In the morning of July 17th, the Scholars of the Journalism and Mass Media Focus Area had the privilege to take an on campus field trip to Murray State’s local NPR station, WKMS. 

The station is a non-profit FM station which had been licensed to Murray State University as of May 1970. It will celebrate its 55th birthday next year! WKMS is not only Murray State’s local news station, but it provides coverage to several counties and cities in the surrounding area, even including the southernmost part of Illinois, the far western part of Kentucky, and the northwest part Tennessee. But their patronage is not confined to the United States, as they have many international listeners! 

Before we, the Scholars of the Journalism and Mass Media Focus Area, could get excited about the possibility of this field trip in ten days our professor Bella relayed to us an interesting assignment.  We were to write about news deserts, their impact on our lives, and how we received our news. 

The term “news desert” refers to the limited or non-existent access that many communities have to credible and reliable news sources. This is a widespread problem across the United States, and in Kentucky alone most counties only have one local news source. This results in limited local coverage, as most newspapers have replaced daily coverage to weekly coverage, or even to no coverage at all because of  loss of funding and support. News deserts cause a multitude of problems, including— but not limited to— poor understanding of local politics and misinformation. Due to this, many people turn to national publications or social media to receive their news, which is less than ideal as many times local problems are rarely covered or are misrepresented. Many of our scholars here live in a news desert and rely on unreliable social media posts to convey to them important situations happening in our communities and society.

We did our research, we wrote our segments, we practiced, and finally we were ready to attend our field trip. 

On that morning, we walked down to the Old Fine Arts Building. The station is located on the 8th floor, which sits directly above Johnson Theatre. From there we were directed to the Old Records Room, where we sat in a vague circle on plush couches, aesthetic spin chairs, and comfortable arm chairs. Except for our lead editor, Hao, who insisted on perching on a very unstable stool.  In this room, we discussed news in general and the assignment that brought us to the station to begin with; the existence of news deserts. 

Photographer: Grace Conley

After the very insightful conversation, we were split up evenly between just the two recording studios to record our segments which we had prepared. Later that day all the recordings were spliced together to create a mini-podcast on news deserts!

Listen below to hear our recording!

Photographer: Grace Conley

We send our thanks to the wonderful team at WKMS who taught us about a very important issue in our communities and have encouraged us to support our local news sources. Thank you again Asia Burnett and Derek Opperle.