News Deserts

Don't confuse them with new desserts...one is sweet and the other is contributing to political polarization.

I spoke in Des Moines last year for an Iowa progressive group. We met in a building dedicated to former Democratic Iowa Senator Tom Harkin on Drake University’s campus. The entire structure is a case study in accessibility due to Senator Harkin’s legacy and most important legislative achievement: The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

As usual, I had to find a space to change and touch up my makeup before the event. I ended up changing in a bathroom — par for the course. It was a very nice bathroom, though, and completely accessible.

I mingled with a few folks before the event, and got in line for the buffet of cheese and crackers and wine. One platter held grilled figs, filled with soft cheese, wrapped in bacon. Figs in a blanket.

I ate one, realized it was one of the best things I had ever put in my mouth, and walked back for another.

Bacon Wrapped Figs with Goat Cheese via Joy Bauer, MS, RDN, CDN

I waited my turn to snag another fig and ended up in line behind a local reporter. He introduced himself and asked if he could interview me after the event.

Of course. The more folks who hear a rural progressive message, the better. And I love local journalism.

The event went well…I could see the audience shaking their heads in agreement right on cue, got a few amens, and had a few seconds of applause as I finished. Whew. Another event in which I didn’t trip over my words and remembered all of my talking points.

The buffet-line reporter caught me on my way out — he asked several questions about the Democratic party and reaching rural voters. One of the first questions he asked me, though, was if I thought there is room in the party for “pro-life” Democrats.

Me: No.

A better question would be why there are regulations on women’s bodies and limited access to healthcare. Why aren’t there any pro-choice Republicans? Why are we electing folks who will put women and girls in danger? And why would Democrats want to be a part of any of that?

I told him that bodily autonomy is a right, and in my opinion, there is no room in the party for someone who does not believe so.

And then came the question that landed me in several newspapers across Missouri and Iowa: How do you talk to rural voters about President Joe Biden (Harris was not named as the nominee at this time.) How do you break through on the national economy with rural voters?

Me: I don’t. I don’t bring up national politicians. I focus on local and statewide lawmakers.

You could have knocked the reporter over with a feather. “What do you mean you don’t talk about Biden?”

Unless I am knocking doors specifically for a Presidential candidate, I never talk about national politicians.

I live in Missouri with a GOP supermajority. Even if Harris would have won, I still live in Missouri. I would still live under the threat of abortion bans and book bans and poorly paid teachers and state workers paid so terribly that they qualify for assistance and crumbling infrastructure and closing hospitals.

Nearly every single thing that is horrible and unholy comes from Jefferson City, not DC.

I knock doors in information silos. I talk to rural people in spaces without a daily paper — sometimes without a weekly paper. The only news many folks are consuming is at the national level and I’m positive that’s how red-state Republicans have been able to win supermajorities. I am sure that is how they have been able to control the narrative for decades. Fox News and OAN and Newsmax focus on national politics for a reason.

When you bring politics to the local level, you are forced to look at policies and how the policies your local lawmakers voted for impact you.

Another problem with reaching voters on local issues? Local news is dying.

This from The State of Local News: Since 2005, more than 3,200 print newspapers have vanished. Newspapers continue to disappear at a rate of more than two per week; in the past year alone, 130 newspapers have shut their doors. In addition to these closures and mergers, papers are reducing their print coverage, including shifting from dailies to weeklies or ending print publishing altogether.

We now have massive swaths of America that are deemed news deserts. When there is a void in local news, that space is often filled with right-wing rhetoric. Even worse? This data point:

While Trump’s national popular-vote margin was just under 1.5%, his margin in news deserts was massive. Trump won 91% of news desert counties by an average of 54 percentage points.

Ninety-one percent.

According to research by Joshua P. Darr, a professor at Syracuse University, “…news deserts have the potential to affect voting behavior in important ways. When voters lose access to local news, they tend to gravitate toward national news sources. This kind of news, by definition, focuses on broad national issues—abortion, immigration, the economy, etc.—without regard to local conditions.”

I have knocked doors and talked about our four-day school week problem and the person at the door blamed the four-day week on Biden. What? Biden has nothing to do with Missouri school funding except sending 10% of our school budgets through the Department of Education.

Many folks in my district don’t know that our State Senator, Rusty Black, is a fan of “school choice.” They don’t know that because Rusty doesn’t freely share that and because some live in towns without local journalism. They get their information from a TV blaring Fox News in their living room.

Fox News doesn’t report on Missouri State Senator Rusty Black.

Daniel J. Moskowitz, a professor at the University of Chicago, said, “…access to local news appears to increase split-ticket voting, moderating the partisan drift. The logic here is simple: Voters who have access to local news coverage of their governor and U.S. senators tend to know more about these officials, leading some of them to split their votes among Republican and Democratic candidates.”

What I wouldn’t give to go back to the days of vote splitting. Days when we could look at policies and decide who is best for the job instead of just looking at the letter behind the name.

Back in the day, many started their day with coffee and the local paper —we read news that was local. And when the front page had national news, we basically read similar stories across the country.

When I was young, we all had three networks to choose from and we all had nearly the same facts reported by those three networks. I am not saying that diversity is bad, I mean you are reading me right now, but I am saying we were all working with nearly the same information. Nowadays, I can tune into Fox News and not only get a different point of view — I am given a whole set of different facts.

“Alternative facts.”

I know there are many who will conclude that news deserts create stupid and uneducated people who then vote for Trump — I’d love to pull away from that narrative. Some people in news deserts are overly aware of politics. Hyper aware. It’s just the news they consume in a news desert is extreme and often right-wing.

From Steven Waldman, Rebuild Local News’ President:

Some of the most common victims of the collapse of local news” are the same people who support Trump. They’re victims, he elaborated, because of all the documented consequences of life in a news desert: more political corruption, higher taxes, lower bond ratings, greater social alienation and rising misinformation, as well as the loss of social cohesion when subjects such as high school sports, local obituaries, and community projects aren’t covered.

I wouldn’t go as far as Mr. Waldman and call people in news deserts “victims.” I will say they are intentionally deprived of local information, though.

This is why I will continue to focus on local politics, policies, and politicians at doors. It is why we often hear and repeat the phrase, “All politics is local.”

Because it’s true.

~Jess