| Close your eyes and imagine a rural person. What do you see?
Now hold on to that image … we’ll get back to it.
Growing up, I traded urban and rural values each Wednesday and every other weekend while being shuttled between one parent who lived in the Atlanta suburbs and the other in the rolling foothills of Appalachia.
Even with that partial education in rural life, I find myself constantly contending with my blind spots, which I’ve become even more acutely aware of since last October, when I joined Open Campus and became the nation’s only national reporter dedicated to rural higher education.
Take a recent piece I wrote co-published with Open Campus and The Washington Post about rural broadband, headlined Despite pandemic promises, many rural students still lack fast internet.
Going in, I assumed somebody knew which areas needed internet most, after seemingly endless pandemic headlines and political platitudes about the need to expand connectivity in rural America.
I was wrong. In fact, billions of rural broadband dollars are being held up because they rely on faulty FCC maps that can’t answer this basic question: Who has internet and who doesn’t?
While national reporters had written about the money allocated to rural broadband, few had visited rural areas to find out whether that resulted in better connections and outcomes.
As soon as I did, significant barriers became clear, from hotspots that don’t work as advertised to grants that don’t consider affordability.
Even with that partial education in rural life, I find myself constantly contending with my blind spots.
I’ve now been on the beat for almost a year, interviewing hundreds of rural students, educators, experts, and advocates. Here are some of the biggest challenges we face, and how we can all do better:
RARE RURAL COVERAGE
National news outlets have tightened their budgets, narrowing their coverage areas even as regionals and locals are struggling to survive.
Rural coverage also is scarce at industry publications, from Inside Higher Ed and Higher Ed Dive to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Most weeks, when I search “rural” in my inbox I see only a handful of pieces, despite subscribing to just about every education email.
There are some exceptions: This Eric Hoover piece in the Chronicle expertly balances the tug-of-war many rural students face when considering colleges away from home. It avoids the trap of just covering the negatives of a rural place while balancing the pros and cons from the very first paragraph.
However, most of the gap in rural education coverage is being filled by a few nonprofit digital alternatives.
The Hechinger Report digs deep and often, giving prime real estate to the nuances of funding with this “year in the life of a small-town superintendent.”
The Daily Yonder has long spotlighted rural K-12 reporting, and has recently expanded its higher ed coverage by co-publishing Mile Markers.
And Scalawag Magazine and Southerly provide valuable spot coverage.
Journalists can also lean on the work of higher ed scholars featured by the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges (ARRC), which created a handy rural-serving institution (RSI) search tool.
Still, the relationship between rural communities and higher education remains woefully under-covered.
The relationship between rural communities and higher education remains woefully under-covered.
DEFICIT DEFINITIONS
Far too often, we only define rurality by what it is not.
Consider that Uncle Sam doesn’t even know how to define rurality.
Various federal agencies use different definitions. The U.S. Census Bureau sets the marker at fewer than 2,500 people, while the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sets it at fewer than 10,000.
But since healthy communities almost inevitably attract more people and grow … The reward for rural success is often to no longer be called rural.
Using static definitions ensures that readers almost always read about a rural America in perpetual malaise, limited by datasets that invalidate rural stories as soon as they become success stories.
Many journalists, intentionally or not, readily lean into that narrative, inordinately focusing their rural coverage on one of three themes: scarcity, addiction, or backwardness.
Many journalists inordinately focus their rural coverage on scarcity, addiction, or backwardness.
The New York Times Magazine’s “The Tragedy of America’s Rural Schools” paired some questionable framing with a headline that paints one-fifth of the nation under its woefully frayed brush.
But the Times is hardly alone.
Instead, education reporters should expand our understanding of what constitutes rurality, adopting an asset-based approach when reporting on rural communities.
That doesn’t mean writing only puff pieces. Far from it. But there are lessons in strengths as well as weaknesses, and any nuanced accounting of rural communities should include both.
Consider how Jason Gonzales, a local reporter for Open Campus, ignored the low hanging fruit of failure while reporting on rural college-going data in Colorado.
Rather than spotlighting the counties with the worst outcomes, Jason visited Fowler, a rural community that routinely sends about 4 of 5 of its graduates to college.
His reporting revealed a strength of rural schools with small populations: minor shifts, such as small scholarships or having even two devoted counselors, can make a huge difference in building a college-going culture.
Any nuanced accounting of rural communities should include both strengths and weaknesses.
EXPAND YOUR VISION
Earlier, I asked you to picture a rural person. Based on national coverage of rural communities, you probably envisioned someone who is white and conservative.
It’s true that rural populations are made up of considerably more white people and Republicans than the nation as a whole. But in the course of reporting from all 50 states, I’ve found these communities to be surprisingly diverse.
I’ve seen Somali immigrants revitalizing an aging agriculture industry in Maine, and watched pipeline fights launched from the right in rural Georgia and Nebraska.
I’ve met pro-choice West Virginians with a taste for vegan food, as well as West African, Latino, and Asian immigrants saving Oklahoma factory towns.
Over 40% of rural people identify as Democrats. A number of Hispanic-serving institutions are in rural regions, and more than 90% of HBCUs are in 10 largely rural Southern states — take rural Orangeburg, South Carolina, which has no movie theater but has two HBCUs.
More than 90% of HBCUs are in 10 largely rural Southern states.
When we assume a rural America that is solely white, conservative, and decaying, we miss the distinct needs and values of these communities and paint a misleading picture of both their challenges and triumphs.
It’s time for education reporters to leave behind assumptions made with closed eyes. We need to not only visit these places but give them the deep and nuanced coverage they deserve.
Fouriezos is the rural higher education reporter for Open Campus and has been published in top publications including the New York Times and Washington Post. Follow him at @nick4iezos and sign up for his newsletter.
Previously from The Grade
The problem with the “impoverished rural schools” narrative
What makes Casey Parks’ HBCU story so good
How student journalists at an HBCU newspaper took on local media
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