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Day: November 5, 2025

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Allen Strunk (BSJ51)

Allen Strunk (BSJ51) speaking into a microphone, wearing a suit and patterned tie.

Allen D. Strunk, former owner and publisher of the McCook Gazette died at age 95 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

As publisher for more than three decades, Strunk carried forward the family legacy of community journalism established by his father, Harry Strunk, while steering the Gazette into the modern era of printing and production. Under his leadership, the Gazette earned recognition among the nation’s leading small-market dailies, a reflection of both his technical foresight and his deep commitment to community journalism.

Born and raised in McCook, Strunk left his hometown to serve with the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War. After his military service, he pursued a journalism degree at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, one of the nation’s most respected programs. When his studies were complete, he returned to McCook to join the Gazette staff in 1953.

Six years later, he succeeded his father as publisher, guiding the newspaper through its transition from letterpress to offset printing and into a new facility in 1966. His tenure was distinguished by a commitment to innovation, journalistic integrity, and the public’s right to know.

A firm believer in open meetings and government transparency, Strunk became a leading advocate for Nebraska’s early open-meetings laws, often challenging local boards and agencies to conduct the people’s business in public view.

Yet Strunk’s influence extended far beyond the newsroom. He played a key role in McCook’s civic and economic development, leading efforts that resulted in additions to McCook College and the construction of a new YMCA and Community Hospital. As chairman of the Chamber of Commerce’s Economic Development Committee, he was instrumental in attracting new industry to the city.

A firm believer in the power of education and community leadership, Strunk later endowed a fund to recognize outstanding local educators, ensuring that his commitment to public service continued long after his retirement. His support for medical and recreational facilities, as well as his leadership on state boards including the Nebraska Game and Parks Foundation and the University of Nebraska Medical Center Board of Governors, reflected a lifetime of civic engagement.

Allen Strunk retired from publishing in 1986, but his imprint on McCook endures – in the institutions he helped build, the open government principles he championed, and the newspaper he modernized for generations to come.

https://www.mccookgazette.com/story/3065253.html

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Medill’s newest faculty member looks to explore rural media ecosystems

Medill faculty member exploring rural media ecosystems. Headshot of a smiling woman with glasses, plus media icons on a road.

For Medill’s faculty member, assistant professor AF Battocchio, research is more than just crunching numbers.

“It has forced me to sort of step out of myself, to challenge my own assumptions and to be more open to trying to understand these stories, even if they may deviate from the stories that we see being commonly told,” they said.

Battocchio joined Medill’s faculty in the fall. Their research focuses on rural media environments in rural and post-industrial communities, specifically in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. By combining spatial mapping and computational analysis with ethnographic field work, they look to explore how these communities obtain and navigate information in today’s changing news landscape.

Battocchio has found that these avenues range significantly.

“Sometimes that looks like traditional newspaper, sometimes that looks like a combination of newspaper and radio,” they said. “Sometimes it looks like a combination of critical actors who share information because they have a role in a nonprofit or some other non-news entity, and they help fill in some of those gaps.”

Battocchio is originally from a small town near Duluth, Minn. They were the first dual-degree graduate from Loyola University Chicago’s School of Communication, receiving a B.A. in Advertising (2019) and an M.S. in Strategic Communication (2020). They earned their Ph.D. from Michigan State University in Information and Media in Spring 2025.

As a non-traditional undergraduate student, Battocchio pulls from their personal experiences working for grassroots, community-based media organizations before attending college.

“These are all things that I think helped me understand the populations that I work with, especially in rural areas,” they said.

They hope to bring these perspectives into the Medill community to support students.

“I think it’s important to normalize the different journeys that people take,” Battocchio said. “I am really passionate about making sure that students are supported, especially if they have socioeconomic barriers to education.”

While completing their research, Battocchio found alternative news sources fill gaps in news deserts. For example, a host at a classic rock radio station in the Upper Peninsula dedicates two hours each weekday to local government programming. He invites council members and city officials to join the broadcast, and community members call in with their questions. For many in this region, it provides a chance to hear directly from community leaders and ask questions.

“These are really powerful tools, but they’re not tools that are necessarily being categorized,” they said.

For Battocchio, Medill provides a unique opportunity to explore news desert ecosystems.

“Being at Medill [with] the Local News Initiative and the Local News Accelerator opens up the opportunity for doing more collaborative partnerships and perhaps more solutions journalism-oriented initiatives that bring research and practice together,” Battocchio said.

Battocchio also encourages audiences to redefine perceptions of rurality, saying that “we tend to think about rurality as a very monolithic concept.”

“We’ve seen over the past 10 years a lot of focus on rural areas, like the revenge of the white rural voter and JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, and all of those things. But I don’t always see as much of a digging into the rural experience and trying to understand rurality not from a deficit perspective,” they said.

Through their work, Battocchio aims to bridge gaps and invite the communities they cover into the conversation.

“If we’re going into a community, we’re writing about them in super academic language, and the majority of the community doesn’t have a post-secondary education,” they said. “We’re telling stories about them, without them, that are not always accessible.”

Creating this change through research starts with spending time in the community, which Battocchio does for their research. Medill allows them to be within driving distance of the areas they focus on while being supported by a welcoming community.

“I really love how Medill is a place where you have practitioners and you have researchers, and everyone gets to sort of bring who they are, the talents they have, the personalities they have,” they said.

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Giving Back Home

Application for the George R.R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop is now open

Apply Now: George R.R. Martin Summer Intensive Workshop 2026

The workshop is designed for mid-career journalists who are writing their first novels. The 10 mid-career journalists selected to participate will learn from award-winning novelists and writing instructors. The eight-day, fully funded writing intensive program will take place in Evanston, Illinois, from July 7-15.

“Talented journalists often have numerous vital stories to tell — and some of those stories would make compelling novels,” said Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Medill’s George R.R. Martin Chair in Storytelling, who will be leading the workshop. “In the first two years of our program, we’ve seen journalists arrive at our workshop with pages or chapters of a novel in progress that’s been percolating in their heads for years and leave with solid pages of a working manuscript. We’re looking forward to achieving the same with our 2026 GRRM Workshop class.”

George R.R. Martin (BSJ70, MSJ71, ’21H), author of the novel “A Song of Ice and Fire” and co-executive producer of HBO’s Emmy award-winning “Game of Thrones,” funds this writing intensive program.

“The workshop was truly a gift,” said Olivia Konotey-Ahulu, a London-based journalist who participated in the 2025 workshop. “I learned so much about storytelling and the discipline of writing from a host of wonderful teachers and fellows.”

During the 2026 workshop, participants will get to learn from leading instructors and guest speakers. In 2025, Martin and fellow authors Lev Grossman, Scott Turow, David Ebershoff, Dawn Turner and Christopher Farley spoke at the intensive, as did literary agents Gail Hochman, Barbara Jones and Mackenzie Brady Watson. Instructors included award-winning novelists Tananarive Due, Julia Glass and Sarah Schulman. Fellows also did a field trip to Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company for a class on writing dramatically led by Director of New Play Development, Jonathan L. Green.

The 2026 workshop will include classes on various aspects of the craft of writing fiction, from developing compelling characters to world-building, plot, structure and narrative arcs, as well as small group workshop sessions in which each participant will have their novel manuscripts critiqued by instructors and peers.

“From educational classes that provided me with the structure for creative writing I never acquired as a journalist; to thought-provoking small-group workshops that broke down everything I needed to do to make my manuscript stronger; to the meaningful, supportive relationships I’ll carry for years to come — every piece of this experience was carefully curated to create an enriching, fulfilling week,” said 2025 workshop participant Massarah Mikati, a Philadelphia-based community engagement journalist. “I’m endlessly grateful to have had the luxury of basking in book world for seven days.”

Applications are currently open for the workshop. The deadline to apply is January 12. 

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Home Medill Research

News deserts hit new high and 50 million have limited access to local news, study finds

Stack of newspapers. Medill's 2025 State of Local News Project report.

The number of local news deserts in the U.S. jumped to record levels this year as newspaper closures continued unabated, and funding cuts to public radio could worsen the problem in coming months, according to the Medill State of Local News Report 2025 released today.

While the local news crisis deepened overall, Medill researchers found cause for optimism — more than 300 local news startups have launched over the past five years, 80% of which were digital-only outlets.

For the fourth consecutive year, the Medill Local News Initiative conducted a months-long, county-by-county survey of local news organizations to identify trends in the rapidly morphing local media landscape. Researchers looked at local newspapers, digital-only sites, ethnic media and public broadcasters.

This year’s report also includes an analysis of a timely issue: the potential impact of the federal defunding of public broadcasting on local news deserts. And for the first time, Medill researchers examined the decline in digital readership at newspapers.

Key findings from the Medill study:

The number of news desert counties rose to 213 in 2025, a jump from 206 in last year’s report. In another 1,524 counties, there’s only one remaining news source. Taken together, some 50 million Americans have limited to no access to local news. Twenty years ago, there were about 150 news desert counties, with about 37 million Americans at the time living in news deserts.

The rise in news deserts was accompanied by an increase in newspaper closures, which ticked up to 136 this past year, a rate of more than two per week. Medill tracked 130 in last year’s report.
In a marked departure, most of this year’s closures came at smaller, independently owned newspapers — not those controlled by large chains — signaling that an increasing number of long-time family publishers are surrendering to economic pressures.

Total jobs at newspapers slumped 7% in the past year. The industry has now lost more than three-quarters of its jobs since 2005.
More than 200 newspapers changed hands in the past year, down from the number of transactions last year but still a torrid pace by historical standards.

Nearly 300 public radio stations and more than 100 public television stations are producing local reporting. In nine counties, public radio is the sole news source, making those areas especially vulnerable to becoming news deserts in coming months.
Utilizing predictive modeling created by the school’s Spiegel Research Center, the Medill team found 250 counties at high risk of becoming news deserts over the next decade.

Web traffic to 100 of the largest newspapers has plummeted more than 45% in the past four years, according to a Medill analysis of data tracked by the media analytics company Comscore.

The report counted more than 300 local news startups in the past five years across virtually every state, demonstrating a surge of entrepreneurship that has come along with a wave of philanthropic support. The vast majority of those startups, however, are in metro areas, leaving rural and less affluent areas further behind.

The number of local news sites that are part of larger national networks is continuing to multiply. This year, there are 849 sites across 54 separate networks, up 14% from the 742 individual sites across 23 networks. This growth illustrates the increasingly prominent role of digital network sites on the local news landscape.

“This report highlights the historic transformation in local news,” said Tim Franklin, professor and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News at Medill. “On one hand, news deserts are expanding, and closures are continuing apace. On the other, hundreds of startups are emerging. The questions are what will the local news ecosystem look like in a few years, and will parts of the U.S. be left behind?”

Zach Metzger, director of the Medill State of Local News Project, said, “Over the past two decades, we’ve seen a dramatic reshaping in local news. Unlike in previous years, however, the majority of papers shutting down now are smaller, family-owned enterprises. These are often the most trusted active local news sources, and their loss creates new challenges for local news access in many communities.”

The Medill State of Local News Project is funded by grants and gifts from the Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Microsoft, the Southern Newspaper Publishers Foundation, the Myrta J. Pulliam Charitable Trust and Medill alumni John M. Mutz and Mark Ferguson.

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Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders Win 2025 James Foley Medill Medal

2025 James Foley Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism winners, featuring the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders logos.

The Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders will be awarded the 2025 James Foley Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism. The award, given annually by Medill, recognizes moral, ethical or physical courage in journalism.

Medill will award a $5,000 prize to Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists for their efforts to support journalists covering conflicts around the world.

“These are perilous times for journalists, both domestically and abroad,” said Medill Dean Charles Whitaker. “The Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders work to keep journalists safe to ensure we have a free flow of information amidst global conflicts and the devastating effects of war.

“We rely on the intrepid journalists who are willing to put themselves in harm’s way to prick the conscience of those of us who view the horrors of war from a safe distance in the hope that we might work harder to end the violence and bloodshed.”

The Foley Medill Medal will be presented Oct. 23 at Medill’s two-day conference, “Press Freedom Under Fire: Threats to Journalism and Democracy.” Journalists from around the world will address challenges to press freedom and consequences. Wendy McMahon, former president of CBS News, will give the keynote address. Please register to attend.

The James Foley Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism was established in 2011, and later named in honor of Medill alumnus James Foley who was killed while reporting in Syria in 2014.

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