Rural editor wins national opinion award, again, and gets in line to be publisher of The Anniston Star

UPDATE: Davis, 47, has been named associate publisher in preparation to become publisher. He will remain editor. He is an Anniston native who has been at the Star since 2003. Read more here.

For the second year in a row, Bob Davis of The Anniston (Ala.) Star was named Opinion Journalist of the Year for newspapers with circulations less than 100,000 by the Association of Opinion Journalists (formerly the National Conference of Editorial Writers).

Davis is editor of the 20,000-circulation Anniston Star in rural northeastern Alabama, a paper that serves several small towns and rural counties along Interstate 20 between Birmingham and Atlanta, at the southern end of Appalachia near the Talladega National Forest.

Davis was praised for both the quality of his writing and for the breadth of issues he tackled in his columns and editorials (links to some examples are below). The judges wrote: "Bob Davis' columns have the best anchor any local newspaper could have -- a sense of place. Whether he's doing a devastating takedown of one state Sen. Scott Beason or advocating literacy programs (as opposed to absurd immigrant laws), the voice is always that of a thoughtful Alabama Southern gentleman who's considered all arguments."

When Davis won the award last year, the judges particularly praised his editorial campaign calling for reform of the Alabama constitution, which dates to 1901 and has a number of obsolete items in it, such as language making interracial marriage illegal and calling for the segregation of schools, both rendered moot by federal laws.

"His focus on issues that matter to all Alabamians (even if they don't know it yet) is clear, determined and precise," the 2011 judges wrote. "He even breathes a diverting life into the issue of Alabama's execrable 1901 constitution, the gift that keeps on giving to Alabama editorial writers and the problem that refuses to go away."

The Star is a storied community newspaper, made famous for its anti-segregation stances during the Civil Rights movement and its persistent watch-dogging of local and regional government agencies under publisher H. Brandt "Brandy" Ayers.

The AOJ's Opinion Journalist of the Year award for publications above 100,000 circulation went to Thomas Frank of Harper's magazine, who has written much about low-income rural people who vote against their economic interests by supporting candidates who stress religious and social issues (What's the Matter with Kansas?)

Here are some links to Davis' winning entries, which he provided to The Rural Blog:
"Reading into a real problem," Sept. 30, 2011; "Beason's gamble: State lawmaker walks thin 'wire'," June 16, 2011; "A 'band of brothers' for Bentley," Jan. 23, 2011; "Memories to warm us during the rebuilding," May 1, 2011.

Rural schools struggle to bridge the digital divide

Rural schools have long been leaders in distance-learning and online education. "To offer a full slate of courses to their students, they’ve had to be. Some states, fearing a divide between rural and urban communities, have developed statewide initiatives to provide technology to rural schools," Sarah Butrymowicz writes in The Hechinger Report. Maine, she points out, gives every student a laptop, and Alabama requires all school districts "to offer advanced placement courses through distance-learning technology, where students video-conference with teachers. (Edison School in Yoder, Colo.; Butrymowicz photo)

In 2010, only 57 percent of rural households had broadband Internet access, compared to 72 percent in urban areas, according to a November 2011 report by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Teachers in rural settings don't require students to go online to complete assignments and have to be flexible about staying after school so students can work on the computers. “The Internet can give them library resources that they might otherwise not have,” said Aimee Howley, senior associate dean in the College of Education at Ohio University, who studies technology integration in rural schools. Technology can also be used for simulations of things, she said, that “you just can’t do on site."

For schools facing shrinking budgets and consolidation, technology could be rural schools’ saving grace, said Bob Wise, a former governor of West Virginia who now serves as president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., that has studied the challenges facing rural schools. “We’re encouraging every district to develop a systematic strategy for employing technology,” he said. “My guess is you will see a number of rural schools actually saved and renewed as learning centers.”