"We need to know things."
--Bill Clinton, a few weeks ago
Over the last few years, we've watched several Arkansas communities lose their local news-papers--Arkadelphia, Prescott, and speaking of Bill Clinton, Hope and Hempstead County.
That's just to name a few. And these places are far too rural to get much attention from the television stations in Little Rock and Shreveport. Not even a small TV station in Monroe, La., is going to cover a school board meeting in Arkadelphia. They just don't have the manpower, and that's not what the mostest eyeballs are looking for, anyway.
Fortunately, one outfit is working to help address journalism shortcomings, and we don't mean long ledes and bad puns. This outfit is called Report For America--and it's helping place reporters in the field. The group's mission statement says it hopes to "restore journalism from the ground up by supporting the next generation through field reporting that serves under-covered corners of the world." Which sounds like a new-age way of saying: Stop the presses! We got us a story!
The idea sounds good. Perhaps in more rural settings, the idea sounds fantastic. Readers could always use more of this sort of thing. But if you take a look at where the group will be placing reporters in 2020-2021, you might notice something a little disappointing.
That list was published last Sunday. Report for America aims to place 250 journalists into 164 newsrooms in 46 states plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
As far as putting reporters in the southern part of the United States, however, the vast majority of those placements will be in cities and bigger towns: Orlando, Atlanta, Louisville, Lexington, Oklahoma City, Baltimore, Charlotte, Miami and the like.
Surely there are things that fall through the cracks in those markets, but those are Big Cities, capital B, capital C. They're hardly "under-covered corners of the world." Didn't Baltimore's former mayor just plead guilty to something? And didn't the papers in Miami uncover the Jeffrey Epstein scandal?
Just for the record, rural newspapers could use news partners to provide additional staff members, too. Or a dozen additional staff members. If the old battle plan is to hit 'em where they ain't, then the country has lots of places where reporters ain't. Emphasis on country. And politicians, boards, commissions and other assorted scoundrels need to be watched there, too.
We're not sure if Report for America got its name from Teach for America, but the similarities suggest as much. Teach for America, bless it, recruits teachers to go into low-income areas to teach in the most challenging of school districts. Yes, TFA will staff some schools in the big cities--we note that it shows the flag from New Orleans to Chicago, from San Francisco to New York City. But it also goes into smaller communities. See Lake Village, Ark., or Clarksdale, Miss.
As Report for America grows--and here's hoping it grows like kudzu--it might elect to help where help is most needed, in places like Hope and Arkadelphia, et. al., and follow TFA's lead. After all, Teach for America has been doing this longer, and has 14,000 teachers scattered around the nation. So it can spare a few for the rural areas. And sometimes more than a few.
(We will give Report for America credit for placing a reporter at the Rappahannock News. Its base town has a population of 127. Yowza. And you thought Jasper was a small town.)
In the coming years, perhaps, Report for America could gain traction, not to mention publicity, and get enough money into its budget to better distribute reporters between small towns and big cities. Just as Teach for America does.
Time is on its side. We wish the same were true for local news reporters.
Editorial on 12/08/2019