{"id":12279,"date":"2019-01-14T16:14:08","date_gmt":"2019-01-14T16:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/funkaces\/?p=12279"},"modified":"2019-01-14T16:14:08","modified_gmt":"2019-01-14T16:14:08","slug":"acdc-news-issue-19-01","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/funkaces\/acdc-news-issue-19-01\/","title":{"rendered":"ACDC News – Issue 19-01"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finding local and creative angles to cover climate change<\/strong><\/h3>\n

We recently added to the ACDC collection an article in Nieman Reports <\/em>about journalists struggling to cover climate change. Author Michael Blanding described it as a complex and abstract topic that often lacks a news hook and defies most journalistic conventions. The article explains how some news outlets are bringing innovation, urgency, and new audiences to stories about climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile climate change is perhaps the <\/em>global issue, it is an intensely local one, with effects from climate change felt on agriculture and business from coastal cities to rural farms.\u201d He suggested looking for stories close to home.<\/p>\n

You can read the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cHalf of the world is now online\u201d So\u2026<\/strong><\/h3>\n

That news last month from a United Nations agency, the International Telecommunication Union, stirs hopes and challenges for rural residents and interests.<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s internet population is estimated to have reached 51.2 percent or 3.9 billion people. Also, almost half of all households in the world have access to a computer, such as a desktop, laptop, or tablet.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite the progress, more needs to be done to help the rest of the world\u2019s population go online,\u201d said ITU Secretary General Houlin Zhao. \u201cFar too many people around the world are still waiting to reap the benefits of the digital economy.\u201d Many resources in ACDC confirm that view. They show long experience with new information technologies from which rural residents receive a limited and delayed share of benefits those technologies offer.<\/p>\n

You can read a report of this news here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/strong>How some early U.S. rural families gained IT \u2013 with barbed wire<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Recently we added to ACDC an Atlas Obscura<\/em> article entitled, \u201cBarbed wire telephone lines brought isolated homesteaders together.\u201d Focusing on the American frontier of the 1800s, author Natasha Frost described how creative homesteaders teamed up two new inventions \u2013 the telephone and barbed wire used to fence their properties.<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether, in an amazing display of rural ingenuity, they connected isolated households to their rural neighbors and the rest of the world. Left to telephone companies and their bottom lines, farm people would not have had telecommunications at all. Building lines was expensive, and hardly worth the effort in sparsely populated areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can read this revealing piece of history here<\/a>. Information challenges and the ingenuity of rural people continue, globally.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/strong>20 ideas for enlivening local community food systems<\/strong><\/h3>\n

A team of University of Kentucky researchers recently examined them in developing a Local Food Vitality Index. Their report in the Journal of Food Distribution Research<\/em> spanned three categories:<\/p>\n