BOSTON The growth of “news deserts” in Massachusetts and the possible solutions to improving local journalism in underserved communities will be the focus of a new commission approved in
The program also opened the application window for reporters to apply to become corps members in 2021.
Report for Americaâs support is adding more than 100 reporting positions and expanding to more than 200 newsrooms across the country, at a time when the impact of the coronavirus pandemic has decimated local news economically. The newly-selected newsrooms and beats include:
Southwest Times Record â Food insecurity around Fort Smith, Ark.
St. Louis American/Type Investigations â African-American businesses in the St. Louis area Â
WFYI Public Media â Criminal justice in central Indiana
Granite State News Collaborative â Statehouse coverage for 20 local newsrooms
Bozeman Daily Chronicle â Photographer covering rural Montana
The program also opened the application window for reporters to apply to become corps members in 2021.
Report for Americaâs support is adding more than 100 reporting positions and expanding to more than 200 newsrooms across the country, at a time when the impact of the coronavirus pandemic has decimated local news economically. The newly-selected newsrooms and beats include:
Southwest Times Record â Food insecurity around Fort Smith, Ark.
St. Louis American/Type Investigations â African-American businesses in the St. Louis area Â
WFYI Public Media â Criminal justice in central Indiana
Granite State News Collaborative â Statehouse coverage for 20 local newsrooms
Bozeman Daily Chronicle â Photographer covering rural Montana
local races. fewer and fewer reporters are vetting the candidates and finding out what they really stand for. and it s especially bad when you drive like an hour or two out of the big cities. many rural areas are news deserts. meaning they lack a local newspaper or sources. this is a brand-new map of news deserts. an effort led by former newspaper executive penny abernathy. her research shows the u.s. has lost almost 1,800 papers since 2004, and others are ghosts, shells of their former severals. abernathy has a unique perspective because she not only studies news deserts, she also lives in one. she moved back to scotland county, north carolina, where she grew up. a rural part of the state near the border and when she came home, she saw the changes. regional newspapers used to cover her county, but not really anymore. i asked her about it and how it affects the midterms. the fayetteville paper has
problem is really visible. there s more parts that are not served by local newspapers and barely by local tv stations. in big cities like philadelphia where i am today, there s daily papers, weekly papers. a lot of sources of news but if you head out an our in any direction, you get into these news deserts all across the country where papers have shut down or lay off a lot of staffers and as a result, you don t know who s running for a local judgeship or the country commissioner. i think as we head into a midterm election season, increasingly a problem that there are so many news deserts in the country where voters don t really know what s on the ballot. it still is very, very sad that there is this kind of slow death in a lot of newspaper publications across the country but then in these places where they don t have any newspapers, they don t have any local television news and probably not even radio either. so who or what is filling the void? it ends up being campaign ads