Goal: Fill the progressive news gap in rural America.

Leadership

Organization’s Objective

Rural citizens have minimal access to progressive news, including how their members of Congress actually vote. PEW Internet & American Life studies show home broadband adoption lags behind; Kellogg Foundation studies show a significant drop in rural news coverage, and; MY RURAL AMERICA's own research shows that rural citizens have a less than four percent chance of finding out from local newspapers and radio how their conservative members of Congress vote. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius describes the problem as, "First and foremost, rural communities have lost their ability to constructively call their citizens to a common table to discuss their future. They have lost this ability because of out-migration of their populations, because individuals have become entrenched in their own corner of the public square to the omission of the other three corners, or because they have lost the skills necessary for productive and progressive communication. They’ve lost this ability to engage the citizenry because the discussion usually starts with limited human and financial resources, and in many cases their only source of community information is the various coffee shop conversations that are either uninformed or misinformed, and most often profoundly negative. The small community newspapers – which 40 to 50 years ago served as a “conscience of the community” – are no longer serving that purpose and in many cases have disappeared altogether. So-called “local” TV broadcasts originate from hundreds of miles away, and supposedly “local” radio stations are increasingly owned by nationwide conglomerates that pipe in programming from the other side of the country.” This progressive "news gap" most often results in rural voters voting against their personal and economic interests on bread & butter issues like access to health care, Social Security, rural economic issues and health care benefits for war veterans.