Ashley Lehnert has no hope for the news in Oklahoma’s panhandle.    

 

Lehnert ran for the Oklahoma House of Representatives District 61 in 2018, the seat representing the panhandle. Her campaign became a frustrating ordeal.     

 

“Maybe other than the Guymon paper, all the other papers in the Panhandle are like the Beaver paper.” Lehnert said. “It's a lot of fluff. A lot of ‘this is what's happening in our schools or whatever,’ which is great, but there's no real news. People are getting their news in the Panhandle, either from Amarillo or from possibly Wichita news stations.”    

 

Poor voter turnout and voter education is a problem reflected in all three of the panhandle’s orphan counties. For Lehnert it highlighted the issues with news and civil engagement in the panhandle. She said many people’s exposure to both is limited. What news is there, outside of social media, comes from Texas and Kansas.    

 

As media consolidation continues in this area, many residents of Panhandle counties will experience a lack of news coverage and see their papers go online or shut down.    

 

For someone like Earl Watt, the founder and owner of the Leader & Times out of Liberal Kansas, media consolidation represents one rural journalism's biggest opponent.  

 

“In ‘08, me and some of the other employees at that time went and started the High Plains Daily Leader,” Watt said. “And we did that because we believed in local ownership. We believed that the resources should be put back in the community of the newspaper. You know, think about it, a corporate newspaper is no different from a fast-food chain. You go buy the food there but the money goes somewhere else, wherever the owners are out of town. So, we wanted the investment to be kept local.” Competition with corporate newspapers means Watt needs to expand The Daily Leader’s presence. The internet, while being the biggest possible detriment, could also be the paper’s greatest tool. Corporate conglomerates have the money and influence for widespread coverage, but now so does The Daily Leader.    

 

“I figured people were going to go to a more digital format and we can either embrace it or we can be left in the ash heap of history, because you know it's going to happen,” Watt said.   The most difficult part of staying afloat is finding relevance. Local papers could cover news that is pertinent to residents; information they would be hard pressed to find elsewhere. Social media, streaming and manic internet echo chambers provide more than enough for some people.

 

While these platforms provide residents with content, it also leaves residents without news about what is happening around them. News that has a direct impact on their daily lives, such as when and where to vote, how local government is spending money and forecasts.    

 

Internet content also opens more information about national issues, from impending government shutdowns, major natural disasters, and foreign policy, but stunts awareness of communal issues.   

 

“What does the city spend this on?” Watt said. “What does the county spend this on? And the newspaper is the one in the local areas that is telling you that. You take the newspapers away and the cities are spending money, and the counties are spending money, and you have no idea what the budget is.” Watt said. “You have no idea what their plans are.”   

 

With the accessibility of the internet, the barrier of entry into the media space has diminished, allowing more people to start their own independent publications. This ease of access works as a two-edged sword, as some areas receive far greater media exposure, and leave local communities out of the spotlight.   

 

Keaton Ross is an investigative reporter at Oklahoma Watch, a nonprofit news corporation. Online circulations like Oklahoma Watch provide news for rural Oklahomans and help keep news in distant counties alive.       

 

“I think the trend we're seeing right now really is the expansion of nonprofit news,” Ross said. “People get their information a lot from social media, and people are generally pretty reluctant to pay for a subscription… As the nonprofit news continues to grow, that would probably be the best bet, as far as serving the state better.” 

 

Expansion into online news and social media highlights has also caused an unintentional sway in the region to more aggressive political positions, which remove people further from reliable information. For Brent Landsen, a high school journalism teacher, these positions broadcast online and on TV have led to noticeable shifts in local political participation. 

 

“Whatever they watch on TV, they just put in their brains,” Landsen said. “And so many people are just strung up on certain channels – won't mention any but CNN – but I mean some of [the news] they watch just poisons their brain, and I think that's a problem,” Landsen said. 

 

Jonathon Clinesmith is the Senior Pastor of St. Matthew United Methodist Church. Even though he lives in Oklahoma City, Clinesmith runs a podcast that covers news in the panhandle. 

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Although he and his co host started the podcast for fun, its still one of the few pieces of media covering the forgotten counties in the northwestern corner of Oklahoma. Even though Clinesmith is hundreds of miles from the panhandle, he also says the political apathy and illiteracy is identifiable over those distances. 

 

“People just they don't really care right now know, like one of the things that with my family members that live in the Panhandle, I've never seen them post about local politics, but I've seen them…criticize…politicians in Washington, D.C., or I've seen them prop up, you know, political candidates that really, if they understood their own political situation, they wouldn't say that those people have their best interests at heart,” Clinesmith said.

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This widespread political dejection can even be reflected in voter turnout polling from the 2018 and 2022 state gubernatorial election. In 2022, Beaver and Texas county experienced declines in voter turnout of 3.81% and 5.9%, respectively, while Cimarron county experienced a 0.8% increase in voter turnout when compared to the 2018 gubernatorial election according to Oklahoma Watch. 

 

“You know, we don't talk about local politics in the Oklahoma Panhandle.” Clinesmith said, “And I think that's probably accidental on some level, because I think there was a time when we did.”