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 U.S. journalists (n =61) to better explore how rural journalists place their knowledge-making in relation to 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.