Depending on where you live and work as a journalist, there are two basic levels of importance when it comes to coverage of the agriculture industry: “very important” or “extremely important.”
How and where food is grown or raised, how it is processed and transported, what it costs to buy and how the industry affects the economy and the environment are important to readers, advertisers, agricultural producers and policymakers.
And yet, mostly due to cutbacks, agricultural coverage has been reduced or even eliminated by many traditional media outlets.
Specialty agricultural publications still do yeoman’s work in covering the industry, but their reach beyond the industry core is limited and the news is often presented from the perspective of an industry insider.
Every journalist has the opportunity, and some might say the imperative, to cover agriculture and the vast range of news topics associated with it.
Here are some tips to start or expand your coverage of agriculture.
— Start small, then go in-depth. Take on a weather story or farmer profile to break in, then go deeper as your skills and confidence build. Do not be intimidated; most farmers want to share stories about their lives and work.
— Read widely to get story ideas. This is true on all beats, but keeping your eyes and mind open to ideas is especially important about a complex industry such as agriculture. Subscribe or go online to scan speciality publications focused on agriculture, then go deeper into topics that may be old hat to industry reporters. Read national stories about the industry and localize them. Talk to government officials who oversee the industry and read reports they or industry groups produce about concerns or issues facing the industry. Visit websites of industry or lobbying organizations.
— Sign up for online bulletins sent regularly by government regulators, industry groups, the National Weather Service, university extension offices or consumer groups. Then read the bulletins and mine for ideas.
— Drive around the countryside with the radio off. Look more closely at farms, ranches and the people who run them. What is new or unusual or special? Seek out industry trends, historical patterns or colorful feature stories worthy of reporting efforts.
— Consider how agriculture affects your own life. Wear your story-idea hat while grocery shopping, while visiting the farmers’ market or while considering the weather and its recent or long-range patterns.
— Once an idea emergences, interview government officials or industry groups for the big-picture outlook, and then ask for names and phone numbers of producers who might be willing to be interviewed by phone or in person. Be aware that some producers may be de facto industry spokespeople, so try also to find local producers on your own. Scouring social media platforms or speciality publication websites can help you find fresh producers to interview.
— Take a two-pronged approach to reporting. First, speak to a variety of sources (especially front-line producers) on the phone. Then, set up a site visit or farm tour to meet producers where they work and live to create opportunities for a deeper understanding of issues, to get great photos, audio or video, and to create opportunities for colorful, detailed writing.
— Think deeply, ask many questions and never assume. Modern agriculture is complicated and high-tech. Be patient and diligent in trying to understand the terminology or concepts involved. Confirm your understanding of a topic with sources so you can present information or processes clearly and accurately to readers.
— Ask tough questions, play devil’s advocate at times and get the other side. Not every agricultural story needs a quote from PETA, but it is important to seek out reasonable sources who question agricultural procedures or ecological impacts. Often, those sources are not anti-agriculture, but mostly want the industry to operate more efficiently and in concert with the earth.
— Prepare well for farm visits. Get clear directions, map your route and show up on time; do not arrive in your Sunday best; be ready for sun, rain or snow; have water or soda; bring a rag or napkins for messes; take written notes while also tape-recording interviews; ask permission before getting close to crops, equipment or livestock; be wary and respectful of animals; take candid photos of farmers in action but get a staged portrait just in case; never be in a hurry.
— Enjoy the writing process. As an agricultural reporter, you have the rare opportunity to bring readers into a world they may never see. Embrace that gift by writing clearly and accurately but with authority, flair and color.
For the rest of this year, AJP is prioritizing providing growth capital to local nonprofit news organizations with a viable plan to dramatically increase the scale of their organizations in pursuit of meeting their communities’ information needs. Organizations seeking grants must have the vision and ambition to grow significantly to become a primary source of local original reporting for their communities. (We recognize that what “primary source” means will vary depending on the local news ecosystem; it can be a collaborative vision, and it must ultimately be rooted in growing to meet the currently unmet critical information needs of the diverse communities in the geographies served.) We are currently prioritizing organizations serving or seeking to serve regions that are either an entire state or a large population area.
Freedom Forum Turns 30 Years Old On July 4
The Freedom Forum is 30 years old this July 4, but in many ways is just getting started in its mission of “fostering First Amendment freedoms for all.”
The First Amendment will be 230 years old later this year. Like the Freedom Forum, it is as current as today’s ongoing disputes over free speech on the web, roiling protests in the street, bitter debates over religious rights and anti-discrimination laws and difficult new questions about the role of a free press in the 21st century.
For those uncertain what is even in the First Amendment, the Freedom Forum’s “State of the First Amendment” national surveys since 1997 say you have a lot of company. No more than six percent in any year could name all five freedoms in the amendment. Each year somewhere around one-third of us cannot name any.
In case you are asked, the five freedoms are religion, speech, press, assembly and petition.
For three decades, the Freedom Forum has fostered the public’s knowledge and understanding of our First Amendment freedoms:
REACHING MILLIONS IN WASHINGTON, D.C., AND ONLINE
Most publicly, there was the Newseum. One opened in 1997, in Rosslyn, Va., just across the Potomac River from downtown Washington, D.C. It closed as construction was under way for its bigger successor. The new Newseum was open from 2008 to 2019 on Pennsylvania Avenue — “America’s Main Street”— halfway between the U.S. Capitol and The White House.
Both Newseums were about all five freedoms, often through the lens of free speech or a free press.
About 11 million people visited the two Newseums, and the hundreds of thousands who toured the spaces each year were amplified many times over online. In just one year, 12 million students and teachers interacted with the Freedom Forum’s online education posts and lesson plans on topics as varied as social justice, media literacy, spotting “fake news” on the web and how we got those five core freedoms — all at no charge.
EDUCATING JOURNALISTS AND TEACHERS
The Freedom Forum has not only helped Americans value the First Amendment and free press, but also worked to make First Amendment education and journalism better. It has produced doctoral programs in journalism and published nonpartisan guidelines on how to teach about religion in public schools — the latter distributed by the Clinton administration to every public school in the nation.
The Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center, headquartered at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and now named for its founder, editor and publisher John Seigenthaler, has produced publications, thought leadership, events, concerts, moot court competitions and television programs.
Through grants and guidance, the Freedom Forum helped in the creation of journalism groups representing Black, Native American and Asian American journalists. That commitment to diversity and inclusion in a free press continues today with the Chips Quinn Scholars program (CQS), set up in 1991 to increase the number of people of color in U.S. newsrooms, and the Power Shift Project, established in 2018 to promote newsroom integrity and inclusion.
From international programs that trained journalists in other nations, libraries throughout the former Soviet Union, satellite offices on both coasts and around the world, education initiatives nationwide, two long-running television series and more, the Freedom Forum has advanced the values of the First Amendment.
Explore a behind-the-scenes timeline of 30 years of fostering First Amendment freedoms for all.
THINKING DIFFERENTLY
The Freedom Forum’s work has focused on helping the public know, understand and defend freedoms set out by the First Amendment’s deceptively simple 45 words. Sometimes that work begins with noting that the opening phase “Congress shall make no law abridging …” now means any part of government, be it presidents or mayors, school superintendents or police officers, football coaches or agency administrators.
Relentlessly nonpartisan and apolitical, the foundation has both benefited from that posture — principally, as a convenor of all sides on a variety of issues — and faced criticism when recognizing that the First Amendment protects opposing and objectionable opinions.
The foundation has been prescient at times in its programs. In 1997, Freedom Forum founder Al Neuharth interviewed Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai about Lai’s rags-to-riches-to-newspaper publisher life story and the future of freedom in Hong Kong. Earlier this year, the Freedom Forum saluted Lai as one of its Free Expression Award winners — with Lai in a Chinese prison. Apple Daily was since shut down by a Chinese government ruthlessly backtracking on the city’s promised democratic exceptions to China’s authoritarianism.
Read Al Neuharth’s Feb. 2, 1996, column from USA TODAY on press freedom in Hong Kong.
Presaging the intense debate today over journalism’s ethics, the Freedom Forum in the mid-1990s launched “Free Press-Fair Press,” a multi-year, multi-million-dollar project that ranged from town meetings to newsroom guides and panel programs in the U.S. and abroad, with multiple spin-off initiatives at the Newseums.
MOVING FORWARD
What is ahead for the Freedom Forum? The First Amendment faces new challenges, particularly claims the “marketplace of ideas” concept, which has underpinned the amendment for 230 years, is outmoded in a global, web-connected world.
Foster First Amendment freedoms into the future by joining the 30th Anniversary Circle.
Our nation has been here before. In the early years of the republic, some First Amendment freedoms were enforceably denied to women and people of color. The introduction of new technologies — from mass-circulation newspapers to radio, TV and the internet — has produced fearful reactions over how the “new” would and did change society. The inherent conflict produced by the protection of fringe and extreme beliefs, faiths and opinions is not new, but the First Amendment is up to the task. The Freedom Forum’s next focus is to ensure a growing number of Americans grasp the 21st century relevance and importance of the First Amendment.
For 30 years, the Freedom Forum has been a rare voice heard on behalf of hearing all voices. In a competitive, fractured world that is often not an easy or comfortable position for any organization: Friend and guide for all, partisan of none.
But it is the path chosen by the founders of the Freedom Forum, advanced over three decades, and the renewed focus of today’s leadership — all in service of the 45 words of the First Amendment that frame the foundation and what it means to be an American.
Join us to celebrate 30 years of fostering First Amendment freedoms for all at a virtual celebration on Thursday, July 22. Come look back at three decades of fostering First Amendment freedoms for all and ahead at what’s next.