Sixty-three percent of NFCB’s member stations serve rural communities. For decades, those stations have shared stories that often don’t match the way rural America is portrayed in our national conversation. They’ve described communities that are deeply connected, remarkably resilient, rich in culture and tradition, and committed to helping one another—even while navigating very real challenges around healthcare, transportation, broadband, local journalism, and economic opportunity.
When we launched NFCB’s Rural Research Study, one of my hopes was that it would do two things. First, I hoped it would help dispel some of the myths that have come to define rural America. Second, I hoped it would validate the lived experiences that so many of our members have shared with us over the years. As the findings have begun to emerge, I think it’s doing both.
We also launched this work at a moment when public media itself is asking difficult questions about trust, sustainability, and relevance. Following the loss of federal support for public media, our sector has been challenged to think differently about how we demonstrate value, strengthen relationships with communities, and advocate for the role we play. It felt like the right time to replace assumptions with evidence.
I expected we would learn a great deal about rural communities. What I didn’t expect was that the research would also challenge some of the stories we’ve been telling ourselves; not just about rural America, but about community radio and the role it plays in civic life.
One of the reasons I’ve always loved research is that it has a way of humbling you. You begin convinced you’re asking the right question, only to discover there was a better one waiting just beneath the surface.
At its heart, this study was an exercise in listening. Before proposing solutions or advocating for policy changes, we wanted to understand what rural communities were actually telling us about themselves; what they value, how they build trust, where they find information, and what helps them feel connected to the places they call home.
Our original question seemed straightforward enough: What do rural communities actually need from their local information systems today? Not what those of us in public media assume they need. Not what gets written about rural America from afar. We wanted to understand what people value in their everyday lives, what helps them stay informed, what helps them feel connected to the places they call home, and where community radio fits into that picture.
Very quickly, we realized we were asking an even bigger question.
For years, public media has understandably spent a great deal of time talking about audiences—listeners, reach, engagement, and consumption. Those measures matter, but they only tell part of the story. This research asks us to think differently. What happens if we stop looking at audiences simply as consumers of media and instead begin understanding communities as living ecosystems? That subtle shift changes almost everything about the questions we ask, and perhaps more importantly, the answers we discover.
As we’ve begun reviewing the findings, I’ve found myself paying less attention to individual statistics and more to the larger story they tell together.
For years, conversations about rural America have tended to begin with what’s missing. Fewer journalists. Less broadband. Hospital closures. Population decline. Economic uncertainty. Those challenges are real and deserve attention. But when every conversation begins with scarcity, scarcity can become the whole story.
What emerged from this research wasn’t a picture of rural communities that was entirely new. In many ways, it confirmed what our member stations have been telling us all along. What the research gave us was evidence. It transformed lived experience into data and anecdote into insight. That’s important because evidence helps us advocate more effectively with funders, policymakers, partners, and even ourselves.
Perhaps what surprised me most wasn’t simply the findings themselves, but where they pointed. I expected to find communities defined primarily by scarcity. Instead, I found myself noticing abundance, not abundance of money or infrastructure, but abundance of relationships. Again and again, the research pointed toward neighbors helping neighbors, volunteers carrying institutions, local traditions creating belonging, and trusted local organizations holding communities together. Those assets don’t erase the very real challenges rural communities face, but they do change where the story begins.
One of the ideas that has stayed with me comes from the framework our research partners at City Square Associates used throughout this project. Rural communities aren’t fundamentally different from the rest of America. In many ways, they share the same hopes, frustrations, and aspirations as everyone else. The difference is often that they experience those realities with a thinner safety net. When transportation is limited, broadband is less affordable, healthcare is farther away, or local information is harder to access, the consequences ripple much farther. That framing has changed how I think about the work community radio does every day.
Perhaps the finding that surprised me most was how much common ground still exists.
If you only listened to our national political conversation, you might assume rural communities are deeply divided along ideological lines. Instead, we found something much more nuanced. While rural communities lean somewhat more conservative than urban ones, the largest share of respondents still identify as politically moderate. Even more striking was how often people returned to the same local priorities regardless of political orientation: good schools, safe communities, reliable local information, thriving small businesses, opportunities for young people, and neighbors who look out for one another. Those aren’t partisan aspirations. They’re community aspirations.
The same was true when we looked at civic participation. I expected rural communities to be engaged, but I underestimated just how deeply woven that engagement is into everyday life. Rural residents reported slightly higher levels of civic engagement overall, particularly when it came to helping neighbors during emergencies, sharing resources, volunteering, donating, and participating in community organizations.
That finding resonated with me because it reflects what so many NFCB stations witness every day. Civic life isn’t something that only happens at city hall or during election season. It happens at the volunteer fire department, the church supper, the farmers market, the library, the school concert, the county fair, the local music festival, and yes, the community radio station. Those places create opportunities for people to gather, solve problems together, and care for one another.
The research also reinforced something our stations have understood instinctively for decades: people want information that is rooted in place. They care deeply about what’s happening in their own town and the next one over. They want local weather, school news, community events, road closures, arts and culture, local businesses, emergency information, and the familiar voices that make a place feel like home.
That’s one of the reasons we’ve intentionally used the phrase information ecosystem throughout this project rather than simply news ecosystem. Communities don’t experience those things separately. Local journalism, weather, emergency information, music, arts and culture, trusted local voices, and opportunities for civic participation all reinforce one another. Community radio has been building those ecosystems for decades.
One of my favorite surprises has been what the research says—perhaps indirectly—about music and culture. We included questions about media habits and the role music plays in people’s lives because community radio has always known that music matters. Yet I’ve found myself thinking about it differently since seeing the findings.
Over the past year, I’ve written a great deal about community radio as civic infrastructure. I still believe that deeply. During one of our conversations about the findings, Joel Martinez at City Square Associates gave me a phrase that immediately clicked: emotional infrastructure. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.
If civic infrastructure is what helps communities function, then music and culture are part of our emotional infrastructure.
Music preserves memory. It celebrates local identity. It introduces us to our neighbors. It accompanies us through grief and joy. It creates shared experiences across generations and reminds us that we belong somewhere. Culture does the same. Together, they help communities recognize themselves. That’s not separate from civic life; it’s one of the things that makes civic life possible.
Taken together, these findings are helping shape what I think of as the Rural Research Study’s theory of change. If we better understand how rural communities build trust, share information, express culture, and care for one another and if we translate those insights into practical tools, stronger advocacy, more effective fundraising, and better public policy—then stations will be even better equipped to serve their communities. Stronger stations, in turn, strengthen the civic infrastructure that allows communities to thrive.
Community radio was created because markets alone could not ensure every community had access to trusted information. Today’s challenges are different, but the principle remains the same. In an era of declining local journalism, fractured information ecosystems, and growing public distrust, communities still need trusted local institutions that exist to serve the public good. That has always been our goal. Not simply to publish another report, but to produce evidence that stations can use in strategic planning, fundraising, programming, and advocacy. We also hope it helps funders, policymakers, and our colleagues across public media recognize that locally governed community radio stations are far more than media outlets. They are trusted civic institutions that help communities stay informed, connected, resilient, and engaged.
Increasingly, though, I don’t think this research is only about rural America. I think rural America offers a lens for understanding what public media can become. If we can build stronger civic information ecosystems in places where resources are scarce and distances are great, we’ll build a stronger public media system for everyone. That’s one of the central ideas that emerged from our presentation at the Public Media Growth Conference, and I suspect it’s one we’ll continue exploring as a field.
At a time when so much of our national conversation focuses on division, decline, and distrust, this research quietly suggests another story is unfolding as well. Across rural America, people are still showing up for one another. They’re volunteering, making music, preserving local traditions, solving problems together, checking on neighbors after storms, serving on nonprofit boards, and looking for trusted local voices that help them understand the places they love. Those moments rarely become national headlines, but they are how communities endure.
To me, that’s ultimately what this research has been about. It hasn’t simply confirmed that community radio matters. It has given us the evidence to better explain why it matters. Community radio isn’t just part of our media landscape. It is part of the civic infrastructure and, I would argue, the emotional infrastructure that helps communities remain informed, connected, resilient, and hopeful.
Over the coming months, NFCB will continue sharing findings from the Rural Research Study, practical resources for stations, and examples of how members are already putting this work into practice. If you’d like to explore the research in greater depth, you can also access the slide deck from our recent presentation, “Rural America & Public Media: Drawing Connections to Deepen Positive Impact,” from the Public Media Growth Conference. Click here to download.
Like any good research project, I don’t think this one answers every question. My hope is that it helps all of us ask better ones, not only about rural America, but about what communities need from public media over the next generation. Because if we begin by listening more carefully to the places we serve, I suspect we’ll build something stronger together.
