The rural South deserves journalism that better serves residents. They should be part of creating it.
How Southerly is telling local stories alongside community members
Two years ago, I launched an independent, nonprofit publication, Southerly, with a series of stories on failing wastewater infrastructure in Lowndes County, Alabama, and the people who are working to find engineering, policy, and economic solutions to address it.
The first story centered on Pamela Sue Rush. A soft-spoken and compassionate woman, she was one of few folks willing to speak out about how she was forced to straight-pipe sewage directly from her mobile home into her yard. Rush struggled with her health and was unable to work, so she couldn’t afford the thousands of dollars it would cost to install an on-site septic system. She feared that by publicizing her struggle she would be fined by the local government and stigmatized by her community. But she graciously and courageously opened her home to us on a sweltering day. Over the years, she spoke to journalists and activists about inequities in her community — from healthcare to infrastructure to broadband access — and about her hopes for her young children.
“A long time ago, I was ashamed about it, and didn’t want anybody looking at this stuff,” she told me when I visited. “But I had to come out of my shame. God gives me strength. I hope it will happen in my lifetime. It might.”
Pamela died from COVID-19 this summer. She was only 48, and her untimely passing is an example of the larger injustices of the coronavirus pandemic: Latino and Black people, in Alabama and in urban, suburban and rural areas across the U.S., contract the coronavirus and die from it at higher rates.
People like Pamela are why Southerly exists. There is a glaring hole in dedicated coverage of the complex relationship Southerners — especially those living in rural areas — have with their natural environment, and how issues like pollution, extreme weather, and infrastructure are inextricably tied to economics, politics, and public health.
Many rural communities are where industrial projects, toxic waste sites, and other polluters are located: On the Gulf Coast, chemical and oil and gas plants are sited next to Black neighborhoods. In eastern North Carolina, Indigenous and Latino residents are still recovering from hurricanes and dealing with industrial energy projects. In food deserts in the Mississippi Delta, Black folks are trying to reconnect to the land that their ancestors were enslaved on. In Appalachia, communities of color are often overlooked as the national media categorizes the region as white “Trump Country.” Historic Black communities in coastal Virginia, South Carolina, and Texas are being squeezed out between development and erosion. Indigenous communities in coastal Louisiana are working to keep their land and adapt to sea-level rise.
But many folks who live in the South don’t get to speak for themselves, and the media sorely misrepresents or overlooks their experiences. When a national news outlet swoops in to cover a story — a coal ash spill, a hurricane, a presidential election — complicated issues like economic development, resource access, and class and race relations are often boiled down to a simple quote that perpetuates negative stereotypes. It’s a loss for those outside of these communities too: Rural places are resilient and tight-knit and can offer lessons for people across America.
Southerly provides accessible, informative, truthful, well-rounded journalism in places that lack access to consistent, accurate news due to a variety of reasons: shrinking newsroom budgets, media monopolies, misinformation from politicians, social media, and industry. We want to amplify the stories of people on the ground — stories about the work folks have been doing for decades, and hurdles they’ve faced all the while. We want journalism to be a conversation, not a transaction.
A Kentuckian by birth and now a resident of Durham, North Carolina, I am currently a John S. Knight Community Impact Fellow, through a remote Stanford University program that is helping journalists and technologists develop news and information solutions that better connect communities of color in the U.S.
Over the next seven months, I’ll be working to improve media coverage and build trust in rural Southern communities by listening to folks about where they get their news, what problems and challenges they face in finding accurate information about environmental and public health issues in their communities, and their ideas for what would be most helpful to get information out more reliably — whether that’s online, in-person, through schools and churches, or elsewhere. Once we’ve identified the barriers, we’ll work closely with community members—who will be compensated for their time and effort—to find resources and develop solutions to help bridge these gaps.
We’re starting in Lowndes County, a rural, predominantly Black county sandwiched between Selma and Montgomery that is home to Civil Rights landmarks like Tent City, where black sharecroppers lived after being kicked off their land by white farmers. It is where the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which helped create the Lowndes County Freedom Organization—later named the Black Panther Party—led the fight for voting rights despite constant violence and intimidation from white residents and police.
According to Census data, Lowndes County is just over 72% Black and 26% white. The election results for major races in November were similar to these numbers: President-elect Joe Biden won the county with about 73% of the vote. Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, who lost the election, won the county with 74% of the vote. Just under 74% of the county voted to remove racist language from the state constitution, including a requirement to segregate schools.
We want to break down statistics like these, speak to people about their experiences, and put both in the context of history. We want to better understand all the ways in which white supremacy continues to cause harm—and how it keeps rural, low-income, and Black people from accessing accurate information that could help them build political and economic power.
The plan is to have a series of conversations over the next two months with homeowners, teachers, community leaders, youth, and activists, and then work with these folks to improve media coverage and reach. I want to use what I learn to inform how Southerly and other local news outlets can more effectively work with community leaders and organizers, reach residents, and ensure more stories are told about the intersection of racial and economic inequities, public health and environmental issues, and the future of our region.
Of course, the pandemic requires a change in approach — a lot of the work will be online or on the phone — but the mission remains the same: How do we build trust in rural communities where journalism has failed people? How do we do it in a way that lets people living there lead the way, since they know their home best? How do we tell stories and provide information in accessible ways that everyone can share and learn from?
This means telling stories alongside community members, so they’re part of creating the solutions. It means ensuring journalism is place-based and meaningful, not extractive. It means that we use consistent, reliable reporting and storytelling to build trust. Reporting on rural Southerners’ relationship to the environment cannot alone dismantle power structures — but it is a step toward putting power back in their hands.
Lyndsey Gilpin is the founder and editor-in-chief of Southerly. She is a 2020–2021 JSK Community Impact Fellow. She is based in Durham, North Carolina.
