It’s been exactly eight years since 100 Days in Appalachia debuted as a project to cover the first 100 days of the new Trump administration’s impact on our region.Those first 100 days were a blur as every decision coming out of the administration reverberated throughout Appalachia, and we scaled rapidly to interpret and investigate the impacts to our region. Then on day 100, April 29, 2017, we covered one of the nation’s resurgent white supremacist rallies in Pikeville, Kentucky and decided that, far from being our last day of reporting as a 100-day pop-up, it was day one for the launch of a new era of reporting for our small newsroom.

2,923 days later, we’re still going strong.

While Donald Trump’s return to the presidency naturally evokes our origin story, we are resolutely relaunching in the realities of our current time. And importantly, we need the world to hear us when we say firmly: This moment is about so much more than the rise of Trump. In fact, national media’s often facile and mutually beneficial obsession with Trump distracts from the necessary interrogation of the systems, all-new extractive industries, predatory technology and accelerating climate impacts that shape the lives of some of Appalachia’s most vulnerable communities. 

And don’t even get me started on J.D. Vance. While the J.D. Vance op-ed industrial complex has run rampant through the national media, we have other critical work to do here.

Our region represents a ground-zero for an increasingly kinetic political landscape that defies conventional frames and exhibits shifting ideological chaos. It is a landscape that has become more extreme, more dystopian and much more manipulated. There are reasons our region remains an enduring flashpoint for the social, economic, religious, environmental and political dynamics playing out across thousands of American communities. Appalachia’s story IS America’s story. And it’s increasingly a global story as well. 

While the world is busy asking, yet again, what the election tells us about this moment in time, we’re not asking anymore. We’re telling the world: Appalachia matters. If you are among those who underestimated the cultural and political force of this vast region, we hope you’ll come along for a new era of deeply rooted reporting from within. 

We are inviting new work to situate and narrate our region’s significance as we close the gap between those who experience the impacts in our communities and those who have held narrative, policy and decision-making power from afar. Next year, the nation will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. We can think of no better or more apt (or more Appalachian) affirmation of that document than speaking these local truths. 

Our current verticals are designed to reflect this emergent moment: Religion, Climate Change, Education, Health Care, Technology and Labor. We are also looking for creative and innovative new work to shape our youth-focused reporting for Generation Zeitgeist, and our most eclectic vertical for this region and this time — The Dystopia Beat. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out new guidance on what we’re seeking for pitches and collaborations among these varied topic areas.

We are interested in trauma-informed reporting and cultural analysis that prioritize our community members’ lived experiences and that effectively address the diverse histories, realities and identities that shape the complicated lives, perspectives and politics across the region. We are interested in work that interrogates power across sectors — health care, technology, energy, media, religion — and that asks difficult questions about who benefits and who is harmed. 

In 2017, President Trump issued 24 executive orders in his first 100 days in office, many of which directly impacted Appalachia; this time around, he has declared he will issue 100 executive orders in the coming months. We are interested in work that interprets and documents incoming impacts from executive orders, legislative reforms, policy decisions and promises kept or broken at the community level. We seek in-depth, culturally sensitive and regionally representative work in any medium, including documentary work.

With respect to our origin story, we are also resisting the accelerated mythmaking seeking, once again, to codify America’s — and Appalachia’s — politics into simplistic partisan frames. It is so much more complex than that, and that is why our stories are worth telling. We hope you’ll join us in the months ahead as we document a new era of Appalachia for the world.

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This article was originally published by 100 Days in Appalachia, a nonprofit, collaborative newsroom telling the complex stories of the region that deserve to be heard. Sign up for their weekly newsletter here.