Jeremy Borden

Executive Director

Jeremy Borden is a longtime journalist who has reported extensively on state and local politics, criminal justice and the business of media, among other topics. His work often involved working with community-based leaders and organizations in rural areas working on issues that affect the South. He has worked at The Washington Post, City Bureau (Chicago), and The Post and Courier in South Carolina. His work as an independent journalist has appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, among other publications.  Borden returned to North Carolina in 2019 and completed a project with the First Amendment foundation PEN America about the state of rural journalism in North Carolina. The report explores how rural area media outlets still play a vital role in their communities and how there is huge appetite among rural area leaders to bolster their community publications, along with a hunger for quality information and commentary that often goes unmet. In 2022, he managed N.C. Sen. Graig Meyer’s winning state Senate campaign. Meyer and Borden began to work on the idea for an organization that could meet rural and exurban North Carolina’s information needs and elevate key leaders and advocates. Borden graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a degree in journalism and he holds a Master’s from American University with a degree in Broadcast Journalism and Public Policy.