Explore the full-page version of the map Rural America experienced record numbers of Covid-19 infections and deaths last week, showing that a slight respite over the holidays was the result of interruptions in test reporting, not waning strength in the pandemic. Rural counties reported 232,239 new Covid-19 infections last week. That’s a 35% increase from […]
Posted inRural Voters
Analysis: Georgia’s Political Earthquake Was a Long Time in the Making
This article is republished with the permission from “Trouble in God’s Country.” If football is a game of inches, politics is one of fractions — a glacial shift in demographics, incremental growth in voter registration, tiny changes in voter turnout. In isolation, individual events like these may seem small and insignificant. In combination, they are […]
Posted inArts and Culture
Book Review: Grounded by Jon Tester
Democratic Senator Jon Tester of Montana got little fanfare from the press when he published his memoir, Grounded, in September 2020. Only the Wall Street Journal reviewed the book, while National Public Radio and the Los Angeles Review of Books interviewed the Senator. The New York Times finally talked to Tester, too, but only in […]
Posted inMedia
Commentary: Rural Journalists and the Insurrection
This column was originally published in the Rural Blog of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week was driven by a mistaken belief, generated by President Trump and his allies, that the election was stolen from him. Millions of the president’s supporters believe this lie, so it is damaging […]
Posted inPolitics and Government
Populism Erupts When People Feel Disconnected and Disrespected
This story was originally published by The Conversation. American society is riven down the middle. In the 2020 presidential election, 81 million people turned out to vote for Joe Biden, while another 74 million voted for Donald Trump. Many people came to the polls to vote against the other candidate rather than enthusiastically to support the one who secured […]
Posted inCoronavirus
Poll Finds Rural Residents More Hesitant to Get Vaccinated
Rural residents are more hesitant than their metropolitan counterparts to get a Covid-19 vaccination, even though rural areas have higher rates of infections and deaths from the coronavirus, according to a new report. About a third (35%) of people living in rural areas said they probably would not or definitely would not get a Covid-19 […]
Posted inArts and Culture
Book Review: Desert Oracle Volume 1: Strange, True Tales from the American Southwest
Desert Oracle Volume 1: Strange, True Tales from the American Southwest, By Ken Layne, MCD & Farrar, Straus, Giroux +++ There’s a voice beaming over the Mojave, coming from a small radio station in Joshua Tree, California, that once a week offers some insight into the weirdness and mystery that characterize American deserts. It’s the […]
Posted inCoronavirus
Ag, Meat Processing Plant Workers, Next in Line to Get Covid-19 Vaccines
Food and agricultural workers are supposed to be a part of the next group of people to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, but experts worry that many workers won’t get vaccinated even if they have the opportunity. A study this summer found that about a third of farmworkers said they were unsure or unlikely to get […]
Posted inCoronavirus
Deadly December Caps off 2020 in Rural Counties
Rural counties helped lead the way in making December the pandemic’s deadliest month on record, ending the year with an emphatic reversal of the urban-focused manner in which the pandemic began in the U.S. in early 2020. More than 16,000 Covid-related deaths were reported in December in nonmetropolitan (rural) counties, about a fifth of the […]
Posted inCoronavirus
Rural Hospitals Have a Greater Percentage of Patients with Covid-19
The percentage of hospital patients who are being treated for Covid-19 has more than doubled in recent months. And throughout the fall surge in coronavirus cases, rural hospitals have consistently had a greater proportion of patients being treated for Covid-19 than urban hospitals have, a new study shows. Nationally, the percentage of rural hospital patients […]
