News from rural America.

From the unprecedented election season to the latest environmental news, the Yonder Report looks back at stories that topped our weekly 2024 newscasts.

TRANSCRIPT

[♪♪♪] For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, this is the news from rural America.

So far in 2024, we've reported over 150 rural news stories on the Yonder Report.

Here are some of the biggest of the year.

After a one-of-a-kind election season, former President Donald Trump reclaimed the nation's highest office.

Daily Yonder data reporter Sarah Mallott says the rural vote stayed steady, unlike the urban or suburban.

It was mostly the collapse in Democratic turnout in the nation's largest cities and suburbs that cost Harris the race for the presidency.

But despite Trump's widespread rural popularity, the same voters rejected Republican policies on statewide ballot measures, voting against school vouchers in Kentucky and Nebraska, and defending reproductive rights in Missouri, Montana, Arizona, and Nevada.

As the opioid epidemic continues to rage, rural recovery experts are combining drug treatment with wraparound services like affordable housing, peer support, and transportation.

This has made all the difference to Luke Loudermilk, who participated in a program at North Carolina's Day One Recovery Center.

I tried to get it cleaned several times, but it never clicked.

I can't recover by myself.

Dollar stores are the nation's fastest-growing retail sector and can offer food and other necessities at low prices.

But when they come to town, rural communities are three times as likely to see established small businesses closed than in urban areas.

Kennedy Smith is with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Community leaders need to be aware that the benefits of a locally-owned business are far superior to those of a chain that's gonna be taking profits out of the community and sending them someplace else.

Environmental concerns also have been top of mind for many, especially rural areas that host large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

Dan Chiles brought his neighbors together in the grassroots group Missouri Guard Rails, backing legislation that will protect communities from the contaminated drinking water that can come from living nearby.

They dump their waste on private property.

They dump it in rivers and in lakes.

So if you're a small farm like we are and you absolutely depend on a domestic well for your prosperity, that well is very much in jeopardy.

A national resurgence of newspapers in prisons is providing new opportunities for incarcerated writers and reporters.

In September, the rural Central California Women's Facility published the first edition of its new monthly, "The Paper Trail."

Jesse Vasquez, who formerly served as the editor-in-chief of the San Quentin News, is the executive director of the Pollen Initiative, a prison journalism nonprofit.

I wanted to expand the opportunities that we had at San Quentin to other prisons.

For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, I'm Roz Brown.

For more rural stories, visit dailyyonder.com.