The Daily Yonder has the slogan, “Keep It Rural,” and that’s because small-population areas are fighting a far different fight from urban populations in far larger cities than Wheeling or Moundsville or Martins Ferry.
The premise for the battles may be similar (simply, survival), but the skirmishes are exceedingly different from each other at the same time. In urban environments enemies like individuals, collective efforts, and organizations often are unknown and unseen until an attack against another is perpetrated, but far too often in rural settings the adversary once was an ally that has turned against everything for selfish reasons.
“Everyone knows everyone,” most often is a positive factor when it comes to community cooperation, but The Daily Yonder also covers the other side of the coin within areas akin to the Rust Belt region here in the Upper Ohio Valley. That is why, in fact, the digital media source featured LEDE News earlier this week.
LEDE News in the Digital World
The area’s continued population decline has forced newspaper publishers to realize drastic daily circulation decreases, and they, as well as the region’s TV stations, have turned into entry-level media outlets, but with every social media “Like” or “Follow,” more “subscribers” to LEDE News are added.
“I don’t see why digital media can’t develop the way newspapers did. It’s a business that can work, but you have to focus on the community you cover.”
That is what I explained to freelance reporter John W. Miller when he visited me here in East Wheeling, and that’s because it is what I and co-publisher Erika Donaghy have believed from the very beginning.
Think about it; the “slogan” for LEDE News is, after all, “Everyone Above the Fold.”
