In hopes of giving people a space to pose questions about local environmental issues, the team launched Ask Planet Detroit. They wanted to bridge the gap between the segregated cities and suburbs of Detroit under the common goal of understanding environmental issues.
The organization works in collaboration with its audience to engage in two-way reporting via text message. This model replaces things like Facebook groups, which can fuel the spread of misinformation and amplify political polarization within communities. El Tímpano provides its audiences with access to the information they need from a source that’s earned their trust.
Spaceship Media worked with Advance Local, Essential Partners, and other organizations to create a nationwide discussion between persons with very different opinions on the topic of gun control.
The South Side Photo Walk, an annual workshop going on its ninth year held by Syracuse community newspaper The Stand, uses photography to bring people together and highlight a typical day in the South Side neighborhood of Syracuse, New York. Participants use photography to capture an aspect of the South Side community that is less frequently covered in the media.
Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (NNS) and Wisconsin Watch collaborated to create News414: a texting service that connects Wisconsinites with resources regarding food insecurity, evictions, employment and more.
The New Mexico Local News Fund brings news organizations across the state together to harness their collective reporting and fundraising power and tell regional or statewide stories that one outlet could not fully cover on its own. The organization is building on a collaborative mindset already in place among New Mexico’s journalists and providing them with resources and training to enhance their reporting.
Eyes on Oakland was a collaborative project launched in 2015 by The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) and the Mobile Arts Platform in Oakland, California. The project used a mobile van retrofitted with a portable recording studio and a screen-printing station to engage with the public on the topic of surveillance in the city.
Injustice Watch launched Check Your Judges to make quality research and information about judicial candidates freely and readily available to voters.
Capital Public Radio’s The View From Here uses a documentary unit as a capacity building project for reporters in a radio newsroom. The documentaries are each an hour long and tell the stories of three unique people or families, woven together to show how different people deal with a similar social justice issue.
The reporters at Block Club Chicago spent endless weeks covering COVID-19 stories and answering an influx of questions sent to the newsroom by worried readers, many of which had already been covered in their previous news stories.
The Wichita Eagle newspaper created a reading challenge through a closed Facebook group. Participants in the virtual book club can track their progress in the challenge, share book reviews, make recommendations, provide links to book-related stories and events. It’s managed by books columnist and education reporter, Suzanne Tobias.
