Citizen and community news
The Tyler Loop: Growing membership with events and newsletters
In a small town with slightly more than 100,000 people, known for its annual rose festival, news site The Tyler Loop is growing a membership model with events and a newsletter to collaborate, not compete with, other local news organizations.
Delivering news onto a digital porch
This summer for Innovation in Focus we are exploring news organizations which function through new, emerging or unique revenue models.
RJI 2018: Strengthening local journalism, testing practical innovations, and trust and transparency
As another year comes to a close, the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute reflects on some of its accomplishments and lessons learned with a mission of helping journalism survive and thrive.
RJI Fellow will pilot a text message distribution and engagement strategy to serve Latino immigrants
Where do you get news and information that’s relevant to you?
AL.com’s news deputy program: A fledgling success despite obstacles, missteps and hiccups
My RJI Fellowship project, dubbed the Deputy Program, has had its share of kinks. But it’s also yielding tips, information and insights that would be nearly impossible for the AL.com newsroom to come up with on its own. It’s creating engagement and connections with people who might otherwise believe they don’t have a stake or … Continued
Mike Wheeler and David Danto: OpenTheRoom.org—Driving Citizen Engagement at the local level
Mike and Dave demonstrated emerging technologies that automate the broadcasting of public meetings and sports events. Camera operators can be redeployed to drive engagement of the content with their community through social media. Michael Wheeler is a managing partner of Westerly Partners, LLC, an investor advisory that provides strategic, financial and technology solutions to early … Continued
Hyperlocal: The promise of entrepreneurial journalism
Dutch graduate students visited four U.S. journalism startups between December 2015 and February 2016 to observe how these entrepreneurs “make it work” and, in the process, redefine what it means to be a journalist. Their work is part of Beyond Journalism, a study of entrepreneurial journalism by 2015-2016 RJI Fellows Tamara Witschge and Mark Deuze, both journalism professors in the Netherlands.
RJI Fellow to create pipeline of ‘deputies’ in pursuit of news coverage of Alabama communities
One unseasonably warm weekend this past February, I found myself chatting about transportation spending deep in the bowels of a dark, loud motorcycle club headquarters in a warehouse on Birmingham, Alabama’s gritty west side. We were eagerly waiting for the latest Vikings recruits to be doused in water and beer as an initiation into the … Continued
Small paper, small city undergoing big changes in Virginia
For a century, the Culpeper Star-Exponent — whose predecessors date to 1881 — served a small community that changed relatively little. Today, the newspaper is dealing with rapid change in its central Virginia market. Since 1980, Culpeper County has more than doubled its population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, mostly with commuters to the … Continued
Serving Hispanic readers is a matter of trust
A recent issue of Nuevas Raices, the Harrisonburg, Virginia, weekly newspaper that serves Hispanic readers in the Old Dominion, had just one small coupon ad. “We don’t trust them,” explains owner Fernando Gamboa, who says his 14,000 readers worry the coupons, standard in U.S. papers, won’t be redeemed. His readers have grown up in countries … Continued