Rural Prosperity Report

Center for
Rural Strategies
Revealing Rural Realities:

What Fuels Inaccurate and Incomplete
Coverage of Rural Issues?
REVEALING RURAL REALITIES: WHAT FUELS INACCURATE AND INCOMPLETE COVERAGE OF RURAL ISSUES? 1
A Note from the Authors
This research was conducted in the fall of 2019. Since then, the world has
changed as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Our health is at risk,
our lives have been upended, and longstanding, systemic issues affecting
the lives of millions have been laid bare for all to see—including those
facing rural regions and native nations in America.
As the pandemic continues, rural communities will likely face

unprecedented challenges as a result of more elderly people in their
communities, drastically limited access to hospitals and critical medical
supplies, higher rates of serious, chronic medical conditions, and
economies that are less diversified than urban communities—and that are
still not fully recovered from the 2009 recession. 1
And in the midst of it all, national media companies are laying off
employees and cutting print days for smaller publications. 2
We knew last year that it was important to better understand and represent
rural communities in news coverage, and the COVID-19 pandemic has
made this work more urgent than ever before.
1 https://lernercenter.syr.edu/2020/03/24/why-coronavirus-could-hit-rural-areas-harder/
2 http://irjci.blogspot.com/2020/04/lee-gannett-and-other-newspaper-chains.html
Table of Contents
4 Introduction
6 Metholodology
9 Common Terms and Definitions
11 Key Insights
15 In-Depth Insights
41 Recommendations from Respondents
Introduction
The local hospital cuts its inpatient obstetric services—then shutters
altogether. A new restaurant opens just as a coal plant closes. A community-
led initiative protects and restores a 10,000-acre tract of forested land
adjacent to town. A timber mill reopens and creates a hundred new jobs.
A community comes together to care for two children whose parents
passed away. The girls volleyball team makes it to the state championships.
These are the stories of hope and heartbreak, progress and peril that rural
residents and local journalists live and tell with nuance and affection.
Major national media outlets tell these stories too—especially since 2016.
However, many rural residents and rural-based journalists maintain that
much of the recent national coverage of rural America portrays rural areas
inaccurately, with an over-reliance on stereotypes and broad generalizations
that paint their communities with the same, simplistic and politicized brush.
As a result, accurate rural and Native American voices are missing from
conversations about some of the most challenging issues of our time, from
climate change to inequality—issues that inherently involve rural America.
Photo Courtesy of Wayne Fawbush
Nationally-focused organizations with deep roots in rural America, the Aspen Institute Community
Strategies Group (Aspen CSG), the Housing Assistance Council (HAC) and the Center for Rural
Strategies (CRS) were acutely aware of the gap between rural realities and public perception.
Working in partnership with Hattaway Communications, Aspen CSG, HAC and CRS sought to better
understand the following questions:
• Why is there a chasm between how rural Americans feel about their communities and the stories
that have captured and influenced national narratives and public perception of rural America?
• Why do the stories journalists want to tell fall flat unless they play into preconceived notions of
what rural ‘is’ and ‘is not’—or is this just a matter of perception?
• What barriers do talented, well-intentioned and hard-working national journalists face when
reporting on the realities of rural America?
• What can be done to achieve more accurate and complete coverage of rural issues?
We aimed to explore these questions with the belief that reporting on the lived experiences of
rural and Native Americans is a journalistic imperative, not only for the sake of reporting accurately
on a large and diverse country but also for bridging political, social, and cultural divides within and
between communities.
The insights and recommendations in this report are based on a series of in-depth interviews
and an analysis of national and regional news coverage about rural areas over a 12-month period.
Hattaway Communications conducted both the interviews and the analysis.
With an eye towards including a diverse array of geographies and media types, Aspen CSG, HAC,
and CRS lent their rural know-how to identifying rural residents, local rural-focused journalists
and national journalists covering rural issues, as well as recommendations of a couple of non-
journalistic experts with important contextual knowledge in the realm of rural affairs and rural media.
Hattaway Communications relied on the Aspen Institute’s relationships with national media for
recommendations of non-rural journalists and editors from national outlets who would indubitably
have perspectives worth sharing. To provide the opportunity for full candor about the inner workings
of newsrooms and the business of media today, all interviews were conducted on background.
The findings from this research underscore and articulate how ongoing changes in the structure and
business of media and journalism contribute to the gap between rural realities and public perception
of rural America. They also highlight the outsized role that social media is playing in shaping public
perceptions. Interviewees shared their recommendations for overcoming the challenges they
identified and for making the most of emerging opportunities. Accordingly, this report provides a
set of recommendations that could result in better rural-focused journalism.
Methodology
This report draws on findings from In-Depth
Interviews with rural experts, activists, and journalists,
as well as a Media Scan that analyzes coverage of
rural America in national and regional news media.
Photo REVEALING RURALPoynter

Courtesy of Shawn REALITIES: WHAT FUELS INACCURATE AND INCOMPLETE COVERAGE OF RURAL ISSUES? 6
In-Depth Interviews
The Hattaway team conducted 15 interviews with rural experts and journalists from
national and local outlets, including those who do and do not currently report on rural
issues, from August 21 to December 6, 2019. The questions asked during these interviews
were constructed with the goal of exploring the successes, opportunities, challenges,
and barriers that local and national journalists experience when covering rural America.
We included local journalists who report on the rural communities where they live, as
well as urban-based journalists who cover rural America for larger, national outlets. All of
the journalists with whom we talked are trusted with reporting on and talking about rural
communities, people, and issues in a nuanced and in-depth manner.
We also spoke with 10 rural community members and rural advocates during the
Center for Rural Strategies’ “Rural Women’s Summit”, which was held October 27–29,
2019 in Greenville, South Carolina, to explore how coverage about rural America affects
those who are from rural communities and/or currently live there. People who live in rural
communities inherently have intimate knowledge of the communities where they live;
we wanted to understand the difference between how rural residents view their
communities compared to how the media often portrays them.
Overall, these hour-long, one-on-one conversations explored interviewees’ experiences

with and perceptions of the national media coverage of rural issues, including how they
decide what stories to cover and publish, what they see as the biggest challenges for
covering rural issues, and how media misrepresentation is affecting rural communities.
We also asked our interviewees what advice they would give journalists seeking to do a
better job of ensuring that their work accurately reflects rural realities.
NOTE: Because tribal communities are integral to rural America, we did our best to include
Native voices and media outlets in our interviews. However, a full review of media coverage
of Native Americans and tribal communities was beyond the scope of this project.
Media Scan
In addition to interviews, we conducted a Media Scan to assess the themes in news
coverage and commentary that shape public perception of rural America and rural issues.
This Scan provided information that enabled us to consider whether quantitative data
points would corroborate or contradict what we heard from our interviews and added an
additional level of insight into the drivers of national narratives about rural America.
For this analysis, our team selected two different samples of media content. The first
sample was drawn from a selection of the top U.S. media outlets and comprised 150
validated and relevant articles that contained the keyword “rural.” The outlets included
were the Washington Post, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the
Houston Chronicle, Fox News (TV channel and website), CNN (TV Channel and website),
HuffPost, the New York Post, and the Seattle Times.
The second sample of media content contained articles with the highest social echo—
defined as the number of combined shares on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit—from
coverage published by U.S.-based media outlets over a year long period. This sample
is comprised of 150 validated articles that contained the keyword “rural” near
“United States,” “America,” or “U.S.”
Both samples were comprised of content published between December 3, 2018 and
December 3, 2019. The limited time period under review is a function of project budget
and scope.
NOTE: A challenge to conducting this media scan on “rural” was that rural issues are not
easy to find with a simple keyword search. Health stories typically use the word “health”;
education stories use the word “education.” The range of issues, and thus key words
that appear for rural places, is cross cutting. Adding to the challenge of reviewing rural
media en mass, rural places have different names (e.g. New Knoxville, the San Luis Valley,
Appalachia), and span across all fifty states; issues central to the rural experience in one
place (e.g. wildfire, the sage grouse, heirs property) are not part of the rural experience in
another rural place. This range makes identifying, aggregating, and tracking rural media—
let alone analyzing it—difficult.
Photo Courtesy of Shawn Poynter
Common Terms
and Defintions

Common Terms and Definitions
Local Journalist: Journalists who live in the community or region where they work and report for
media organizations with a predominantly local or regional audience.
National Journalist: Journalists who work outside of rural-based or rural-focused outlets, with a
particular emphasis on larger, more widely circulated, and urban-based outlets. Some examples
include USA Today, National Public Radio, or the Washington Post.
Media: For the purposes of this report, media refers to any content from print, radio, television,
or digital news outlets.
Rural: The definition of rural is an ongoing source of confusion. What counts as urban has changed
over time. The Census has consistently defined the rural population as a “non-urban population.”
Depending on which definition you use, the total rural population can range from 60 million (19.3%)
(U.S. Census definition) to 46 million (14%) (OMB definition). For the purposes of this report, we are
not concerned with a specific definition of rural, but importantly, when we say ‘rural’ we are referring
to a rural that includes Tribal Nations and communities located in rural regions of the U.S. Instead of
a specific definition of rural, we rely on our interviewees’ knowledge of rural and tribal communities to
confer their personal experience, understanding and perceptions of the term. For the purposes of this
report and any discussion of rural people, places, policy, and media, it is wise to acknowledge the core
truth that rural conditions vary widely; the same holds true for the hundreds of Tribal Nations and
communities in the U.S.
Photo Courtesy of Kedrick Moholt
Key Insights

Structural challenges facing news media as a whole have
had a disproportionate impact on rural reporting.
Key
Insight
According to almost all of our interviewees, the changes in the media landscape have
played a tremendous role in furthering the decline of rural voices and issues featured
in local and national media. Over the past 15 years, changes in the media industry
and landscape have caused more than one in five newspapers to close and over 500
newspapers to close or merge in rural communities specifically. At a time when digital
technology makes it feasible for news and media organizations to operate just about
anywhere, business models and industry trends have resulted in a media landscape that
thrives increasingly in larger cities, while facing a greater threat of neglect or hollowing
out elsewhere.
“Time and time again we’re going to places now where there isn’t a local paper,
or even the papers online, and it’s a shadow of what it used to be. And that for
me, that feels like it’s a national crisis.... The rural part of the country deserves
every bit as close of scrutiny and care than those living in cities, and they’re not
getting it at the moment.” — Editor at National Outlet
Rural America is often misunderstood by non-rural journalists

and audiences alike. There is, however, an enormous interest
Key
Insight on the part of national journalists and their readers to learn
about the issues that affect rural America and, ultimately,
all of us.
Many interviewees said the 2016 presidential election was a clear reminder that covering
rural areas more accurately was critical for reflecting the full diversity of the country.
Because of this, many national outlets and journalists understand that there is a pressing
need to report on the lived realities of rural America. Time and resource limitations,
“parachute journalism,” and a lack of rural voices in newsrooms, however, complicate
these efforts. Almost all the journalists and editors with whom we spoke highlighted the
importance of bringing a human perspective to rural reporting, challenging negative
stereotypes about rural America, and dedicating resources to tell the full stories of these
communities. Stories that did so were well received by all audiences.
“To me, [rural stories] are such rich stories and that’s what we’re about as
journalists is storytelling. Listeners, and readers and viewers, they’re going to
like these stories. I don’t think it’s from a lack of interest on the part of other
Americans. I think it’s, again, a lack of imagination, or creativity, or openness
on the part of editors and producers and news executives.” — National Journalist
Despite efforts by national outlets to report on the realities

of rural America, there are still strained relationships and
Key
Insight distrust among national media, local journalists, and rural
communities as a result of post-2016 coverage.
Local journalists—and rural residents more generally—are distrustful of national outlets

largely because of their perceived role in perpetuating stereotypes and misrepresenting
rural issues. Following the 2016 presidential election, local journalists relayed that
they were consistently contacted for stereotypical “rural” sources such as the farmer,
coal miner, or Trump supporter, even when these people may not have reflected the
zeitgeist of the community. Many interviewees expressed concern that quick-turnaround
stories from national outlets ignored the diversity and nuance of rural America. Although
national outlets are trying to remedy this relationship, years of oversimplified and negative
narratives about rural areas have led to a lack of trust between national outlets and
rural America.
“A lot of times what we experience when reporters call us, national reporters,
is that they have a particular story in mind and they have certain people that
they want to talk to like out-of-work coal miners, people who voted for Trump
and have changed their mind. I mean, we get the same kind of requests a lot
of times from national reporters. And no matter how many times we try to
redirect them ... they just keep circling back to that story.”
— Communications Director at Rural NGO
Journalists and editors view coverage of rural areas as integral
to strong national reporting, instead of as a traditional and
Key
Insight distinct “beat.”
Through our conversations with journalists and editors, we found that “rural” is not
covered as its own topical beat in the way that issues such as health care or education are.
When asked what kinds of topics they would consider “rural issues,” most interviewees
said many different issues could fall into that category. Several interviewees mentioned
that what are sometimes thought of as “rural issues” significantly affect—or at least
intersect with—issues in other parts of the country. These interviewees believed calling
them “rural issues” inherently suggested that such issues were not relevant to other parts
of the country, although they very much are.
“Rural issues in particular are so integral to understanding any particular

problem. Because rural people are closer to public lands, they are closer to the
environment, they are closer to the floods and the wildfires, and sea level rise a
lot of times.... It’s really important to talk about rural issues because they’re no
different challenges than New York or somewhere.” — Local Journalist
In-Depth Insights

1. Structural challenges facing news media

as a whole have had a disproportionate
impact on rural reporting.
According to almost all of our interviewees, the changes in the media landscape
have played a large role in furthering the decline of rural voices and issues
featured in local and national media. At a time when digital technology makes
it feasible for news and media organizations to operate just about anywhere,
business models and industry trends have resulted in a media landscape that
thrives increasingly in larger cities, while facing a greater threat of neglect or
hollowing out elsewhere—with rural areas being the first ones affected.
The changes in the media landscape have played a significant
role in deepening the decline of rural voices and issues
Finding
featured in local and national media.
Over the past 15 years, changes in the media industry and landscape have caused more
than one in five newspapers to close and over 500 newspapers to close or merge in rural
communities specifically.
During this time period, the media as a business has been mirroring the broader economic
trends that are challenging rural communities at large. Business models for digital news
increasingly reward scale and affluence, so media organizations that have had success
adapting to the industry’s major challenges tend to operate at a national scale and
concentrate themselves in the country’s largest metropolitan areas.
12%
New York City
5%
Washington, D.C.
5%
Los Angeles
As of 2017, nearly one-in-five (22%) newsroom employees live in New York, Los Angeles or
Washington, D.C. according to Pew Research Center.
For these types of organizations—such as the New York Times and Vox Media—
scale and consolidation means investing in growth and innovation. Meanwhile, scale and
consolidation for smaller media organizations operating closer to rural communities
have come primarily in the form of corporate mergers and purchases by private equity.
These cases—akin to the GateHouse and Gannett merger or the ongoing acquisitions
of Alden Global Capital—tend to drain wealth and reporting resources out of local
communities, through cost reductions, layoffs, and worse. Because corporate mergers
are primarily focused on the business management of media organizations instead of on
solely their democrative imperative, these acquisitions have led to the loss of in-depth
and vital reporting in these areas.
As a result, systemic problems—closures, the shrinking of time and resources for local
coverage, and the consolidation of media outlets—have negatively influenced the variation
and quantity of stories from and about rural areas that are published in both local and
national media. Almost all of our interviewees, including those working at national outlets,
pointed out that these changes have immensely affected rural coverage:
“Local journalism has really declined just in terms of the business model.
I think as these papers shrink, hopefully you’re not going to get rid of the one
guy you have covering city hall or the legislature. But [for] the person covering
agriculture and/or the environment, it’s probably easier to justify getting rid
of them.” — National Journalist
“Time and time again we’re going to places now where there isn’t a local paper,
or even the papers online, and it’s a shadow of what it used to be. And that for
me, that feels like it’s a national crisis.... The rural part of the country deserves
every bit as close of scrutiny and care than those living in cities, and they’re not
getting it at the moment.” — Editor at National Outlet
“If you really care about what’s going on in Paducah, Kentucky, you’re relying
on the Kennett Paper that’s just bought by GateHouse, and he’s probably got
three reporters left in the newsroom.” — Local Journalist
“[The decline in local reporting] means that a lot of these issues aren’t found
or covered. ... I think larger news organizations are almost dependent on these
local news organizations to cover these issues and find out some leads, and
then the larger organization might come in with a greater number of resources
to dive in more deeply or bring a heavy-hitter of a reporter or something to
push it further.” — National Journalist
Photo Courtesy of Kertis Creative
The decline of local media has affected the way rural
communities see themselves, their neighbors, and their
Finding
relationship to the country more broadly.
Many of the rural people we interviewed told us that the negative narrative they hear
about their communities from national media has affected the way they view themselves
and the future of rural places. Due to the lack of local newspapers in many isolated places,
rural community members are turning to larger, more urban-based outlets to receive their
news. Many of our interviewees noted that not only does primarily receiving news from
urban-based outlets affect the ability for local media to report on problems that are unique
to a certain community, but it has also affected how these communities see themselves.
While films, television shows, and other media have often traded in stereotypes,
national news media outlets have had a large hand in reinforcing negative stereotypes
about rural areas and the people who live there, if they cover rural at all.
Psychological research has demonstrated that how people see themselves represented
influences personal development; thus, accurate, frequent, and positive representation is
important for building up a positive sense of self, or in this case, a community. As one of
our interviewees mentioned, the media has the ability to build up what people can imagine,
and the decline of local newspapers has meant that there are fewer publications circulated
in rural communities that are challenging the current, dominant national narratives being
told about rural America.
“Because we don’t have as much connection through local media with each
other in a community, those stories are coming from the top, from those big
national outlets. [And] the result of those stories really does pit people against
one another.... [For example], extractive industries have come into this place
and they have tried to portray the people of eastern Kentucky as people who
aren’t worth saving, and people who don’t have enough gumption to save
themselves. And they’ve done that because they wanted to be able to easily
exploit their resources in this place. So they’ve constantly used the media as a
tool to be able to then come into the region and take everything from people.”
“Tech in rural is a concept that a lot of people can’t get their minds around.…
[and] people aren’t believing that it’s possible because it’s not in their mental
model or frame of reference. The way that people talk about rural doesn’t include
that economic activity.... it’s just ag and poverty. That way of thinking of rural,
and the possibility in rural, is a really big barrier to rural communities getting
there. It’s hard for people to build up what they can’t imagine, and the media has
constructed what rural people can imagine.”
— Rural Community Member
Direct funding programs or media collaboration facilitated by

a national outlet can help to remedy resource shortages
Finding
affected by the changing media landscape.
Several interviewees mentioned that some organizations and programs are providing
direct funding to support local journalism. However, there is skepticism about the
sustainability of this model.
“ProPublica has its local reporting network which supports investigative

reporting in local news organizations.... They’re interested in all kinds of
places, too. They’re off the coasts, they’re in rural communities, so that is a real
boon and a real opportunity. And ... it’s all about funding. It’s somebody who’s
got money willing to fund it.” — National Journalist
A few interviewees also mentioned the trend of media collaboration, in which a single
parent company supports a number of smaller outlets. Although they recognized that
there were benefits to this model, such as being able to draw on the parent company’s
greater resources, there were also drawbacks, such as local outlets having to conform to
standardized story formats, which limited the type of stories they could run.
“We were able to work cooperatively at the national level to make sure that
we had what we needed, and also to make sure that we could provide [help to]
under-resourced organizations. We could lend a videographer to a very small
newspaper that didn’t have its own video team if they needed it. We could even
lend an editor … to make sure that these great stories that were being reported
in these smaller communities were able to be surfaced ... and to be able to be
elevated so that they would work for a national level as well as a local level.”
— Editor at National Outlet
“[Different news organizations] don’t have common ownership, and also

they don’t have common editing tools, and they may not have common
news standards. You want to make sure that the reporting is vetted and to the
highest possible level. And if you don’t know each other, it’s harder to do that.…
[For example,] ProPublica is able to partner with all kinds of different
organizations because everybody knows that ProPublica has a standard of
quality, and they have a certain amount of control over the content and the
quality of the content.” — Editor at National Outlet
2. Rural America is often misunderstood by

non-rural journalists and audiences alike.
There is, however, an enormous interest
on the part of journalists and their readers
to learn about the issues that affect rural
America and, ultimately, all of us.
Many interviewees said the 2016 presidential election was a clear reminder
that covering rural areas more accurately was critical for reflecting the full
diversity of the country. Because of this, many national outlets and journalists
are committed to reporting on the lived realities of rural America. Time and
resource limitations, “parachute journalism,” and a lack of rural voices in
newsrooms, however, complicate these efforts. Almost all the journalists
and editors that we spoke to highlighted the importance of bringing a
human perspective to rural reporting, challenging negative stereotypes
about rural America, and dedicating resources to tell the full stories of these
communities. Stories that did so were well received by all audiences.
National journalists and editors recognize the importance of
Finding
including rural perspectives in their reporting, especially
post-2016.
Most journalists we spoke to at national outlets believed there was a genuine interest
in rural stories at the editorial level, and none perceived they were discouraged from
reporting on rural areas. Following the 2016 presidential election, national outlets quickly
realized that covering rural areas more accurately was critical for reflecting the nation
as a whole.
“I don’t think the word ‘rural’ had appeared in [my organization] in the lead-up
to the 2016 election, probably didn’t at all. There was a big perception that the
rural vote didn’t really matter anymore.… And then as soon as President Trump
won there was intense interest ... what’s going on? And where are these voters
coming from? And that whole fascination in trying to understand why a swath
of the country could see the world so differently.” — National Journalist
“There’s never been a shortage of interest among the editors and shows [here]
in the [rural] stories I’ve done, and audiences have responded, usually with
surprise. They didn’t know these things and they were grateful to know
about them.” — National Journalist
“Grandparents as Caregivers,” Creative Commons Attribution License
National journalists cite a lack of time and resources as a
Finding
significant barrier to in-depth and frequent reporting,
however many rural community members and journalists
cite “parachute journalism” as the main cause for the
misrepresentation of rural America in national outlets.
When asked why they did not report on rural areas more frequently or more in depth,
given their interest in doing so, most national journalists said they simply lacked the time
or resources to spend more than a day or two in an area. Nevertheless, local journalists
and rural community members stressed that visiting a community for a short time isn’t
adequate enough to understand local dynamics and perspectives and be able to write an
accurate story about it.
“The changing shape of news staff and the increasing focus on quick-turn
pieces done from a central office instead of deeper reporter pieces done from
the ground really hampers our ability to understand communities, whether
they’re urban or rural, that are placed outside of main newsrooms.”
— National Journalist
“[National reporters] have to parachute in from the coast, and grab as much
as they can in the maybe two days they get on the ground, and get out. So they
go to the café in town and interview the old white guys. Well, the old white
guys don’t really represent most of us anymore and they need to go to different
places.” — Local Journalist
“A lot of [national] reporting about health care in rural areas doesn’t look at
history, context, or socio-economic factors. It mostly focuses on poor health
epidemics. So, it will focus on diabetes, obesity, or poor dental care; [and] there
is always a blaming of a community for failing to provide services, or blaming
an individual for what they are experiencing without a larger context....
[National reporters] will maybe get to the context of ‘there are not a lot of
health care professionals in that area,’ but they never get to the context of why.”
— Rural Community Member
When non-rural outlets do spend time covering rural areas
in depth and share stories that reflect the real experiences
Finding
of rural Americans, those stories perform well with
non-rural audiences.
When asked how well stories about rural communities perform—in terms of readership,
views, shares, and other engagement metrics—most journalists said such stories perform
well. National and local journalists alike noted that in their experience, their audiences
wanted to hear more than the stereotypical stories about rural areas, such as the common
trope about rural Trump supporters voting against their own interests.
“To me, they’re [rural stories] such rich stories and that’s what we’re about as
journalists is storytelling. Listeners, and readers and viewers, they’re going to
like these stories. I don’t think it’s from a lack of interest on the part of other
Americans. I think it’s, again, a lack of imagination, or creativity, or openness
on the part of editors and producers and news executives.” — National Journalist
“I think a story that gets more traction is one that surprises the reader or
listener. Something that’s counterintuitive to the common perceptions or
misperceptions of rural America. That, for instance, there are people of color
here, or not everybody’s a farmer. Or, hey this small town actually does have a
pretty good idea of what they want to do.” — Local Journalist
Journalists and editors suggested that two types of stories about rural areas perform
especially well on a national platform: stories that show how events in one rural
community connect to other communities or to the country as a whole, and stories with
a strong human-interest angle that reveal local realities to people who aren’t familiar with
rural America.
“Some of my very favorite [stories] were simply ... reporting on the ground like,
‘Explain what life is like here.’ It gave you a sense of how this is a community
that did not look at all, sound at all, or live in a world at all familiar to a typical
New York Times reader.” — Editor at National Outlet
“[A good story] is about finding issues that connect with all these people on
a broader level, but then adding an element of the personal. So it’s not just
saying, ‘Hey this issue affects this crazy number of Americans.’ But here is ...
the normal dude who’s being impacted and showing the impact on him ...
then connecting that to a larger trend.” — National Journalist
“I think a good story, well told, with compelling characters is going to be

received well. And it doesn’t matter what the subject is or who the people are,
or where the location is.” — National Journalist
Interviewees did identify a few national outlets they believed were doing a good job
reporting on rural issues, including the Washington Post and National Public Radio (NPR).
Most felt these outlets have been successful where others have not because they allow
their reporters to take the time they need to get beyond the surface of the story, or work
closely with rural reporters to identify and report stories.
“The Washington Post for example does a good job of [reporting on rural
America]. They had a push recently where they hired more national reporters
… and so they dedicated a reporter and time to doing those stories, and doing
those stories thoroughly. And so they spent a lot of time in those communities
doing the interviews that they needed to do, and exploring the concept as
thoroughly as possible.” — National Journalist
“[In my experience], NPR loves stories that surprise people, that challenge
conventional wisdom, that certainly are stories that you’re not hearing
anywhere else … and the rural reporting gives [NPR reporters] the opportunity
to go to places reporters weren’t necessarily going to at all or very much,
and doing it in a systematic way and a thoughtful way.” — National Journalist
Besides what we heard from journalists, our Media Scan supported the idea that
in-depth reporting on rural realities resonates with non-rural audiences. When analyzing
the coverage about rural areas with the highest social echo, half of those stories were
Media
focused on local trends and issues we categorized as Rural Realities, such as: the decline
Scan
Finding of medical centers in rural America, rising suicide rates, immigration, and small-town
news. By comparison, stories about national politics and Donald Trump represented less
than a third of the most-shared stories.
Coverage within Each Theme

Themes
Percentage within Highest Social Echo Sample
*Notes: Some articles are coded under more than one theme. All are rounded to the nearest percent.
Photo Courtesy of iStock
Rural Realities Example: National Politics Example:
May 25, 2019, NPR May 8, 2019, Washington Post
Trump Example: Farmer Example:
American farmer: Trump ‘took away

all of our markets’
August 21, 2019, Business Insider July 31, 2019, Yahoo! Finance
Within our sample, the majority of the stories coded as “Rural Realities” were published by NPR,
the Washington Post, and USA Today. The top article among the most-shared stories coded as
“Rural Realities”—a profile of a struggling farming family in Wisconsin—was shared more than
439,000 times across Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit.
Definition: Social echo is defined as the number of combined shares on Facebook, Twitter,
and Reddit— from coverage published by U.S.-based media outlets over a year long period.
3. Despite efforts by national outlets

to report on the realities of rural
America, there are still strained
relationships and distrust among
national media, local journalists,
and rural communities as a result of
post-2016 coverage.
Local journalists—and rural residents more generally—are distrustful of
national outlets largely because of their perceived role in perpetuating
stereotypes and misrepresenting rural issues. Following the 2016
presidential election, local journalists relayed that they were constantly
contacted for stereotypical “rural” sources such as the farmer, coal miner,
or Trump supporter, even when these people may not have reflected the
zeitgeist of the community. Many interviewees expressed that quick-
turnaround stories from national outlets ignored the diversity and nuance
of rural America. Although national outlets are trying to remedy this
relationship, years of oversimplified and negative narratives about rural
areas have led to distrust between national outlets and rural America.
Rural community members recognize that national outlets
play a significant role in perpetuating stereotypes about rural
Finding
communities and misrepresenting rural stories.
Because stories that play into stereotypes about rural people and places are the ones
breaking through, local journalists and their communities think that national media is
publishing mainly these types of stories, even if they are only a small subset of coverage.
“Writers from the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and the New Yorker were
saying that we’re all racist in Iowa for electing Steve King and Donald Trump
without knowing a thing about Iowa.... Steve King says something outrageous,
and they say, ‘Oh. All Iowans must be racist.’” — Local Journalist
“Over time, the narrative of [Appalachia] has really been cemented by a lot of
popular culture. Obviously, you can think of things like the movie Deliverance,
The Beverly Hillbillies, those kinds of things. And then the news media sort of
picks up on that and ... [it’s easier to] come into the region looking for those
stereotypical tropes than it is to think in a more complex way.... ”
Photo Courtesy of KOMUNews, Creative Commons Attribution License
Although national outlets seem to be moving away from
stories that perpetuate rural stereotypes, these types of
Finding
stories are disproportionately shared on social channels.
Journalists and rural community members expressed concern that, particularly after
the 2016 presidential election, the majority of coverage about rural areas in national
media perpetuated stereotypical depictions of rural Americans as backward, racist,
and unintelligent. We consistently heard that rural coverage often talked about support
for Trump among rural areas or highlighted farmers and the issues they face despite the
fact that agriculture only employed just 6% of the rural workforce in 2017.
“I think in terms of the election in particular, [national journalists relying

on stereotypes] was about needing an explanation for the dominant culture
and for America as a whole for why Trump happened. And the easiest
possible answer that they could come up with was that it was backwards,
bigoted people who live in the South. And in particular, because central
Appalachia is predominantly white, it was easy to put that onto this region,
and say, ‘Here are these backward white people who obviously voted for this
guy who is perpetuating some ideals of white supremacy.’”
Our analysis of news coverage about rural areas in the top news outlets over the 12-month
period found that only 12% of coverage talked about Trump and rural communities.
Instead, the majority of their coverage was about issues affecting local communities,
Media
Scan such as hospital closures and natural disasters, and interesting “local color” stories.
Finding
In contrast, when looking at the articles with the highest social echo, we found that a
quarter of the coverage talked about Trump and rural America—twice as frequently as
he was mentioned in the sample of top news outlets. In addition, 21% of the 150 most-
shared articles mentioned farmers, compared with only 3% of the articles from top news
outlets. This suggests that although national outlets are now covering rural America in
a more representative way than they may have been right after the election, stories that
play into stereotypes of rural America still have traction on social media and may be
disproportionately influencing the national conversation about rural areas.
Coverage by Each Theme across Samples
Legend
Top U.S. Media
Themes
Outlets Sample
Highest Social
Echo Sample
Percentage of Coverage
*Notes: Some articles are coded under more than one theme. All are rounded to the nearest percent.
Even though there is more coverage of rural realities, stories

often portray only the negative components of rural life.
Media
Scan
Finding
Although the stories coded as “Rural Realities” provided insights on daily life in rural
America, many of them may actually be perpetuating the idea that rural communities
are struggling places with few jobs or opportunities. When looking at the “Rural Realities”
stories with the highest social echo, more than half were negative, with either the words
“crisis” or “struggle” appearing in some headlines. Common negative themes were suicide
rates, hospital closures, and other health-care inadequacies. Of the “Rural Realities”
articles in the top national outlets sample, a third of the articles focused on the negative.
Tonality within “Rural Realities” Theme
Legend
Top U.S. Media
Tonality
Outlets Sample
Highest Social
Echo Sample
Percentage of Coverage
*Notes: Pertains only to the “Rural Realities” subset.
Negative Example: Neutral Example:
November 4, 2019, NBC News November 19, 2019, USA Today
Positive Example:
July 22, 2019, NPR
The lack of geographical representation in non-rural
newsrooms affects coverage of rural America.
Finding
Many of the journalists and rural community members with whom we spoke pointed to
an abiding problem that negatively affects the coverage of rural America—the lack of
rural voices in newsrooms across the country. Because national journalists usually don’t
represent the rural communities they are reporting on, they bring their own biases to their
reporting, are less likely to have working relationships with local sources, and seldomly
have a deep understanding of these areas. Additionally, many interviewees noted that
lacking a familiarity of place means that important stories often go untold or are told
without nuance.
“My production team are predominantly people who grew up in urban

environments. They don’t have a huge amount of knowledge about what it is to
live in rural areas and to grow up maybe poor.… Again, it’s breaking down this
idea of, particularly national media, thinking that they can paint a story or a
part of the country in one way, and it just feels out of kilter with what the lived
reality is about.” — Editor at National Outlet
“Problem B is when you do have reporters there, too often you’ve got reporters
who are not diverse enough in terms of mirroring what their communities are
... they’re coming from the outside. And so they don’t necessarily have the same
level of understanding. I think when you have newsrooms that don’t mirror
their communities, you miss a lot of stories.” — Editor at National Outlet
Photo Courtesy of iStock
Local journalists often distrust national journalists. They feel
like they are being used to identify sources for stories national
Finding
journalists have already decided to tell, and then don’t feel
properly credited or invited to collaborate on stories that are
important to locals.
Many of the local journalists we interviewed mentioned they are often skeptical of the
motives of national reporters and media outlets when they are interested in reporting on
rural issues. Several local journalists mentioned that reporters at national outlets often
contact them asking for specific sources that clearly would serve to corroborate the story
the national journalist has already decided to tell before they even get there. For example,
a national reporter might call in search of a local Trump supporter or a farmer, rather than
to learn what’s happening and what stories merit attention.
“I mean, I could talk for an hour about Ivy-Leaguers coming in and try to
portray the pig farmer, but that’s what it boils down to because that’s the image
that they want, and get me a farmer. I can’t tell you how many.... I just had
an email that I’m ignoring right now from a reporter who wants me to find a
farmer for him to interview. Well, you know what? Farmers are 2% of Iowa’s
population.” — Local Journalist
“After the election, if I had one call, I had 50 that was about, ‘Can you help me
explain the rural vote and what happened?’ ... [Or] go find me somebody who’s
going to be hurt by Trump’s policies, but voted for him.” — Local Journalist
“A lot of times what we experience when reporters call us, national reporters,
is that they have a particular story in mind and they have certain people that
they want to talk to like out-of-work coal miners, people who voted for Trump
and have changed their mind. I mean, we get the same kind of requests a lot
of times from national reporters. And no matter how many times we try to
redirect them ... they just keep circling back to that story.”
A few local journalists also mentioned times in which their work was picked up by national
outlets without giving the journalists proper credit, or instances of journalists from these
outlets reaching out to ask for connections to sources so they could rewrite the piece
themselves (again, without properly crediting the work). Although local journalists are
happy to see their stories picked up and given a bigger audience, they are often frustrated
that they have spent years talking about an issue and then national outlets report on the
issue as if they are the first to uncover it.
“I couldn’t talk [my editors] into my first flooding story. Then, of course,
they see it in the New York Times so then they’re interested, which is one of our
biggest frustrations is that editors on the coast wait for the big boys and see
what they do, and then they’ll have us do it.” — Local Journalist
“I tried to do a thing on rural issues for the Chicago Tribune that was Iowa-
centric because this is the first-in-the-nation caucus state, but they rejected
my work. Do they [the Chicago Tribune] realize that half their readers in the
Western suburbs are Iowa ex-pats? No. They’re so consumed by themselves
at the Tribune tower, they don’t even know who’s living in those suburbs.
They can run something on the same topic from the National Review [and]
I was writing on a similar issue with more competence, but because I was
from Iowa, I was not the same as [nationally syndicated columnist]
Jonah Goldberg.” — Local Journalist
“Case in point is the missing and murdered indigenous women. That’s all you
hear about now but I actually began writing about this violence against Native
women in the ’08 era, and it wasn’t really something that [got traction]....
I mean we’ve been hollering about it forever.” — Freelance Photojournalist and
Writer covering Native American people and Issues
Although many journalists at national outlets claimed that lack of time or funding meant
that rural issues couldn’t be covered more in depth, freelance journalists and those at local
outlets believed that claim was disingenuous. Several felt national outlets could find the
resources to spend if they were motivated to do so, and others pointed out that national
outlets could do more to connect with the local journalists already reporting on these
stories and elevate their work, rather than spending resources to essentially redo what the
local and freelance journalists have already done.
Because spending time and building relationships among rural community members
was pointed to as critical for national journalists to do better reporting on rural areas,
this strained relationship presents a significant challenge to reporting on rural areas.
“There’s no excuse for national news organizations not to be paying more

attention and better attention to rural issues in rural places. There’s simply
no excuse. They spend enormous amounts of money doing what everybody is
doing and to me, that’s counterproductive.” — National Journalist
“Chalk Fairy,” Carl Sr., Flickr Creative Commons
4. Journalists and editors view coverage

of rural areas as integral to strong national
reporting, instead of as a traditional and
distinct “beat.”
Through our conversations with journalists and editors, we uncovered
that defining “rural” as its own beat is not the same as topical beats such
as health care or education. When asked what kinds of topics they would
consider “rural issues,” most interviewees said many different issues could
fall into that category.
“I love [covering rural] a lot but it also drives me crazy because it’s so huge.
I think it impacts everything from criminal justice to immigration,
to environmentalism, to politics. You can really say almost any subject
and ultimately it has some tie to rural America, so it’s all relevant.”
This meant that not only were interviewees unable to speak to another beat comparable
to covering rural areas but also they noted that covering rural areas was far more complex
than any other topical beat. Besides the diversity of topics the rural beat could include
(health, education, energy, environment, technology, government, etc.), rural areas are
diverse geographic areas that differ in meaningful ways—such that the issues affecting
Appalachia are different from those that affect the Mountain West, and different still from
those that affect Native American people and lands.
“Often the rural press doesn’t cover Indian Country for a whole lot of reasons.
There’s not a lot of good data because we don’t produce the data, we don’t have
the infrastructure to produce it. So often, for instance, we’ll get left out of
crime rates in a county, and we may be the largest population in the county,
but we’ll get left out because there aren’t any who have access to our data.”
— Freelance Photojournalist and Writer covering Native American people and Issues
“Rural means coal mines. Rural means small college professors and all those
things. It means Latinos. It means Sudanese people and Asian people. We
speak about 24 languages with another six dialects for 30 different languages
in [my town].” — Local Journalist
And finally, several interviewees mentioned that what are sometimes thought of as
“rural issues” significantly affect—or at least intersect with—issues in other parts of the
country. These interviewees believed calling them “rural issues” inherently suggested that
such issues were not relevant to other parts of the country.
“What [national reporters] need to do is connect climate to rural issues to get

people to pay attention and because it is the existential question of our time....
The land is in rural areas, and land use is the primary way to solve climate
change problems, whether you’re installing wind turbines or solar panels
or you’re sequestering carbon through plant life ... and the other issue ...
is immigration. You hear a lot about refugees being locked in cages at the
border, but you don’t hear a whole lot about what’s happening in the interior
in rural communities, Dodge City, Kansas beef-packing.” — Local Journalist
“Rural issues in particular are so integral to understanding any particular

problem. Because rural people are closer to public lands, they are closer to the
environment, they are closer to the floods and the wildfires, and sea level rise a
lot of times.... It’s really important to talk about rural issues because they’re no
different challenges than New York or somewhere.” — Local Journalist
Recommendations
From Respondents

At the end of each conversation with rural community members, rural

experts, and local and national journalists, we asked for recommendations
to increase the quality and quantity of representative and nuanced stories
about rural America in national media. We explicitly made sure to include
this question at the end of each interview in order to generate ideas
from those who are passionate about rural reporting and the people that
live in rural communities. Each of our interviewees expressed the need
for investing in local journalism and making sure that rural and tribal
perspectives are fully voiced and heard. To fully reflect the diversity of our
country and our democracy, all of our interviewees highlighted one main
point: National media should accurately represent all of us; rural America,
Tribal Nations and the people who call these places home are no exception.
Here’s what we heard.
Recommendations for Journalists
Focus on telling stories from rural areas or including a “rural perspective”
in reporting, rather than advocating for more coverage of “rural issues.”
“I mean, part of it is trying to bust out the idea that so much of what we talk about is a
rural issue or an urban issue. It’s not that. It’s just the fact that you’re approaching this
particular story from a rural point of view. If you’re talking about crime, are you just
going to have people from Chicago, and Boston, and New York participating in talking
about crime? Or are you making space for the idea that you do have someone [in a rural
community] who has absolutely as much concern about crime, but they just happen to
live in a much more rural part of the country.” — Editor at National Outlet
Seek out a broad array of voices representative of the diversity of rural

America in geography, race, ethnicity, culture, history, economy, and more.
“Just like what the struggles are for LGBTQ folks on the [reservation].... We live in the
modern world and it’s not a very friendly place for LGBTQ people.... I want to hear about
this person’s struggle and they really want to send a message to the people coming after
them, other young people. How to navigate the world and how to gain strength.”
— Freelance Journalist covering Native American people and issues
Highlight the opportunities, innovation and positive aspects of rural

America rather than focusing primarily on challenges facing these areas.
“But what you would want is for people to look at small towns for what they are, which
are cool places to live. And much more diverse than cities to my way of looking, or my
experience is that’s the case. And good places not only for people to grow up, but also good
places for adults to live and prosper.” — Local Journalist
Recommendations for Editors
Commit to a consistent presence and build trust within local rural and tribal
communities via lasting, mutually beneficial relationships.
“What we undertook this year is that we promised that wherever we went this year,
we would go back to in 2020. So it’s a way of us trying to build a relationship with an area
which is new to us, but also try and build some trust. The idea is that we’re just not going
to turn up for a few days, get what we want and leave. We’re trying to be respectful and
say, ‘This is part of a relationship. We look forward to seeing you again next year and
maybe we talk about something different. Maybe we don’t.’ But it’s a way of trying to say
to those communities and those folks that we’re not just coming in and splash-and-dash
routine, which again, national media is very good at doing.” — Editor at National Outlet
Challenge journalists at national outlets to find and publish more stories

that challenge stereotypes of rural America.
“I think that Americans and journalists tend to forget that rural communities are full
of people of color, that rural communities mean Native American tribes, that there is
an incredibly large immigrant community, an incredibly diverse series of immigrant
communities in towns across the Midwest and the plains who don’t get heard from a lot,
whose politics and priorities do not get a lot of views and a lot of attention.”
Partner with local and freelance journalists on stories or contract freelance

journalists to produce stories for national publications.
“[Stories are being covered] but it’s missing the nuance, and I think that’s where regional
journalists and independent journalists can really benefit news outlets because of that.
The problem is you’ll see the New York Times or the Washington Post have someone
parachute, when you could easily assign this to a journalist that is already there.”
— Local/Freelance Journalist
Recommendations for National Outlets,
Local Newsrooms, and Investors
Create partnerships between national outlets and local newsrooms that can
produce better rural stories. For example:
Recognize the potential biases of reporters not familiar with rural and balance them by ensuring rural
journalists or people with knowledge are a part of the team.
“We’re working in collaboration with these [local] teams, and they’ll put us right if
they just feel that we’re making an assumption about a particular viewpoint. So the
relationships with the local news are helping us avoid those mistakes. They’re the check
on our national prejudices and we trust them—we obviously respect the work they do—
and that’s hopefully making our product stronger.” — Editor at National Outlet
Cover local stories more quickly and accurately via partnerships and collaborative work with
local journalists.
“Instead of putting national reporters on a plane and photographers on a plane and

sending them to Florida, [we] have the local journalists covering it. And you’ve got much
better coverage. So it actually made quite a bit of sense and we were able to make use of
a lot of the reporting that otherwise would not have seen the light of day, including rural
reporting [and] deep red state reporting, that other national media did not have.”
— Editor at National Outlet
Dedicate more resources to ensuring that reporters can spend sufficient

time doing the legwork in rural and tribal communities when they are sent
there for stories.
“If they’re able to actually come here and visit, that would make the biggest difference.
We see the change in people all the time. It just makes a huge difference if you can
actually go into a place and hear from the people who live there, look them in the eye
and have a real conversation, a real human connection with them.”
— Communications Director at a Rural NGO
“90% of journalism is showing up and the story is always different when you actually go
there. You talk to people, you reach out broadly for all kinds of perspectives. It’s always
different and it’s always more interesting.” — National Journalist
Diversify national newsrooms to include more journalists who have
rural-know how, such as having been raised or lived and worked in rural
or tribal places.
“I think there might be some comparability to the early black reporters who went into
national journalism.... They were able to get stories that they didn’t get before because
they had somebody who would understand things that people who hadn’t had that
background and experience in understanding wouldn’t be able to get.” — Local Journalist
Conclusion
Representation in media matters. The movie Black Panther was celebrated, in part, because it
provided a generation of young people with the opportunity to see superheroes who look like them on
the big screen. Rural and native people also need to see themselves and their communities in media
and the news. Done right, reporting about rural and tribal communities would acknowledge there is
distress, but it would also showcase their assets, diversity, innovation, cultural richness, opportunity
and natural beauty. It would wrestle with the tough challenges communities face, while delving into
the essential contributions of rural and tribal communities to our nation’s past, present—and future.
Indubitably, reporting on these communities requires sustained commitment, intentionality and
nuance. We hope that the findings, insights and recommendations in this report prompt reflection,
discussion, creative thinking, and changes that—with time and effort—result in news stories that rural
and native people embrace because they reflect their lived experience and the places they call home.
Center for
Rural Strategies
This report and the findings contained herein are the intellectual property of
Hattaway Communications, Inc.
Copyright © 2020 All Rights Reserved.


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Center for

Revealing Rural Realities:

As the pandemic continues, rural communities will likely face

9 Common Terms and Definitions

41 Recommendations from Respondents

Photo Courtesy of Wayne Fawbush

Photo REVEALING RURALPoynter

Overall, these hour-long, one-on-one conversations explored interviewees’ experiences

Photo Courtesy of Shawn Poynter

Photo REVEALING RURALPoynter

Photo Courtesy of Kedrick Moholt

Photo REVEALING RURALPoynter

Rural America is often misunderstood by non-rural journalists

Despite efforts by national outlets to report on the realities

Local journalists—and rural residents more generally—are distrustful of national outlets

“Rural issues in particular are so integral to understanding any particular

Photo Courtesy of Shawn Poynter

Photo REVEALING RURALPoynter

1. Structural challenges facing news media

Photo Courtesy of Kertis Creative

Direct funding programs or media collaboration facilitated by

“ProPublica has its local reporting network which supports investigative

Photo Courtesy of Kertis Creative

“[Different news organizations] don’t have common ownership, and also

Photo Courtesy of Shawn Poynter

2. Rural America is often misunderstood by

“Grandparents as Caregivers,” Creative Commons Attribution License

Photo Courtesy of Kertis Creative

“I think a good story, well told, with compelling characters is going to be

Coverage within Each Theme

Percentage within Highest Social Echo Sample

Photo Courtesy of iStock

May 25, 2019, NPR May 8, 2019, Washington Post

Trump Example: Farmer Example:

American farmer: Trump ‘took away

3. Despite efforts by national outlets

Photo Courtesy of KOMUNews, Creative Commons Attribution License

“I think in terms of the election in particular, [national journalists relying

Even though there is more coverage of rural realities, stories

Tonality within “Rural Realities” Theme

*Notes: Pertains only to the “Rural Realities” subset.

November 4, 2019, NBC News November 19, 2019, USA Today

July 22, 2019, NPR

“My production team are predominantly people who grew up in urban

Photo Courtesy of iStock

Photo Courtesy of Kertis Creative

“There’s no excuse for national news organizations not to be paying more

“Chalk Fairy,” Carl Sr., Flickr Creative Commons

4. Journalists and editors view coverage

Photo Courtesy of Kertis Creative

“What [national reporters] need to do is connect climate to rural issues to get

“Rural issues in particular are so integral to understanding any particular

Photo Courtesy of Kertis Creative

Photo REVEALING RURALPoynter

At the end of each conversation with rural community members, rural

Seek out a broad array of voices representative of the diversity of rural

Highlight the opportunities, innovation and positive aspects of rural

Challenge journalists at national outlets to find and publish more stories

Partner with local and freelance journalists on stories or contract freelance

“Instead of putting national reporters on a plane and photographers on a plane and