Agriculture is one of the largest industries in the world. Rural communities in the U.S., and specifically in Southern Illinois, have significant cultural and economic ties to agriculture. Since the 1950s, information about agriculture topics and issues decreased in mainstream media, while niche agriculture and trade publications have become more prevalent. Mainstream media portray agriculture producers as either bucolic, passive people not able to manage their own affairs, or as evil capitalists out to make a profit at any cost. The classic center-periphery model of Johan Galtung (1971) illustrates how economic and political centers benefit by restricting information flow out of, and among industrial and geographic peripheries. The center-periphery model has been used in recent sociology and communication studies to explicate how urban media frame and present rural areas. This study examines agriculture coverage in Southern Illinois newspapers. Agriculture news is evaluated to determine what topics are covered and what perspective is being advanced. Agriculture coverage in 30 newspapers was compared to general news content. In-depth interviews were conducted with editors of four rural newspapers to determine the decision-making process for covering agriculture news. Agriculture news was primarily national in perspective, while general news content was mostly local in perspective. Agriculture commodity markets, youth organization news, and weather related articles were the most common topics in agriculture articles. Front page agriculture stories ranked seventh out of 10 topics in both frequencies and prominence. Editors claim to make local news a priority, but feel they are not qualified to write about most agriculture issues due to the increasing technical nature of the industry.

Thesis (MPhil (Journalism))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / 131 p. / This thesis explores how six commercial local newspapers based in the towns of Swellendam, Bredasdorp, Caledon and Gansbaai are reporting on gender and HIV/AIDS in ways that may help to shift specific attitudes as well as to generate appropriate community responses. The overall aim of the study is to advance theories around the location of commercial news media in the development context. It also aims to inform and empower development workers and activists on the opportunities or pitfalls in engaging with rural local media to advance their development goals. In most prior studies into the nature of gender or HIV/AIDS reporting in the media in South Africa, the focus has been exclusively on mainstream corporate and/or urbanbased media titles and very little investigation has been done into the performance of small ruralbased media. The study employs two methods of data collection namely, a quantitative content analysis of newspapers and structured interviews with the editors of the papers, and a sample group of government employees and community activists in the respective towns. The structured interviews provide a qualitative dimension to the content analysis, bearing in mind the dangers of quantifying media content and making isolated judgements on the actual context of journalistic practice. Through the interviews, the researcher has been able to explore the extent to which the perceptions of the media editors visavis a public interest role with respect to gender and HIV/AIDS actually differs from the quantitative evidence of their performance and the perceptions of key informants in their communities. The findings of the study suggest that local rural media hold out great hope with respect to the advancement of development communication goals through commercial media platforms. The editors in the four towns have established organic connections with their community, albeit tenuous, but which extend into the ranks of development workers in their towns. The data from the content analysis suggests that women enjoy high visibility in the pages of their local papers, and they are most likely to be portrayed as positive achievers than as women encountering violence. The tenuous nature of the connections between editor and community are most starkly evident around the issue of HIV/AIDS, with coverage of this being very low despite much work being undertaken in the community to deal with the pandemic. With respect to the issue of gender, there was demonstrable evidence from actual examples of content, that showed on the one hand the capacity to motivate for change in women's lives, but also on the other hand a danger of reinforcing attitudes that compound women's oppression. The study offers recommendations to a range of roleplayers to ensure, firstly, the continued survival of local rural newspapers, and also support in building capacity to see these papers mature into journalism products that are integrative and transformative. / Ford Foundation and the Media Development and Diversity Agency