I showed up to my first Dare to Repair Cafe with a notepad and a shopping tote full of holey sweaters.

The pad I needed to take notes on the event — a roving ministry, of sorts, for broken household items.

The sweaters, on the other hand, I took as mea culpas: I had said I’d bring a faulty Bluetooth speaker in the hopes a volunteer could make it play again. But my husband had already tossed the speaker in the trash. We were, in other words, part of the problem.  

“You won’t do that again,” said Don Winkelman, 71, a long-time volunteer for Dare to Repair. “We have people come in one time, with a lamp or something, and then we see them again and again.” 

Don Winkelman is a longtime volunteer for The Tool Library’s repair cafes. Courtesy of The Tool Library

Dare to Repair exists to reprogram wasteful consumers like my husband and me. Since 2017, the roving monthly cafe has traversed Buffalo, New York, and its environs, helping attendees repair broken electronics, household goods and small appliances. 

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans throw away nearly 40 million tons of such items each year. Repair cafes — of which there are now more than 3,000 across the world — offer an economical and environmentally friendly solution: Fix your broken stuff, instead. 

In Buffalo, repair cafes represent part of a larger regional movement around sustainability, communal resource-sharing and mutual aid. The monthly events are organized by the city’s Tool Library, a fast-growing, 13-year-old nonprofit group that lends tools and other equipment to individuals, small businesses and community organizations. 

The Tool Library has amassed a collection of almost 5,000 items, from hand tools to a cotton candy maker. Courtesy of The Tool Library

To date, the Tool Library has diverted 7,779 pounds of waste from landfills via its repair cafes and amassed a communal tool collection of nearly 5,000 items. It also serves as a model, a resource and a centralized hub for a range of other community sharing projects, from little free libraries to public gardens. 

“We’re part of a broader economic transition away from a system that really hasn’t been serving most people, locally or around the world,” said Darren Cotton, The Tool Library’s founder and executive director. “We’re shifting toward models that are more sustainable, more regenerative and that rely more on people helping one another, as opposed to a market delivering services.” 

The birth of Buffalo’s Tool Library

Cotton, 35, first dreamt up plans for The Tool Library while studying urban planning at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The university is an economic and cultural engine for the region, but its decision to open a suburban campus in the 1960s siphoned both people and resources away from University Heights, the city neighborhood surrounding its original campus. 

By the late 2000s, entire blocks of University Heights had been gobbled up by absentee landlords who leased their neglected properties back to low-income renters and students. Residents wanted to fix up their homes and address wider neighborhood problems, such as street trash and low tree coverage. But they frequently lacked access to basic tools, or the knowledge required to use them. 

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“It was a convergence of all these different problems,” Cotton said. “I realized, ‘Wow — a library is such a great platform for addressing all of them.’” 

The Tool Library launched in a tiny storefront in 2011 with roughly 40 tools and $15,000 in federal community development funding. Cotton and his all-volunteer staff developed a membership model, where residents could pay a low annual fee for unlimited tool rentals, as well as a system for tracking their growing inventory of hand tools, power tools and lawn and garden equipment.

The Tool Library processes more than 14,000 loans a year. Credit: Caitlin Dewey

In 2022, Cotton took on a full-time role and hired Lissa Rhodes, a poet and trained carpenter, as the Tool Library’s first operations manager. One year later, The Tool Library relocated to the ground floor of an old neighborhood bank on Buffalo’s Main Street, expanding its footprint from 1,500 square feet to more than 2,500. 

Today, the organization boasts nearly 1,500 members and processes more than 14,000 loans a year. Its wide east- and south-facing windows overlook a bright lending room, where tools are shelved in neat blocks of Ryobi green and DeWalt yellow: drills, jigsaws, sanders, drivers, lawnmowers and leaf blowers, hydraulic jacks, router tables. An entire wall is hung with coils of extension cords and hoses, while several shelves gather the library’s growing collection of household miscellanea: a sewing machine, a projector screen, a bocce ball set, a cotton candy maker. 

“A tool is anything you need to get a job done, whatever that job is,” said Rhodes. “Is it a presentation? Then your tools are a projector screen and a projector.” 

Repair Cafes

That community-minded, DIY ethos has gradually prodded The Tool Library into other initiatives, including tree-plantings, park clean-ups and — of course — repair cafes. In 2017, a director with Buffalo’s recycling department approached The Tool Library about collaborating on a series of repair events.

Since then, and despite a hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Repair Cafe has salvaged more than 500 items. Volunteers will happily tinker with lamps, furniture, small appliances, bikes, broken windows and damaged clothes, though they don’t currently accept computers, tablets or phones. 

The March repair cafe was held in the basement of a public library in the village of Akron. Courtesy of The Tool Library

For the March iteration, a team of volunteers set up shop in the basement of a public library in Akron, a small village 20 miles northeast of Buffalo. The room hummed with quiet chatter and the intermittent vrooms of faulty vacuums. Volunteer fixers puttered around a coffee station and traded stories in between work on lamps, clocks, Kitchenaid mixers and old CD players.

The atmosphere is both studious and social; over time, fixers often become friends. They also teach attendees the skills needed to make their own repairs: “What I love is that you not only get your fixes for free, but you get a lesson as well,” said Antoinette McClain, a Tool Library board member who helps organize the events. 

Many of those fixes are quite simple — which makes the impulse to junk these items look all the more wasteful. Both of the broken vacuums at the March cafe simply needed a good cleaning, for instance. Jennifer and Rebecca Outten, who brought the vacuums, said they would have spent $400 or more to replace each one. 

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“We love the Buy Nothing groups,” said Jennifer, referring to a movement of popular Facebook pages that encourage people to reuse household items instead of buying new. “But this, the repair cafe, I had never heard of.” 

I also left the Akron library with a newfound appreciation for repair: To fix the holes in two cashmere sweaters, volunteers Don Winkleman and Tom Guerra coached me through the process of ironing on a fabric patch.

Volunteer Tom Guerra (seated) at the March repair cafe. Courtesy of The Tool Library

Of course, I am but one of the millions of consumers needlessly tossing and replacing my stuff — and the repair movement faces a long, uphill battle against the wider culture of throwaway consumerism. In Buffalo, The Tool Library also faces the sorts of financial constraints common to many small community nonprofits. The organization will soon have the option, for instance, to acquire the building it moved into last year — but the cost to acquire and renovate the structure tops $1 million. 

The Tool Library plans to launch a capital campaign in April, Cotton said, and is currently a finalist for a major regional foundation grant. With that funding, he added, The Tool Library could build out new community space, seed mini-libraries across the region and further champion communal resource-sharing as a model for social and environmental innovation. 

“It’s one thing to be cool and novel and niche,” Cotton said. “But the question for us is: How do we make sharing and repairing ubiquitous?”

The post Got Broken Stuff? The Tool Library Has a Fix appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

This story was originally published in the Daily Yonder.

Adaline Sneak lives at the end of a long, unmarked dirt road in a rural area of the Navajo Nation in Utah. Getting there requires a high clearance vehicle and at least moderate navigation skills.

Residents here don’t have typical addresses with street names and house numbers. Until recently, Sneak’s official address was even vaguer than the directions a gas station clerk might give a lost driver — seven miles south of Montezuma Creek, Utah, County Road 410.

She can’t get mail with an address like that, nor could someone search directions to her house on Google Maps, for example.

But for someone like Sneak, an address like this is more than just inconvenient. It’s life-threatening. Sneak suffers from seizures, and about a year ago, an ambulance got lost on the way to her house because of her ambiguous address.

Adaline Sneak recently registered her Life Alert system with her new Plus Code so that emergency responders can find her house more easily. Credit: Emily Arntsen

“We almost lost her that day,” said Arlene Begay, Sneak’s mother. The ambulance eventually made it to Sneak’s house, but only because someone on the emergency response team happened to know Begay’s sister, whom they called for directions to Sneak’s house.

“That’s happened a few times actually,” Begay continued, recalling other times the ambulance had gotten lost. But now, any confusion over Sneak’s address is hopefully cleared up for good.

This fall, Sneak was one of over 3,000 residents on the Navajo Nation who received a new, more accurate address through an initiative led by a nonprofit called the Rural Utah Project. The new addresses, which were developed by Google, are called Plus Codes. The codes are simple alpha-numeric coordinates based on longitude and latitude.

All locations on Earth have unique, Google-generated Plus Codes, the same way every location on Earth has global coordinates, though the Plus Codes are much shorter than global coordinates, making them easier to share and remember.

Slow beginnings

Plus Codes aren’t new — Google started developing the free, open-source technology in 2015. But the system has been slow to catch on in some areas.

For the Rural Utah Project, whose main mission is to empower disenfranchised voters, educating people on how to use Plus Codes originally started out as a way to increase voter registration on the Navajo Nation.

While registering voters during the 2018 state and county elections, field organizers with the Rural Utah Project realized hundreds of residents on the Navajo Nation were registered in the wrong voting precincts because of mix-ups with their addresses.

“When I got my ballot, I noticed I had the wrong school board member that I was voting for,” said Daylene Redhorse, a field organizer with the Rural Utah Project who lives on the Navajo Nation and spearheaded the addressing initiative.

Plus Codes are simple alpha-numeric codes based on longitude and latitude. The Rural Utah Project partnered with Google to distribute thousands of Plus Code signs on the Navajo Nation. Credit: Emily Arntsen

In rural parts of the Navajo Nation, as with many rural areas in the United States, step-by-step descriptive addresses are the norm. These addresses are valid for most services that require proof of residence, such as enrolling in public schools or registering to vote.

But just because these are technically “official” addresses doesn’t mean the system is particularly functional. For example, when Redhorse registered to vote with her descriptive address — 15 miles southwest of Bluff, Utah, County Road 436 — the county accidentally pinned her in a district north of Bluff.

“It’s discouraging for people, getting the wrong ballot and feeling like their vote doesn’t count,” Redhorse said. “As it is, we already have a lot of people who are skeptical about voting. When I go door-to-door registering people to vote, a lot of them say, ‘Why would I register? I don’t count. Nobody counts us.’”

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That attitude, Redhorse explains, stems from a long history of oppression and disenfranchisement for Native Americans, who didn’t receive the nationwide right to vote until 1962, when New Mexico was the last state to grant Native Americans suffrage.

In order to help Utah residents on the Navajo Nation adopt the Plus Codes system, the Rural Utah Project partnered with Google, who helped field organizers match thousands of homes with their new addresses. Those Plus Codes were then printed on blue plastic signs, which were delivered door-to-door, along with information about how to register to vote.

Since starting the initiative, the Rural Utah Project has registered nearly 2,000 new voters with their Plus Codes.

A new address right on time

The day that field organizers arrived at Sneak’s house to deliver her Plus Code sign and explain the new addressing system, she had a seizure. Redhorse’s colleague, Tara Benally, called 9-1-1 and gave the dispatcher Sneak’s new Plus Code.

“They were able to use the Plus Code no problem,” Redhorse said. “They found the house easily.” Sneak is now able to use her Plus Code for her Life Alert system, which, her mother said, is a huge relief.

Herman Chee Jr., chief of the Monument Valley Fire Department, says Plus Codes have made. Credit: Emily Arntsen

Herman Chee Jr., chief of the Monument Valley Fire Department, said that most EMS responders on the Navajo Nation already use Google Maps, which is compatible with Plus Codes, unlike descriptive addresses, which mostly rely on local knowledge to pinpoint.

“With our community, we just know where people live,” he said. But memory isn’t always perfect, especially during emergencies. He said there were many times when he made mistakes getting to the scene and had to double back.

“I remember one time, we got paged out to a structure fire. I was communicating with dispatch, and they just told me to take this road, then that road. And that was it. It was dark, and it was really snowing. I just had to guess. I could see the structure fire in the distance, but I still took that wrong turn. Had to go back,” he said. “Took a long time.”

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He said Plus Codes have helped responders reach people’s houses faster. But the system only works if people remember to use their new addresses when calling 9-1-1. He was recently called out to a fire using a descriptive address.

“When I finally arrived, I saw that blue sign on their house,” he recalled. “I always tell people, use your Plus Code, remember your Plus Code. It’s so much easier for the dispatch.”

Beyond expectations

Redhorse said that when she started the addressing project for voter registration, she didn’t even think about all of the other benefits.

“Then we started to notice UPS coming down the dirt road, then FedEx coming down the dirt road.”

The United States Postal Service, which handles all voting by mail, doesn’t recognize Plus Codes. Rural residents will still need a post office box to receive mail-in ballots.

But commercial mail carriers, such as the United Parcel Service (UPS) and FedEx, have already started incorporating Plus Codes into their systems.

Daylene Redhorse, a field organizer with the Rural Utah Project, helped distribute over 3,000 Plus Code signs to residents on the Navajo Nation. Credit: Emily Arntsen

“I tell people to put their Plus Codes in the ‘description’ section when they’re buying something online,” Redhorse said. “The delivery person can usually figure it out that way.”

Residents can also use their new Plus Codes to receive at-home medical treatments, which were previously unavailable to them in some cases because of their addresses.

Redhorse used to work in a dialysis clinic in Blanding, Utah. For some of her patients that lived on the reservation, the commute was over two hours.

“The biggest complaint from our patients was that they didn’t want to make the drive every other day, but they couldn’t do home dialysis because they didn’t have an address that the insurance companies would recognize,” she said.

“One guy who used to be my patient used his Plus Code to get on home dialysis, and now I’ve been seeing the same truck that we used to have at the clinic going down the dirt roads,” she said. “When I see that I say, ‘Wow, this has really changed people’s lives.’”

The post On the Navajo Nation, Accurate Mailing Addresses Save Lives appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

“Coming from another country, you find yourself in a completely unusual location and amongst completely different people. Everything is unfamiliar and you, like Alice in Wonderland, walk and watch.”

That’s how Anastasija Kostenko summed up what it was like arriving in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2022, having traveled over 700 miles to flee the destruction and devastation in Ukraine caused by the Russian invasion.

Needing to start a new life but not knowing where to begin, Anastasija signed up to become a mentee in the city’s BeFriend Vilnius program, run by International House Vilnius, an organization aimed at helping foreign newcomers find a “soft landing.” The program matches foreign mentees with local mentors, with pairs encouraged to meet at least twice a month.

BeFriend Vilnius was founded to help Ukrainian refugees feel more at home in Lithuania, but also to find a social way of fielding their questions. Courtesy of BeFriend Vilnius

Anastasija’s mentor Rūta and Rūta’s friend helped her navigate what seemed like a never ending array of forms and applications. “Were it not for them, it would have been incredibly difficult to arrange a huge number of documents and top priority issues,” Anastasija told BeFriend Vilnius coordinators.

“It’s been a matter of filling out documents, applying for grants and applying for payments and payment cards. I am sincerely grateful for their help with some really important issues. I would not have understood them myself.”

Anastasija and Rūta, who have not shared last names for privacy reasons, are part of an initial cohort of around 500 Ukrainian mentees and Vilnian mentors. They were matched by BeFriend Vilnius during the first iteration of the program in 2022, initially designed to help the influx of Ukrainians find their footing amidst a new culture and language.

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With a population of around 86,000, Ukrainians are now the largest foreign community in Lithuania, making up around 3.2 percent of the country’s overall population of about 2.7 million.

For International House Vilnius project manager Agnė Goldbergaitė, who has been project manager at BeFriend Vilnius since the beginning, the original idea was not only to make Ukrainian refugees feel more at home in Lithuania, but also to find a social way of fielding the inevitable influx of questions around basic information.

“When Ukrainians first started coming to Lithuania, there was a huge flow of people needing all kinds of information, like how to register for a doctor’s appointment, how to find a school for their children, how to buy tickets for the public buses or even where to drink coffee,” says Goldbergaitė. “They were really just in need of a friend.” 

“Every time we host an event, we’re surprised at how many different countries people come from,” says Agnė Goldbergaitė. Courtesy of Befriend Vilnius

“We decided that they could register with us, and share a bit more about themselves, whether they are a single mom with two kids, or a young woman who is into photography. We then connect them with a local Vilnian with a similar situation or interests, to try and lift some of that burden from the government institutions that are also taking care of them. So many of our first mentors joined because they wanted to help Ukrainian people coming from the war.”

Another mentor/mentee pair is Irina and Jovita. Irina came from Ukraine with her eight-year-old daughter, and she met Jovita within a week of her arrival in Lithuania. Jovita’s 11-year-old son comes up with the activities and meeting places, and while the moms are able to communicate in Russian, the kids speak to each other in English, supplemented with hand gestures.

Meanwhile, mentor Kristina was initially anxious about whether she could provide the help her mentee, Iryna, would need. But when they met, she was reassured to hear that Iryna was simply looking for someone to talk to. “I’ve met a great person who I’m now very happy to call my friend,” she told the program. Vilnius local Jurga has also been offering in-depth emotional support to Ukrainian Eteri, and the two have developed a strong bond.

Seeing how well the program has worked, coupled with Vilnius’ overall increasing attractiveness to migrants, the BeFriend Vilnius team expanded the program last year to all foreign newcomers. It also moved away from the time-consuming process of hand-matching mentors and mentees, instead developing a website with the ability to match pairs based on their circumstances and interests. Since the initial launch, BeFriend Vilnius has been receiving up to 15 applications per week for mentors and mentees.

BeFriend Vilnius pairs, from left: Jovita and Irina; Jurga and Eteri; and Kristina and Iryna. Courtesy of BeFriend Vilnius

“We realized this would actually be the best thing for all foreigners. There are around 73,000 international people living in Vilnius at the moment, making every ninth Vilnius resident a foreigner. Our city is becoming more international,” says Goldbergaitė.

“Every time we host an event, we’re surprised at how many different countries people come from — Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ecuador, Philippines, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Georgia — all kinds.”

The number of foreigners living in Lithuania has risen rapidly, totaling 203,157 as of September 2023, up from the 145,118 recorded in 2022. This is partly due to local marketing efforts. The tongue-in-cheek “Vilnius: the G-Spot of Europe” campaign hit global headlines, while government-funded organizations Work in Lithuania and Invest Lithuania have made it their mission to attract skilled foreign workers to the country. Visa processing times have been cut from eight months to just one, and there’s even an arrival allowance of €3,444 (around $3,764) awarded to migrants in high-value occupations considered to be in local shortage. 

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Quality of life in Lithuania also appeals to migrants: It’s in the top 25 percent of the world’s safest countries and has 15 public holidays a year, the second-highest number in the EU. Just one percent of employees work very long hours — well below the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development of 38 countries) average of 10 percent — ranking it 11th for work-life balance in this group. 

The next evolution of BeFriend Vilnius will be to complement the mentoring initiative with a more formal integration program of events and seminars.

“Vilnius is super compact and understandable, and if you take just two steps outside the city, you’re in the forest. Everyone speaks English, and most people do love it,” says Goldbergaitė. “We want people to fall in love with Vilnius and thrive here. We’re always excited to have an impact on real people, and build our community.” 

The post Friendly Mentors Help Ukrainians Find Their Footing in Vilnius appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

On the drizzly first Tuesday in March, voters crammed into a historic white clapboard meeting house on a hill in Stockbridge, Vermont. It was Town Meeting Day, when Vermonters across the state gather to debate and vote on local government. And the election for the next member of Stockbridge’s three-person select board, the main governing body of this town of just over 700 people, had drawn record turnout.

As voters waited to cast handwritten ballots in a long queue that snaked around wooden benches, University of Vermont sophomore Sarah Andrews approached locals, notebook in hand. Andrews and two classmates were not just there for course work: They were there as part of UVM’s Community News Service, reporting for the White River Valley Herald, the weekly newspaper that covers 16 towns in this rural region.

Small newspapers like the Herald have long been the main way of recording and distributing information about community happenings. But local news outlets are disappearing. The 2023 State of Local News report found that about half of all counties across the country have only one local news outlet, and more than 200 counties have none.

UVM student reporters covered an unusually busy Town Meeting Day in the small town of Stockbridge. Credit: Elizabeth Hewitt

As local news deserts grow, universities are stepping in. With initiatives ranging from student-staffed statehouse bureaus to newspapers run by journalism schools, these academic-media partnerships are bolstering local news.

“It’s a short-term win and it’s a long-term win,” says Penny Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and co-author of the local news report. 

University-media partnerships provide reliable local news coverage in communities where it is needed. In the process, students get hands-on experience with community decision-making in a way that shapes their careers and worldviews going forward.

Credit: Elizabeth Hewitt

Sarah Andrews and two of her classmates covered Town Meeting Day for the White River Valley Herald, the weekly newspaper that covers 16 communities in Vermont’s rural Upper Valley region.

“Too often over the last 20 years, we’ve tended to focus on teaching students what we assume are professional digital skills for the digital age, when in fact journalism at its core teaches not only the journalist but the citizen how to employ critical thinking and make wise decisions,” says Abernathy.

Closures of smaller news outlets over the last several decades have left many regions without reliable media coverage. Since 2005, the number of newspapers in the US has dropped by a third, and the number of journalists has declined by 60 percent. The erosion of local news makes it harder for community members to be aware of the issues in their regions.

“Most of the decisions that affect our immediate everyday life occur at the local level,” says Abernathy.

 Through university-led journalism programs, students — under the tutelage and editorial supervision of faculty members — are stepping in to fill in some of those gaps. The model isn’t new: The University of Missouri has been practicing a “teaching hospital” approach that involves students in community news coverage since 1908. Now, in the current media landscape, higher education institutions are looking at how they can both offer students enriching experiences and contribute to communities, according to Richard Watts, who heads the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News.

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“Students like to do things that are real,” he says. “There’s a sense of agency about writing real stories that real people read and make a real difference.”

There are about 120 such programs at colleges and universities across the country, according to Watts. The Center for Community News found in 2023 that over the last year, more than 2,000 student journalists across the US had produced more than 10,000 news stories that were published in community outlets. The stories were estimated to reach more than 14 million people.

Often offered to students in the forms of classes, the programs require a high level of commitment from faculty members — editing stories for publication is more intensive than typical grading. Across different regions, the scope and focus of programs varies, says Watts.

Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication has taken advantage of its location a few miles away from the State Capitol to bolster coverage of the legislature.

 News coverage of state policy-making is among the casualties of the erosion of local news. Across the country, the number of reporters covering statehouses full-time declined by 34 percent between 2014 and 2022.

Claire Sullivan has been an LSU Manship School Statehouse reporter for both the 2023 and the 2024 sessions. Credit: Ria Salway

As press coverage of the Louisiana legislature diminished, LSU launched a statehouse bureau in 2016. Through a high-level journalism class, student reporters cover committee meetings and floor proceedings. Grant funding allows the program to keep students on as interns to cover the weeks of the legislative session after the semester ends. Christopher Drew, a former New York Times investigative reporter and editor who heads the bureau program, edits the stories. Then they’re made available for any news outlet to publish for free. 

 Ninety-five outlets have run LSU student statehouse stories, ranging from some of the state’s largest newspapers to small weekly and bi-weekly papers, many of which Drew says wouldn’t have another option to get stories about news from the statehouse.“Our students never have any problem getting taken seriously by lawmakers because we often are the hometown reporter for the lawmakers,” says Drew. “A lot of them come from places [where] the only thing that constituents could read about what they do comes from what the LSU students do.”

The idea is spreading; 20 states have some form of university-led statehouse bureau, and Drew is involved in conversations with schools interested in launching programs in additional states. LSU also offers an investigative journalism course, focused on civil rights era cold cases, which similarly distributes stories to outlets. Drew is working on a new project that would create a network of universities and colleges around Louisiana, partnering journalism programs with small local news outlets.

LSU senior Claire Sullivan is taking the statehouse course for the second time this spring. She sees the community news model as mutually beneficial for students like herself who want experience and local news outlets that want coverage.

“It’s the best kind of motivator,” says Sullivan. “You want to do your best job for the local outlets.”

Devon Sanders, an LSU Manship School Statehouse reporter, interviewed State Representative Katrina Jackson in 2018. Credit: Katherine Seghers / LSU

The Oglethorpe Echo has been covering the issues of Oglethorpe County in northeastern Georgia since 1874. The weekly was poised to shut down in 2021, when the long-time publisher was ready to retire. Instead, a community member hatched a plan for the local paper to be taken over by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Over the last two and a half years, students have reported the stories that fill the Echo’s pages. During fall and spring semesters, the newspaper is staffed by students in a senior capstone class. Over summer and winter breaks, students are hired as interns, so there’s no break in news coverage. The paper was converted to a nonprofit, and Andy Johnston, a longtime sports journalist who had been an adjunct professor, came on as the paper’s editor. 

Student journalists have dug into issues related to limited rural broadband access, and use of a particular form of fertilizer on local farms. In its first full year of operating under the university, the paper won nine awards from the Georgia Press Association.

Courtesy of Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication

The Oglethorpe Echo nearly shut down in 2021. Instead, the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication took over the paper. Now, student stories fill its pages.

One difference between university-led media and traditional local outlets is that student reporters turn over frequently, so they don’t have the long-term knowledge and relationships that a professional reporter would. But editors — both employed by universities and with community news outlets — help provide that expertise. In Vermont, when the White River Valley Herald picks up stories written by UVM students, editor Tim Calabro says he occasionally adds in local context that students don’t know. 

When the University of Georgia took over the Echo, Johnston says there was an adjustment period of building trust with the community. The university is located about 25 miles west of Oglethorpe County, so students don’t live locally. But the feedback he gets is generally positive. Readers appreciate having a local news source, and they particularly like slice-of-life stories that feature their friends and family members.

“We’re writing to tell the stories of the community, tell the stories of the county,” he says.

Current Echo students Michael Johnson (left) and Izzy Wagner read through a copy of The Oglethorpe Echo. Courtesy of Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication

Back in Vermont, on Town Meeting Day, a total of 139 people voted in the election for Stockbridge’s new select board member. Two days later, Andrews’ story about the election ran in the White River Valley Herald. 

For the Herald’s editor, Tim Calabro, UVM students’ stories helped his limited staff cover news around the region on the biggest single day for local government of the year. But Calabro says there are broader benefits of the program beyond filling the paper with news. 

“Of all the dangers that newspapers, news organizations of any stripe are facing, the biggest worry is that people just won’t care about what’s going on in their communities,” Calabro says.

Not every student who goes through a university-led news program will go on to a career in journalism, he says. But even for those without ambitions in journalism, he sees this kind of program as valuable for engaging young people in communities: “Being a human being in society,” as Calabro puts it, “it’s good to care about society.”

The post As News Deserts Expand, Student Journalists Step Up appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.