The Foothills Forum, funded mostly by individual donors, is producing in-depth enterprise well beyond the capability of the single editorial staffer employed by the weekly Rappahannock News, the only news source in Rappahannock County. Although its output is modest—four multi-part series in the last 18 months—the Forum is changing news expectations for the county’s 7,400 residents scattered across the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the end they settled on a nonprofit that would steer away from the traditional step of setting up a newsroom; rather, it would commission major freel...