What is Rural Journalism? Occupational Precarity and Social Cohesion in US Rural Journalism Epistemology

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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.