Civic Catalyst Newsletter
Winter 2002

Idaho Partners Spotlight Ailing Rural Areas

By Pat Ford
Staff Writer
Pew Center

When four Idaho newspapers and public and commercial television set out to tell about the state's ailing rural areas, they conducted a poll and gathered extensive facts about the economy, federal aid, public policy and population changes.

But nothing seemed to bring home rural Idaho's crisis like Dick and Georgianna Parker's story:

"Dick drew a man's wages working in the fields when he was 12. He has spent his entire life as a farmer, cowboy or logger - until now," reporter Greg Hahn wrote in October in The Idaho Statesman.

"Dick traded his tractors and chain saws for a computer. Georgianna's days of sewing and baking and gardening have become nights of telephone interviewing. Their evenings in cramped cubicles, doing surveys for the Council office of Boise-based Clearwater Research Inc., aren't the life they would have chosen. But their old ways of life are gone, leaving them with a continuing need to work."

The Parkers were one of five families spotlighted in "Rural Idaho: Challenged to Change," an initiative partly supported by the Pew Center. For all the media partners' data, Statesman Managing Editor Steve Silberman believes the human stories had the most impact.

"You could see how a man's life had changed," he said. "The whole idea was to humanize important policy decisions and make [the issues] come alive for readers."

The project partnered Boise's Statesman, the Lewiston Morning Tribune, the Post Register, The Spokesman-Review, Idaho Public Television and KTVB-TV (Boise's NBC affiliate). The stories prompted two public-policy organizations to generate a November conference and a white paper that proposed steps for the state legislature to shore up rural Idaho.

The media partners began planning in the late '90s, when an economic boom led many urban residents to lose sight of the downward spiral in the rural areas.

The news organizations polled rural residents and dug into documents that showed how rural resources were used. They discovered that rural areas were losing jobs and population and that the median age was rising as young people moved away. The partners also found that rural areas receive huge federal agriculture subsidies but relatively little for economic development.

Each paper found a family that represented a different aspect of the rural economy: Timber, mining, farming, small business and the shift to new industry.

The Statesman featured two families; the three smaller papers each featured one. The Statesman also added Web features, including photos that users can click on while listening to family interviews. Forums and an online survey are at www.idahostatesman.com/news/ruralidaho. The site got 30,000 hits in its first two weeks.

"We're in an urban area so we were very sensitive to writing about these rural communities. By teaming up with papers in rural communities, we were able to get material we wouldn't have had to work with otherwise," Silberman said.

The Lewiston Morning Tribune, for example, regularly covers agriculture and timber; all the partners shared its expertise. Tribune Managing Editor Paul Emerson said the statewide partnership brought continuity to coverage of a state often divided by awkward geography.

"It shows people that their concerns are not isolated," Emerson said. "They may be affected by timber prices but the downturn in the wood-products industry is not much different from the family 150 miles north that is dealing with silver prices being depressed."

Making Idaho residents aware of their common problems, Emerson said, is essential to solving them. "Towns in these rural areas have to forget who beat whom in the regional basketball play-offs. They have to forget regional rivalries and collaborate on solutions."

The Andrus Center for Public Policy, a think tank, approached The Statesman about collaborating on an issues conference.

"We used it as a springboard to take the conversation to the next level: What our policies ought to be, what should the next session of the state legislature focus on - the practical stuff," said Andrus board member Mark Johnson. Afterward, the center developed the white paper.

The Statesman contacted Minnesota's Northwest Area Foundation, which specializes in rural issues. The paper put the foundation's rural-issues survey online and the foundation installed a cybercafe at the conference where about 165 of the 250 participants took the survey. The foundation will work with rural Idaho communities on solving their problems.

Reporter Hahn said he hopes the series will lead to concrete action. "The questions [raised] took the whole idea of rural policy farther than I've ever seen it discussed. In Idaho, I don't think they usually take that holistic approach."

Johnson said he expects the media partners will continue covering the issues. "They heard a big earful about the responsibility they need to shoulder," Johnson said. "They heard, 'Don't think you can walk away just because you've done this one ambitious project.' We really need to grapple with what we can do to foster this discussion and take it to other parts of the state."