The News Untold offers an important new perspective on media narratives about poverty in Appalachia. It focuses on how small-town reporters and editors in some of the region's poorest communities decide what aspects of poverty are news, how their audiences interpret those decisions, and how those two related processes help shape broader understandings of economic need and local social responsibility. Focusing on patterns of both media creation and consumption, The News Untold shows how a lack of constructive news coverage of economic need can make it harder for the poor to voice their concerns. Critical and inclusive news coverage of poverty at the local level, Michael Clay Carey writes, can help communities start to look past old stereotypes and attitudes and encourage solutions that incorporate broader sets of community voices. Such an effort will require journalists and community leaders to reexamine some of the professional traditions and social views that often shape what news looks like in small towns.

After her parents divorce, Chloe Williams moves from a comfortable life in Fort Collins to a smaller town. She was popular back home, but at the new school she just doesn't fit in. Everyone is secretive and pretty much ignores her. Everyone that is, except "the pack," a group of kids that always hang out together and can sometimes be downright mean. Her one and only friend, Jenna, is an even bigger outcast than she is. Jenna dabbles in witchcraft and claims to be able to open Chloe's eyes to the hidden world around them and that includes the creatures lurking in the dark. The only thing Chloe is interested in "eyeing" is Jenna's older cousin, Ryan, who also happens to be a werewolf. When a classmate goes missing, the girls form a search party. Everything is turned upside down by fear and hatred as the town begins a manhunt. Chloe has a secret of her own and it just may be the key to finding the missing boy. She has just begun to develop feelings for Ryan when his troubled past and recent friction with the victim comes to light. Can Chloe help prove his innocence or will she lose her first love forever?

The News Untold offers an important new perspective on media narratives about poverty in Appalachia. It focuses on how small-town reporters and editors in some of the region's poorest communities decide what aspects of poverty are news, how their audiences interpret those decisions, and how those two related processes help shape broader understandings of economic need and local social responsibility. Focusing on patterns of both media creation and consumption, The News Untold shows how a lack of constructive news coverage of economic need can make it harder for the poor to voice their concerns. Critical and inclusive news coverage of poverty at the local level, Michael Clay Carey writes, can help communities start to look past old stereotypes and attitudes and encourage solutions that incorporate broader sets of community voices. Such an effort will require journalists and community leaders to reexamine some of the professional traditions and social views that often shape what news looks like in small towns.