Electric Nevada -
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Published on: 4/30/2006
Last Visited: 9/22/2008
Electric Nevada editor Steve Miller said that the Associated Press tends to function like a 'sinkhole' for a lot of news from rural communities. "It's not anything really intended," he said."It's just that the economics of AP's business mean that AP needs to devote most time and resources to what best serves the big-city papers. "That means news put on the AP wire by rural papers often won't be sent out to papers in general unless it appears it would be interesting for city readers.And thus it may not even get transmitted out to other rural papers." Miller said it was because Electric Nevada focuses on stories of special interest to folks living in the High Desert that the need for the rural wire first became apparent. "We saw there wasn't that much regional news reporting aimed directly at the concerns of rural readers, and thought there had to be a better way. "It dawned on us that the papers in these areas all have readers who are employed in ranching, mining and agriculture and face common issues, such as today's much more militant federal agencies." Miller said he expects the long-run effect of the wire service, and the Internet, to be a rural Nevada that is more integrated -- within itself and with the rest of the state. "When you have the rural papers across the state easily communicating back and forth, sharing information and discussing common problems," he said, "it has to eventually mean better informed readers in all those different rural communities. "Once that happens, I'd tend to expect some kind of sea-change
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in the consciousness of the entire rural community, statewide, followed by a change in the ongoing dialogue between the 15 counties of rural Nevada and the two of Clark and Washoe." A big reason why Miller expects rural news operations to sign on with RIWS is that they all need to save money. "Good news reporting is always expensive -- it takes time and energy and therefore money.It's rarely cost-effective for one small rural paper to pour in a lot of resources to fully cover a regional story. "But if that paper has access to a market of other papers with similar needs -- papers which might be inclined to pay a small fee to reprint such a story -- then the situation could be different," he said.