After 15 years documenting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other regions, photojournalist Andrea Bruce focused her lens on a growing political conflict at home.
“As someone who is from the United States, a country that kind of exports this idea of democracy to different places, I would often get these questions about its meaning,” she says. “But after so many years overseas, I didn’t feel like I even had a solid understanding.”
Following the 2016 U.S. elections, Bruce channeled her curiosity into Our Democracy, an ethnographic study and collaborative media project that seeks answers to the question — “What does democracy mean to you?” — by inviting people around the country to share their stories and perspectives.
“I didn’t have a theory I was trying to prove, just this very open-ended question,” she says, noting one of the project’s early challenges. “Go to a newspaper or a magazine for support, and they ask, ‘Okay, what are you going to photograph? What are you going to say?’ But I really didn’t know what I was going to find.”
Bruce spent the next year documenting working-class life in dozens of cities and towns. Then in 2018, she was selected for the CatchLight Global Fellowship with a plan that included more interviews, classroom workshops, and community photo submissions. And as the 2020 elections approached, National Geographic picked up the story as an extended photo feature.
The tour eventually led Bruce back to her hometown in Pamlico County, North Carolina, where another question came into focus:
Is democracy even possible without local journalism?
During a stop in San Francisco, a conversation with CatchLight CEO Elodie Mailliet Storm inspired Bruce, the traveled journalist, to embrace a hyperlocal approach.
Last year, Bruce launched Down in the County, a visual newsletter that uncovers hidden stories and daily happenings around Pamlico County, which serves as the only source of local news for the rural community.
“The inspiration behind it really came from CatchLight,” says Bruce. “It’s given me an offshoot to the project that allows me to experience for myself how to grow an audience that doesn’t really trust the news anymore, or how to grow local journalism in a news desert.”
Today, the newsletter reaches almost 5,000 subscribers, an audience roughly 40% the size of Pamlico County’s population, with the majority of readers being local residents. Bruce is encouraged by the response thus far, with an active readership that consistently outperforms media and publishing industry benchmarks.
Focusing on local stories has been both grounding and surprising for Bruce:
“Nationally, we seem so politically charged right now, and it is scary to listen to at times. But realistically, talking to people on the ground, living their lives across the country, people have way more in common than I realized.”
Bruce’s next objective is to find a new home for the newsletter, which is currently licensed to Bulletin, Facebook’s newsletter subscription pilot that is scheduled for sunset in 2023. Her goal is to find institutional partners to plant deep and lasting roots for local news in Pamlico County.
By collaborating with entities like the local community college, she hopes to deepen her neighbors’ appreciation for honest visual journalism — “not just for people to take it in, but for more people to produce it,” she says.
Andrea’s approach is unique in that she is leveraging her proven visual journalism skills to bring critical information to a county that has no other local news sources. She is creating a new model for other journalists working in news deserts. We have so much to learn from her as we set out to harness the unique power of images to inform and engage the public.
— Elodie Mailliet Storm, CEO, CatchLight