Info District dispatch: Missing markets

Many local news deserts are “missing markets.” They have the resources to support local news and information production but lack the information, trust, and coordination to do so.

Jeremy Merrill: ProPublica’s project crowdsourcing political ads on Facebook

After the 2016 presidential election, Facebook received criticism and questions over a lack of transparency into micro-targeted political advertising on its platform. ProPublica has been particularly persistent in its coverage of electioneering on the social media giant. In  the fall 2017, the non-profit news organization launched a project to crowdsource the collection of political ads on Facebook. … Continued

Putting Mayer’s research to work

Around 2012, Jodi Gersh was travelling to various large Gannett newsrooms and running engagement workshops. She had recently pioneered the first social media position inside Gannett, and now she was helping the company figure out how it could meet its readers on these powerful platforms they were using. She used Joy Mayer’s Community Engagement: A … Continued

A LION Is born

Dylan Smith was skeptical when, in 2010, he received an invitation to the first Block by Block conference. Leaving his one-person newsroom for a weekend for a conference aimed at local, independent, online news operators seemed like a waste of time.

Small-town print goes big-time digital

Mark Nienhueser worked for Service Noodle, an online platform that made it easy for businesses to develop a website and a digital footprint. When he moved to the MPA, in 2013, he realized there were a lot of untapped digital opportunities for newspapers.