ICYMI: Experience Water in a News Desert presented by The Integrity Project
Online audiences and media observers were treated to fascinating conversation Friday with (clockwise from top left) moderator Mark Curtis of 12News | KPNX-TV Phoenix, Prof. Emeritus Lew Friedland of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, The Integrity Project Executive Director Scott Brooks, and Mi-Ai Parrish of Media Enterprise at Arizona State University.
The Integrity Project
Media watchers coined the phrase “news desert” as a term to describe a community that lacks access to reliable and comprehensive news coverage following the closure of thousands of media outlets in the early 2000s and 2010s – mostly newspapers. Lost was the primary news-gathering organization for a town or geographic area for generations, along with the editors, reporters and photographers who chronicled life in the area and held the powerful accountable.
More than 1,300 communities in the U.S. are classified as news deserts. Some shuttered newspapers consolidated with others or moved their news organizations online. But not all rural areas have access to high-speed, and what news there is becomes subject to alternative narratives, conspiracy theories, and social media misinformation.
The Integrity Project assembled an all-star group of long-time media veterans to discuss this perilous trend, and the innovative ways it is being reversed. The online conversation, Water in a News Desert: The Reinvention of Local News, features moderator Mark Curtis of 12News | KPNX-TV Phoenix, Prof. Emeritus Lew Friedland of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, The Integrity Project Executive Director Scott Brooks, and Mi-Ai Parrish of Media Enterprise at Arizona State University.
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