September 9, 2024

The Rural News Network from the Institute for Nonprofit News has become a powerful consortium of independent, nonprofit publishers that informs and engages residents of U.S. rural communities and broadens global understanding of what it means to live and work in rural regions.

For months, these local, regional and statewide newsrooms have been surveying their audiences about the 2024 elections – gathering insights into what information they need from candidates. These newsrooms have developed voter guides that will allow rural residents to make decisions informed by facts and deep reporting. It’s not just business as usual. Newsrooms plan to distribute printed products, produce innovative digital reports and host live, in-person events and candidate forums.

These important efforts take resources to create and distribute. To help these independent newsrooms deliver on their commitments, today, we are announcing new investments, resources, and the national expansion of Text RURAL to 35 RNN newsrooms. The SMS-based news service uses AI to curate stories from across the Network and connect rural residents with the best fact based reporting on issues they care about, based on geolocation. In addition, up to 30 newsrooms will receive stipends to produce and distribute election guides. 

This expansion is made possible, in part, by a new investment from Microsoft’s Democracy Forward program. Through Democracy Forward, Microsoft is working to preserve, protect, and advance the fundamentals of democracy by safeguarding open and secure democratic processes, promoting healthy information ecosystems, and advocating for corporate civic responsibility. The company also offers a Journalism Hub, with a host of free tools and services to help journalists and newsrooms.

“Using a ‘citizens agenda’ approach, many of these newsrooms are asking voters what they want to hear candidates talk about as they ask for votes,” said Alana Rocha, INN’s director of collaborations and rural initiatives who leads the Rural News Network. “The money and resources Microsoft is generously providing means local news leaders can effectively adapt their guides to maximize reach.”

In Pennsylvania, a vital battleground in November, Spotlight PA is buying geo-targeted Facebook ads to promote its election guides in rural regions of the state, increasing its distribution to rural audiences who live outside legacy news networks and may not otherwise see that fact based reporting.

For South Dakota News Watch, this money will fund Spanish language translation of their voting guide. They will also co-produce a live town hall that will be televised statewide.

“Our goal is to arm voters with easy-to-understand explanations of the consequences of each measure,” said Carson Walker, CEO of South Dakota News Watch.

Text RURAL is currently available to subscribers nationally from RNN as well as directly via RNN newsrooms in five test markets. Initial response from consumers has been strong and subscriber retention has consistently stayed at 95+ percent. Another 20 newsrooms are in the process of onboarding to Text RURAL.

“Leveraging AI from NOTA to summarize the content and Overtone.ai to sort and rank content for relevance has enabled us to build a product that is both optimized for rural consumers and easy for small, rural-serving newsrooms to produce,” Andrew Haeg, INN’s network product manager, said.

The RNN network today consists of more than 80 newsrooms reporting in 47 states that, in aggregate, reaches more than 15 million people monthly online and that has more than 1.5 million email subscribers. This network, INN estimates, is the largest alliance of journalists reporting on rural communities in the U.S. and is having a positive impact not only on these locales, but in driving the long-term sustainability of these news organizations that are so critically important in these often overlooked areas.

Other INN Network projects supported by Microsoft

In Georgia, another key swing state, The Current GA is creating a multimedia voter guide for its target audience: young, first-time voters and people who have recently moved to Georgia. The newsroom’s partners at local high schools, universities and library branches will help distribute the guides. 

“Your funds would help underwrite and support our plans to drive engagement by producing short video clips directed to individual schools and student groups as well as general PSAs that we can advertise in a wider area than our normal coverage zone,” said Margaret Coker, editor in chief of The Current GA.

For KOSU, in Oklahoma, the public radio station plans to use texting to gather voters’ frequently asked questions and address more nuanced questions directly. It’s also organizing three listening sessions in rural communities – in Stilwell, Carnegie and Coalgate.

VTDigger, in Vermont, knows older folks and multilingual residents rely heavily on printed information and news. Support from RNN will make it easier for the organization to translate its voter guide and print and mail promotional postcards to key areas of the state it has identified.

“Based on past success that we had with translating and distributing a full printed version of the voter guide in multiple languages in 2022, we are hopeful that this option will connect even more Vermont voters with fact-based info about how to participate in the upcoming elections,” said Sky Barsch, CEO of VTDigger.