Editor’s Desk: We’re a finalist for a National Magazine Award — again!

By Theodore Ross

We were thrilled to learn last week that “Power Failure: On Landscape and Abandonment,” by Mya Frazier was named a finalist for feature writing for the 2025 National Magazine Awards. This article, which was produced in partnership with Switchyard Magazine, marks the second consecutive year that FERN has received such an honor, and while we’re not yet getting cocky, we are very proud. 

I’d like to personally extend my congratulations to Mya, who is a dogged reporter, a stylish writer, and totally committed to telling stories from the middle of the country. I also want to share my respect and admiration for FERN senior editor Ted Genoways, who also happens to be Switchyard‘s editor-in-chief. His achievement in founding a new literary magazine of the highest quality is well worth noting.

Mya looks deeply at the incursion of data centers into what was once farmland in Ohio, telling a story that touches on environmental issues, the power of the major technology companies, and the ways in which our industrial food system has advanced perilously to a post-agricultural phase:

Data centers, in the plainest terms, are nothing more than buildings — gleaming windowless monstrosities but just buildings. The danger comes from what’s inside. Computers, servers, data storage drives, network equipment and communication connections, and everything else needed to prop up the fragile infrastructure of our rapacious tech boom. In Ohio, many of those data centers service Amazon, which defines the need for such a site bluntly: “It is the physical facility that stores any company’s digital data.” Because that data, for an online juggernaut like Amazon, essentially is the company, they protect it with redundancies and backup systems, with air conditioning and water cooling and fire suppression systems, and physical security measures wired to surveillance and alarm systems. Every bit of it demands more and more electricity, amping up demand for fossil fuels, and it requires astounding amounts of water — a large data center can require as much as five million gallons of water a day. 

The demand for data centers is only going to expand in the coming years, as the tech platforms compete for AI dominance. Reporting like Mya’s is one way through which Americans will be able to protect their communities and advocate for their best interests. 

Such reporting also is essential to creating the kind of food system that everyone in this country needs and deserves. At FERN, we are committed to supporting powerful storytelling of this kind, and to do that we need help from devoted and concerned people like you. Please consider making a donation to help us keep digging.