Rural Newspapers Research Articles

Local Journalists as Brokers: Conceptualizing Information Relationships in Rural Communities

ABSTRACT This paper introduces the concept of brokerage to the scholarship of local news. Drawing on anthropological conceptions of actors that bridge gaps in social structure and help information flow across such gaps, we propose that local journalists act as cultural brokers in rural towns. Building upon Gould and Fernandez (1989, “Structures of Mediation: A Formal Approach to Brokerage in Transaction Networks.” Sociological Methodology 19:89. https://doi.org/10.2307/270949), we employ a typology of five brokerage functions to classify relationships between local journalists, their sources, and their audiences. In addition to coordinating, itinerant, representative, liaison, and gatekeeping brokerage, our analysis reveals a novel type of brokerage: relay brokerage. We argue that this typology is useful to conceptualize information relationships in rural communities and to understand how information flows change when local journalism ebbs. Empirically, the paper presents a comprehensive study of staffing at rural newspapers in Alberta, Canada, revealing that local media are stretched so thin in many geographic areas, there is little left to cut. For scholars, this simplified media ecosystem is an environment where relationships between reporters, sources, and audiences may be more easily analyzed.

Rural maternity and media discourse analysis: Framing new narratives.

Continued rural maternity closure across Australia has seen impacts on women and families such as financial pressures, quality and safety concerns, and emotional pressure. This review aimed at understanding how media coverage of rural maternity and closure are presented and what impact this may have on maternity service sustainability. This research seeks to examine media discourse and characteristics of online newspaper articles related to rural maternity services. A narrative review was conducted using thematic discourse analysis to examine online newspaper content published in Victoria, Australia from 2010 to June 2021. Local maternity services were a source of community interest for rural people. Coverage of negative outcomes for mothers and babies was highlighted by rural newspapers; however, increased content over the last 12-month period focused on community support for the sustainability of rural maternity services. Recent community support in newspaper articles coincided with maternity services reviews and retaining some of these rural services. Community support in media may provide a protective social pressure, leading rural health services to consider this when reviewing the sustainability or closure of rural maternity services. Media attention about sustaining local maternity services by highlighting issues and representing community voices may influence health executive to consider opportunities to remodel and sustain high-quality and safe maternity care in rural settings. Knowing how rural health executives consider media, community pressure, and how it impacts expediency of maternity service closure decisions is unknown and an important gap in knowledge to explore and understand.

Revenue & Readership: Rescuing & Reviving Rural Journalism

ABSTRACT Utilizing the theory of disruptive innovation, this study relies on dual surveys: one of publishers of rural newspapers in America, and the other of readers of rural newspapers in America. This work ascertains key differences and similarities between how the two groups consider various funding models for U.S. journalism. The survey probes how the two groups perceive the ability to fund journalistic organizations utilizing a variety of potential revenue streams. Key findings include a clear disconnect between what revenue streams publishers are willing to implement and what revenue streams readers are potentially willing to endorse.

Reporting a Rural Reality: A Case Study of an Agricultural Newspaper’s Series on the Rural Opioid Epidemic

Opioid drug abuse has created an epidemic recognized as a public health emergency in 2017, and the detrimental impacts of this epidemic have reached into rural America. When it comes to presenting information via the mass media, communications professionals serve as gatekeepers for what information is passed on to media consumers. Additionally, news organizations place certain degrees of importance upon issues through the amount of coverage dedicated to an issue. In late 2016, when the Farm and Dairy newspaper editorial staff decided to dedicate a vast amount of time and resources to covering Ohio and Pennsylvania’s rural opioid epidemic, a variety of questions and concerns followed. This complicated topic was largely unfamiliar and untraditional to agricultural communications. Concerns about how to research the topic, work with sources, and manage responses from stakeholders emerged at the onset, but motivations to increase awareness, reduce stigma, and instill hope in the midst of a rural opioid epidemic brought the series to fruition. This case study details the actions taken by those involved in the series and stakeholder reactions to a unique journalistic investigation from a rural newspaper. Discussion of recommendations for future research and curricular impacts are provided.

News coverage of the School Strike for Climate movement in Australia: the politics of representing young strikers’ emotions

ABSTRACT Since mid-2018, school students across the world have been leading mass strikes to demand strengthened political action on climate change. This article explores how young people’s political participation in the School Strike for Climate movement in Australia was represented in newspaper coverage over a 17-month period (August 2018–December 2019), with particular attention to the representation of young people’s emotions and actions. The analysis works with a corpus of 500 articles published in Australian national, state (New South Wales and Victoria), and a select sample of regional and rural newspapers. The corpus is read with affective-discursive attunement to historical representations of children and young people, the politics of emotion, and contemporary media representational politics surrounding climate justice activism. Four dominant characterisations of the young strikers are analysed: ignorant zealots, anxious pawns, rebellious truants, and extraordinary heroes. Alongside these characterisations, we consider how young people speak back to these characterisations, and draw implications for future research with young climate justice activists.

Charting the media innovations landscape for regional and rural newspapers

This article charts a scholarly framework for understanding media innovation in Australia’s non-metropolitan news environments. We adopt a geo-social methodology to explore strategies for the betterment of small country newspapers and the societies they serve in the digital era. In doing so, we do not discount the importance of digitization, but contend that a narrow ‘digital first’ focus is eclipsing other important aspects of local news and generating blind spots around existing and evolving power relationships that might impede or foster innovation. We advocate for a six-dimensional approach to shaping innovation for rural news organizations – one that is relational because it foregrounds the connections between digital, social, cultural, political, economic and environmental concerns. Here, the central question is not how country newsrooms can innovate in the interests of their own viability but rather how they can build resilience and relevance in the interests of the populations and environments that sustain them.

Syndicates Attempt to Sway Public Opinion as a ‘Silent Partner’ of the Country Press, 1900 to 1950

ABSTRACTThis article is an examination of the partnership between community weekly newspapers in the United States and national newspaper syndication services during the first half of the twentieth century. The syndication services provided editorial content for the community weekly, such as feature and news articles, commentary, illustrations, and advertisements, from a centralized, non-local source. Community weekly subscribers relied on syndication services for national and world reports. However, the question of whether or not readers enjoyed the national and world reports was not always as much of a concern to the publisher as was filling pages. Without syndicate materials, more staff would have to be hired, more supplies ordered, or new press equipment purchased. Thus, newspaper syndicates became the “silent partner” of the country press, writing and influencing the opinion of thousands of rural newspaper readers who were unaware of the source of much of their news.

The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots, and Class Conflicts in the American West by Mark A. Lause

Reviewed by: The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots, and Class Conflicts in the American West by Mark A. Lause Jeff Wells Mark A. Lause, The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots, and Class Conflicts in the American West. London: Verso, 2018. 304 pp. $29.95. The title of veteran working-class historian Mark A. Lause's The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots, and Class Conflicts in the American West refers to an 1883 strike by cowboys in the Texas Panhandle. The book, however, is not as narrow as its title suggests. This is a broad history of the American labor movement during the 1880s. The Great Cowboy Strike will be of interest to scholars of the Midwest and a variety of other fields, including readers interested in agrarian and labor organizing, Populism, and violence in the West. Lause applies Marxist analysis to his subjects. For example, when he confronts the mythology of the cowboy as a rugged individualist, he describes cowboys instead as "grossly underpaid and overworked agricultural laborers" (vii). But—thanks to his dogged research in long-neglected newspapers and histories published more than a century ago—the results herein are far from predictable. Lause makes an intriguing contribution to the ongoing debates on the origins of the Knights of Labor, Farmers' Alliance, and the Populist movement [End Page 156] by rescuing the Industrial Brotherhood from obscurity. In contrast to previous scholars, who have paid little attention to the Industrial Brotherhood, Lause observes that it expanded from Jasper County, Missouri, to become the "primary national organization of American labor between 1874 and 1878." (30). Joshua A. Bodenhamer, the publisher of the People's Press in Carthage, Missouri, launched the organization in 1874 after the Grange refused to expand its membership or engage in politics. Andrew Warner St. John, a schoolteacher and farmer near Carthage, used his affiliation with the group to emerge as a national labor leader. The Industrial Brotherhood, Lause argues, inspired the reorganization and reinvigoration of the Knights of Labor. Scholars of Populism contest whether the earliest origins of the Farmers' Alliance arose from the Texas-based southern Alliance or from the northwestern Alliance. The latter was organized in upstate New York but promoted by Milton George's Chicago-based Western Rural newspaper. Lause finds the roots of both regional Alliances in the Kansas Settlers' Alliance. As the Industrial Brotherhood grew across the border, D. G. Campbell, a Greenback leader and recent arrival from New York, sent material on the Settlers' Alliance back to his old home. A Farmers' Alliance soon flourished there, and information about the group eventually found its way to the Western Rural. Lause contends that other participants in the Settlers' Alliance followed the cattle trails south to Lampasas County, Texas, where the Knights of Reliance, a precursor to the Alliance, formed in 1875. Lause links the violence that framed the emergence of the Alliance in central Texas with the labor unrest that occurred a few years later near the Panhandle town of Tascosa. In the early 1880s, the cowboys that drove cattle from ranches on the Texas Panhandle to railroad stockyards in Kansas and Nebraska or to ranches on the northern range earned about $30 a month. In early 1883, as the big ranchers prepared to round up and send herds north, two dozen cowboys signed a strike call and demanded that their employers agree to their terms by March 31. The cowboys sought a monthly wage of $50 for hands and $75 for wagon bosses. The strike lasted two and a half months. Although there is no evidence that the ranchers recruited or hired strikebreakers, reports circulated that the strikers threatened violence against replacement cowboys. Newspapers, repeating information provided by the ranch owners, alleged that the strikers planned to burn ranches and cut fences. The employers intended that such reports and allegations would justify the use of the state's armed power. [End Page 157] In the end, the state did not send troops to end the strike, and there was no violence associated with it. Reports indicated that the strikers settled for a wage increase to $42.50 a month for hands. A year later, wagon bosses earned $75 a month. Although...

Stylistic features of rural print media in Ghana

Abstract Rural print media journalists in Africa tap into perceptions about their readers to produce newspapers. The evolving aesthetic perceptions of the rural print media in Ghana have in turn produced social domains of consumption and affiliation with the newspapers and print media. The style of Ewe-language newspapers produced in Ghana has generated different newspaper-reader affiliations and discursive spheres. This article examines some of the stylistic features of Ewe newspapers, investigating the way in which rural print media consumers and producers use these to articulate perceptions of the language domain of Ghanaian rural newspapers and print media.

Dead quiet in the hinterlands: the construction of workplace injuries in western Canadian newspapers, 2009–2014

ABSTRACTMedia reports profoundly misrepresent the nature of workplace injuries and fatalities in Canada. This study uses a new dataset comprising 409 urban and rural newspaper reports in western Canada to confirm the over-representation of fatalities, injuries to men, acute physical injuries, and injuries in blue-collar occupations found in earlier exploratory work. This misleading social construction of injuries may skew public policy and management decision-making about injury prevention. The study also confirms the existence of three key media frames: injuries are “under investigation,” “human tragedies,” and “before the court.” Together, these frames cast workplace injuries as isolated events that happen to “others” for which no one is responsible (except maybe the worker), thereby suggesting that the public need not be concerned about workplace safety. Contrary to expectations, no significant differences were found between the reporting of urban and rural newspapers.

Portrayal of the human resource crisis and accountability in healthcare: a qualitative analysis of ugandan newspapers.

BackgroundUganda is one of the 57 countries with a critical shortage of health workers. The aim of this study was to determine how the human resources and health service crisis was covered in Ugandan newspapers and, in particular, how the newspapers attributed accountability for problems in the health services.MethodsWe collected all articles related to health workers and health services for the calendar year 2012 in the two largest national newspapers in Uganda (collection on daily basis) and in one local newspaper (collection on weekly basis). These articles were analysed qualitatively regarding the main themes covered and attribution of accountability.ResultsThe two more urban national newspapers published 229 articles on human resources and health services in Uganda (on average over two articles per week), whereas the local more rural newspaper published only a single article on this issue in the 12 month period. The majority of articles described problems in the health service without discussing accountability. The question of accountability is raised in only 46% of articles (106 articles). The responsibility of the government was discussed in 50 articles (21%), and negligence, corruption and misbehaviour by individual health workers was reported in 56 articles (25%). In the articles about corruption (n=35), 60% (21 articles) mention corruption by health workers and 40% (14 articles) mention corruption by government officials. Six articles defended the situation of health workers in Uganda.ConclusionsThe coverage of accountability in the Ugandan newspapers surveyed is insufficient to generate informed debate on what political actions need to be taken to improve the crisis in health care and services. There exists not only an “inverse care law” but also an “inverse information law”: those sections of society with the greatest health needs and problems in accessing quality health care receive the least information about health services.

Big Food without big diets? Food regimes and Kenyan diets

Path-breaking scholarship has described how corporate control of food production and distribution is implicated in the global emergence of diets heavy in fats, meats and sugars. The ‘multinational food and beverage companies with huge and concentrated market power’ can be thought of as Big Food. Big Food’s presence in Kenya has expanded, and organizations have expressed concerns about the number of Kenyans who are obese. Despite these concerns, Kenya’s dietary profile does not show a clear picture of high fats, meats and sugars. This suggests that the structural factors that shape the organization of Kenya’s food supply need to be examined. By looking to the food regime approach, it is possible to understand how dietary patterns are a ‘reconstitution of material culture’, as trade arrangements shape diets in ways that make some foods seem traditional, while others appear to be new or exotic. By using the food regime approach, it is possible to understand how Kenya’s position in international trade influences food production and consumption, as well as how the Kenyan state has played a role in mitigating the Big Food diet. In this respect, the policies and practices that organize Kenyan diets are reflective of global-historical arrangements, but are also particular to Kenya. I base my argument on ethnographic research conducted in 2010 and 2014 in urban and rural areas, interviews, FAOSTAT statistics, scholarship, government documents, agency reports, newspapers and relevant food websites.

Issues of Rural Development in Mainstream Journalism: Exploring New Strategies for Media Intervention

The present study, which is in the form of a vision document, intends to explore alternative ways of linking up expanding media business with the rural development in such a way that both rural economy and media economy get entrenched into a win–win situation. In the process, the study offers an overview of how the print and electronic media have been consistently neglecting the coverage of rural issues that has resulted in the lopsided growth of Indian economy. The study further argues that extending support to rural issues/problems of development has become, for long, solely the job of government driven media without the participation of either public or private sector electronic media. A number of quantitative studies documented earlier only proved that the space devoted for the development journalism in the mainstream press was negligible compared to their marketing and industry coverage. While the success of rural newspapers has the dubious distinction of espousing the cause of rural India, a holistic approach to the problems of rural India is yet wanting on the media front. Grounded in qualitative communication research, the present study discursively endeavours to offer some strategies of expansion of media that offers new vistas of business and marketing for the media industry by converting the most important and burning issues of rural India into windows of inclusive growth and progress, besides bridging the digital divide between the rural and the urban India.

American Isolationism and The Political Evolution of Journalist-Turned-US Senator Gerald P. Nye

This article outlines the rise of the radical agrarian Nonpartisan League (NPL) press in North Dakota, focusing on NPL editor Gerald P. Nye, who took his Prairie-based populist platform and constituents' post-World War I anti-British sentiments to Washington, DC. There he effectively opposed active US participation in European and Asian wars as a US senator from 1925 to 1941. The article explores the intersection of journalism and politics through the development of Nye's isolationist ideology as a rural newspaper editor and his rise as a powerful political ideologue and advocate in the Senate.

Improving rural newspaper coverage of nutrition stories: an educational assessment of editors' attitudes and learning needs.

Local newspapers are an important source of information for rural residents but often lack accurate or helpful nutrition-related information. To improve the quantity and quality of nutrition stories in rural, local newspapers, it is important to understand the perspective of editors. An online survey of 51 rural Midwest editors was conducted to assess attitudes toward writing nutrition stories, sources of information, perceived challenges, and interest in learning more about writing such stories. Of respondents, 49% were female, and 63% had at least a 4-year college degree. Through a mix of closed- and open-ended questions, the majority indicated positive attitudes toward nutrition stories, were confident in their abilities to write them, and expressed interest in learning more. Challenges cited include lack of print space, small staff, lack of specific requests from readers for nutrition stories, and the need to avoid offending local agricultural businesses. Results should be useful in planning an educational intervention for editors. Meanwhile, public health practitioners should provide concise press releases to their local newspapers about their activities. Also, greater expressions of appreciation from public health professionals and other readers may lead to higher prioritization of nutrition-related stories, and ultimately to an environment more supportive of healthy eating.

The Rural Restaurant Healthy Options Program

Local media should be used to raise awareness of health promotion programs. In rural areas, local newspapers provide an opportunity to reach large numbers of residents. Although there are expert guidelines describing the process for successfully engaging local media, little has been documented regarding the range of responses that local, rural newspapers might have when approached about covering health promotion programs. This study describes the response of rural, local newspapers to a press release about a health promotion program taking place in 28 restaurants in different rural towns. The most common reason for not publishing a story was that it would constitute free advertising for the restaurant. Twenty-two stories were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The majority of the responding newspapers were weeklies, and 16 published the full press release verbatim. Three stories included photos, and five included quotes. Headlines typically included the name of the restaurant and the university partner. The overall response rate is encouraging; however, there is considerable room for improvement in terms of personalizing the story with photos or quotes. Greater efforts may be required to obtain this depth of coverage, including training for local journalists to increase their interest and confidence in covering health promotion issues.

A postal intervention for dependent cannabis users

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS. In Australia, many would-be treatment seekers for problematic cannabis use live in rural and remote areas, thereby limiting their access to face-to-face treatments. In order to address this gap in treatment availability, the present study aimed to assess the feasibility of a mail-based intervention for regular cannabis users. Treatment was based upon cognitive-behavioural and motivational interviewing principles, and consisted of six treatment modules posted fortnightly to participants. In addition to the standardised modules, participants received personalised feedback at four points, based upon their mailed-in responses to the modules. Participants were recruited via advertisements in rural newspapers and a Google advertisement. A total of 268 people expressed interest in this study and 36 participants went on to complete treatment. Treatment completers demonstrated a significant reduction in cannabis use at the 1 month follow-up. Transposing face-to-face treatments into a mailed format has shown some promise and future research is warranted to determine the efficacy of such treatments in a controlled study.

Rural student doctors top city colleagues: Representation of a rural clinical school in the rural press

To describe the way in which the rural press portrays a rural clinical school and its staff and students. Textual analysis of a collection of newspapers kept by the local campuses of the University of New South Wales Rural Clinical School (UNSW RCS). The UNSW established a RCS in January 2000. This study sampled a total of 225 articles from eleven rural newspapers, a collection held by the campuses of the rural clinical schools. The major themes of the articles were identified; the descriptive terms the newspaper articles used for medical students, the UNSW RCS and rural doctors were also identified. The way in which clinical schools, their staff and students, are portrayed in the rural press has the potential to influence recruitment and retention. The study showed that the rural press was strongly supportive of the rural clinical school in their local region. This was particularly true for medical students, the school itself and the potential impact on workforce. The newspapers provided information for future students, depicting work-experience programs and current students. They were less illustrative of current medical and academic staff, with the exception of the Head of School.

"The Undesirable Position": <i>Umpiring in the American Association 1882-1891</i>

From earliest years of baseball there is documentation that players and fans have never given much credit to those who assume what one rural newspaper once described as the undesirable position. By 1870s it was a high compliment to simply be considered an impartial umpire. This was due to fact that role of an umpire as an independent entity within game of baseball was yet evolving. Many were not far removed from playing field, knew those who did play, and were still seeking employment as players or managers. At same time there were others who saw themselves as advocates of fair play, and were innovative in developing conception of umpire's role and methods. Two Baltimore newspapers provide a glimpse of what it was like to umpire in major leagues in 1880s.In 1882 American Association was a fledgling major league, but its approach to offciating seemed somewhat informal. In April, umpire Thomas Carey made his debut and received a severe blow to throat from a foul ball while offciating a game in Baltimore. A month later, he was complimented for his complete impartiality, something that seemed exceptional to reporter. Within two weeks it was announced that Carey would manage Baltimore on its coming road trip, perhaps as a reward for his impartiality. By July it was reported that Association would select three first class umpires to be paid a good salary to offciate what they termed their championship games. Thomas Carey was one of them. Crossing line between arbiter and player was common in era.1The Association took a step to formalize situation in 1883. Ben Sommers, Charles Daniels, John Kelly, and J. Bucannon were named as umpires for season. They were to be paid $140 a month and their assistant $10 a game. There was no mention as to who assistants were, where they came from, what their roles were, or how often they actually worked. They are never mentioned in a game account and evidence suggests that until late in Association's existence, only one offcial worked a game. The umpires also had to pay for their offcial uniforms of blue-flannel, double-breasted jacket with a military cap trimmed with gold and buttons. Uniforms would be provided for assistants. It was also announced that any umpire could be expelled at request of two clubs. But any attempt to distance umpires from players and management was not immediately pursued.2Ormand Butler was appointed umpire in Association during 1883 season, but was soon hired to take place of manager Al Pratt of Pittsburgh Alleghenies. When John Magner resigned as an umpire a week later, it was Al Pratt who replaced him. In 1884 John Valentine had to temporarily relinquish his umpiring duties when he injured his leg practicing with Baltimore pitcher Bob Emslie. A year later, still an umpire, ex-pitcher Valentine announced his arm had recovered and he hoped to return to pitcher's box. When Orioles pitcher Bob Emslie's arm gave out next year, he gravitated to umpiring as well. Much maligned for his initial efforts, he went on to an extended career as a respected umpire in both American Association and National League. In 1886 manager John Gaffney of Washington Club announced he would step down from his position to umpire if they would raise their salaries from $1,000 to $2,000 a season. Gaffney would become one of he most sought-after and innovative arbiters in business. One-time Baltimore Orioles Tom York and Big Jim Davis would also surface as other former players umpiring in Association.3But former players lobbying to find jobs with major league clubs wasn't only factor that brought impartiality of umpires into question. In 1885 it was pointed out that rule that prevented umpires from borrowing money from Association clubs should be more strictly enforced.4It was rare for fans, clubs, or newspapers to perceive umpires in a flattering light. …

Women and male hegemony in Australian regional and country journalism

The Barcoo Independent newspaper is an example of an Australian rural newspaper which provided images of women in a variety of ordinary roles and as important members of the community. It is happened so because large number of female reporters involved in the writing of news stories for the editions.