Many national media pundits and reporters were caught off-guard by 2016's election, seemingly oblivious to the support Pres. Donald Trump enjoyed outside America’s coastal cities.
That’s why London-based news agency Reuters has hired a special correspondent to cover stories outside the political epicenter of Washington or the major cultural centers on the United States’ coastlines.
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Poynter reports Tim Reid will cover America’s Midwest and Southeast, focusing particularly on economic change and government policy.
"We looked at this pretty closely, and we thought it was a politically and culturally important area of America that really deserved more intensive coverage,” Reuters’ National Editor Jason Szep told Poynter. "We wanted to get beyond the typical approach of parachuting a correspondent into the region for a few days or a week and start to really understand it.”
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Reid will journey around various Rust Belt cities, “spending months-long stretches in each place to immerse himself in the community.”
One reporter won’t cure all the media’s ails, Szep said, but he hopes they’ll get an opportunity “to examine whether people in places like Ohio, West Virginia and Michigan will respond to the results of (Trump's) promise to deliver jobs."
Read more at the website here.
