Bad Bunny vs. Turning Point USA: a reflection of the American divide

Leading up to the Super Bowl, there were many headlines regarding Bad Bunny and what his performance would entail. I expected Bad Bunny to use this platform to make a statement, similar to how Kendrick Lamar did last year, as a response to this tense political climate.

A week prior to the big event, Turning Point USA announced their own version of a rival halftime show. When I heard of this, I was disgusted. It felt like a direct attack to heighten the nation’s divide. Turning Point has been sowing seeds of political division for years, and now it would be on full display, taking the focus away from America’s pastime. Meanwhile, TPUSA stays in the headlines for what might be an even more damaging initiative as they plan to infiltrate high schools in Nebraska, sowing similar seeds of political division in our nation’s youth.  

Bad Bunny holding the original Puerto Rican flag during his Superbowl halftime performance

Photo Credit: NPR; Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images (2026)

On Sunday February 8, 2026, NFL hosted the first ever full Spanish halftime show. Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance was more than just a regular halftime show. Benito’s message was clear: love is more powerful than hate. Bringing the Puerto Rican and Latinx culture into the most watched American sporting event was a beautiful reminder that America is more than just whiteness, and that culture is to be celebrated. The trailer that Apple Music released prior to Bad Bunny’s performance was a great reminder that his music is for everyone. The trailer was a video of Bad Bunny switching dance partners, with every new partner being a person of a different race, occupation, culture, again emphasizing that anyone can enjoy his music. The Americas (North, Central, and South) are a combination of many Latin cultures, and the United States, specifically, is the melting pot of many cultures. Bad Bunny ended his performance with a beautiful display of every single flag that makes up the Americas. Meanwhile, Bad Bunny lists them off saying, “We are America!”

USA Today reported that Bad Bunny’s halftime show had an average viewership of 128.2 million viewers (making it the 3rd most viewed halftime show), with peak viewership of 137.8 million viewers. The NFL reported that 55% of their social engagement with Bad Bunny’s performance was from the international market. 

While people from all over the world were excited for this performance, there was backlash over NFL's choice in musician. Even President Trump had some negative comments to make about the halftime performers. So, in opposition to "Benito Bowl", Turning Point USA decided to announce that they would stream their own halftime show featuring Kid Rock, a problematic MAGA rock-n-roll artist. Their competing halftime show was titled the “All-American Halftime Show,” which ended up having about 6.1 million viewers according to the NY Times. There is no current data on exactly who and where people tuned in from for the TPUSA halftime show. I would assume, however, that the viewers were mostly white Americans because of the organization's demographic. One person who was asked which halftime show they were going to watch, answered Kid Rock because “I don't understand Spanish.” He added, Bad Bunny “isn’t what this country is about.”  I saw other interviews where people offered other justifications for watching Kid Rock. Some said they grew up listening to Kid Rock, or that they know more of his songs over Bad Bunny’s. I can’t help but wonder, though, if they were motivated by racism. 

Between the two halftime shows, Bad Bunny’s numbers blew Kid Rock’s out of the park. But it raises the question: Is this how American society will continue? Will this persist a divide forever? A Turning Point USA spokesperson told Fox News they plan to have another “All-American” halftime show in 2027 after their “massive” success this year. Will TPUSA’s “All-American” rhetoric work to keep Americans divided by race? 

TPUSA Propaganda to Youth and Rural Areas of the U.S.

Nebraska Governor Pillen hosts students for TPUSA "Club America" high school partnership 

Photo Credit: Governor Jim Pillen (2026) 

On February 10, 2026 Governor Jim Pillen of Nebraska announced a partnership with Turning Point USA to bring a Club America chapter to every Nebraska high school. The official website of the Nebraska Governor features a press release about the event.

Pillen hosted an event at his house to make the announcement, which involved local high school students, college students, the TPUSA director, the Chapter President at Creighton University, and the attorney generals. Governor Pillen is a vocal supporter of Charlie Kirk, and during the event he said: 

Through this partnership, we get one step closer to Charlie’s vision of seeing Club America in every high school in the nation.

Currently, there are 22 high school chapters in Nebraska. Club America has more than 3,200 chapters nationwide, which is 13% of all high schools in America. Students who attended this event ranged all the way from Ogallala to Lincoln, Nebraska. 

The chapter president of Creighton University, Emma Smith, spoke at the event about her experience with TPUSA. She mentioned that Turning Point does not tell her exactly what to think, but more so challenges her way of thinking and being confident in her beliefs.

Politics used to be something I avoided entirely, now it’s a part of my everyday life, not because I have to, but because I want to. Because I care deeply about the direction of this country and I believe my generation has a responsibility to protect what is right, rational and worth preserving.

When I read this quote, I initially thought, wow what a great thing that young people are caring about politics and wanting to get involved. Usually teens and college students are not as engaged with the news or politics, but as you get older you tend to get more involved; so it’s great seeing that people are more engaged at a younger age. But then I remembered all the horrible things that TPUSA and Charlie Kirk stand for.  

TPUSA is known for their far-right political rhetoric and Christian nationalism, advertising these ideals to students across college campuses throughout the U.S. and even at some events abroad. Members of TPUSA have expressed racist, homophobic, and transphobic speech while on college campuses. Furthermore, TPUSA provided charter buses to students to attend the January 6th Capitol riot. The founder of TPUSA, Charlie Kirk, has spread across multiple platforms his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and misogynistic views. He was very loyal to Trump and his MAGA agenda. 

My issue with TPUSA having chapters across Nebraska high schools and spreading their message to students is that they are normalizing hate speech as a political view and brainwashing these young Americans to believe that white nationalism and Christian nationalism are okay. If high school students are surrounded by people who have these hateful beliefs, those beliefs are likely to be influential. And if the majority of high schoolers start joining TPUSA Club America, students who disagree with TPUSA’s message may not be vocal about it. High school is a very weird time socially for kids; being a teenager, navigating the high school social scene can be complicated. And when a majority of kids follow a certain idea or group, it is likely that many will follow suit. Also, some teenagers wouldn’t know any better, so they would think this is what is “normal.” Teens and young adults are very easily influenced by their environment, and exposure to ideas at this age may greatly influence adult beliefs. 

My Final Thoughts on the Super Bowl and TPUSA Collaborations

For me, the weirdest part of people’s annoyance is that they “don’t understand Spanish” and thus cannot enjoy Bad Bunny’s music and performance. This felt like a weird microaggression that was hiding their internal racism, because – what do you mean you can’t enjoy the music? Personally, I listen to Bad Bunny all the time and I haven’t understood Spanish since learning it for my language course in high school. I also listen to K-pop artists, Ayra Starr, Kali Uchis, and many other global artists – yet I don’t speak a lick of Korean, or Nigerian, or any of those other languages! Music can be enjoyable even when you do not understand the direct translation of what the artists are saying. 

Propaganda is a very effective tool in influencing people, especially young people. Media usage to promote certain political beliefs is more popular than ever because of social media. To see political content, people used to have to do research or watch the news or go out of their way to know what was happening. But now with social media, access to information is so readily available. Whether you choose to see certain “takes,” they may can pop up on your feed anyway driven by the prevailing algorithm. Bits of the news are even more accessible on social media since most young people do not actually go watch cable TV anymore. And if it is not on your feed, it can be sent to you easily as well. My worries of TPUSA being the main influence of the younger Republican generation is that those people will normalize hateful speech and reverse the progress that has been made in America (regarding pro-choice, LGBT+ rights, pro-immigration). 

Bad Bunny's message from his Super Bowl performance was needed given the current political climate of the United States. However, Turning Point USA's collaboration with Nebraska makes me worried for the future of the next generation's view on politics and the American divide.

A Slam dunk: women’s high school basketball in rural areas

As a young girl on my high school’s varsity basketball team, I faced inequalities plaguing women’s sports in general: although we had a better record, only the boy’s team had cheerleaders, students made attending the boy’s games, not ours, a part of their social life, and when we scrimmaged with the boys during practice, we could count on not being passed the ball.

All that to say, outside of our parents, my team and I didn’t feel externally supported or valued for our skills.

During my sophomore year, my suburban high school had an away game at Ramona High School, situated in the rural town of Ramona in San Diego County which, as of 2020, had a population of about 21,468.

The particulars of the game are lost to time, but I do remember playing in front of the loudest and biggest crowd I’d ever faced. We weren’t rivals with Ramona, and this wasn’t a playoff game. It was a random day in December in a town once known as The Turkey Capital of the World. Yet, parents, students, and what felt like the whole town, was packed into the stands chanting and cheering for their team. While it wasn’t fun to be the opposing team in that scenario (and yes, we did get crushed), I marveled at what it would be like to have a strong support system.

Of course, I don’t mean to imply female athletes in rural areas don’t face the same problems affecting female athletes at large. In her past blog, “Are rural girls more interested in sports than their urban counterparts,” Professor Lisa Pruitt wrote that her rural hometown of Jasper, Arkansas followed boys teams more closely than girls teams, and it took litigation in 1980 to get the girls basketball teams from playing 3-on-3 on half-court to playing full-court 5-on-5.

Thus, while acknowledging similarities in challenges I faced on my team and what the female athletes at Ramona likely faced, the strong community support I saw almost ten years ago was completely foreign to me, and inspires me to look at high school sports in rural areas, specifically in regards to women’s sports.

According to a 2021 Aspen Institute Report, nationally 73 percent of rural public high schools offer interscholastic sports, more than the 70 percent of suburban or 63 percent of urban schools. And, when sports are offered, rural students are the most likely to play. According to the same study, 42 percent of rural students play on high school teams, compared to 41 percent of suburban students and 33 percent of urban students. Therefore, in general, high school sports seem to be more part of everyday life in rural areas compared to suburban areas.

High participation in sports could be, as Professor Pruitt discusses in her blog, because many high schoolers already perform physical activity in their daily lives on a farm or the countryside, or because sports is an attractive option when there is little else to do.

In “Health needs and challenges of rural adolescents,” the authors describe how focus groups in rural communities expressed concern that the lack of healthy forms of recreation in rural areas leads to boredom. Thus, it would make sense that rural residents use sports, both participating in or watching, as an accessible, healthy activity to combat boredom.

Often, I’ve seen the discussion about rural areas and high school sports focus on football. For example, in “Football in rural America bonds communities together” for The Mountain Citizen, Kyle Lovern, a journalist in Tug Valley, explains how people in rural communities, especially Appalachia or the South, love football. He describes people showing up to games on Friday nights:

 [They] may have a family connection with a specific team, the cheerleading squad or the marching band. Or [they] may just be the alumni of a certain high school who still loves to cheer and support [their] team … People rally around sports teams of all kinds everywhere, but it seems even more special in rural areas and small southern towns.

 Likely, this enthusiasm translates to basketball. In Ramona, people could have had loose connections to the team and still showed up to watch. Additionally, girl’s basketball may be more popular in Ramona than my hometown and mean more to everyone involved. The survey by the Aspen Institute found that rural girls play basketball at a higher rate than urban girls, and rural students in general had the highest rates of participation in basketball. Additionally, winning games and making their family feel proud seemed to matter the most to rural students, and rural girls in particular.

I checked Ramona’s record the year we played them, and they were an impressive 18-8 overall. It becomes a chicken or the egg question — did people only attend that game because the team was good, or was the team good because of consistently strong attendance? The under-appreciated high school version of me likes to think their success can be attributed, at least in part, to the support of their community.

On rural communities and schools hanging on to Native American mascots

The New York Times reported today from Cambridge, New York, under the headline, "Facing a Ban, a School District Fights to Keep ‘Indian’ Nickname."  The gist of the story is in the subhead: 

Residents in a divided predominantly white town in upstate New York are fighting a state ruling to remove the Native American mascot.

Cambridge, about an hour north of Albany, on the Vermont state line, has a population of  2,152.  The following excerpt focuses on the community members who want to keep the mascot, the Indians--and in particular the divide between them and relative newcomers to the area, as well as those with more formal education who have returned there. 

Many supporters of keeping the mascot have dismissed concerns as political correctness gone amok, a movement spearheaded by a small group of liberals, many of whom have perhaps not lived in town long enough to realize that many nearby districts have similarly themed names, including the Mechanicville Red Raiders, the Averill Park Warriors and the Lake George Warriors.

Duane Honyoust, a Cambridge resident and a member of the Onondaga Nation, said he supported the school district’s use of the nickname and logo as a tribute to Native people and a reminder to students of the importance of local Native history.

Regarding the anti-mascot movement, he said, “Once you take references to Native Americans out of the schools, you’re starting to erase us.”

* * * 

Meetings of the once-obscure school board have been packed with vocal attendees, necessitating larger spaces and, at times, a local police officer assigned to ensure order.

One recent weeknight this month in a school cafeteria, board members sat on folding chairs emblazoned with the Indians mascot. Many of the roughly 75 attendees pointedly wore orange T-shirts and other garments adorned with the Indians logo.

Most of them were vigorously cheered as they spoke in support of keeping the mascot.

An official announced that it would cost over $90,000 in supplies alone to physically change the nickname and logo on the gym floor, hallway signs, the sides of school buses and other places.

One speaker took the lectern and attributed the name opposition to “woke racism.” Another stepped up and said she was sending her children to a school 20 minutes away because “I didn’t want them to have this experience in their education.”

* * *

By last June, the five-member board voted 3-2 to adopt a resolution to retire the nickname and logo. Then came the backlash, a vote to reverse the decision, the successful appeal to state officials, and now an outright culture war.

“It’s mostly outsiders, people who aren’t originally from here, who want to get rid of it,” said Belinda Sawyer, 49, a restaurant manager in town.

A cheerleader when she attended high school in Cambridge, Ms. Sawyer dropped to the restaurant floor one recent evening and began reciting “Indians on the Warpath,” a cheer chanted over a percussive drumming beat on the bleachers. (Her great-grandmother was a Blackfoot Indian, she said.)

Greg Woodcock, a Cambridge resident in support of keeping the name and mascot, estimated in a phone interview that some 85 percent of the district’s residents are supportive.

They will raise the legal fees themselves, if necessary, he said.

Many critics have dismissed the anti-mascot campaign as being spearheaded by recent transplants to Cambridge, said Alex Dery Snider, a Cambridge resident who was a petitioner in the appeal.

“The message is that outsiders are not welcome here,” she said. “I know of people who planned to move here who changed their minds because of this issue. It just felt really unwelcoming to new people. The message has been if you aren’t from here, you don’t belong here.”

For Mr. McMillan, it was only after moving away to college and gaining more diverse friends that he began viewing certain things in a different light. He started seeing the name as an insensitive caricature that perpetuated stereotypes of Native Americans. As a teen, he did the tomahawk chop to cheer on the high school’s football team.

Several Cambridge area residents of Native American heritage support keeping the Indian mascot. And that reminds me of this similar story out of Colorado last fall, "Rural Colorado students sue to block law demanding 26 schools shed their Native American mascots."  The subhead for Sue McMillan's story is, "The plaintiffs, some of whom claim tribal membership, say the Senate Bill 116 seeks to erase cultural references to Native American heritage."  The plaintiffs in this case are from Lamar, population 7,804, and Yuma, population 3,524, both in far eastern Colorado. An excerpt follows: 

“Erasing Native American names and images from the public square and from public discussion echoes a maneuver that plaintiffs have previously seen used by the eradicators of Native American heritage,” the lawsuit says. “Colorado repeats the same mistake in its paternalistic assumption that it must protect Native Americans by erasing cultural references to them and to their heritage.”

It says the plaintiffs “oppose the use of American Indian mascot performers and caricatures that mock Native American heritage.”

The plaintiffs intend to file a motion this week seeking an injunction that they hope will immediately halt implementation because districts can’t wait for the lawsuit to be heard and risk being fined $25,000 a month if they’re not in compliance, said William Trachman, an attorney with Mountain States Legal Foundation in Lakewood.

An important and deeply reported story, worth a read in its entirety.  

What every female rural runner feels

Natalie Ruth Joynton's op-ed was published in the Washington Post today, "What every female runner feels."  A short excerpt follows: 

I live in rural northern Michigan, a region celebrated for its cherry orchards, shoreline state parks and small-town tourist attractions. People travel from all over the United States to experience what I do every day on my regular morning run: the mist rising off the water, the towering beech trees, the rolling hills. Each day running these dirt roads restores my sense of wonder.

She then recounts the stories of number of women who have been murdered while running in rural places, including Mollie Tibbetts, killed in the summer of 2018, while running near her hometown, Brooklyn, Iowa.  Part of the point is the vulnerability associated with being alone in a rural place, often out of sight of the watchful eye not only of law enforcement, but also of people who can help--or help deter an attacker.  It's an issue I wrote about here and here.

On the role of sports in rural high schools, and resilience amidst a pandemic

There are layers to these three LA Times stories--two news stories and a video feature--but in the interest of time, I'll just post the links here, here and here.  The dateline for all three is Weaverville, California, in remote Trinity County.  I'll also say that these stories are a testament to how sports keep kids in school, and provide motivation for them to try.  Sports also represent a key opportunity for socialization, something that's been lost in many a school, whether rural or urban.  

Rurality in "Ted Lasso" series

I just finished watching Season 1 of "Ted Lasso" with my family.  We started it a few weeks ago and paced ourselves.  (Ok, maybe we didn't really pace ourselves given that we watched the last three episodes tonight).  I'm motivated to write about the show now because in the third from last episode, a British soccer fan called Ted Lasso a "hillbilly."  As you will gather, Lasso is the central character in the series, and in case you haven't seen it, let me explain that Lasso was a coach of American football (the Wichita State Shockers) who is recruited to coach the AFC Richmond soccer team, in southwest London.  

This moniker, used as an insult, led me to contemplate on what basis Lasso could be considered a "hillbilly"?  And the only basis I can think of is a broad definition of middle America, including Kansas, as a land of hillbillies.  Perhaps it is a synonym for "red neck."  But it still rings odd to me given that  Kansas is not known for its hills (let alone mountains).  

Other cultural references in "Ted Lasso" to that broad swath of middle America sometimes called the "flyover" states include Willie Nelson and the Marlboro Man.  There's also a more specific reference to a Kansas institution, the Westboro Baptist Church. 

A photo essay about women's high school basketball in nonmetro North Carolina

NPR reports from Kinston, North Carolina, population 21,677.  An excerpt follows, but click through to see the photos, which are the real attraction. 

In Kinston, N.C., basketball is king — or queen, as the case may be.

The town has a reputation for producing more NBA players than anywhere else in the country and the boy's team is often in the spotlight. Yet the girls team wins just as often as the boys. The girls often receive top grades — in the spring, two players graduated at the top of their class — and after graduating, many stay in the community, sometimes serving as assistant coaches for the team.

* * * 

Growing up in Kinston isn't always easy. In the 2017-18 school year, more than half the students at Kinston High were economically disadvantaged, according to the most recent state report card — and that was before the pandemic hit. The school also rates below the state average in math and English language arts.

Head Coach Chris Bradshaw understands that basketball can only take the girls so far. "The most important thing is academics," Bradshaw explains. "Athletics come and go, but what you learn in academics you can take with you for your whole life."

Kinston is the county seat of Lenoir County, population 59,495. 

Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXXIX): Impoverished Arizona school district struggles with decision to re-open or not

Eli Saslow reports for Washington Post from Hayden, Arizona, population 662, under the headline, "I'm sorry, but it's a fantasy."  Here's an excerpt quoting the superintendent of the Hayden-Winkleman School District, Jeff Gregorich, who was interviewed by Saslow as part of an oral history series featuring voices of the pandemic.

The governor has told us we have to open our schools to students on August 17th, or else we miss out on five percent of our funding. I run a high-needs district in middle-of-nowhere Arizona. We’re 90 percent Hispanic and more than 90 percent free-and-reduced lunch. These kids need every dollar we can get. But covid is spreading all over this area and hitting my staff, and now it feels like there’s a gun to my head. I already lost one teacher to this virus. Do I risk opening back up even if it’s going to cost us more lives? Or do we run school remotely and end up depriving these kids?

This is your classic one-horse town. Picture John Wayne riding through cactuses and all that. I’m superintendent, high school principal and sometimes the basketball referee during recess. This is a skeleton staff, and we pay an average salary of about 40,000 a year. I’ve got nothing to cut. We’re buying new programs for virtual learning and trying to get hotspots and iPads for all our kids. Five percent of our budget is hundreds of thousands of dollars. Where’s that going to come from? I might lose teaching positions or basic curriculum unless we somehow get up and running.

I’ve been in the building every day, sanitizing doors and measuring out space in classrooms. We still haven’t received our order of Plexiglas barriers, so we’re cutting up shower curtains and trying to make do with that. It’s one obstacle after the next. Just last week I found out we had another staff member who tested positive, so I went through the guidance from OSHA and the CDC and tried to figure out the protocols. I’m not an expert at any of this, but I did my best with the contact tracing.

An earlier post featuring this school district, which lost a teacher to COVID-19 in the spring, is here.  

Another compelling oral history interview from this series is here.  No dateline is given, just a reference to the intercoastal waterway in North Carolina.  The woman interviewed works at a convenience store, and she talks about folks refusing to wear masks in spite of the state mandate--even as she cannot afford to give up her job there and thus must expose herself to the risk the customers pose.  

Coronavirus in rural America (Part XXXVII): more on the media and California

Plumas County Courthouse, Quincy, 2013
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt

I've already written a lot of posts in this coronavirus era about both California (read more here, here, here, and here) and, separately, about the impact the coronavirus shelter-in-place rules are having on media outlets, mostly due to lost advertising revenue (see more here).  This post is going to bring those two together, in a story by Hailey Branson-Potts of the Los Angeles Times, out of Plumas County, California, population 20,007.  (Oh, and by the way, those 20,000 people live in a county the size of the State of Delaware, and they are divided by the mountains and the flow of the Feather River into four communities or valleys).  The headline is "In rural Northern California, pandemic crushes newspapers that delivered news and warmth during winter cold," and the lede follows:

Eight days after the first case of the novel coronavirus was confirmed in rural Plumas County, something happened that sent shock waves through the small health department trying to keep people updated during the pandemic. 

The publisher of all four of the Northern California county’s newspapers stopped the presses. 

The Plumas County Public Health Agency had relied on them to provide residents with information about COVID-19. 

Branson-Potts quotes Lori Beatly, spokesperson for the county health agency: 

It’s been difficult trying to provide information about the pandemic ... Unfortunately, not having a newspaper makes a difference. 

In this case, after the four Plumas County newspapers stopped publishing, the health agency sent postcards to every county resident "detailing COVID019 symptoms and stay-at-home orders."  Beatly comments: 

It was very expensive and time-consuming.

This illustrates just one more important way that local media outlets matters, including in rural areas.  Among the challenges facing the public health department:  the fact that online notices are not very effective because so many Plumas County residents don't have access to computers or broadband at home.   Plus, the population is especially vulnerable: 28% are elderly, twice the state average.

Main Street, Quincy, February 2013
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2013

Branson-Potts quotes Mike Taborski who, with his wife Keri, runs Feather Publishing, which also published neighboring Lassen County's newspaper.  They now are simply publishing/updating both counties' news websites. 

We’re primarily the only game in town; that just made the decision that much more difficult. It was extremely painful, both for the impact it was going to have on the community, to shutter their only means of getting local, reliable news, and the impact it was going to have on our family of employees.

Branson-Potts also quotes Debra Moore, managing editor of the Plumas County papers:

You get people upset about the content, and you get the people who worry about how they’re going to start their fires.  It’s a big, big deal. We’ve had people come in to stock up in case we don’t start printing again.

The "how they're going to start their fires" apparently refers to this bit of additional context from the LA Times story:

In this region where winter can be brutal, the papers published by family-owned Feather Publishing did more than deliver the news — they literally kept people warm. Sold in bundles, they crackled aflame in wood-burning stoves.

I'm not sure how to feel about that, but I guess if it sells papers and funds journalism, I can live with burning a few newspapers.  Certainly, during the winter months, I use my old Sacramento Bee and New York Times print editions to start fires in my fireplace.

But consider the rural economics of what has just happened in Plumas County--the local economic implications:

With some 75 employees, Feather Publishing is one of Plumas County’s largest employers. The publisher laid off all but two.

That is a stunning data point and one that surprises me. I'd never have anticipated that newspapers serving such a spatially dispersed population across two relatively poor counties would employ 75 people.

In the past decade and a half, 25% of newspapers, 2100 total, have closed.  Many of these have served rural counties and with disproportionately high poverty rates.  Here's some information about national trends re: newspaper closures, including those serving rural areas and those serving poor places.  A quote from Prof. Penny Muse Abernathy of the University of North Carolina follows:

The tragic part about that is these are the very communities that need the kind of information that a local newspaper provides. If you lose your local newspaper, and you’re in a small or mid-sized community, nobody’s showing up at the local school board meeting. Nobody is covering local team sports. Nobody is covering everyday life.

I have written previously of rural newspaper closures.  This post collects media coverage of the phenomenon; this story is about the "near miss" (closure) of the newspaper in Sierra County, California, to the south of Plumas County, and here's the first post of a series I started last summer about what nonmetro newspapers are writing about. 

This blog's prior coverage of Plumas County is here.   This post from last year mentions both Plumas and Lassen County, and it relates to this one, about California's state legislature and assembly representation from that region, which remains persistently Republican.  Indeed, the Republican being discussed in those posts, Brian Dahle, is a seed farmer in northern Lassen County who previously served several terms on that county's Board of Supervisors.  Interestingly, Dahle is now my State Senator, representing what I believe is the state's senate largest district in land area, stretching from Modoc and Siskiyou counties bordering Oregon, through Lassen and Plumas counties, to north Lake Tahoe, to the eastern suburbs of Sacramento where I live.

This post from 2018 also mentions Lassen County, along with a number of other counties now in the news for protesting Governor Gavin Newsom's stay-at-home order.

In 2012 and 2013, I spent several weeks off and on in Plumas County with students in a course I created called "Practicum in Rural Community Advocacy."  We were working with Legal Services of Northern California to help educate community members--working with as many stakeholders as we could engage--about early opportunities for enrollment in the Affordable Care Act.  I say "as many stakeholders as we could engage" because after an initial meeting, the Plumas County Health Office stopped returning our phone calls.  They were not interested in collaborating with outsiders.

At that time, I visited all four population centers in the county, including the county seat, Quincy; the only incorporated entity/municipality, Portola; and tertiary communities of Greenville and Chester.  The latter is on Lake Almanor, a site of some rural gentrification--at least it has many homes that are second homes to Californians whose primary residence is elsewhere.  Neighboring Lassen County is the home of several state and federal prisons, and it was the subject of the 2007 documentary "Prison Town USA."

Here's a link to a "Small Business Marketing Grant" program being run by the owners of my hometown newspaper, The Newton County Times, which is one of 10 papers owned by the Phillips Media Group in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas.  It's described thusly:

All 10 Phillips Media Group publications are participating in this program, jointly allocating up to $250,000 in matching advertising credits to assist local businesses. Local businesses are an important part of a community’s identity. Whether it is the jobs they create, the uniqueness they add, or the services they provide, they truly are the heartbeat of our towns. As the local leader in news and advertising, we want to be there for you during these uncertain times. Our Local Marketing Grant Program is another way we are looking to strengthen our communities, one business at a time.

I hope it helps small businesses in the region continue to advertise so that the newspapers are able to stay in business.  Will be interesting to see. 

Coronavirus in rural America (Part XXVIII): Montana's hi-line

Hi-Line is the moniker Montanans use for the strip of northern counties that border Canada, and one of those counties, Toole, population 5,324, is featured in a radio story that ran on NPR this morning.  The story was actually reported last week by Nate Hegyi, but just picked up nationally today as part of the America Amplified 2020 series.

Four of Montana's 10 coronavirus deaths have occurred in Toole County's seat, Shelby; these are mostly attributable to an outbreak at the county's only assisted living facility, called Marias.  Here's an excerpt focusing on the good news:  the county's preparedness, attributable to the fact that the Chicago to Seattle (and vice versa) Amtrak train stops in Shelby, the county seat, twice daily.  This means that, even though Shelby might seem like the middle of nowhere, it is connected by mass transportation to the rest of the world, and therefore vulnerable to coronavirus.  Hegyi quotes William Kiefer, CEO of Marias Medical Center:

We believe that everyone staying in their homes and following the guidance of the CDC is incredibly important.  To this point it's been very successful in Toole County.

Hegyi also addresses small-town ingenuity:

There's also something else that Marias Medical Center did that other U.S. hospitals should all take note of for future pandemics. It planned ahead before the virus even reached our shores. 

We have a group of dedicated people here that thought, 'Wow, if it does hit the United States, we're a very rural frontier facility and we should do everything in our power now."

Hegyi clarifies:

Back in January, Marias began purchasing and storing personal protective equipment. The excess masks, face shields and gowns reduced the chances of exposure for their staff after the outbreak in the hospital's assisted living facility took hold. However, Kiefer says he wishes they were wearing them regularly before the virus arrived in Shelby because once the first patient tested positive, many of the medical center's employees were unwittingly exposed to the virus. 

Thus Marias Medical Center in Shelby has been left short-staffed.  Further, it has just 21 beds and two ventilators, but it has formed an alliance with medical centers in other hi-line counties, including those in Kalispell, Browning, Conrad and Cut Bank.  Marias also has plans to air evac patients to Helena, as necessary. 

Kiefer comments:

Although we're small, we're not isolated.  People do move around quite a bit.

And as Hegyi concludes, in the context of a pandemic, "it's that movement that can kill." And that is why orders limiting movement --or at least screening those who are moving--are appropriate at times like these.

Here's the Billings Gazette's April 19 coverage of what is happening in Shelby and Toole County.  It's a very deeply reported story by Jeff Welsch, heavy on lack of anonymity and history, among other rural themes.  An excerpt quoting Dwaine Iverson, a CPA in Shelby, follows:

When you drive down Main Street and don’t see a car, it’s frightening.  Impacts are everywhere. And if we don’t do something to keep (businesses) alive, when we get all done with this ... Main Street now, with the shutdown, is going to look like that all the
time.

The story continues:

Iverson recalls his wife, Barbara, who works at the Heritage Center, and three daughters, all nurses in other Montana communities, initially warning him he "wasn't taking it seriously enough" when COVID-19 first gripped Seattle and surged toward Montana. Soon after, Barbara was in quarantine at home, even though she was off-duty when the virus hit.

Then the first three residents died.

More from Iverson: 

It feels real because you know the people who died.  They’re prominent people around here. They come from large families. They were personal friends of mine, clients of mine. That brings it home.

* * *

The biggest issue is families can’t even get together to grieve. That type of thing makes it so tough because the whole grieving process is so critical to go through and could affect the rest of your life. When you can’t give somebody a hug, how important is that?

Another resident, Michael Bashor, commented: "We all pretty much know who they are."

This Billings Gazette story features great photos, too, from Larry Mayer.

And here's a Montana Public Radio story from 1 April indicating that Governor Steve Bullock ordered health screenings of those arriving in Montana via train or plane.  An earlier post about coronavirus impacts in Montana is here, and an even earlier one is here.

My own very long 2010 law review article, featuring lots about Montana's human, political and physical geography in relation to the delivery of health and human services to children is discussed here.  What a treat it was for me to give talks at the University of Montana in Missoula in 2009 and 2016, and to vacation there in 2011 (Glacier National Park, Missoula, Ravalli County/Darby) and 2017 (Bozeman, Livingston, Gardiner).

I'm a huge fan of "the last best place" and Governor Bullock.  For still more on the Big Sky state, search "Montana" here on Legal Ruralism.

Revisiting Paradise Lost, a year on

The Camp Fire destroyed the Butte County city of Paradise, along with a few smaller communities, a year ago today.  Thus, many radio programs and newspapers are running commemorative features.  I'm linking to just a few of them below.  Legal Ruralism's earlier coverage of the Camp Fire disaster is here, here, and here.   And here you'll find the CalATJ's policy brief on rural disasters, which was published this summer. 

From Northstate Public Radio

From National Public Radio--predictably about sports (another exemplar of that is here)

From the New York Times.

From the Sacramento Bee. 

From the Los Angeles Times

From the San Francisco Chronicle. 

Rural news out of Australia

I've been collecting these stories and am just going to roll them into a single post, with "Australia" as the common theme:

First, from the Washington Post, is this story about a rural community of Biloela (population 5,758) in Central Queensland (Banana Shire, no less!) which has rallied around a Sri Lankan immigrant family, trying to spare them deportation.   Rebecca Tan writes under the headline, "How a conservative town in Australia set aside politics to rally for a family facing deportation."  The headline implies that rural folks are conservative and, perhaps, also anti-immigrant-- except when it came to this family.  Tan writes: 

Kokilapathmapriya Nadesalingham and her husband, Nadesalingam Murugappan, who go by Priya and Nades, fled Sri Lanka amid a civil war and settled in Biloela five years ago. After failed attempts at securing the appropriate visas, the couple, along with their two Australian-born daughters, Kopika, 4, and Tharunicaa, 2, were seized by immigration authorities from their home last year and placed in a detention facility under deportation proceedings.

* * * 

[In Biloela] friends, neighbors and strangers have worked for a year to get the family home, forming an online movement under the banner “#HomeToBilo."

* * * 

“The emotional swing that has occurred in this community has been extraordinary,” Angela Fredericks, a Biloela resident and friend of the family, told the Guardian on Saturday. “I’ve never seen a rage like that in Biloela. We’re a polite town.”

As for how the family endeared themselves to the community, Tan writes:

In the four years they spent in Biloela, the Tamil family had become a core part of the community, advocates say. Nades worked at the local abattoir and volunteered at a welfare services society, St. Vincent de Paul. Priya, the Guardian reported, often cooked for staff at the hospital.

One community member commented for the Washington Post: 

It’s a very politically conservative town; that’s not debatable. Growing up, I had never ever been to a protest or to a vigil about anything political.

Even now, I think people are not thinking about it as global issues or politics. It’s a story about a family and a town that wants them back.

I can't help wonder how the Biloela resident quoted here would define "conservative."

The other stories from down under came to my attention via the Australia Broadcasting Corporation's Twitter feed.  One is out of South Australia, a town called Lucindale (population 301), and it's about how this community lobbied to host a major national concert as a way to help raise money to replace their dilapidated pool. 

Almost 15,000 festival goers donated more than $22,000 — half of which is to go towards the pool, the other to youth leadership scholarships — as they entered the gates to the free event. 

It means children from the small farming community, almost 350 kilometres south-east of Adelaide, will not have to travel to other towns for their half-hour swimming lessons.

Love this quote from a "Year 12" student about his town:

It sums up the way Lucindale lives and operates as a community. We set out a goal to do something and we get it done.

The third story is about coal mining in New South Wales in an area called Bylong Valley.  Here's the gist of the story, with no significant explanation for the decision to stop the mine:

There has been immediate and sometimes angry reaction to the Independent Planning Commission's decision to halt the proposed multi-million-dollar Bylong Valley coal mine in the Upper Hunter. 

The mine was expected start operations this year and provide 650 jobs during construction and 450 once developed in the Bylong Valley. 

The decision by the IPC to reject the proposal comes following significant community opposition.

On small-town football (and toughness) in the wake of disasters

The Los Angeles Times has recently run two stories about small-town football teams in the Golden State, each one in the process of recovering from a disaster.  Trona High, on the edge of Death Valley,  straddling Inyo and San Bernardino County, was near the epicenter of earthquakes in early July.  Read more here.  Paradise High is recovering from the Camp Fire of November, 2018, which destroyed nearly the entire town.  Read more here.  

Dan Wharton reports for the LA Times from Trona, population 1,900, under the headline, "Trona High’s once-mighty Sandmen fight to keep football alive in wake of earthquakes." Here's a poignant depiction of the city:

At least in the old days the school fielded big squads, all those miners’ sons eager to prove themselves on Friday night. They forged a reputation for toughness, scratching out wins, even contending for an occasional championship. 

That was before the local processing plant laid off hundreds of workers, leaving this remote community littered with abandoned homes, forcing the grocery and furniture store out of business. The Ridgecrest earthquakes last month scared off even more people. 

Now the once-powerful Trona program, which downsized to eight-man football a while back, is scrambling to attract enough bodies for its fall schedule.

The story about the Paradise football team win on August 23 is by the Associated Press, and an excerpt follows:

It’s hard to recognize Paradise. 

It is heaps of melted metal. It is scorched pine trees. It is a place where things used to be, before a fire destroyed nearly 19,000 structures and killed 86 people in November 2018. 

But on Friday night, Paradise looked like home again. Thousands of people filled the stands at Om Wraith Field at Paradise High School — which was spared from the flames — to watch the football team missing more than a third of its players play its first game since losing everything. 

Girls wore ribbons in their hair and glitter on their faces. Boys wore jerseys with the sleeves rolled up. People stood in line to order hot dogs at the concession stand, only to be given a paper plate with a bun and told to walk around the corner and pick one off the grill.

Paradise's current population is just over 2,000, though it was more than 26,000 before the Camp Fire. 

It's interesting how sports--perhaps especially football--become symbolic of so much else about community and place, especially when it comes to small towns.

Rural media (Part I): A new feature reporting from the pages of small-town newspapers

Office of the Del Norte Triplicate, a thrice-weekly paper in Crescent City, California
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2019

When I travel to rural places (as well as urban ones, for that matter), I make a point of reading the local news. I like to see what the issues du jour are in particular rural regions, and I blog about what I find as often as I can.  Some recent examples of that are here and here.  My travels throughout California in July have given me ample opportunity to consume several different local (county) newspapers, so I'm going to highlight some of what I read here:

The San Luis Obispo Tribune published an editorial headlined, "Reckless drivers, drunks and confederate flags don't belong on the Oceano Dunes," on July 19.  Here's an excerpt, about a recent Coastal Commission meeting in the area, which considered the fate of the popular outdoor park where six people have died this year in ATV/off-roading accidents:

Yes, the Coastal Commission agreed to maintain the status quo at the popular off-road park for at least one more year. But it also made it clear that it expects improvement. 

And if the commission takes its job to protect and enhance the coastline at all seriously — and wants to retain any credibility with opponents of the state vehicular recreation area — it will treat this as a last chance.

For as much as supporters have tried to portray the Oceano Dunes as a safe, welcoming, family-friendly place, the PR isn’t working.

It’s hard to characterize a place as safe and family-friendly when there have been six fatalities and a shooting so far this year.

And welcoming?

Sorry, but even a single Confederate flag on the back of a pickup is enough to create the impression that the entire off-roading community is a bunch of racist good ol’ boys who come over from the [Central] Valley to drink and raise hell — leaving the locals to eat their dust and clean up their mess.

* * *

For many, the [2019] deaths confirm the park is an inherently lawless, dangerous place — the term “Wild West” gets used a lot — where there’s little supervision and almost anything goes.

As we’ve said before, we don’t believe the increase in fatalities is a reason to close the park — but it definitely is a reason to figure out what the heck is going on and do whatever it takes to make the park safer.

I could excerpt more, but I think readers will get the picture. 

The (Sonoma County) Press Democrat ran this story by Julie Johnson on July 26 under the headline, "Mendocino marijuana raids reflect California’s stepped-up enforcement on illegal operators."  Here are a couple of key excerpts about what went down in what has been called the Emerald Triangle.  Specifically, the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office "cut down more than 42,000 marijuana plants on nearly 30 properties in the Eel River watershed." This is reportedly the first "major multiagency operation investigating illegal cultivation and environmental crimes to take place" in the county since the state legalized marijuana.  While the state has granted licenses to some 500 entities to grow marijuana in Mendocino County, thousands of unlicensed marijuana farms are believed to exist.

Cannabis industry leaders here said the operation was premature for an industry struggling to adapt to new regulations and that it felt like a resumption of the heavily militarized law enforcement campaigns that for decades targeted marijuana growers in these hills and valleys.

But Sheriff Tom Allman said his teams focused on sites where they spotted evidence of serious environmental crimes such as water theft and polluting the watershed with trash, fuels and pesticides. The investigations targeted properties where people had not even applied for local permits or state licenses to cultivate, he said.

“Is it marijuana enforcement or is it environmental enforcement?” Sheriff Tom Allman said. “There’s a difference, and I think the tide is turning.”

In the aftermath of legalization, marijuana industry leaders had hoped that enforcement of the state’s cannabis cultivation laws would fundamentally change. Where once they had encountered teams of camouflaged and armed peace officers investigating criminal behavior, they envisioned civil operations run by code enforcement officers using warnings, legal notices, fines and penalties to hold people accountable.

The Times-Standard (Eureka/Humboldt County) on July 6 led with this headline, "County buildings aren't up to standards."  The story by Sonia Waraich features these paragraphs: 

Humboldt County has been failing to make public facilities accessible to people with disabilities for years, according to a report from the county's civil grand jury.  

The county has been on hot water with the U.S. Dept. of Justice for over a decade because it has continuously failed to meet deadlines set by the department to bring county buildings up the the standards laid out in the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to the Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury report "Here We Go Again" released Friday morning.  The ADA states that government buildings need to be usable for people with disabilities and modifications need to be made to make them accessible.  

The following is a quote from the report: 

As the County approaches the final deadline in the Consent Decree to remediate the remaining facilities and curb ramps, it seems unlikely that work will be completed on time.  Many earlier deadlines have been missed and a number of projects are still out for bid.  

Nearly 1700 curb ramps still need to be remediated, according to the report. 

In it's July 3, 2019 issue, the Curry Coastal Pilot (Oregon) ran a front-page story announcing the paper's new ownership under the headline, "Turning a new page."  The story, which features a photo of Carol Hungerford, begins:

Hello, Brookings and Crescent City!  We're privileged to be the new owners of the Curry Costal Pilot and the Del Norte Triplicate.   

As a native Oregonian, I love this coast and its iconic smaller towns  We are excited at the opportunity to learn about and become part of the fabric of Brookings and Crescent City.   

My husband, Steve, and I have been working toward this goal of purchasing these two promising community news outlets for four months.  

Steve created Country Media nearly 20 years ago because of his passion for community news and service.  After half a century working at daily and weekly newspapers of all sizes, his zest for this business continues unabated.  

My education and work experience had been centered in the arts and arts management.  But early on I agreed to help Steve operate our newspaper company, and I've never regretted that decision.   

Over the past two decades, we've built our business to include some 15 nondaily newspapers and 15 years, associated websites serving communities of various sizes in four states.  So we have a strong background in finding a good fit between our publications and their communities.   

For now, our prime focus with these two newspapers is to make them sustainable, to ensure that Brookings and Crescent City have long-term newspapers they can rely on for non-judgmental, accurate and unbiased news coverage.  

The column then goes on to explain that Country Media bought the two papers our bankruptcy.  Curry is Oregon's most southwesterly county, and its population is 22,364.  Del Norte County, California, home of the sister paper, the Triplicate, has a population of 28,610.

Speaking of media ownership, to close out this initial post on the rural media, let me turn to this New York Times story from August 1 about the last issue of the Warroad (Minnesota) Pioneer, printed this past May.  Warroad, population 1,781, is in far northern Minnesota, a few miles south of Canada, and its paper had a distribution of about 1,100.   Richard Fausset's story notes that the Warroad paper joined some 2000 United States papers that have ceased to publish over the last decade and a half.  A study by UNC research, "The Expanding News Desert," found that “there is simply not enough digital or print revenue to pay for the public service journalism that local newspapers have historically provided.”  Fauset writes:  

In Warroad, The Pioneer was full of soft-focus features on residents, reprinted news releases, photos of fishermen with their outsize catches, and news of awards won by children and Shriners. There were the occasional stories, too, about city officials, the school board and local sports.

And so, Fauset notes, the closure of the paper leaves a big hole:

No hometown paper to print the obituaries from the Helgeson Funeral Home. No place to chronicle the exploits of the beloved high school hockey teams. No historical record for the little town museum, which had carefully kept the newspaper in boxes going back to 1897.

And what about the next government scandal, the next school funding crisis? Who would be there? Who would tell?

A prior post about Warroad, as hockey powerhouse, is here.