Talking Rural News and More With Tim Marema, Editor of the Daily Yonder

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Welcome to season two, everyone. This is Everywhere Radio, season two, and I’m so excited. We’re launching our second season today, right now. This is it. You’re in it. We’re bringing you a whole new set of interviews in 2022 with more incredible rural leaders, and allies, and grumps, and neighbors. If you’re a regular listener to this podcast, then you know we like to focus on diversity in rural, across geography, and experience, and culture. And I feel like we did a really good job of that throughout 2021. 

I mean, we interviewed 20 incredible people last year, people who care deeply about rural America. Some of them brought us wisdom from a very local context, and from places like … small places like Lexington, Nebraska, and Wilkesboro, North Carolina, and Del Ray, California. And some of them brought generosity and allyship from big cities like New York, and Washington, DC, and Minneapolis. But all of our guests last season, from radio host Krista Tippett, to rural artist Nikiko Masumoto, all of them brought us stories that help us make sense of who we are, and that illustrate how we’re connected in this big, and messy, and fascinating world. 

So if you missed last season, I encourage you to go back and give it a listen, but after you hear this amazing episode. Today’s conversation, the first of our second season is really special to me. Today, I bring you Tim Marema. He is the editor of the online rural news platform, the Daily Yonder, and he’s a Vice President of the Center for Rural Strategies. Spoiler alert, Tim and I work together. We’ve worked together since 2008. He’s a dear mentor of mine, a colleague, and a friend. We even shared office space and mediocre office call coffee for several years in Knoxville, Tennessee. But both of us work from our home offices now. I work in Athens, Tennessee, and Tim works in Norris, just a couple of hours up the road. I can always track him down on our Slack app at Rural Strategies, but it really isn’t the same as seeing him in person. So that’s another reason why I’m really excited about this conversation. 

I get to tell you many things about Tim today, and hopefully he’ll share a bit about himself, too. But you should know that Tim is a topnotch journalist and writer. He’s also a musician and a songwriter, and he and his wife, Liz McGeachy have been performing and recording music together for a long while. They even made a trip down to Athens and performed in our local Black Box Theater. Tim likes buttoned down flannel short sleeve shirts. Although, if you’re watching this today, he didn’t get the memo that I actually wanted him to wear one of those today. 

Tim Marema: 

Oh no. Okay. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

It’s all good. It’s great, Tim. 

Tim Marema: 

I do have a button down. 

 Whitney Kimball Coe: 

You do have a button down. And I know you also like scruffy baseball hats, Tim, but you’re not wearing one today, either, but that’s okay, too. You’re just such a dad, I think. And you really are a dad to two grown children, Graham and Walker. It’s really been a gift to me to get to watch you celebrate your children over the years. Tim also loves rural America, and his native Appalachia, and his Kentucky roots. So what else could I tell you about him? I was trying to decide. I mean, he’s a little grouchy sometimes. We give him a hard time about that at Rural Strategies. But he helps us keep it real and keep it rural. So, Tim, I’m really, really glad to have you on Everywhere Radio, to be looking straight at you right now. Thanks for saying yes- 

Tim Marema: 

This is great. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

To this conversation. 

Tim Marema: 

Thank you so much, Whitney. And thank you for a complete and more or less accurate introduction, right down to the grouch factor. I don’t think I’ve had that included in any introduction before. So that’s a first. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

We’re a truly inclusive radio program here. We appreciate the grouches, too. And I started out by saying, too, that you and I got to work in an office space together for many years, actually, or it felt like several years. And we would spend the first 20 minutes of almost every day standing in the hallway with our colleague Shawn, and sometimes Katherine Pearson Chris, and kick off the first 20 minutes of our day with shooting the shit. And I really miss that. And as I was preparing for this interview today, I was thinking about those conversations. Do you miss our in person time, too? 

 Tim Marema: 

Oh, absolutely. That was one of my favorite parts of the day, was gathering, and talking, and laughing, and commiserating. And that’s a whole interaction that a lot of folks don’t share the same way we used to before the pandemic. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

No, no. And also, we parted ways or went to our own remote working areas even a little bit before the pandemic, when I decided to move back to Athens and you were so supportive of me in that move. I’ll always be grateful to you for that, as well. Even though it broke up our little hallway conversations. 

It was a good investment. And I’ve said this to you. I know we’re not interviewing you, necessarily, but I thought that your move back to Athens after having been in Charlotte, and Boone, and Knoxville, and Maryville was really a big step for all of us in placing you back in a more rural context. And I think it affected your work in a very, very positive way, and all of us benefited from that. And me, I know I did. So, I’m very glad you’re back in Athens, almost as glad as the people in Athens are, probably. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Well, so today I wanted to talk to you about a lot of things, about the state of journalism in this country, about rural journalism in particular, and about the things that have shaped you and brought you to your current role as editor of the Yonder. I know a lot of our listener here at Everywhere Radio are avid readers of the Yonder, so I know they’re going to be really excited to hear more from you about what you see out there in the world of journalism and on the horizon for the Yonder. So I wondered if we could just start with the present. You, as a lifelong journalist, how are you making sense of what is happening in journalism right now? With disinformation and the growth of distrust in our news and in institutions, tell me what it’s like to work in this sector right now. 

 Tim Marema: 

It’s unlike anything I’ve experienced before. And I came up in the time of print newspapers. I started working at weekly in Berea when I was a college student there, Berea, Kentucky. I worked in dailies in the Durham and Chapel Hill area before going into nonprofit work, and then coming back into journalism through the nonprofit sector several years later. 

The newspapers and local radio stations generally set the agenda for what was going to be discussed, and the frame through which communities would get their news and understand it. And I don’t think we knew we were doing that as journalists. I think we thought we were just … this is the way things are. Looking back on it now and knowing what I know now, I realize we were very much framing it around the city establishment. And that was the challenge, is how to have a more diverse exchange of ideas when there is agenda setting going on. 

But now we’ve thrown that out in a way that has created, through social media primarily, this devaluation of information and a lack of understanding of what’s actually fact versus opinion. And it’s a very, very challenging time. Not just fact, but what’s just outright false. It’s not fact versus opinion as much as it is fact versus just downright a lie at some level. And it’s a challenging environment. 

I think all of us at the Daily Yonder, there’s several of us involved in this, our goal is just to do … to continue to turn out what we aspire to be accurate information, to challenge what we see that’s inaccurate. And traditionally that’s been around perceptions of how people view rural America in broader media, how rural people are portrayed. But increasingly stuff about the healthfulness of vaccinations, and misinformation about elections, and that sort of thing, we just … Some of it we confront head on. A lot of it we just keep pushing on what we know is factual, and sharing that with our readers, who we know are very, very involved, and need a place to look for that kind of information. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Is there a recent story or a report from one of your correspondents, or one of our correspondents out there that has felt like a … really emblematic of the work that the Yonder is trying to do, or in the space that the Yonder is trying to occupy? 

Tim Marema: 

One that I think is very simple, but fits that mold somewhat, Liz Carey and I wrote a piece about the death rates in rural America from COVID 19. And generally, since about August, they’ve been twice that of urban areas. So people in rural areas are dying at a faster rate from COVID 19, and that’s more or less current to now. The ratio has come down a little bit. But the consensus of opinion with the health professionals that Liz talked to, and the data that I provided for the story, are that it links directly to vaccination rates. There are factors about access to healthcare in rural areas, preexisting conditions. The age of rural people tends to be up there, which puts them more at risk for dying from COVID 19. But underneath it all, fundamentally, is a lower vaccination rate leads to more deaths. 

And it seems like a simple point, kind of a duh factor, but I hadn’t really seen it reported that way before. And so, I was glad we could to do something that connected the dots in a very specific way about what, and then the number of deaths that are attributable to that gap. Tens, twenties, 30,000, I think the number was 60,000 additional deaths because of the higher rate in rural areas. I felt good about that story trying to add information to what is out there, but that had not been filled in by other outlets. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Something that I’ve observed over the last couple of years during the pandemic and with the Yonder, and the Yonder creating this COVID 19 dashboard where you all really are tracking cases, hospitalizations, vaccination rates in rural, and all the effects that the pandemic has had in rural. It almost seems like the Yonder is serving a public health role by connecting those dots, by telling us the true story, even though it’s not as … it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t necessarily play to what we want to believe about the direction the pandemic might be heading. But what do you think about that, the role of the Yonder in the pandemic? 

Tim Marema: 

Well, the data reporting on cases, and deaths, and vaccination rates is something we just … I wouldn’t say we stumbled into it, but it never occurred to me three years ago that this would be a major focus of my work individually, or the publication generally. We’ve always covered a fair amount of health information because healthcare, and access to medical care, and the difference between the results of healthcare delivery in rural areas is not as good as it is in urban areas. So we’ve all always covered a lot of it. I hadn’t expected that we would have as much. But it makes sense. The pandemic is a huge global story, and we’ve tried to show how it is affecting rural areas. So, it makes that we would do that. It hadn’t occurred to me that we would have to, and I’m sorry we have to, but I’m glad we have the resources to be able to do it. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

So I wanted to go back to the origin story of the Daily Yonder because I think it’s a really good one, and it gets to the idea that rural audiences are in need of reliable news outlets that are for them and about them. I wondered if you could tell me just a little bit about how the Yonder got off the ground, and then how you came into the editor role. 

Tim Marema: 

The Daily Yonder is published by the Center for Rural Strategies, which you work for as well in your role as a vice president there, and with as directing the National Rural Assembly. So … or the Rural Assembly. So we’re a project of the Center for Rural Strategies. Rural Strategies started in 2001. Our idea was that if we used … if we communicated better, more accurate, more compelling information about rural people and places, that the result would be that we’d get better rural policy and a more … a nation that is more responsive to what would actually be helpful for rural areas, and to see their importance and the opportunities that are there. 

A lot of our work focused on helping journalists cover … who were covering rural issues. And we had a stable of formal and informal advisors along the way, people like the late Rudy Abramson, and Al Smith in Kentucky, and two of them were Bill Bishop and Julie Ardery. And several of them said, “Along with helping other journalists do this work of covering rural America, of providing background, and contacts, and context for them, you should publish your own journalism site that covers rural America, both as a way to fill in the gaps and then to show what the real … how you can cover rural America as real news.” And that was primarily Bill Bishop and Julie Ardery. And they came up with a plan for how to launch it with a little bit of support from the Center for Rural Strategies. 

Dee Davis, and Marty Newell, and Michelle Reynolds were all involved with helping along the way, but it was primarily Bill and Julie who got it going in 2007, which not coincidentally was the first year of the Rural Assembly. And we launched at the Rural Assembly, and I was just an advisor and supporter, and along the way, did special projects, and got to know Bill and Julie well as professional colleagues. I became editor in 2012. And the idea is that we want to fill an itch by covering rural America, showing how rural stories are national stories, and why they’re important. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

And as editor, I’ve wondered, how do you decide, how do you find and curate the rural voice? 

Tim Marema: 

Well, the dirty little secret is that we’ve always relied on the kindness of strangers and friends. And a lot of it has felt like not curation as much as taking advantage of what comes in over the transom. So we’ve had a lot of volunteers, people like Roberto Gallardo at Purdue, Brian Whitaker at Oklahoma State, and people who were digging into rural issues, who wanted to share them with a rural interested audience. We had people in different towns who wanted to write about what was going on there, local color types of stories. We were constantly digging up stuff out of public domain reports, like from the Economic Research Service at USDA. It was a real scramble to fill the page. And, I did not feel as much like an editor as I did a … I just practically had to get a story up every day, so I was kind of a beggar. 

And what has changed dramatically in the last couple of years is that we really do have far more resources and people to actually curate, and cover, and assign stories now. I feel much more like an editor right now because of steps than I did previously in being able to curate. What I’ve always looked for in terms of, is this a good Daily Yonder story, is if it’s from a rural place, is this rooted in someone’s experience of living in a rural community, or is it someone’s perception of what it’s like to live in a rural community? 

I got a lot of stories about having backyard chickens and, “Hey, here’s a story I could send you on backyard chickens,” which is great. I have chickens in the next yard up the hill, fortunately far enough that I don’t hear them much. But that is not a rural story per se. A rural story is … from a place, is rooted in a small town or a rural community. It deals with someone’s lived experience in it, and it’s not … So I have to differentiate between what someone’s perception of living in a rural area, and what’s the reality. And I’m the editor, so I and others get to decide what we think that is. There is a filter there. 

And then on the other end of the spectrum, we have a lot of stuff that’s about policy, and data, and larger topics. And there, we’re looking for, often, what’s the … how are rural areas similar to each other around the country? How is the desert in Arizona similar to Eastern Kentucky, and how is it different? And then also, how are urban areas and rural areas alike and different? And there’s a lot of data that can help us make those determinations. So it’s a loose filter, but I hope there is one, and I hope it’s relatively consistent. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Moving onto to you and your background, and I know you’ve been a lifelong journalist, you’ve got a degree in journalism. But you’re also a musician. You’ve also spent time working for Appalshop, one of our neighbor organizations in Whitesburg, Kentucky, which is … It’s a media … Appalachian media organization. I think of you as a real community in the East Tennessee region and Norris. And I just wonder if I were to call out a common thread in your life, storyteller jumps to the forefront for me, as a teller of stories, whether it’s news, or music or in bringing people together. I wonder if that rings true for you, that moniker. Are you a storyteller? Is that what makes your heart sing? 

Tim Marema: 

As I’ve gotten a little grayer and longer in the tooth, I’ve understood, I think that a lot of what I am is a reflection of what my parents’ values were. And I don’t know whether that was storytelling or what, but my parents were school teachers in Southwest Michigan in a small community, Galesburg, Michigan. And I was actually born there. And when I was just a little guy, couple months old, they moved to Kentucky to be school teachers there because they felt like they could make more of a contribution in a small, rural school in Eastern Kentucky in 1962 than they could in Western Michigan. 

And that had a lot of implications for me. They really didn’t give me a vote at the time about whether I wanted to go along, but … So I’m a Kentuckian in that sense. And then later, they worked for Berea College, which was a couple counties over and a little less rural, but still an idea of service, and of serving the region, and of helping. I wanted to be in journalism. That was my default occupation. And I did that at a weekly in Berea, and then I went to graduate school at UNC Chapel Hill in journalism. And I got really a couple great jobs in Durham, and I learned so much. I had so much fun in the Durham Herald Sun newsroom. I had such good colleagues. And I met at graduate school, Liz McGeachy, and we married about four years after meeting. 

We both kind of felt like there are people lined up out the door trying to be in the triangle, Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh, who would love nothing more than to have our jobs and to do what we’re doing, and would, frankly, might do a better job at it. I felt like I could go someplace else and they wouldn’t even know that I had been there, is what it felt like. And so, we wanted to go somewhere, ultimately, with a service ethic to do something good, I guess. And jury’s still out on whether that we achieved that goal or not. But we decided we would go … we would look back in Appalachia where I was from. And Liz had … She was born in Sylva, North Carolina, and grown up in Nashville. 

So, we wound up at Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and it was just a real formative experience. For its place, for the place, it’s a large employer, 30 some odd people. But in a context of an organization that I’ve been part of, it was small. It was self-governed. And there were people lining up the door, lining up at the door in Chapel Hill to be development director at any nonprofit there. But to be the development director at Appalshop, which I became, you had to move there, you had to be in that community. And that was a real advantage for me, because we were ready to do that. 

And my experience in rural places has been that there’s so much opportunity because there’s so much … You don’t have to have a committee to figure out your long range plan. If you see a need, you can dive in and start doing it. And that’s what it felt like at Appalshop in that I had so many opportunities because everybody plays in a rural area. You don’t have bench warmers, everybody plays. So anyway, that sense of trying to fill a need, and of finding something that would be useful in doing it, I hope that … That feels like what’s been my motivation. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

I love the way you describe the opportunities that are there for those who want to really contribute and participate in the life of a community, a small community, that everybody plays, everybody’s important. And so many of your songs that you’ve written with Liz have … I feel like the lyrics are in support of that. There’s a really great song that you all wrote several years ago called Brought On, which I think is the story of your coming to Kentucky and from outside. And coming to learn and understand that place, too. If anybody’s interested in listening to that, where could they hear it, Tim, Brought On and some of your other music? 

Tim Marema: 

Well, we’ve got some stuff on YouTube, Liz and Tim, and we’re on Spotify, if you- 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Yeah, yeah. 

Tim Marema: 

Look at Liz and Tim, you’ll find us there. I think we’re on Amazon, maybe a little bit, as well. And sometime there’s another Liz and Tim that pops up, but we’re not that hard to find. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

[crosstalk 00:28:53] not that Liz and Tim. 

Tim Marema: 

Yeah. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Where does the Yonder place its feet in this conversation, this national conversation we’re just having now about democracy? Is there a role for news in journalism in the repair that’s got to take place? 

Tim Marema: 

One role that we’ve tried to play is to separate myth from fact in terms of what rural America’s participation in this decay of democracy has been. There’s a, sometimes from urban areas, a blame game put on rural. If those rural people would know how to vote, if they wouldn’t vote against their self-interests, this wouldn’t happen. Or if they wouldn’t fall for that talk radio stuff, this wouldn’t happen. And, I’m not going to say that there’s not plenty of people in rural America who are being deceived by information being put on them, but it’s no greater rate in my analysis than it is anywhere else in the United States. 

And one of the things we did most recently was noted where the people arrested for the January 6th insurrection, where they came from. And what we found was that rural areas were actually underrepresented as a percentage of the population in the people arrested for the insurrection. And there’s this perception, this is one example of it, that rural is a particular way when it comes to politics or where they stand on the role of government in society. And so we try to push back on stereotypes and untested assumptions about here’s what rural America is like. Well, I think there are ways to test our assumptions with numbers a lot, and that’s one role we play, which is to educate our readers and other people who are trying to cover these issues in other media about exactly … here’s the reality of what those arrest numbers look like, for example. 

And then our hope is that something like that becomes a background paragraph in other reporting, in other respected mainstream outlets about the reality. We try to give facts that can then be picked up, not as a major story necessarily, but as a ground truth statement about what’s actually happening. So that’s one role I think we can play is helping people understand that this is not a … that the difficulties of our democracy, that’s not a rural problem, that’s a national problem. And we have to find ways to get everybody involved in the conversation in positive ways. And one of those groups that’s got to be in there is rural America. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

So winding this down, and I hate to let you go, but I want to ask you a question that we ask all of our guests before we hop, and that is, what are you reading? What are you watching right now? What are you listening to that is making you less grouchy and more hopeful, and yeah, giving you insider wisdom and how we better live our lives? 

Tim Marema: 

Well, I’ve got to start with Reservation Dogs. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Yes. 

Tim Marema: 

Which is a comedy set in Oklahoma with indigenous actors, and crew, and writer, director. And I just am enjoying that show so much. It reminds me so much of my experience in Eastern Kentucky, though not indigenous, but that sense of rootedness to place, and how specific and unique the culture can be in one place versus another. And I love the specificity of that program, and how it shows us that something that is tremendously local can be universally hilarious, and inspire empathy in us. So I love the specificity of that program. 

I also finally got, through my local library, She Come By It Natural by Sarah Smarsh, which I’m enjoying. I knew quite a bit of the Dolly story. This is a story about Dolly Parton. And the parts I enjoy the most about it are how she compares, how Sarah compares the experiences of the women in her family and her life to how Dolly negotiated the world in a patriarchal … even though Dolly wouldn’t talk about it being a patriarchal society, she- 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Or herself as a feminist. 

Tim Marema: 

Yeah. Yeah. But I’ve really enjoyed that part of it. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

So, Tim, thanks for doing this with me, for being on this podcast, and for being our first episode in our new season. 

Tim Marema: 

You’re so welcome. I’ve enjoyed the podcast a lot, and I’m so glad you’re doing it, and I think it takes advantage of some particular skill sets of yours. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

All right, friend, I’ll see you on Slack. 

Tim Marema: 

All right. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

And email. 

Tim Marema: 

I’ll see you around the digital water cooler. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

If you enjoyed Everywhere Radio, we’d love for you to consider subscribing to the general Rural Assembly Newsletter. That’s where we promote new offerings from the assembly, and we amplify the good work of our many partners across the country. We’ve also launched a new policy advocacy newsletter that comes to inboxes on Mondays to help you start each week with a quick take on the top issues that we’re tracking across the nation, everything from broadband policy to rural vaccinations. Just head over to RuralAssembly.org to sign up. 

If you’re a true fan of Everywhere Radio, please let us know by rating us wherever you get your podcast. If this isn’t your cup of tea, that’s no biggie. It’s fine. And we’d like to thank our media partner, the Daily Yonder. Everywhere Radio is a production of the Rural Assembly. Our senior producer is Joel Cohen, and our associate producers are Xandr Brown and Teresa Collins. And we’re grateful for the love and support of the whole team at the Center for Rural Strategies. Love you, mean it. You can be anywhere, we’ll be everywhere.