Program

At Radically Rural, big ideas meet small town publishers

The Lenfest Institute sponsored the 2025 Radically Rural summit in Keene, New Hampshire

By Ben Conant

October 31, 2025

At the eighth annual Radically Rural summit earlier in October, hundreds of journalists, entrepreneurs, educators, and investors came together in New Hampshire to discuss how to bring to life big dreams while working with rural resources. In an era where dwindling newsroom staffs feed a push toward automation, summit attendees said they’re embracing technological tools while keeping in mind that there’s no substitute for human connection and building community.

“One of the things that we’ve gotten more and more intentional about is really addressing how entangled everything really is — economically, ecologically, socially,” said Julianna Dodson, executive director of the Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship, which organizes Radically Rural. “It’s all connected, it’s all intentional and it’s all about really grasping at the root of everything that we’re dealing with and trying to actually get to a point where we are structurally and systemically moving the needle rather than just surface-level solutions.” 

Sixty-five of the nearly 500 registered Radically Rural attendees participated in the journalism track sessions, where pros from around the country shared their successes and struggles. Attendees ranged from boots-on-the-ground reporters and do-it-all one-person newsrooms to editors, publishers and advertising managers. Other tracks of interest like arts and culture, land use, clean energy, and health drew their own crowds.

“We like to say that anybody who hears a problem and wants to solve it comes to Radically Rural,” said event organizer Lillian Chase of the Hannah Grimes Center. “People with that spark of ‘I could do that! I could contribute,’ those are the kind of people who come, and obviously people who love their rural communities — that’s why we get together to celebrate rural, to solve problems for rural. If you live, work or recreate in rural, Radically Rural is the place for you to come meet your people.”

Optimizing your tools to serve your readers

Claudia Laws, director of consumer revenue at New Orleans’ Times-Picayune/Georges Media, said her approach to the business side of journalism was shaped by her time in the newsroom. She encouraged newsrooms to “do medium things” in service of bigger goals. Participants visualized and considered their revenue funnels, analyzing how much time, energy, and money is being spent to develop and serve their various audiences of paying customers. The presenters agreed that while careful analysis of different trial-and-error revenue innovations is important, so is putting a face to the numbers and remembering who journalism is ultimately intended to serve. 

“This is not data,” Laws said. “What each one of these numbers is is a human being.”

One of the biggest questions facing the journalism industry today is: How do you harness emerging technology without developing dependence on it? Many working journalists at the conference were quick to suggest using AI-powered apps like YESEO, which helps craft SEO-friendly headlines. ChatGPT or similar large language models can also help reporters and editors with headlines, interview questions, or article summaries. Once newsrooms identify which technological advances best suit their needs, there’s the matter of dedicating staff to master these new tools and ultimately train and onboard the rest of the team, but the biggest hurdle is sorting through the noise and determining what new tech is worth investing in and what’s simply trying to ride the cresting wave of AI interest.

“There are so many shiny objects out there,” Laws said. “‘AI this, AI that, have you seen this tool? There’s this analytics platform that measures what people are reading.’ You don’t have to chase every shiny thing — let’s start looking at the things that we get the most out of and start doing those, and then we can follow prettier, shinier things.”

Rural resonance and building community

Panelist Maria Arce of Documented, a New York-based independent nonprofit journalism organization dedicated to reporting news that impacts immigrants, urged newsroom leaders to bring their stories and their passion to the audience in their small communities, rather than waiting for readers to come to them.

“I invite you to go out there,” Arce said, “to listen to the community, respond to their needs, go back to them and ask for feedback and keep the loop going and going. This is not a sprint. This is a marathon. It’s something that keeps going,”

In practice, that means attending events like cultural festivals or visiting third spaces, said Buckeye Flame reporter Benjamin Jodway.

“A church, even just a coffee shop, nonprofits are also extremely helpful places to find sources, stories, and subscribers…but they also just help people feel connected to each other. Going in person for some of these rural stories, even though they may be hours of driving, is so important,” Jodway, a Report for America Corps member at the Flame, said. 

The Flame covers all things LGBTQ+ in Ohio; Jodway’s self-created beat as “rural LGBTQ+ reporter” might bring him to any of the state’s 88 counties in a given day. He said he’s stopped using Google Maps in favor of a hard copy Rand McNally atlas to guide him on his sometimes-10-hour drives from corner to corner of his beat, and what he uncovers on those journeys indicate that the old-school approach can be a road map to success.

“The best part about using these atlases is sometimes you can just go to a place you don’t realize because you got a little lost, or maybe you found a route you wanted to take that looked interesting,” Jodway said. “And I want to challenge myself to do that more.”