Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting

Reporting on rural America: Pamela Dempsey talks about what’s missing.

On March 8th, I’ll be moderating a panel in Austin at SXSW on the challenge of Reporting on Rural America Under Trump. In the lead-up to the event, I asked Pamela Dempsey, executive director at the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, a non-profit newsroom that covers environment, agriculture, and energy in the Midwest, for her take. 

USDA’s rural broadband plan met with citizen criticism

Slow speeds, bad coverage and expensive service. These are just some of the concerns contained in nearly 300 public comments on Rural Broadband Pilot Program proposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a review by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting found.

Dual-herbicide seeds to be Monsanto’s biggest GE launch

After a decade of development, Monsanto anticipates its genetically engineered Xtend soybean and cotton varieties will be its "largest biotech trait launch...with six times the number of varieties" that it offered in a previous set of GE strains.