Yesterday I gave a new media presentation at the 46th ASA Conference. The video of the presentation is above. A video that shown in the presentation is below. I am unable to embed the slides used in the presentation but you can view them here.
Rural areas in the U.S. are at risk of becoming news deserts. As can be seen in the image above, the counties with no newspapers are in red. The counties in yellow have one news papers. For those that have them, the staffs of these papers are shrinking. In addition, they are owned mostly by corporations with no control from the local community. This site and the ones profiled here are trying to prevent their areas from becoming news deserts. The purpose of the New Media Presentation was to inform the conference about these efforts.
I met with people from other new media outlets at the conference and invited them to the talk. They could not come to the presentation but I discussed their sites. Firstly, I discussed the site Black by God. It was founded in 2020 by Crystal Good “to provide a more nuanced portrayal of the Black Experience in the Appalachian region.” She received an award by the Appalachian Studies Association this year.
The second site discussed was Appodlachia. It bills itself as “a shrewd, witty, comical, sometimes irreverent, and always honest podcast providing a counter-narrative to the negative portrayal and harmful stereotypes of Appalachia.” Guests have included Senators John Fetterman of PA, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Doug Jones of Alabama, and others.
The last site discussed was Black in Appalachia. Created in 2020 as a “non-profit that works in collaboration with public media, residents, university departments, libraries, archives and community organizations to highlight the history and contributions of African-Americans in the development of the Mountain South and its culture.” They run a podcast and have multiple projects for the purpose of informing the public about issues in the African American community in Appalachia.