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The Daily Yonder
Rural Employment Edges Back to Pre-Pandemic Numbers
Three-and-a-half years after the Covid-19 pandemic created massive layoffs, rural workers are right back where they started, according to a Daily Yonder analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The latest monthly county-level employment report from BLS shows that rural counties have a few more jobs now...
Does Rural America Have Outsized Influence on the Electoral College?
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week. In late 2023, I wrote a Keep It Rural on the...
Activists Win a Battle for Women’s Reproductive Healthcare in a Rural Colorado Town
On June 8, 2023, Lindsay Yeager of Cortez, Colorado, woke up to a barrage of text messages, asking if she had heard about the local birth center closing. Yeager immediately sprang into action. By that evening, protesters gathered across the street from the city’s hospital with placards and a purpose: keeping the birthing center open.
A Huge EV Factory Is Coming to Rural West Tennessee. Here’s How Locals Are Ensuring They Benefit.
This story was originally published by Grist. “Blue Oval City” sounds like some kind of fantastic, utopian megalopolis of the future. In reality, it’s a massive automotive manufacturing complex that will provide several links in the EV supply chain. The joint venture, between Ford and Korean company SK Innovation, promises 6,000 good-paying jobs for residents of the small, rural communities around Stanton, Tennessee. Many expect it to benefit surrounding towns like Covington, Brownsville, and Jackson as well, while reaching south into Mississippi and north into Kentucky, too.
Making Mountaintop Removal Renewable
The dirt road to Starfire Mine is rough, bumpy, and rutted, with a view of undulating terrain covered and scrubby vegetation rolling out into the distance. This is one of the largest mountaintop removal mine sites in Appalachia – at 27,000-acres, it’s as large as Disney World – and the site of one of the most significant renewable energy projects in development in the eastern U.S.
Q&A: Rural Voter Behavior Is Driven By Economics, Not ‘Culture Wars’
Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.
In a Small Colorado Town, People Rally To Save a Unicorn
On an unseasonably warm day in November, we find ourselves where we never thought possible: in the dramatic throes of saving a unicorn. That’s the big story, but we begin our journey with one of the universe’s known knowns: a small town will get together to help one of their own. That’s just the way it is. Relationships in rural areas are fostered like nowhere else for good and for bad. At any given moment, people know each other and their needs and wants. That’s how we know so much about our unicorn, like that his name is Steven and he needs a kidney.
Lawmen of the Small Screen
Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in The Good, the Bad, and the Elegy, a newsletter from the Daily Yonder focused on the best, and worst, in rural media, entertainment, and culture. Every other Thursday, it features reviews, retrospectives, recommendations, and more. You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article to receive future editions in your inbox.
Workforce Shortages Plague Rural Hospitals, Legislation to Address It Stalls
With 2023 being the least productive year in Congress since 1933, legislation that could help rural hospitals with their workforce issues continues to wait for any action by lawmakers. Advocates for rural hospitals and healthcare facilities say that workforce issues are one of the biggest challenges facing rural healthcare facilities...
Pedestrian Safety on Rural Roads
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week. I have a recurring nightmare in which I’m sitting on an...
Second-Hand Sales Turn into Second-Chance Grants
The first shopper arrived at 3:30 a.m., five and a half hours before the doors opened. By 9 o’clock, 202 people stood in line in front of Second Chance Emporium, a second-hand store and rural retail phenomenon in La Grange, Texas. When the doors finally cracked open, it was off to the races, as shoppers poured into the 20,000 square foot shop in search of….well, everything.
How Miners Are Still Paying the Costs of Pursuing an “American Dream”
This story was originally published by the Postindustrial. “I’ve loaded more coal in my sleep than I have in the mines,” says Terry Lilly. The words don’t come easy. Though retired, Lilly remains ever a coal miner. It’s said coal miners are a stoic sort. Inner revelations aren’t in Lilly’s nature. But it’s also physically difficult for him to share those words.
A Rural Calling: Scott McReynolds
When Scott McReynolds completed his graduate studies, he decided he’d do “one more fun thing before getting a real job.” That one fun thing became a calling and a career. McReynolds grew up in Lithonia, Georgia, just outside Atlanta. In the summer of 1990, he came to...
Rural Wyoming Is Losing OBs. Those Who Remain Are Spread Thin.
This story was originally published by Wyofile. Jan Siebersma has delivered thousands of babies during his three-plus decades in obstetrics. He’s seen it all: twins and breech babies, marathon labors, emergency cesarean sections, even the rare en caul delivery when the infant emerges in the intact amniotic sac. Working...
45 Degrees North: Home Improvement The Rural Way
There’s a whole lot of remodeling going on in rural areas. Affordable housing is in short supply and housing stock is aging. And out here we tend to stay in the same home longer than the national median tenure of 13.2 years. So rural folks are building additions to accommodate growing families, accommodations to allow aging in place, and features that make the homes we’re in more livable.
Independent Journalists Work to Fill Rural News Gaps on the Big Island of Hawai’i
Julia Neal is the backbone of the Ka’ū Calendar, a 16-page community newspaper covering local news and events in the southern portion of Hawai’i’s Big Island. Like clockwork for the past 21 years, Neal works late into the night before the first of every month to send the final draft of her independently published newspaper to the printers on the neighboring island of O’ahu.
From ‘No Resources’ to a ‘Model Program’: NM’s Behavioral Health Services Tailored to Rural Needs
When Vivian Montano was in jail, her favorite day of the week was Tuesday. That was the day she, along with a small group of other women, would be transported nearly 90 miles to the Olive Tree Creative Arts and Community Center for a day of behavioral health programming. The...
It Is, Once Again, an Election Year.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week. Happy 2024, Keep it Rural readers! In just under two weeks,...
Review: Who Is the Rural Voter? Book Builds on Old Themes to Create New Understanding
In their new book, The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America, Colby College political scientists Nicholas F. Jacobs and Daniel M. Shea set out to describe what differentiates the politics of metropolitan and nonmetropolitan places. Drawing on the largest survey ever conducted with the specific aim of understanding rural voters, they seek to explain the recent rightward shift of the American countryside.
Thank You for Supporting Rural Journalism
We’ve officially reached the finish line of our annual donor campaign. And we owe you a huge thanks for helping us get here. With your support, we’ve tapped into more than $38,000 in match funds, for a grand total of more than $75,000 raised. This money goes directly...
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