Marlee Baldridge
Freelance
Rural communities are some of the most politically disenfranchised when it comes to climate policy, and last year’s National Climate Change Report showed they’re also among the most at risk when it comes to the effect of climate change. This could mean stronger storms, more intense droughts and earlier freezes.
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While President Donald Trump has rejected the scientific evidence of climate change, nearly half of his voters — many in Midwestern states — believe in global warming, and most support funding renewable energy. This bucks stereotypes about a rural voting bloc that doesn’t care about the environment. And though rural residents may not use the words “climate change,” they can see it happening in their own backyards and farm fields. - read more
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13.3 percent of U.S. residents speak Spanish at home, but the circulation of Hispanic daily newspapers is decreasing (though weekly and semiweekly papers have held up better, per Pew). Phil Napoli, the lead author of the Duke study, said that nailing down how well-informed Spanish-speaking communities are is difficult. Some Spanish newspapers aren’t online, which makes the news sources hard to track. Some community members are more invested in foreign or English-language news sites. “And minority populations just tend to be not as well-served because advertisers don’t value them as much,” Napoli said. But the lack of original and local reporting for Spanish-speaking communities is real.
Madeleine Bair, a journalist in Oakland, California, hopes to fill that gap. Her project, El Tímpano (“the eardrum” in Spanish), began with a question: How are Spanish-only speakers in Oakland served by local media? - read more
The University of Missouri School of Journalism is the world’s oldest such institution. There is some contention with a university in France, but we’re fairly confident we were the first.
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The J-school’s slogan, “The Missouri Method,” is taken very seriously. It refers to the belief that journalism training should be “hands on,” its lessons learned by trial and error through practice and real-world experience. The school practices what it preaches. Students run the school newspaper, The Maneater, as well as a town daily, the Missourian. They edit and write the local art magazine, Vox, staff an NPR affiliate, and produce the programming for a local TV station.
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None of that prepared students for the events of the Autumn of 2015. - read more
