’s “first principle” for the Post staff is “Tell the truth as nearly as it may be ascertained.” He said the paper started working on a slogan before the last election, “trying to come up with some words that would capture the essence of our mission in a way that you might even put it on a T-shirt. We had a lot of ideas and it was all over the place.” The choice was made by new owner Jeff Bezos; Baron told me he thought the line was “a little dark.” Yes, but it displays nicely in the reverse type the Post uses on its mobile site. The line had been used by Bob Woodward, the Post associate editor who as a reporter with Carl Bernstein broke open the Watergate scandal.

What’s the difference?  The Post’s slogan brought to mind other newspaper mottoes or slogans, many at rural or community newspapers, and I wrote about it on The Rural Blog recently. The blog post is at http://bit.ly/2f1cWqs. It linked to an explanation of the difference between a motto and a slogan; here’s a capsule version:

A motto contains a belief or an ideal that can serve as a guiding principle and the identity of a newspaper. The Amarillo Globe-News still uses a saying coined by publisher Gene Howe, who died in 1952: “A newspaper may be forgiven for lack of wisdom, but never for lack of courage.”

Slogans can serve the same purpose, but tend to be simpler and catchier, and used more as marketing tools. The best are those that serve not only as a slogan for the public, but a motto, perhaps implicit, for the staff. One of my favorites is used by The Blackshear Times, a Georgia weekly: “Liked by many, cussed by some, read by them all.”

Some slogans or mottoes are implicit, as in the simple warning of hard-nosed editorial policy at the Aspen (Colo.) Daily News: “If you don’t want it printed, don’t let it happen.”

Whether you call it a motto or a slogan matters less than having a line that accurately describes your newspaper. The most common slogans for rural papers are like the one used by the Mason Valley News in Nevada: “The only newspaper in the world that gives a damn about Yerington.” It’s a natural; most newspapers’ reason for existence is to publish news of their locality, and in most cases they own that franchise. The Greene County Democrat in Alabama, which competes with the Greene County Independent, puts it more subtly: “Serving Greene County Like No Other Newspaper.”

Some mottoes are blunt and simple, like that of The Star in Johannesburg, South Africa: “Tell it like it is.” Another conveys the same principle, but in more friendly, flowery fashion. It was written by British poet and politician Lord Byron (1788-1824): “Without or with offense to friends or foes, we sketch your world exactly as it goes.” Andrew Jackson Norfleet adopted it when he founded The Times Journal in Russell Springs, Ky., in 1949. The weekly still posts it on its editorial page.

Another idea: Speaking of editorial pages, that’s where newspapers can best explain who they are, even if they don’t have regular editorials.

If I were a newspaper editor again, my paper’s home page would have a button called “How We Work,” taking readers to a policy statement on the editorial page, explaining our editorial philosophy, policies such as correcting errors and separating news from opinion, a call for readers to let us know when we fall short, and a link to The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, with a few examples, such as:

Our first obligation is to the truth, not in an absolute, philosophical or scientific sense, but “the truths by which we can operate on a day-to-day basis;” and the essence of journalism is a discipline of verification, using an objective method. The authors explain: “Being impartial or neutral is not a core principle of journalism. Because the journalist must make decisions, he or she is not and cannot be objective. But journalistic methods are objective.” I doubt most readers understand those important distinctions, so we need to explain them at every opportunity. They need to know we’re on their side, and how we work.

Categories
Fake News media criticism

A community journalism response to the ‘fake news’ phenomenon

In a challenging environment with fewer resources, greater vulnerabilities and increasing attacks from politicians and the politically motivated, how should news organizations respond? One editor-publisher’s approach — a calm, respectful but strong defense of journalism and its essential role in democracy — seems to work.

Brian Hunt, editor and publisher of the Walla Walla (Wash.) Union-Bulletin, circ. 16,000, gave a speech at the local library and boiled it down to a 2,400-word column in the May 7 edition, headlined “Community journalism in the era of fake news.” We excerpted it on The Rural Blog at bit.ly/2rxLqCi, and you can read the entire original at bit.ly/2sQtB5k.

Hunt begins by explaining that fake news “is as old as communication itself. . . . What is newer historically are the advertiser-driven platforms and technologies that now enable information to accelerate and expand without regard to any formal vetting or verification.”

With technology and consumer data held by Google, Facebook and other advertising-driven platforms, “Truth matters less today than reach,” Hunt says. “The content that wraps around these ads doesn’t need to be true, it just needs to be able to entice us to click. And we really click, motivated in part by our very human desire to improve ourselves and to belong to something. . . . They know what persuades us as individuals and they can easily help us sort ourselves into very small groups of like-minded groups. What could go wrong?”

A tribal and divisive politics, for one thing. “I don’t want to paint social media as the enemy of truth,” Hunt says. “It’s not — though a business model focused exclusively on serving ads based on our likes does present challenges in terms of what is true and what is merely effective. . . . We all gravitate to information that feels like it fits our perspective. It’s human nature. Fake news stories — like spam emails that preceded them — work because they can cheaply exploit known human behavior.”

Hunt gives a short history of journalism and explains: “As journalists, we are trained in critical thinking. In looking at all sides of an issue. In separating our personal feelings from the work of telling true and balanced stories that enable readers to make up their own mind. The rise of objective journalism had a dramatic impact on the news media – and in our world. The advent of the advertiser-funded internet particularly, and the scale at which broadcast news outlets proliferated and extended themselves, is a new wild west of information dissemination. So how do we navigate the vast amounts of information we encounter to ensure that what we read and what we share are true?”

Hunt recommends the “Stop, Search, Subscribe” motto of the News Media Alliance, formerly the Newspaper Association of America, but acknowledges, “What is true or false may not be as enticing as “our desire to believe in something shared.”

He gives examples: “The president of the United States declares the press the enemy of the people. In our valley, we drive by billboards that vilify our reporters and editors. Fake news accusations are now common for stories that don’t suit a particular audience, true or not. We’re increasingly intolerant about information we don’t like, for sides of the argument that disagree with our side. For community newspapers such as the U-B, this loss of collective understanding and tolerance threatens the very sense of a shared and diverse community.”

After Donald Trump was elected, “I began hearing from readers who seemed confused about what was published as a news story and what was published as a personal opinion column or an editorial — definitions that newspapers have relied on for decades are suddenly not widely understood,” Hunt says. “This became a small wave of complaints that national political coverage in the U-B did not match reader expectations — they knew things we didn’t include, and they often disbelieved what we did include.”

Hunt gives examples of the extreme without being judgmental: “I’ve been challenged on why we include people of color in our newspaper. I’ve heard from readers who question why, when two-thirds of our region voted for Trump, the U-B would ever publish anything remotely critical of his presidency. I learn things in these conversations. Most notably, the people I speak with are not unaccomplished, not unintelligent, not uncaring.  We know these people. You know these people. Fake news and the isolated intolerance that can feed it gets to us all.”

Such challenges to newspapers “threaten to eat away at the core of what makes us communities,” Hunt says. “Strong communities support good community newspapers, and strong community newspapers support good communities. That’s the best way I know to show how much we depend upon each other. How much benefit we can together achieve. For that, I hope you are all subscribers, that you encourage others to be subscribers. And that you continue to challenge us to be the best community newspaper we can be.”

So, how did Hunt’s column go over?

In an email to The Rural Blog, he said reaction “has, for the most part, been positive/understanding, with a fair amount of surprise around the idea that the bitterness and intolerance of our national politics does indeed have real local impact.” He also said, “I have to believe many rural papers are in the same boat.”

There is evidence the column had a positive impact, Hunt said: “a dramatic slow-down in complaints/stops based on the perception that we’re too liberal. . . . Stories that are perceived to reflect on Trump as a person seem to generate the most outcry. The policy actions, health care debate, etc. have not.”

Hunt’s column indicates that he knows and respects his readers. He mentioned Trump, but he did it factually, and he avoided attacking any politician, faction or institution. He explained journalism’s role in democracy and community, and subscribers’ increasingly important role in the news business. Every newspaper’s audience is different, but Hunt provides a good example for other editors and publishers.

Categories
political coverage

Help in localizing the health care debate

The debate over changes to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is especially significant to rural areas, and The Rural Blog has several stories that can help inform your local coverage.

Obamacare’s private-insurance options are on life support in much if not most of rural America. A third of counties, mostly rural, had only one insurer offering Obamacare plans for this year, and that lack of competition made the plans more expensive. That was also true even in areas with two Obamacare insurers, a study found, as we reported on it at http://bit.ly/2qedXLV.

As Congress debated what to do in late May, the Trump administration was asking for more time to decide whether to continue cost-sharing subsidies that help lower-income people pay Obamacare deductibles and copayments. State insurance departments are letting insurance companies delay filing their plans, and rural areas could be hit hard if Congress and the administration “don’t send signals that they’re committed to keeping Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces stable,” reported The Hill, which covers Congress. With our pickup item, we ran a map showing the number of Obamacare insurers in every county. Get it at bit.ly/2q5eQeC.

The bill drafted by House Republicans “would largely hurt people in areas where coverage is high, predominately rural areas where there are few hospitals or few insurers, The New York Times reported in March. The bill passed in May differed little from the original on those points, so the story and the Kaiser Family Foundation map we ran with it are still good references. See them at bit.ly/2qPcoYK.

Obamacare has covered fewer people through subsidized private insurance than through expansion of Medicaid, which the Supreme Court made optional for states, not mandatory. The expansion probably saved some rural hospitals in states that expanded Medicaid, and probably led to those closure of some in states that didn’t. We’ve had many items about rural hospitals on The Rural Blog, which is searchable; one with a good explanation of the issue is at bit.ly/2qPxIxb.

Other health issues

The opioid epidemic is worst in rural America, which depends more on non-physicians to provide primary health care, but most states don’t let them use a federal license to prescribe a potentially life-saving medicine for opioid addiction “unless they are working in collaboration with a doctor who also has a federal license,” Stateline reported. Half of all counties in the U.S., mainly in rural areas, “do not have a single physician with a license to prescribe buprenorphine.” Read the story at bit.ly/2qeh0np.

The opioid epidemic appears to be making suicide more common, and suicide rates are increasing faster in rural areas than in metropolitan areas, according to a federal study. We excerpted it at bit.ly/2qJswKQ.

Suicide is a leading cause of death among teenagers, and that was a focus of a 13-part Netflix series, “13 Reasons Why,” based on the novel of the same name. In it, 13 people receive messages from a teenage girl who committed suicide, detailing how they played a part in her decision. The National Association of School Psychologists recommended that “vulnerable youth, especially those who have any degree of suicidal ideation,” not watch it. The Washington Post reported on a group of high-school students in Michigan who responded to the series with a project, “13 Reasons Why Not,” and we picked it up at bit.ly/2qPbcon.

Nutrition is a big factor in health, and many school-nutrition directors were happy to hear that new Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue relaxed some of the Obama administrations rules for school meals. The changes delayed another reduction in the amount of salt allowed in meals, gave states the ability to allow some schools to serve fewer whole grains, and allowed schools to serve 1 percent milk rather than only nonfat milk. See bit.ly/2rbvx88.

Trade, agriculture, rural jobs

Perdue appeared to play a key role in persuading President Trump not to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement, but to renegotiate it with Mexico and Canada. That was good news for farm interests that depend on exports. As those lobbies asked for protection in the negotiations, Perdue’s USDA ran against Trump’s anti-trade theme and actively promoted the value of agricultural trade to the U.S. We wrote about it at bit.ly/2qPle8W.

Cattle farmers suffering from lower prices got good news in May, when the administration cut a trade deal with China to allow U.S. exports of beef, 13 years after a case of mad-cow disease prompted the Chinese to block them. In return, the U.S. will find ways to allow Chinese cooked poultry to be exported to the U.S. It’s big news in farm and ranch country, and we picked it up at bit.ly/2qJgjWA.

Trump’s special assistant on agriculture, trade and food assistance told reporters that the White House’s new Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity would focus on agriculture because it’s “the No. 1 driver in these rural communities.” However, the Daily Yonder noted that agriculture is not the top economic sector in rural areas. The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, which ranks seven rural economic sectors, says agriculture is fifth in earnings and sixth in jobs. The Yonder also ran a county-level map of dominant economic sectors, and we picked it up at bit.ly/2rbnBE1.

Some states are enacting policies to generate or keep jobs in rural areas, such as tax credits for investment. Critics say such laws have failed to deliver, with investors profiting from the deals even if the businesses they fund never create a job, Stateline reported. We picked it up at bit.ly/2qJiidj.

Rural areas sometimes lose jobs because local business owners can’t find the right buyer or successor when they want to retire. A growing number of services match rural entrepreneurs nearing retirement with younger people looking to run a business, Forbes reported. Read it at bit.ly/2rvmHSA.

If you see news with rural resonance that should be on The Rural Blog, email me at [email protected].

Categories
Community Journalism

How newspapers can set themselves apart in a crowded information market

Last month’s blogpost was a warning that the attack on journalism by certain actors on the public stage is having an effect on community newspapers, and that social media are driving readers to spend more time with national news than with local news. How can community papers can adapt to this radically changed news landscape?

To survive, newspapers must stop thinking of themselves as being in the newspaper business, or even in the news business; you’re in the information business, competing with all other sources of information for people’s time and attention – even if you are the only newspaper in your market.

Increasingly, rural communities have become bedroom communities, and the longer a commute someone has to work, the less likely they are to read their local newspaper, according to research by Eastern Kentucky University and the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. The ubiquity of information through smartphones means you have to be where your readers are, and that means mobile.

The new landscape requires us to operate on multiple platforms. Your newspaper’s website should be attracting most of its traffic from social media. If it’s not, you’re probably not getting enough traffic.

And we need to be on social-media platforms not just to drive traffic, but to help people understand the difference in social media and the news media.

We also need to stop saying “the media” when we mean “the news media,” in order to distinguish ourselves from actors in the media who are more about opinions and an agenda than about facts and public service.

And we need to stop using “the media” as a singular noun. It’s more plural than ever, and it’s important for readers to understand that. The media are. And they are many different things.

If we don’t distinguish ourselves from our competitors in the information market, we are lost. The fundamental difference in social media and news media are a discipline of verification, as defined in The Elements of Journalism, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel.

Those elements have shifted a bit, but not substantially, in the new landscape of journalism. They are a guide not only for journalists as we do our work, but for citizens to understand how we work and why we do what we do.

Here are the elements, which would make a good standing box or filler on your editorial page, with a brief explanation of each:

Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth – not to some absolute or philosophical truth, but practical truth “by which we can operate on a day-to-day basis.” And that includes being transparent about sources and methods, so readers can make fully informed judgments.

Its first loyalty is to citizens – not to the bottom line of whoever is publishing the journalism. In the current environment, this test may be the most difficult for some publishers.

Its essence is a discipline of verification – not objectivity, which is rarely achievable because we are human beings, but objectivity of method: testing the truth of information so our biases don’t get in the way.

Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover – not pure neutrality, but an arm’s-length relationship that keeps our essential independence from being compromised.

It must serve as an independent monitor of power – not just keeping an eye on government, but on all facets of society, including business and nonprofit organizations.

It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise – not just offering an outlet for discussion, but improving the quality of the debate with verified information.

It must strive to keep significant things interesting and relevant – in other words, making readers want to read the news that they need to read. This is more important than ever in the new age.

It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional – an even more challenging task when competing for time and attention, but all the more important to build and maintain confidence and trust.

Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience – speak out against poor journalism, and allow others to do so.

Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities – to be responsible on social media. That may be too much to hope for, but if we ask them to be, that’s reminder that information needs to be more about facts than opinion.

While we need to do a better job explaining ourselves, ultimately we will not be judged on the arguments we make, but by the work that we do: reporting news that’s important and relevant, and more.

Even if you successfully compete in the information business, that’s not really enough to be a complete community newspaper.

You also have to be in the deliberation business. Deliberation is how democratic societies make decisions, and one of the best forums for deliberation is the newspaper – an editorial page with lots of letters.

And, ultimately, you also need to be in the leadership business, because there are times when a newspaper must take a stand and lead its community in what it thinks is the right direction it needs to go.

Nothing else in a community can do these three things as well as a newspaper, and now is the time to do it better than ever. Make yourself essential.

In your quest for people’s time and attention, you are also competing with other media for readers’ confidence and trust, which drive time and attention. Be worthy of that trust.

Categories
Community Journalism Credibility

Distrust of national media may affect the credibility of local newspapers

Trust in “the mass media, such as newspapers, TV and radio” in polls taken by the Gallup Organization was at 32 percent last year, the lowest ever – and was significantly lower than the 40 percent recorded in 2015.

Rural newspapers have often presumed that such trends don’t affect them, because they’re in closer touch with smaller communities, where readers know the people at the paper. That is not as safe an assumption as it once was, based on some events, trends and issues we’ve reported lately in The Rural Blog.

For example, a Feb. 5-6 Emerson College poll of registered voters, weighted to reflect turnout in the 2016 election, found them evenly divided about the Trump administration’s truthfulness, but by 53 to 39 percent, they considered the news media untruthful.

The Pew Research Center found in early 2016 that there was little difference in the trust of local and national news outlets. About 22 percent of Americans said they trust local news outlets a lot, and 18 percent said that of national news sources. Recently, rural and community journalists have voiced concern that the attacks on “big media” are hurting “little media,” too.

One is Mark Smith, editor of the Davenport Times in Lincoln County, Washington, just west of Spokane, who was a minister for 14 years. He told columnist Sue Lani Madsen of The Spokesman-Review that the current atmosphere reminds him of the 1980s scandals involving televangelists, which “forced him to defend his profession at a local level,” Madsen wrote, quoting him: “There is the same sense now that if one media source is bad, they all are.”

Madsen wrote, “He believes he’ll weather the fake news and biased-media storm because he’s built relationships in the community to establish trust and credibility. . . . It’s tougher to build trust and credibility, to make that human connection, as the circle gets larger.” You can read the rest of our story on The Rural Blog at http://bit.ly/2nYe9y2.

At the state level, local newspapers still have influence, but in some states the anti-media political atmosphere is threatening them. Tom Larimer, executive director of the Arkansas Press Association, wrote that he believed a rash of bills to limit government transparency was fueled by “anti-media sentiment in Washington, D.C.” Our blog item is at http://bit.ly/2n2n8yS.

 Attacks on traditional news media and the new dominance of sola media have left people in rural areas disconnected from the facts about national issues, the president of the Kentucky Press Association said at a Society of Professional Journalists forum in Lexington Feb. 23.

“You have people who do not trust anything outside of their own bubble, their own county, their own city,” said Ryan Craig, publisher of the Todd County Standard in Elkton, for nine years the state’s top small weekly.

Craig said he occasionally posts national news stories on Facebook and is asked how he knows they are true.

“I have to tell them … ‘You live in this very rural bubble, and the algorithms for Facebook that you keep popping on all the time have pretty well rules out what I consider balanced journalism that comes into your life.’ The only balanced journalism … they may get is a regional or statewide newspaper, or a local newspaper, and maybe something off the Nashville television stations.”

Craig said he hears people say they read his newspaper, President Trump’s Twitter feed and the Facebook pages of their Republican governor and congressman. “They consider that their news source,” he said. “The problem is, nobody’s asking the source if what they’re saying is even so.” The rest of our blog item about the event is at http://bit.ly/2nYf2qu.

Social media limit our exposure to different viewpoints and hurt democracy and journalism, Harvard University law professor and author Cass Sunstein says in his new book, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media. You’ll hear more about the book; you can read our blog item about it at http://bit.ly/2nMhWiG.

Social media’s focus on national news has hurt mid-major newspapers. “There is so much more national and international news available to people, it has changed what people are interested in,” Tom Rosenstiel, director of the American Press Institute, told The Guardian. During the election, “I saw clear and distinct evidence that people were consuming more national news and less local.” We picked up the story at http://bit.ly/2nEEYv4.

In a speech at the University of Kentucky, Rosenstiel said news media need to adjust to the age of social media, but can do so without compromising their principles. The co-author of The Elements of Journalism showed how each element has been affected by the new environment and how journalists and their audiences can adapt. You can read our write-up at http://bit.ly/2nMphPf.

One essential element of journalism is what Rosenstiel and co-author Bill Kovach call “the discipline of verification,” which social media lack. Traditional media can reinforce their journalistic brand and the public trust by explaining that, and showing audience how to spot “fake news” and discern facts from “alternative facts,” Danielle Ray of our staff wrote on The Rural Blog, at http://irjci.blogspot.com. Read her informative blog item at http://bit.ly/2mnohnJ.

If you do or see stories that are relevant across rural areas, please send them to me at [email protected].