The opportunity now is to shepherd and accelerate a transition to an emergent civic media system. This new ecosystem looks different from what it will replace: while the commercial market rewarded information monopolies, what is emerging now are pluralistic networks in which information is fluid, services are shared, and media is made in cooperation with the people it seeks to serve.
Curated and led by June’s Gather Guest Curator, Simon Galperin brought together community media leaders from New Orleans, Atlanta, and Cleveland to share lessons in working with community members to produce journalism.
We hear from two people who have been building state “ecosystems”: Rashad Mahmood, from the New Mexico Local News Fund and Stefanie Murray, from the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University.
Instead of letting public access channels wither due to commercial market fluctuations, we should publicly fund and expand the precious communication infrastructure that access media offers.
National Trust for Local News (NTLN) recently engineered the purchase of a family-owned newspaper chain in Colorado in order to sustain its irreplaceable local journalism. Is this business model a viable strategy to prevent vulture capital acquisitions of local media and closure of local papers across the country?
Newly established National Trust for Local News works “with communities to catalyze the capital, new ownership structures, and business model transformations needed for established local and community news organizations to thrive and remain deeply grounded in their communities.”
Learn about Southern California Public Radio’s engaged journalism work and Alabama Media Group’s project “Reckon Women: Motherhood.” Both are finalists for the 2020 OJA Gather Award in the Overall Excellence category.
Public access cable channels have rarely been considered essential. Often lampooned or ignored, these channels suddenly offered informational lifelines to more than 3,000 US communities desperate for local news. Their crisis performance underscores the potential for hyperlocal media, as well as the need for regulatory structures that bolster open society.
What can you expect from the Census 2020 rollout, and how can you learn about your community’s confusion and concerns around the Census? Join David Rodriguez from Reveal and Diana Montaño from SCPR to learn about their process, hear questions to help you prepare for reporting, and find resources to support your Census engagement work.
How can advisory boards help newsrooms stay in touch with what matters most to their communities? And what are some best practices for setting them up, recruiting members and making the time useful? Join Elizabeth Stephens of Columbia Missourian, jesikah maria ross (JMR) of Capital Public Radio, and Kim Bode of News Deeply to find out.
This toolkit — based off of years of organizing in communities to reshape local news — provides tactics for building power toward transforming media where you live. Just as communities are organizing for equitable and just social policy, we can organize for equitable and just local news. To transform local news, we have to build local leadership.
How do local communities define themselves? How do news outlets define their audiences? And how do journalists know what’s important to their audiences and what niche they can fill? A recent report is a useful jumping off point for discussion of those questions. Join Amy Schmitz Weiss of San Diego State University, Jesse Hardman of the Listening Post Collective, and Madeleine Bair of El Timpano to continue the conversation.
