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Murdaugh trial can be a model for how judges balance free press and fair trial issues

By BENJY HAMM

Director, Institute for Rural Journalism University of Kentucky

The Alex Murdaugh murder trial in South Carolina is a good example of how a judge can balance the free press needs of the media with the defendant’s fundamental right to a fair trial, according to Jay Bender, a veteran First Amendment attorney.

To build trust and your audience, show how much you care, not just how much you know

The national headline on stories about the latest poll on the news media and democracy were about its finding that half of Americans believe national news organizations deliberately “mislead, misinform or persuade the public to adopt a particular point of view through their reporting,” as Associated Press media writer David Bauder put it. He added, “In one small consolation, Americans had more trust in local news.”

By Al Cross, Director, Institute for Rural Journalism, University of Kentucky

Now we have to make people want local news

In the last six years, interest in local news has declined, for several reasons. Community newspapers can’t do much about most of the causes, but there are some things they can do. It starts with understanding the problem.

Now we have to make people want local news

In the last six years, interest in local news has declined, for several reasons. Community newspapers can’t do much about most of the causes, but there are some things they can do. It starts with understanding the problem.

By Al Cross, director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

Paxton Media buys Landmark Community Newspapers

One of America's larger community newspaper companies is buying the other.
Paxton Media Group of Paducah, Kentucky, announced in late May that it is buying Landmark Community Newspapers LLC, a chain of 44 weekly and two daily newspapers based in Shelbyville, Kentucky.

Pandemic payoffs: sample copying, public notices

The main issue facing the country and most of our communities is what it has been for more than a year: the coronavirus. We are in what is almost certainly the last chapter, immunization – but this chapter may last a lot longer than it should, and make the economic recovery slower, because so many Americans are pandemic-fatigued, ill-informed about vaccines, and reluctant to get a shot, or even resistant.

Leading advocate of printed weekly newspapers says retailers are no longer their best source of ad revenue

Iowa weekly newspaper publisher Peter Wagner, who has fought a rearguard action against the digital revolution and social-media advertising, knows the facts when he sees them.
"Publishers looking to reboot their markets following the pandemic need to recognize the retail sector is no longer their best revenue source," Wagner starts his latest column for state newspaper associations.

Covering a pandemic: Don’t let fatigue and friction stop you

Just as some people are tiring of taking precautions against the novel coronavirus, helping it spread, I’m sure some newsrooms are tiring of covering it. And that helps it spread, too, by making it seem less of a threat and discouraging precautions.
And I fear that some newsrooms aren’t just tired of covering the pandemic, but have scaled back their coverage because of objections from people who think the pandemic is overblown or even a hoax that will fade after the election.

Amid bad news, a permanent solution to a temporary problem

Since fall 2018, 300 more U.S. newspapers have disappeared, bringing the number over the last 15 years to 2,100. That’s almost 25% of the 9,000 newspapers that were published in 2005.
That’s one upshot of “News Deserts and Ghost Newspapers: Will Local News Survive?,” a report published June 25 by Penelope Muse Abernathy of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Rural and small-city community newspapers, once the healthiest segment of the industry, are now caught up in its decline. One-third of the closed newspapers were outside metropolitan areas, the report says.

Newspapers must embrace bold, persistent experimentation to survive and thrive

Our country may not be in a depression, but the newspaper business is, and its fatality rate may be as great at that of the coronavirus. The pandemic and its economic restrictions have accelerated closures and mergers, which have increasingly affected county-seat weeklies, long the most stable type of American newspaper.

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