The most recent annual report of the State of Local News Project by Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism revealed an alarming uptick in news deserts across the country. Since 2005, the country has lost almost 2,900 newspapers and 43,000 journalists. ...
One bright spot in the report is the potential for university reporting programs to be part of the solution by partnering with local news outlets. Colleges and universities in rural areas can engage their students and resources to support local news.
There are 627 colleges and universities located in rural areas, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). About 95% of these — 598 — are located in a news desert or in a county adjacent to a news desert.
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DaneClaussen
A very high percentage of those 627 rural colleges do not have a journalism school/department large enough to sustain an ongoing off-campus community news operation. This was clearly demonstrated in Dane Claussen's paper on 10 sample states at the 2022 convention of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication (AEJMC). He also wrote about the geographical mismatch between college journalism programs and "ghost" newspapers in 2010.
Tuesday, February 13, 2024 Report this