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During the 2016 presidential race,
Bruce noticed a disconnect between how
national media covered the United States
and what she saw for herself when she
went back to the small towns in North
Carolina and Indiana where she had
grown up. She wants to avoid that kind of
problem in her own work.
“I want to approach journalism in
a different way, a way that's actu-
ally an old way, a community jour-
nalism style,” she says. That means
going into the community and talk-
ing with people before she starts
to shoot. “This is an approach that
we use overseas all the time,” she
explains. “We really get involved
with the community, and we talk
to fixers and translators and driv-
ers and community people to try to
battle the idea of clichés and stereo-
types that are so easy to fall back on
when you're covering a country that
is not yours.”As it turns out, that approach is
pretty effective for covering a coun-
try that is yours, too. In fact, it’s the
kind of community journalism Bruce
practiced early in her career before
she went abroad. But during her years
away, local journalism continued its
steep 21st-century decline, and by
the time she came home, many areas
outside of major cities had no jour-
nalists left at all. Local papers that
still exist are often filled with notices
and syndicated content. Most people
she meets traveling across the United
States now tell her they’ve never met
a journalist before.
“When people talk about democ-
racy and how they would change the
community they live in...the media
is never mentioned,” she says. “UsingWith duck hunters in Pamlico County,
North Carolina.“This is what I think is needed right now.
I want to show how people are wrestling
with ideas of democracy and commu-
nity and citizenship.”