The year 2020 was a big news year, even by today’s standards. There was a hotly contested presidential election, the COVID pandemic and lockdown, and protests for racial justice after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police. These news stories were felt in every corner of America.
But what about in the small towns and cities which aren’t big media markets and are often overlooked by national news outlets? How do the big stories change when they are told by local journalists? And what is lost as this kind of coverage disappears?
The book American Deadline brings together dispatches from four longtime local journalists in different parts of the United States that tell the story of 2020 from a fresh perspective.
The book shares reporting from Bowling Green, Virginia; Macon, Georgia; McKeesport, Pennsylvania; and the border community of McAllen, Texas. Two of these towns lost their local newspapers and the other two are barely hanging on.
The four co-authors were assigned to consider what makes each town distinctive and how these local perspectives tell a part of a broader American story. American Deadline reports on how residents of these towns grapple with and talk about issues relating to race, schooling, health, immigration, deindustrialization, as well as local and national politics amid a changing and increasingly precarious information ecosystem.
This is a distinct and intimate look at a calamitous year that displays the challenges, realities and possible futures of local journalism.
Guest:
Sandra Sanchez is the Border Report South Texas correspondent and co-author of "American Deadline: Reporting from four news-starved towns in the Trump era.”
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This interview will be recorded on Wednesday, October 11, 2023.
