Watertown Daily Times sets the Atlantic straight

When the Watertown Daily Times in northern New York saw that Malcolm Burnley of the Atlantic had been horribly off base on a story about large-scale agriculture, the Amish and land prices in rural St. Lawrence County, it set out to set the record straight, and did so Sunday in a 3,300-word story by Christopher Robbins. (Screenshot including Reuters photo)

"It is a model of good reporting and the importance of having reporters living, breathing and writing in rural communities," Daily Yonder co-editor Bill Bishop writes as he retells the story. "This is a great story, and tells so much about journalism, the relationship between city and country and how important it is to listen."

Times Managing Editor Robert D. Gorman says in the story, “The writer didn’t know the difference between bail and bale, teats and udders, DePeyster and Canton, and wrote that huge agribusinesses have moved into St. Lawrence County, which is simply not true. Despite acknowledging Mr. Burnley’s factual errors, his editors are still convinced he methodically unraveled an incredibly complex socioeconomic trend in regional farming. I have told them Mr. Burnley got that wrong, too, but to no avail.” The Atlantic has corrected six errors but the story remains posted.

Amish one of U.S.'s fastest-growing religious groups

A new Amish community is established about every three and a half weeks in the U.S. and more than 60 percent of all existing Amish communities have been founded since 1990, according to a new census of the Amish population by Ohio State University researchers. They say this suggests that the Amish are growing more rapidly than most other religions in the U.S. The growth can be linked to large families and high baptism rates, while growth in other religions would more likely be linked to conversion. The study restricted its count to "Old Order" Amish and others who limit their use of most modern technologies. (Fotosearch image)

There are now 456 Amish settlements, compared to just 179 in 1990, according to the census, Science Daily reports. If the growth continues at its current rate, there could be more than 1 million Amish people living in more than 1,000 settlements across the U.S. by 2050, which would "bring economic, cultural, social and religious change to the rural areas that attract Amish settlement." Researchers predict Amish will buy land vacated by farmers, but "the availability of farmland might not keep pace with population growth," forcing many Amish men to seek non-farm work, including woodworking and construction, which could increase land prices and enhance local economies.

The Amish should not be confused with Mennonites, who are similar and share common backgrounds, but are more "assimilated into mainstream culture and are more likely to live in urban and suburban settings," according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, whose senior fellow is Amish scholar and expert Donald Kraybill. The Ohio State census found that Amish live in 29 states, mostly in the Midwest and Great Lakes region, but as far south as Florida and Texas, as far northeast as Maine and as far west as Montana. Ohio contains the most Amish, Pennsylvania is second and Indiana is third. New York has seen the most recent growth in settlements, with 15 founded since 2010. (Read more)

Rural areas have higher home ownership than national average, much of it free and clear of debt

Amid all the talk about home ownership being harder and harder to obtain -- and it is -- reporter Lance George has uncovered some revealing statistics about who has done the best job of settling in and paying on a mortgage, and of paying it off. George, writing in the Daily Yonder, cites census and federal housing data showing that in 2010, 65.1 percent of U.S. homes were occupied by their owners. In rural communities, the number was 71.6 percent.

Home ownership, the reporter notes, varies across demographic groups, and among regions within rural and small-town America. It is highest in the Midwest, at 74 percent, and lowest in the West, at 68 percent. "Delaware has the highest rural and small-town homeownership rate, at 77.8 percent, followed closely by Minnesota and Michigan, at 77 percent."

The biggest rural-urban disparity in the data was free and clear ownership. "Nearly 42 percent of homeowners in rural and small town America own their homes free and clear of mortgage debt, compared to roughly 27 percent of suburban and urban homeowners with no mortgage," George reports, offering possible reasons: a large number of manufactured homes with shorter loan terms and an older demographic; mortgage debt declines with age. (Read more)

As local governments picked up more of school tab, gap between poor and rich districts widened

The Great Recession has changed state formulas for funding education, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's annual Public Education Finances report released last week. According to Ben Wieder, reporting in Stateline, the news service of the Pew Center for the States: For the first time in 16 years, local governments picked up a higher share of the education bill than the states, while the federal government picked up more than 10 percent of the tab. Data was from the 2009-10 school year. State funding did decrease by 6.5 percent from the previous year, according to the bureau, the biggest decrease since reporting began in 1977. That drop was accompanied by an unprecedented increase in federal funding, largely stimulus dollars, that in many cases propped up state spending. Taken together, this means that education funding across the country increased by a half percent, while per-pupil funding increased by 1.1 percent.

Michael Griffith, senior school finance analyst at the Education Commission of the States, says local funding wasn't hurt early by the recession, but it declined as lower property assessments translated into lower local property tax collections. That decline came as state budgets were starting to recover, compensating for some of the losses in local revenue. Griffith expects that the next couple of census reports will show a fuller picture of the impact of the recession, particularly numbers for the past school year, in which federal stimulus dollars expired, Wieder writes. Declining state revenues increased the distance between the haves and the have-nots, Griffith says, because wealthier districts in many parts of the country were better able to make up for fewer state dollars.

Historic post offices up for sale or already sold; National Trust, communities want them preserved

The U.S. Postal Service has been selling off post-office buildings as a way to save money and "downsize its retail network," Steve Hutkins of Save the Post Office writes. But The National Trust for Historic Preservation is stepping in to try and save some historic offices by collectively placing the buildings on its list of the most endangered historic places. The post offices include those in Geneva, Ill., La Jolla, Calif. (left), Gulfport, Miss. and Fernandina Beach, Fla.

The Trust said on its website that city officials and preservationists "find themselves frustrated by a lack of information and guidance from the U.S. Postal Service" when they find buyers for historic offices. "Local post office buildings have traditionally played an essential role in the lives of millions of Americans. Many are architecturally distinctive, prominently located, and cherished as civic icons in communities across the country. Unless the U.S. Postal Service establishes a clear, consistent process that follows federal preservation law when considering disposal of these buildings, a significant part of the nation’s architectural heritage will be at risk."

The USPS owns about 9,000 of its 32,000 offices, Hutkins writes. The others are in leased spaces. Of those it owns, about 2,500 are either on the National Register of Historic Places or are eligible to be listed. More than 1,000 post offices were built during the New Deal, including the one in La Jolla, and are significant for the murals and sculptures they contain, which Postal Service Historian Dallen Wordekemper said are "often prized more than the buildings themselves."

Many of the New Deal post offices have already been sold as of last year, Hutkins reports. USPS partnered with the largest commercial real-estate company in the world, CB Richard Ellis, to manage sales. About 80 post offices are listed for sale on a USPS real-estate website, and many are historic. At least 38 historic post offices in 19 states have been sold or put on the market, most of them in rural places. Eleven are in California, 4 are in Connecticut, and three each are in Pennsylvania and Illinois.