What is Rural Journalism? Occupational Precarity and Social Cohesion in US Rural Journalism Epistemology

ABSTRACT

Given the recent focus on news poverty and gaps in local journalism, rural journalists would seem to have a challenging job. This study seeks to understand the novel experiences and challenges of journalists who cover rural communities and how they conceptualize their knowledge-building practices. Through the lens of journalistic epistemology, researchers conducted a two-step, in-depth interview procedure with rural US journalists (n = 61) to better explore how rural journalists place their knowledge-making in relationto non-rural journalists. Rural journalists identified as being rural in that they practiced in rural communities, but also thought of their knowledge-building as tied intimately to their rural communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Rural journalism
• precarity
• journalistic epistemology
• epistemology
• interviews
• social cohesion

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Appalachian State University Specialized Reporting class of Spring 2023 for helping gather interviews for this study: Erin Isley, Ben Brady, Ben Gosey, Colin Trinity, Lexie Carroll, Francisco Grimes-Hernandez, James Parker, Ethan Bumgarner, Rachel Rodgers, Sam Vanolinda, Jade Ogle, Brionna Dallara, Dan Davidson, Maddie Lipe.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Pseudonym employed here to retain participant confidentiality.