Rural areas are more dependent on public radio, TV

In the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney said he would cut federal funding for public broadcasting. Public television and radio outlets, including PBS and National Public Radio, received just $445 million of the 2012 budget, about .014 percent. In The Washington Post, Brad Plumer reflected on the importance of public broadcasting, and argued that if the budget is cut, rural areas would suffer the most.

"The usual arguments in favor of public broadcasting focus on the facts that a) public television and radio are highly educational and b) that this government spending mainly benefits rural areas with few other media options," Plumer writes. The government doesn't actually give money to PBS or NPR, he notes; it gives it to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which parcels out the money based on a formula. A lot of it goes to TV programming, the rest goes to 581 local TV and radio stations across the U.S.

PBS would lose just 15 percent of its budget, and NPR just 2 percent if Congress eliminated the public broadcasting budget. But local stations in many rural areas might be forced to close or drastically cut back their programming because more than 50 percent of their funding comes from the government. Plumer says that would be bad for children in rural areas who have only three options for educational programming: Nick Jr., Disney Jr. and PBS. "For families that can't afford cable, PBS is the only option," Plumer wrote. "The big worry is that an end to government funding would leave pockets of the country without public radio and TV, replaced by commercial stations that are less affordable, more saturated with advertising, and less educational." (Read more)

All journalists should take apart those misleading political ads; here's another tool to help you do it

By Al Cross
Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

With less than a month until the hugely important Election Day for federal, state and local offices, the airwaves are being clogged with commercials from campaigns, party committees, so-called "super PACs" and other outside players, and most of them are playing fast and loose with the truth.

Pointing out lies and misrepresentations is the duty of journalists, including rural journalists. You may think that you need to stick to local coverage, but you should should remember that many if not most of your audience has no easy access to daily newspapers that pick apart the ads for federal and state office -- and that there and many sources from which to glean facts and analysis about ads that are running on your local airwaves. The voters you serve deserve the best possible information, and you are the only source for many of them to get it. Please do not forsake this responsibility.

Previously, we have noted the services FactCheck.org, Politifact.com and The Washington Post's Fact Checker column, which we have found reliable, with only very rare and minor errors. In addition to fact-checking, now there is a service that can help you track the volume and sponsors of ads: Political Ad Sleuth, a searchable database of political ad buys across the nation, as well as a crowd-sourced research tool for journalists. The site has data on where presidential, congressional and issue ads are running and who is paying for them.

The site is based on online ad files from the Federal Communications Commission, which cover the top 50 media markets, plus files uploaded by volunteers in smaller markets. If you are in such a market, you can become one of those volunteers and return the favor. Learn how you can help here.
A tutorial about political ad files and the site itself is here. To contact the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, which operates the site, click here.

Ex-ABC reporter gets that 'too close for comfort' feeling in writing about journalism in her community

By Al Cross

Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

CHARLESTON, S.C. – A former network correspondent who wrote an admiring book about small-town newspapers, told their main national meeting this weekend that she has faith in the future of community journalism and had experienced its fundamental challenge – in writing about a Colorado community where she has a home.

Judy Muller spoke to the annual convention of the National Newspaper Association because she is the author of Emus Loose in Egnar: Big Stories from Small Towns. She started her career at a weekly paper in New Jersey, but writing the book after leaving ABC News and joining the journalism faculty at the University of Southern California gave her a much greater appreciation of “that too-close-for-comfort feeling” that her audience knows well.

But not as great as the appreciation she gained when she wrote about how local media in and around Norwood, Colo., where she has a home, handled a sensational bullying case at a high school where “the average graduating class is about 12,” and which had “torn the town apart,” she told the editors and publishers, who mainly run weeklies.

"I have been aware the whole time of how concerned I am about how the local editor there will react -- the article is somewhat critical of her coverage -- but she is a friend,” Muller said. "And the piece is not a flattering picture of the local school, and yet I hope more young families will move to the community -- after all, I have a home there, and property values are important."

But in reporting the story, which she has sold to The Atlantic magazine, being local worked to Muller’s advantage.  Parents of two boys charged in the case gave her exclusive interviews because, as they said, “You live up there on Deer Mesa and you gave the commencement address last year.”

And, for first time in her career, Muller sent interviewees their quotes in context, to show them how they would appear in the story. Asked what she would have done if the people decided they didn't want to be quoted at all, Muller simply said she would have talked them into it.         

The trust required in such situations takes time to develop, and that’s why Patch.com, the national network of online local news sites, “won’t get much cooperation,” Muller said.

Some weeklies are reluctant to embrace the digital world, but some noted for their good journalism are using social media to make sure they maintain the local-news franchise that is the secret to their status as the healthiest part of the newspaper business.

Muller said her friend Laurie Ezzell Brown of The Canadian Record in the Texas Panhandle is using all sorts of social media, which appeals to younger people. She quoted Brown: "Those who may have viewed the paper as too staid or serious are finding that it is much more friendly and approachable."

Meanwhile, though, the paper has also expanded its efforts in a more traditional way, cultivating two non-staff columnists whom Laurie says have developed their own followings.

Muller sees a good future for printed community papers, because they provide local news, often of deep personal interest worth clipping, that is unavailable anywhere else. "They have a captive audience,” she said. “As long as there are refrigerator magnets there will be weekly newspapers."

But Muller concluded with exhortations about the most important reason for community newspapers: covering local officials and holding them accountable. "Try to remember why you got into it in the first place,” she said. “It's more important now than ever."

Dish Network to offer broadband-Internet services to 14.5 million rural folks

Rural customers are getting more broadband choices, but they're still not cheap. Dish Network Corp., the second- largest U.S. satellite-television provider, has introduced a nationwide broadband-Internet service called DishNet that’s aimed at rural customers. According to Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Alex Sherman, Dish is targeting the 14.5 million rural Americans who have slower Internet access or no online connection at all.

While the Internet speed it plans to offer these customers -- 10 megabits per second -- is a fraction of what’s offered by cable and fiber-optic lines in urban areas, "it’s fast enough for most applications, such as social networking, video streaming and Internet-based phone calls," Dish representatives told Sherman. The cost of the service should be between $40 and $50 a month. (Read more) 

Des Moines' KCCI-TV takes top small-market photography award again; Bakersfield is runner-up

The National Press Photographers Association announced late last week that KCCI-TV in Des Moines was its the small-market Station of the Year in TV news photography. The station also won in 2007 and 2009. The judges remarked that its work showed a willingness "to travel to far away places to get great stories" and "demonstrated an understanding of storytelling."

The runner up was KBAK-TV in Bakersfield, Calif. NPPA says it gives the award is given for consistency in providing outstanding news photography coverage for and about the audience it serves. It is an award aimed at raising the standards of the industry. To see a video compilation of KCCI's submitted work and the judge's full comments, go here.

PBS documentary following two rural soldiers gets Emmy nomination

The story of Dominic and Cole, best friends who join the National Guard after graduating from their rural Northern Michigan high school, became the PBS documentary that The Washington Post called "hauntingly beautiful and deeply felt." Where Soldiers Come From is now also an Emmy nominee for Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a New Story, Long Form. For the documentary, director Heather Courtney returned to her own hometown to gain extraordinary access to Dominic and Cole to show how two men from a small town grew and changed, almost overnight, to become men, looking for bombs on the roadsides of Afghanistan. And how they came home again, victims of traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress, eventually disillusioned about their choices and their mission.

The National Priorities Project reports that, in 2004, 44 percent of military recruits came from rural areas. In contrast, only 14 percent came from major cities. Regionally, the Pentagon reports that most enlistees come from the South (40 percent) and the West (24 percent).

Where Soldiers Come From won the 2012 Independent Spirit Truer Than Fiction Award. The 33rd annual News and Documentary Emmy Award winners will be announced at a gala event at Frederick P. Rose Hall, located in the Time-Warner Center, on Monday, Oct. 1, in New York City.

Andy Griffith dies at 86; will always be remembered as sheriff in Mayberry, modeled after his hometown

Andy Griffith, who exemplified rural America for a generation of television viewers, died today at his home in Roanoke Island, N.C. He was 86.

From 1960 to 1968, Griffith was Sheriff Andy Taylor on "The Andy Griffith Show," set in Mayberry, N.C., which he as show co-owner modeled after his home town of Mount Airy, just south of the Virginia border in the shadow of the Blue Ridge and Pilot Mountain (also the name of a tiny town that became the larger town of Mount Pilot on TV). After the show went into reruns, which still continue, it was succeeded by a spinoff, "Mayberry R.F.D," and the town's name became a metaphor for small-town America, sometimes favorable, sometimes not.

The first show "gave rise to other small town, Main Street USA shows," Joanne Ostrow writes for The Denver Post. Until then, TV "was centered in New York duplexes . . . urban police stations and hospitals, and suburban ranches and Colonials." Doug Martin of The New York Times notes that "The Real McCoys" debuted in 1957 (and offers several other tidbits, such as Griffith's endorsement of President Obama's health-care reforms). The Times' Neil Genzlinger says the McCoy show was "unflattering," but the Griffith show countered a rural and especially Southern "stereotype defined by ignorance and bigotry" and confirmed "the notion that the moral center of the country lives somewhere in a small town." Griffith "made rural values universal," The Boston Globe said in an editorial.

Mount Airy, population 10,000, gradually adopted a Mayberry image, particularly after the decline of the region's main industries: textiles, tobacco and furniture. "Tourism has really saved us," Tanya Jones, executive director of the Surry County Arts Council, told CNN. Griffith originally resisted helping the town promote itself as Mayberry, perhaps remembering prejudice he felt growing up on the wrong side of the town's railroad tracks, but in recent years participated in those efforts, including establishment of the Andy Griffith Museum. He won the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.

As Lonesome Rhodes, with Patricia Neal

Griffith's first big star turn was as "a country singer and egomaniacal psychopath named Lonesome Rhodes in the gut-wrenching drama 'A Face in the Crowd.' It is the story of a wildly popular entertainer who becomes too big too fast and is corrupted beyond salvation. His fall from grace is even faster than his sudden rise from anonymity," Dennis Rodgers writes for the Raleigh News & Observer. "Griffith nailed it. He was dead-on brilliant. His demonic anger and barely controlled energy were difficult to watch, however, and the public stayed away in droves. Today, film buffs consider it a classic. But when it was released, only critics seemed to approve."

As lawyer "Matlock"

Griffith's last big role was as fictional Wilmington, N.C., lawyer Ben Matlock, in an eponymous series that ran "off and on from 1986 to 1995," Rodgers writes. "Griffith’s Matlock was wise, cranky, stubborn, funny and 100 percent Andy. Those who knew the actor said he was much closer to Matlock’s persona than he ever was to TV’s beloved sheriff. It was also a favorite of fans of the old show who tuned in to catch the sly Mayberry-related asides Griffith would slip into the dialogue."

Rodgers concludes, "Andy Griffith never won an Oscar, an Emmy or a Tony for his acting. But then, around here we never thought of him as an actor. He was just our friend and neighbor and we were so proud of him we couldn’t hardly stand it. And if the rest of the world happened to tune in to his popular shows and just happened to assume folks in North Carolina were anywhere near as good-hearted as Andy Taylor, Ben Matlock or the good people of Mayberry, well, that was OK with us, too." (Read more)

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/03/3688509/andy-griffith-he-was-just-our.html#storylink=cpy

For coverage from the Mount Airy News, click here. For an obituary from Inside TV, go here. TV Week has reaction, including President Obama's, and some video clips, including a "Face in the Crowd" trailer and a segment from another movie, "No Time for Sergeants," which followed TV and Broadway versions that starred Griffith.