AIP-Ohio University Programme – Insights into data-driven reporting and sustainability for rural community journalism
Prof Aimee Edmondson from the E.W Scripps School of Journalism on “data access and data-driven reporting”
“I have no interest in math,” Prof Aimee Edmondson told us, “and I’m not all that interested in computers but as a reporter as I began working more on projects and stories relating to social ills I found I needed context and the tools data journalism provided.”
One might not expect a session on data journalism to be entertaining and fun but that’s exactly what Prof Edmondson served up.
She said she would show delegates “how to find data quickly, how to use this in daily stories, how to employ it in more long-term stuff and to get into what we call a data state of mind”.
READ: Police shootings database 2015-2023: Search by race, age, department – Washington Post
The first thing to do is to investigate your data: “How is the data organised?”
“As a journalist, I want to look under the hood,” she said, “find out why, and what’s going on there?”
Prof Edmondson led a practical demonstration of various Excel formulae and functions, such as pivot tables and filters, using fascinating cases such as journalists killed and city budgets.
If you want to play along while you watch her presentation, you can download her sample dataset files available here and open them in Excel.
After playing with the Excel spreadsheets, she then suggested that publishers seek out more resources and training from a global non-profit called Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE). Find links to the IRE here. She suggested that AIP reach out to them to do further training sessions.
She stated that one of the challenges is finding data sets but that this can be quickly overcome through advanced Google searches and contacting organisations such the World Bank, the United Nations, government departments and so on.
She then set one final test – create your own data sets.
“It is a lot of work,“ she said, “but can be very rewarding.”
By way of example, she told publishers to look at the work of journalist Mark Knoller, a former correspondent with CBS best known for his reporting on the White House. He has painstakingly gathered data on several US presidents’ daily activities including stats looking at when and where Presidents go every time they leave the White House. She stated that this has led to some fascinating stories.
The YouTube livestream recording of Prof Edmondson’s presentation is here.
Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues on “sustainability in rural community journalism”
Director Al Cross is an Extension Professor of Journalism at the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, at the University of Kentucky. This means that most of his work is directed off campus, to professionals. For students, he teaches a course each semester in Community Journalism, and covers all platforms from the small but very interesting town of Midway, halfway between Lexington and the state capital of Frankfort.
He says it’s always more difficult to do good journalism in rural places, mainly because of resources but it’s also about sociology, about the way people in smaller places live. There is some timidity because there’s much more risk in offending an advertiser or a public official.
Watch the YouTube live stream here.
“You have to be careful, and you have to be confident.”
“As someone who is the editor and sole reporter at my paper, it’s hard to opine about local issues because I have to then turn around and report on them,” said Cross.
“I need to keep open channels of communication with elected officials, and going on about them in an editorial would likely get doors slammed in my face.”
“I think if you have been at the paper long enough to have earned the trust and confidence of local officials, some of whom haven’t been in office as long as you have been at the paper. In my years of the weeklies, I found that columns (not editorials) were a good way to share knowledge that I had unofficially, outside of public meetings, or to offer perspective about the difficulties of an issue that doesn’t fit into a news story.”
In recent years there has been much more talking about sustainability because so many rural newspapers have been shrinking and closing as the digital challenges hit home.
The US has lost 1800 newspapers in the last 20 years and is losing two a week on average.
The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues publishes The Rural Blog, a digest of events, trends, issues, ideas and journalism from and about rural America.
Each year the Institute presents the Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism, named for the couple who exemplified those qualities as publishers of The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Kentucky, for 52 years.
“We look for rural journalists who made a difference,” said Cross.
“You have to be honest not just in what you report but in your dealings with the community.”
Cross believes principles of journalism are more important than ever because of the advent of digital media and social media.
“(That) means many people don’t understand how journalism is supposed to work. It’s crucial that people understand the value of journalism.”
“We are in the business mainly to provide a public service,” said Cross.
Al Cross has an “elevator speech”.
“We publish journalism, which practises a discipline of verification. We tell you how we know something or we attribute it to someone. We’re mainly about facts, not opinions. Social media is mainly about opinion, not facts, and practises no discipline or verification. Where should you go for the facts?”
“If we are going to hold people accountable we have to be held accountable,” Cross said. “If we tell our audiences that, we are showing them respect.”
The theme of the Institute’s national summit last year was “Good journalism is good business.” (Amen.)
Sharon Burton is the founder and publisher of the Adair County Community Voice, a weekly newspaper in Columbia, Kentucky. and The Farmer’s Pride, a statewide newspaper that provides hometown news for Kentucky’s farm community.
“I make money so I can be in the newspaper business. I’m not in the newspaper business to make money,” she said.
Sharon publishes a Special edition focusing on health paid by health-related businesses.
The Keene Sentinel is good at earning revenue from readers. Their digital subscriber revenue went from $55,000 in 2018 (out of $1,528,000 total circulation revenue) to $258,000 in 2022 (out of $2,032,000).
Good rural newspapers not only cover civic activities -– they also hold them. They should be seen as community builder not just another business that makes money off the community
“The readers are loyal to the Sentinel because the Sentinel is loyal to the readers,” said Al Cross.
Their value statement says it all.
“The Sentinel keeps watch over the Monadnock Region, standing as a trusted source and community partner since 1799, always locally owned, always produced by your neighbours, and always delivering the news you need to help make our community stronger, together.”
Many rural newspapers are online but still have print newspapers.
Another excellent local newspaper, the Hickman County Times is deeply involved in its community.
It has been running a series of stories on sewage leaks in rivers.
When a 17-year-old student committed suicide, the editor saw it as a tragedy that was also an opportunity. So the editor not only reported on the suicide but also helped create a suicide prevention task force.
“He did this not because he had to but because it was the right thing to do.”
When reporting on drug-related deaths, he not only did an in-depth report but also promised to write a story on drug deaths every month.
He has to be careful because he doesn’t own the business but he is a great example of an editor who can make people think about things they need to think about.
Many rural newspapers don’t have editorial pages or editorials in the same way as metropolitan papers. Another example of timidity. Often it is not an editorial but it is a column – it has a more personal impact if a person writes it as a column.
As one community newspaper publisher said, community journalism is relationship journalism. “You have a closer, more continuing relationship that takes more care.”
As The Informer’s Andile Nomabhunga said in introducing himself, “I love telling stories about people in the rural areas, who are the most neglected.”
