• by Ray Schultz , May 11, 2023

The Institute for Nonprofit News has launched a website to support its Rural News Network (RNN), a resource for newsrooms across rural America. 

The new website, RuralNewsNetwork.org, features RNN’s collaborative series and daily stories pulled from its 68 participating newsrooms in 46 states.

Supported in part, by grants from the Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and other funders,  the newsroom consortium has produced five collaborative series featuring rural voices.

In addition, it has hired a dedicated editor, Alana Rocha, invested $300,000 in local newsrooms, and facilitated republication of the series in more than 100 news outlets, including The New York Times and other major publications.

The new platform is “an important step to shining a light on the nuances of rural communities, adding a vital but often underheard voice to the national discourse through trustworthy and sustained reporting,” says Michael Harvey, a program officer at the MacArthur Foundation. 

Newsroom teams can reference or republish the news stories for free on their own sites. They can also subscribe to the Rural News Spotlight newsletter.

The participants are a subset of the 400+ members of the INN Network. 

“It’s exciting to be able to bring larger newsrooms together with smaller ones who may have a great story but lack the resources to pursue it,” said Alana Rocha, who oversees RNN collaborations and curates stories on the RuralNewsNetwork.org website. 

Rocha adds, “Through our behind-the-scenes collaboration and, now, with this website, more stories will get written and more people will understand the realities of life in rural America today.”