When Rural News Becomes World News

Nebraska generally only makes national and world news when something awful happens. Charles Starkweather, for instance. But the most common reason Nebraska, where I live, makes the national headlines, is because weather becomes extreme, like when blowing snows close Interstate 80, one of America’s major transcontinental arteries, or droughts threaten meat prices. In spring of 2019, record snows followed by record rains destroyed a huge portion of my state.

I recall this, not to elicit your sympathy or tell anyone that they should pay Nebraska better attention, but rather, because my state isn’t alone. Just days ago, I discovered that similar history-making rains are currently destroying eastern Kentucky, a state with a similar economic backbone of agriculture and light industry. I remember, in 2019, complaints from flooded areas that mainstream journalists were ignoring the devastation. This year it’s happening again.

Many major journalism outlets don’t even have stringers positioned in the worst-hit regions for environmental destruction like this. Sometimes, on those rare occasions when Nebraska makes national headlines for weather-related devastation, national outlets will buy printed reports or camera footage from locally based reporters. The AP apparently keeps a paid stringer in Lincoln, in case something newsworthy happens. He doesn’t post very often.

Not that national venues ignore rural America altogether. Barely three weeks ago (as this posts), national-grade journalists flooded Iowa for the 2020 Presidential caucuses. They slavishly followed candidates (mostly Democrats) around the state, recording them knocking on doors, shaking hands, and ginning up morale among volunteers. Then the caucuses happened, the candidates moved on, and the journalists folded their tents and followed. The Midlands retreated to insignificance.

St. Louis-based journalist Sarah Kendzior writes that Americans living in “flyover country” grow accustomed to getting routinely ignored. Life in the middle of the map requires a reëvaluation of what we consider “fair,” Kendzior writes, because the difference between the richest and the meanest citizens is increasingly small. Those who muster enough money, or have so little they can affordably walk away, leave this region for coastal cities, which have something ours don't:

Jobs.

Please understand, this isn’t sour grapes. I understand that national and world news happens in major cities, which have access to money, instant media technology, and populations ready to attend camera-friendly events. Cities create a reciprocal relationship between reporters and events: things happen in places which have journalists ready to report. And journalists stand ready to report where things happen. This feedback loop makes simple sense.

But in the near future, what events demand reporting will probably change. Until now, human-made circumstances, like economics and technology, have demanded journalists’ attention, and journalists have obliged. Going forward, what we euphemistically term “acts of God” will make national and global headlines, and places with sparser populations will get first and hardest. Nobody is prepared in those areas to report; the media apparently expect somebody competent  to rush in later.

This pattern has already begun. Besides Nebraska, the entire Missouri and Mississippi River Valley system saw record-setting floods in 2019; the Mid-Atlantic region was socked by massive floods in 2018; the Lower Mississippi was devastated in 2017; and, to quote USA Today, “U.S. had more floods in 2016 than any year on record.” Devastating weather events are becoming normal… if you see and recognize the pattern.

A pattern which even I, a dedicated news-follower, completely missed until it hit my home last year. Floodwaters from the 2019 Nebraska floods came within eight feet of my front door. I was personally fortunate, because my building didn’t actually get infiltrated. Several friends weren’t so lucky; some were driven from their homes when water entered. One friend had her home flooded a second time while still conducting repairs from the previous flood.

In 2019, Nebraskans complained on social media that our state’s devastating floods got ignored in national media. This was perhaps an exaggeration; sources like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal did, indeed, run wire-service reports on the flooding. But the reporting usually got buried in “regional news,” only got two or three paragraphs in websites, and otherwise got nodding acknowledgement without much real, attention-grabbing coverage.

Now it’s happening again. Floods are socking eastern Kentucky, an area journalists ignore except during massive coal-mining disasters. The pattern becomes clear to those who see it: those places where the vanguard of environmental damage is happening, are least likely to have coverage. Thus it becomes easy to pretend life continues unchanged. Because destruction is happening, but nobody tells us about it.