{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.021283562540929928, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.865168539325842, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Book Review: Randall S. Sumpter, Before Journalism Schools: How Gilded Age Reporters Learned the Rules

probability of finding its way into the newspaper. When asked about the low volume of content on the topic, journalists in the case study locations said that they often avoided integrating first-person narratives about poverty for fear of shaming neighbors enduring personal economic hardship. To more effectively cover poverty in rural America, journalists should partner more closely with the local community, Carey contends. Drawing upon his own experiences as a rural reporter, the author proposes a set of “Action Steps for Journalists,” which outline how news practitioners can better institutionalize poverty coverage that better serves rural readers. Some suggestions could be easily integrated into daily practice, such as encouraging reporters to more transparently explicate why they need community sources in their stories about poverty. Other ideas, such as building partnerships with civic and educational collaborators, would require significant investments in infrastructure. In all proposals detailed in the book, Carey emphasizes that dedicated audience engagement efforts can help provide a more comprehensive portrait of poverty. In particular, leveraging citizen content creation—such as online comments to stories or hyperlocal platforms for user-generated content—can facilitate closer ties with readers in rural communities. For Appalachian residents, however, constructing a web-based relationship with institutional media may be difficult because of digital divides—a concern that Carey rightfully highlights. However, this work does not explore with sufficient depth how economic imperatives at play may influence this coverage. This gap in the literature leaves room for future research, which can further probe the degree to which business-side considerations influence editorial judgment calls for rural publishers, such as allocating limited resources toward digital audience engagement. The best practices in fostering community dialogue delineated in this work can extend beyond Appalachia. The book’s “how-to-guide” for community relationship building could be employed as an easily digested reference for practitioners on how to better cultivate relationships with readers, for instance. Journalism educators may also find this material relevant, providing students concrete advice on how to better integrate diverse sourcing into their narratives. Furthermore, instructors of graduate-level method courses (particularly those using qualitative approaches) could easily use chapters from this book, modeling Carey’s masterful research design and eloquent presentation of the resultant data. For academic researchers, this book contains a clarion call for more scholarship on urban and rural divides in newswork. Across all audiences, Carey’s work spotlights why journalistic storytelling (still) matters in shaping our collective belonging to geographic space and place—particularly down Appalachia’s country roads.