Editorial: Kentucky Forward filling ‘newspaper deserts’

Journalism serves many purposes, but the most important is to be a source of information for the communities that news outlets serve. For example, the Kernel is a source of information for students, faculty and staff about what is going on around campus, and what happens in the administration.

Unfortunately, in a world becoming more and more corporate, larger companies that operate out of state are buying up newspapers. To combat this Judy Clabes and her husband, Gene Clabes, created Kentucky Forward, an online-only news outlet based in Lexington, which covers the state of Kentucky. Clabes is the editor of Kentucky Forward, as well as the Northern Kentucky Tribune.

“We saw a need for better and more coverage,” Clabes said. “We saw a void and thought that there would be a more serious void in the future.”

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Clabes worked with other journalists to create a site that covers communities across the state to fill the “newspaper desert.” Clabes said they aim to get people reengaged in their communities.

“There is too much evidence that people aren’t engaged in their communities and in democracy,” said Clabes, who added that democracy needs people to be engaged for it to work.

Clabes recently started the Northern Kentucky Tribune, a paper dedicated to covering the top three counties of Kentucky – Boone, Kenton and Campbell.

According to Clabes, this area of Kentucky has had no local newspaper covering the area, since the closure of the Kentucky Post. People from this area of northern Kentucky rely on coverage from outlets in Cincinnati.

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She said if people are fed up, all they have to do is start looking for people, and there is no shortage of journalists who want to be involved. Areas in Kentucky and across the country that are uncovered have options, but Clabes said starting a news outlet takes funding and passion.

“It needs to be run, owned and nurtured by the community, and you need to find real journalists to do it,” Clabes said. “We need people to be involved in the community. You really have to be involved and know what your community’s needs are and dig into those needs and get people engaged.”

The Kernel tries to be as involved as possible in our community, most of us are members of different organizations on campus and all of us are students. Just like a campus newspaper is important, covering local communities is as well.

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