“Get out of Missouri,” was the professional advice Tina Casagrand received as a young journalist fresh out of college. Instead, she hunkered down in a small city and started a print magazine for people who love the Lower Midwest just as much as she does. Places matter to Tina Casagrand. So […]

Innovation has always been a driving force in America’s rural economies. Rather than throw up our hands, we should learn from small towns that are successfully enacting regional economic development strategies To paraphrase the famous writer from America’s heartland: reports of rural America’s demise are greatly exaggerated. Paul Krugman’s recent […]

Last week’s New York Times columns by Paul Krugman and David Brooks offer textbook examples of the unhelpful frames that define our conversation about rural America. Americans have a couple of ways they tend to think about rural America. On one side of the coin, we see it as a […]

As local newspapers shutter across the country, the residents residing in those counties without sources of local news are forced to rely more heavily on national media outlets that report political news primarily through the lens of the perennial two-party political conflict. A study that was published in the Journal of Communication […]