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What Journalism Can Do for Small Towns [1]

['Olivia Weeks']

Date: 2023-12-19

When I was in high school, my hometown paper closed. That was right around the time I started to care a lot about national politics and take an interest in local issues. I don’t think I was precocious enough to fantasize about a robust watchdog institution for my town, but the absence of a newspaper added to my sense that we were living in our own little realm, totally unknown to the rest of the world. In that universe, there were a lot of scams and scandals. It felt like anything could happen and nothing could be proven.

Today, the most reliable source for local news in my home region is The Southern Illinoisan, but it, too, is increasingly barebones. On the day after Thanksgiving this year, after it was acquired by Kentucky-based Paxton Media Group, the Southern fired all 10 of its unionized employees. Even before the layoffs, I found that most e-editions of the paper consisted of some glossy sports coverage, a few obituaries, and many, many pages of reprinted national news. That’s certainly not for a lack of local stories.

I’ve been bothered lately by my sense that, despite the constant presence of coal-industry nostalgia, southern Illinoisans have few ways of knowing how much active mining still goes on in the area (in 2021, more than 36 million tons of coal were mined in-state). So I’ve been on a personal mission to understand what the industry actually looks like today. But when you enter “coal” into the search bar of the Southern, most of the in-house articles are obituaries for long retired miners. The problem isn’t just that there’s no investigative unit paying attention to what goes on in the mines — it’s also that it’s exceedingly difficult to figure out which mines are even operating. It’s hard to describe the psychological toll that level of opacity has on a community (let me know if you think I should write a novel), but to me it seems at the heart of rural alienation from mainstream institutions.

At this point, I’ve seen clearly what journalistic attention can do for small towns. In the summer of 2020, I was lucky enough to land an internship at The Provincetown Independent. That nonprofit paper, launched just before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, serves a relatively wealthy population on outer Cape Cod, but the issues they cover mirror those of remote communities nationwide. Working there, I felt how transformative it could be for a small community to have a voice. The reporters at the Independent notice when an outer-Cape town government isn’t doing its job, and they notice when a local artist has a striking new exhibit.

Like the Independent, the Daily Yonder is an experiment. Old models for rural journalism aren’t working out. We’re trying new ones and sharing what works. We’re supporting high-quality coverage in towns that really need it — towns like the one I come from — through community-based fellowships, reporting grants, and by republishing and co-publishing stories from local newsrooms. It’s increasingly clear that traditional revenue models won’t support that kind of work in sparsely populated places.

Donations to the Yonder support these efforts, but they do something else, too: they show that rural Americans value their nonprofit news sources and have a hunger for good information. They help us do good work, and they encourage others to experiment and invest in new journalistic institutions in their own hometowns.

And, for two more weeks, your donations have a bigger impact, thanks to our end-of-year matching gifts and donor challenges. Don’t miss this opportunity to strengthen your support for rural news.

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Note, contributions from individuals are eligible to be matched up to $1,000 per donor from November 1 to December 31, 2023, to a combined total of at least $15,000, through the NewsMatch national-matching program. The Daily Yonder is eligible to receive an additional $10,000 in matching funds thanks to support from the Wyncote Foundation. These matching funds run concurrently, which means every dollar we raise, up to $10,000, is matched twice. Monthly recurring donations are matched at the 12-month value of the donation, up to $1,000. For more details about eligibility see NewsMatch guidelines.

The Daily Yonder is a project of the Center for Rural Strategies, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Gifts may be tax deductible; consult a tax adviser for more information.

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