A STUDY OF RETENTION AND RECRUITMENT AT SOUTHERN AND MIDWESTERN WEEKLY U.S. NEWSPAPERS

Daily and weekly newspapers are closing at alarming rates, leaving readers without local coverage in many parts of the country. More than 5,000 of the remaining newspapers in the United States are weeklies, providing meeting coverage, agricultural news and keeping small towns informed. Yet, not nearly enough research exists about the people working at those newspapers. More than 1,000 email surveys were sent in early 2021 to weekly news editors, publishers or owners in seven states seeking opinions on successes and challenges in hiring and retaining weekly journalists. Survey results and follow-up interviews revealed a number of insights including data indicating weekly newspaper leaders are challenged by lack of funding, lack of qualified candidates and candidates lacking an interest in living in rural America. The weekly newspaper leaders also indicated that staffing challenges have negatively affected local news coverage. Workplace culture and community engagement were two of the main reasons journalists stayed in their jobs

Measuring Student Success in JOUR200A: Fundamentals of Editing & Reporting I: A Beginning Writing, Editing and Reporting Class

A grammar error or typo on a resume can mean the difference between getting the job or having your resume deleted. Factual errors and inconsistencies can also affect a writer’s credibility. Accuracy, style, word choice and consistency matter for these reasons and more. Journalism students in particular should come to internships, classes and jobs with the skills they need to succeed. The course Jour200A: The Fundamentals of Reporting & Editing I attempts to meet this demand by providing all majors in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications with a strong foundation in editing and writing. This project sought to develop and deploy learning outcome measures to better understand the course’s weaknesses and strengths by examining student work and test scores from select students and a class of 19 students. Assessment tools were created and deployed in one section of Jour200A taught in spring 2021 and showed that student test scores improved from the first to the last week of the semester. Student writing success as assessed via rubric improved in all categories including writing, style and organization, but the rubrics and tests also provided guidance on areas of improvement. The learning assessment tools provide a baseline of knowledge about one cohort of Jour200A students that can be used to better understand how to assess learning outcomes in Jour200A going forward

Nitrates in Nebraska: A Multimedia Journalism Project on the Impact of Nitrate Contamination in the Groundwater

Nebraska’s multi-billion-dollar farm economy depends on groundwater and thankfully, the state has plenty of it for now. But that farming success has come at a cost: The fertilizer used to make those crops grow is also contaminating Nebraska’s groundwater, the drinking water source for most of the state. It’s a problem that is quietly costing the state and federal government millions of dollars and changing the way rural residents get water and how much they pay. Health researchers believe nitrate contamination in drinking water could be one cause of Nebraska’s higher than average pediatric cancer rate. Nebraska has the seventh-highest pediatric cancer rate in the country and the highest in the Midwest. This multimedia website explores the history of this decades-old problem, how it is impacting Nebraskans and what’s being done about it — from a corn and soybean field in McLean to a daycare in Edgar to a water treatment plant in Creighton. For decades, Nebraska farmers over-applied nitrogen fertilizer, which seeped into the soil, drained into surface water and leached into the groundwater, the source of drinking water for 85% of the state. Nebraska sits atop the plentiful Ogallala Aquifer, a fluid body of water with a water table that is hundreds of feet deep in some parts of the state and bubbling up into streams in another. Much of the attention on Nebraska water has been the sustainability of the Ogallala Aquifer, but more and more Nebraskans are now worrying not only about quantity, but quality

Nitrates in Nebraska: A Multimedia Journalism Project on the Impact of Nitrate Contamination in the Groundwater

Nebraska’s multi-billion-dollar farm economy depends on groundwater and thankfully, the state has plenty of it for now. But that farming success has come at a cost: The fertilizer used to make those crops grow is also contaminating Nebraska’s groundwater, the drinking water source for most of the state. It’s a problem that is quietly costing the state and federal government millions of dollars and changing the way rural residents get water and how much they pay. Health researchers believe nitrate contamination in drinking water could be one cause of Nebraska’s higher than average pediatric cancer rate. Nebraska has the seventh-highest pediatric cancer rate in the country and the highest in the Midwest. This multimedia website explores the history of this decades-old problem, how it is impacting Nebraskans and what’s being done about it — from a corn and soybean field in McLean to a daycare in Edgar to a water treatment plant in Creighton. For decades, Nebraska farmers over-applied nitrogen fertilizer, which seeped into the soil, drained into surface water and leached into the groundwater, the source of drinking water for 85% of the state. Nebraska sits atop the plentiful Ogallala Aquifer, a fluid body of water with a water table that is hundreds of feet deep in some parts of the state and bubbling up into streams in another. Much of the attention on Nebraska water has been the sustainability of the Ogallala Aquifer, but more and more Nebraskans are now worrying not only about quantity, but quality

A study of retention and recruitment at midwest and southern U.S. weekly newspapers

This mixed method study examined recruitment and retention challenges at weekly U.S. newspapers

What’s with the Water: The Nature of Reporting on the Problem of Nitrates in Nebraska

This article examines how 22 Nebraska newspapers and a wire service covered nitrate contamination in Nebraska’s groundwater over nearly 4 years. We found coverage lacked depth and examined a few solutions although 88% of Nebraskans get drinking water from the ground. Reliance on fertilizer and irrigation for crop production leads to groundwater contamination, making this a concerning coverage gap as climate change impacts promise to make farming more challenging and increase environmental risks

“It’s Not Hate But … ”: Marginal Categories in Rural Journalism

Journalists who cover rural areas in the United States say they are afraid to report on hate groups, and this fear is exacerbated by close community ties and limited resources among rural journalists. We examine the concept of “hate speech” as a boundary object, analyzing in-depth interviews with U.S. journalists reporting in rural communities (n = 33) to better understand how rural journalists report on hate. We find that rural journalists articulate a clear definition for hate speech but struggle to apply that definition to events within their communities, even as they articulate numerous forms of hate. Journalists often dismissed acts of hate using the residual category of “not hate, but … ” to signal something that they felt was out of place or unsuitable but did not rise to the legal definition of hate speech and thus was not worth reporting on. This approach ends up challenging journalists’ normative commitments to their communities and exemplifies their desire to avoid an objectivity trap

Rural Journalism

The goal of the project is the understand the work experiences of rural journalists in the U

“Everything Else is Public Relations” How Rural Journalists Draw the Boundary Between Journalism and Public Relations in Rural Communities

Rural journalists are news professionals, but also citizens engaged in their communities. The function and purpose of local journalism and public relations have become interdependent as media and communication has become more digital. These relationships create some tensions and it is in this environment that rural journalists make daily choices to cover a story or run prepared content provided by an outside source. Through the lens of boundary work, this study explores how (N = 33) self-identifying rural journalists navigated this gray area and walked the line between creating authentic journalistic content and publishing public relations content. We found that in principle they identified stark boundaries between public relations and rural journalism based on journalistic norms, but in practice these journalists were often put in a position to engage in public relations work to support their communities