January 29th, 2010

Creative class guru Richard Florida has found himself mired in a growing controversy over the claims of his research and the troubling ways in which in enriched himself peddling advice to communities. Check out The American Prospect’s piece titled “The Ruse of the Creative Class.” Read more »

January 21st, 2010

An interesting piece from The Daily Yonder calls on young people from the countryside to “stay put and start a revolution”. Read more »

January 6th, 2010

Who moves? Young college graduates are more likely to move to a new state if they made good grades or attended top ranked colleges. Those who stay enjoy their spare time and want to live near family. Read more »

January 6th, 2010

An editorial for the NY Times makes an urgent plea for immigration reform. Read more »

January 3rd, 2010

We published an essay for the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business Magazine. Read more »

December 14th, 2009

Pat was a guest on Chicago Public Radio’s Eight Forty-Eight where he discussed Hollowing and the “rural brain drain.” Listen »

December 11th, 2009

Pat joined Minnesota Public Radio’s Kerri Miller for a discussion about the rural youth exodus and the future of small towns across the heartland. Listen »

December 9th, 2009

Kirk Johnson’s heartbreaking front page story for the NY Times chronicles how depopulation has isolated the rural aged. Read more »

December 6th, 2009

Maria was interviewed for a Des Moines Register article titled “Are overlooked ’stayers’ keeping rural Iowa alive?” Read the article » or Download the article »

December 3rd, 2009

Pat spoke to Bob Edwards on his weekend and weekly shows for Sirius XM Radio. Check out the podcast »

December 2nd, 2009

Maria and Pat spoke to Marty Moss-Coane on Philadelphia’s WHYY’s Radio Times. Listen »

November 26th, 2009

Pat’s visit to Sumner, Iowa library was featured on Book TV. Watch the show »

November 24th, 2009

The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC looked into why many young people are abandoning the small towns they grew up in for big cities, and how that’s effecting rural America. Recent articles and books have celebrated the migration of highly productive and creative workers to key cities. Sociologists Patrick J. Carr describes what happens to the towns that they desert, and to the people who are left behind. In Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America, written with Maria J. Kefalas, they describe what they learned by moving to a small Iowa town whose young people are leaving in droves. Listen »

November 14th, 2009

The Daily Yonder reports on the devastating loss of manufacturing work in Iowa’s small towns. Read More »

November 11th, 2009

Steve Kraske of KCUR talks with Maria Kefalas about her book Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America. They discuss the rural brain drain and the exodus of young people from America’s countryside and what happens to the towns that they desert, and the people who are left behind. Listen »

November 4th, 2009

Read Paul Adams’ piece for the BBC on the promise, and pitfalls, of immigration in Iowa. “Immigrants in the American heartland” Read More »

November 1st, 2009

Hollowing Out the Middle is discussed in an article called “How does rural brain drain impact you?” by Sandye Voight at TH ONLINE.COM. Read More »

October 30th, 2009

Maria and Pat spoke to Christina Gillham, of Newsweek.com, about their book and what to do about the rural brain drain. “Doughnut-Hole Country” »

October 27th, 2009

Listen to Paul Adams’ marvelous piece for the BBC on the promise, and pitfalls, of immigration in Iowa. “A tale of two cities: Postvile and Storm Lake, Iowa.” Listen to the show »

October 20th, 2009

Pat and Maria spoke to Wisconsin Public Radio’s Kathleen Dunn. Kathleen Dunn’s guests examine how thousands of small towns in rural America are being de-populated…their most talented and ambitious young people leaving for big city careers. Listen to the show »

October 14th, 2009

Check out Pat at Boston’s WGBH’s Cambridge talk for the Forum Lecture series Watch Video »

October 10th, 2009

Patrick Carr was quoted in newspapers throughout Canada including The Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald, and The Gazette in an article called “Small towns contributing to their own demise” by Shannon Proudfoot. Read More » Read More » Read More »

October 5th, 2009

Maria was interviewed for NPR’s “On Point.” Listen to the podcast »

September 29th, 2009

Pat spoke with Virginia Prescott on New Hampshire Public Radio’s “Word of Mouth.” Listen to the podcast »

September 21st, 2009

Hollowing Out the Middle is mentioned in the October 2009 edition of Reader’s Digest’s Digest section in a piece on “Big Ideas.”

September 15th, 2009

The great folks (Alex Kafka and Rose Engelland) of The Chronicle of Higher Education’s magazine, The Chronicle Review, invited us to write this cover story. Read More » If the article is no longer available at The Chronicle, view it in PDF format.

September 11th, 2009

Today, President Obama’s economic adviser, former Harvard University president Larry Summers warned that “unemployment would remain unacceptably high” for quite a while. Younger workers, especially the ones who would have worked in blue-collar jobs, are paying the highest cost, though increasingly college educated ones are taking a hit. Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum noted in a NY Times interview that half of employed workers under the age of 25, who possess college degrees, work in jobs which don’t require this level of education. The recent Labor Day inspired Maria to post a rant on The Huffington Post this September 9th. Read More »

August 20th, 2009

South Dakota, the new Ellis Island?

The World’s Jason Margolis travels to Sioux City to show how the Dakotas have become the destination for growing numbers of the nation’s 70,000 legal aliens coming to this country each year. Yet, while Sioux City’s new status as immigrant boomtown status brings benefits to a region which finds itself hungry for low-skilled, low-paid workers, the challenge will be finding ways to make Sioux City’s new arrivals adapt to life in their new home over the long haul. Read More »

August 20th, 2009

Did you know that 2 percent of America’s farms produces 50 percent of the nation’s food? When candidate Obama ran for office, he promised to make rural development a top priority and to try to weaken the stranglehold that agri-business has over American agriculture. Check out another story from NPR’s John Burnett about what the Department of Justice is doing to look at the nation’s farming monopolies. Read More »

August 20th, 2009

Most Americans, when they think of cartels will think of OPEC or the notorious Mexican drug cartels that are destabilizing that country right now, not Holstein dairy cows and Wisconsin dairy farmers. Check out this piece from NPR’s John Burnett to change that impression. Read More »

August 16th, 2009

More unsettling news for young millenials in the economy, read Alfred Lubrano’s front page story in the Inquirer. Read More »

August 15th, 2009

Steve Greenhouse, in the Times, writes a great story about an Ohio community college which is doing what we want to see nationally with community colleges. Be sure to check out the video interviews with students, staff, and faculty at the school. Read More »

August 4th, 2009

In his book American Vertigo, the French philosopher, Bernard-Henry Levy, takes a post-modern Tocqueville-inspired tour of America. Levy describes the Iowa State Fair as “a festival of American kitsch.” Garrison Keillor explores his own love-hate relationship with the uniquely midwestern experience – the state fair – in this photo essay for National Geographic. Read More »

July 22nd, 2009

We are huge fans of Tim Egan’s work. His 2002 Times article, “Pastoral Poverty” hangs in Maria’s office and his award-winning The Worst Hard Time sits on our nightstand shelf. In a recent piece for his Thursday column, Outposts, he points out that the romanticized, culture war rural America – “mythland” – and Nick Reding’s apocalyptic “methland” are not the real, real small town America. Read More »

July 6th, 2009

Listen to Maria and Laura Sessions Stepp on NPR’s Tell Me More with Michele Martin. Listen to the story »

July 5th, 2009

Nick Reding’s new bestseller, Methland, about Oelwein, Iowa, which is not far from our own pseudonymous Ellis, is really capturing people’s attention. Reding’s book is fascinating and dark and does a brilliant job of assaulting the Music Man stereotypes. But, in discovering the dark, underbelly of the countryside does Reding overstate the problem? Iowa’s crime rate is miniscule compared to Philadelphia or Baltimore, that said, there are more people in the US using meth than crack. Read More »

June 26th, 2009

Another piece on the similarities bring to life small town and city kids. The problem of early childbearing does not simply exist among urban youth, a great story from the Post’s award winning journalist: Laura Sessions Stepp. Read More »

June 25th, 2009

A wonderful piece in the New York Times from Steve Greenhouse. Greenhouse interviewed us for the story and the words and viewpoints of these young people in Ohio just resonated with our young Iowans. Watch Video »

June 13th, 2009

Guest column in Des Moines Register: Is gay marriage part of appealing to young people? Read More »

May 1st, 2009

Failure to Launch or Launching Too Soon?, by Maria Kefalas, featured in The Huffington Post. Read More »

May 1st, 2009

The Reluctant Rural Warriors, by Patrick J. Carr, featured in Cornell University’s Rural New York Minute. Read More »

April 28th, 2009

Featured in the blog, Reimagine Rural. Read More »

April 21, 2009

Featured in the blog, Century of the Common Iowan. Read More »