From Kansas, with love: like it or not, my home defies stereotypes

While Americans in polls report historically low levels of trust in the media, it could be in large part because much of the press hasn’t been speaking to the concerns of their everyday lives. It would mean incorporating the knowledge and skills of reporters like Heather Bryant, who grew up in rural Missouri, where her lower-income family would buy... See more

But the midwestern town was depicted somewhat differently. It was an “inheritor of values of a mythological founding generation” and a “battleground for the characteristics and actualization of those values,” with the result that it “became the center of a conflict about the future of the country itself.”