Tommy Orange, a renowned debut literary author, recently participated in Q&A at the Belle Mehus Auditorium in Bismarck, where he addressed urban Native identity, young adult readers, a new book in the works, and plans to bring his novel “There There” to TV.

The age of the Internet, mixed-race identities, and intensified racism have changed the landscape for everyone today, said Orange. “People are thinking about things in ways that we never did before.” Young Native readers, in particular, have gravitated to “There There” because many feel seen for the first time in a literary work.

Orange said he never read a full novel until he was around 24 because he didn’t see himself in the stories. “Part of that is not identifying with all the lives that were being written that I was required to read.”

The Q&A sponsored by Humanities North Dakota featured two prominent Native creatives on April 28. Novelist Mona Susan Power, a Standing Rock Sioux citizen, led the stage conversation with Orange, a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Both Power and Orange are PEN/Hemingway Award winners for their first-book debuts.

Each writer also has a new book soon to be published. Power’s long-awaited book “A Council of Dolls,” goes on sale in August. Readers anxiously awaiting Orange’s new book “Wandering Stars” can expect it in March 2024.

It’s the sequel to “There There,” a book published in 2018 that quickly rose as a favorite among literary critics. It won the American Book Award in 2019 and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for fiction.

Orange’s fictive writing deftly addresses myriad issues embodied in Native communities. In “There There,” a dozen characters’ lives converge at a powwow in Oakland that ends in tragedy. The stories tend to elicit sadness among readers in the United States and overseas, Orange said. A reader in Copenhagen, Denmark, told Orange he really liked the book, but then asked: “Why did you choose to write such miserable lives?”

The comment took Orange aback. “It hurts me because I’m writing about people that resemble me and my family and my community,” he told the Belle Mehus audience. “And I would never think of our lives that way.”

The captivating writing grabbed the attention of HBO producers. The media conglomerate quickly bought the TV rights to “There There” after publication. Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo was set to adapt it to the screen. But the project was later dropped. “Somewhere during the pandemic, the thread got lost,” said Orange.

“And this is before Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls before there was this sort of proof that people care about these shows, that the shows will be good, that there’s big talented acting pools to pick from,” Orange said.

The lost thread, however, has been picked up again, this time by NBC Universal. Orange said he had prerequisites that needed to be met before signing over his ownership rights. He wanted a Native director, Native writers, and a Native cast to bring “There There” to life.

He joined the process of picking writers for the adaptation. Tazbah Chavez was selected to be lead writer. From this point, Orange said his work is done. The TV writers are free to interpret the book as they see fit.

“I don’t need a whole lot of my vision in it,” he said. “I’m not tied to it. My work is in the book. So, I’m open to new forms and interpretations.”

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There’s a conflict between what weekly newspaper publishers think are the most likely ways their businesses will generate money in the future and what their readers are most willing to pay for, according to a study conducted in four states in the northern Great Plains.

The research – which focused on weekly papers in Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota – found that publishers were more likely to bank on traditional sources of revenue like advertising and subscriptions. Readers, on the other hand, were more likely than publishers to say they were willing to pay for less traditional products and services such as events, memberships, and newsletters.

The study concludes that there is “a clear disconnect between what revenue streams publishers are willing to implement and what revenue streams readers are potentially willing to endorse.”

The research, written by scholars at public universities in Kansas, Colorado, and Missouri, has implications for small-town and rural media that are negotiating major changes in the news-industry economy.

In the last 20 years more than 500 rural newspapers have closed or merged, but little of the research on the journalism economy has focused on small-market media, said the study’s lead, Teri Finneman, associate professor at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. Dozens of papers closed during the pandemic alone, Finneman said.

“It really made me start thinking, ‘why is it that we don't yet have a solution for this business model problem?’ And frankly, I saw this as a failure of academia, like why in the last 20 years has there not been a solution found for the industry? And so this really motivated me to try to look into some solutions to this very serious problem.”

Together with two colleagues, Finneman researched the possible revenue streams, speakng with publishers and readers in the Heartland states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas.

Not surprisingly, the publishers picked the model that has been around for hundreds of years: advertising and legal notices.

“They very much pitch the current model, which is concerning, because we know that legal notices are under attack at legislatures across the country,” said Finneman, publisher of The Eudora Times, a nationally recognized news desert publication that she runs with journalism students. “And so at any point, newspapers could see that revenue disappear, which is why we are arguing why it is so important to be proactive instead of reactive, so that there are more financial resources coming in.”

For readers, however, the study found that the top response for an additional revenue stream was events.

“The most common phrase in rural areas is there's nothing to do. So it makes a lot of sense that events would be very popular because they're looking for things to do,” said Finneman, who grew up and spent a large part of her life in rural North Dakota.

Another top option for readers was memberships, which was defined as a perk beyond subscription.

“We left it simple like that, because there's different ways to do membership programs,” she said. “And this was something that readers said that they were really interested in.”

Other myths that were busted about rural America include that older adults care more about the news and consuming it. The study found that residents ages 18 to 54 were more willing to financially help their newspaper than those over age 55.

“The industry has got to get past this myth that their older readers are the only base that they have to serve because they have a lot of younger people who would be willing to support them if they were given an opportunity,” Finneman said.

Still, for all the myth busting and hardships for rural news, Finneman believes there are a lot of good things happening.

“Rural journalism has more of a stability to it, when they aren't run through Wall Street, and when they care more about their communities and not just making money for shareholders,” she said. “So there are a lot of positives for rural journalism. And I emphasize that to my students a lot about how many opportunities that there really are in this field.”

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