Daily reads worth considering

From PBS's Media Shift, "At Rural Newspapers, Some Publishers Still Resist Moving Online."

Long shielded from the pressure of Internet news competition, as well as classified competitors like Craigslist, rural newspapers have reportedly fared far better than their metropolitan counterparts. While newspapers in population centers saw growing competition from online startups in the past decade, rural newspapers have faced relatively little competition. (So-called hyper-local sites like AOL's Patch are clustered in metropolitan areas and altogether absent from rural areas in the West.)

As broadband Internet spreads into rural communities -- spurred by a $7 billion federal investment -- rural newspapers are increasingly facing a question encountered by their metropolitan counterparts a decade ago: What information should be offered online?

The article quotes Al Cross, among others.

And from Earl Wilkinson at INMA: "Why is relevance to audience such a sin for journalism?"

It has this provocative line: "Start rewarding “relevance” over “quality” in the culture of your company, notably the newsroom."

New research: Small-town readers still prefer paper

A new report from the Reynolds Journalism Institute finds that in small communities, the newspaper is still the preferred way of getting local news.

Before we go too far on this, however, keep in mind it is a multivariate problem that also goes to the availability of such news online and the penetration of easy access to online (still not so great in some rural areas).

Rural broadband

One of the things that came up in discussions at the recent AEJMC meeting was rural broadband and mobile, and how news organizations that have largely bypassed the Web may not be able to afford to do the same with mobile.

This column by Al Tompkins of Poynter has some statistics on rural broadband and mobile and a link to a White House document (PDF) listing the various broadband projects being funded under the federal initiative.