The Oxford Free Press is nearly ready to release the first in a multi-story reporting project focusing on how education is going in rural areas. The reporting is sponsored by a grant from the Rural News Network.
The first of four stories will center on the role schools in rural communities play beyond just education, according to newspaper board member, Richard Campbell.
"There are often clinics there. There are often food delivery services there," Campbell tells WVXU. "That's what this first story is going to be about: how these how schools serve communities that lack resources, often because they're too far away from stores and health centers, for instance."
Campbell says the reporting will focus on schools outside of Oxford in the Talawanda School District, including communities such as Hanover, Reilly, and Oxford townships, and Somerville.
The story is expected to publish later this month or in early September. The newspaper will report three more major pieces over the next nine months.
Part of the impetus for the project was realizing the newspaper, which launched in 2024, maybe wasn't reaching enough people in the more rural parts of its service area.
"This is the project that's going to get our reporters out talking to people in these districts, and we plan to do some kind of listening tours, listening projects where we go into these communities," Campbell says.
He says it's important because of the larger problem of news deserts in the United States, where many communities are underserved or not served at all by a local news outlet.
"The Local News Index reminds us that in 2002 there were 40 reporters for every 100,000 people in the United States. Today there are fewer than eight reporters, so essentially we've lost 75% of reporters covering communities in the last, probably, 25 years. A lot of these folks are in rural areas, in where there's no local papers," he says.
Part of the funding for the project is specifically earmarked for promoting it. The newspaper is considering how to raise awareness, not just about the reporting project, but the newspaper in general, to get it into more hands.
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