Underserved health beat leads fellow to create niche news network

When traditional news organizations begin laying off beat reporters, crucial community coverage can take a hit. Health is one beat that is underserved in almost every community. People want to understand why so much money is spent on healthcare every year and why there are so many health problems in communities, said Jane Stevens, ACESTooHigh.com … Continued

WellCommons: Revolution under the radar

Last week, WellCommons.com, a local health news site, part of the Lawrence Journal-World in Lawrence, KS, won Editor & Publisher’s EPPY award for “Best Community Service on a Media-Affiliated Website with under 250,000 unique monthly visitors”. Thank you, judges! Since there wasn’t an article about the winners, just a list, I’ll explain why we nominated … Continued

Prototype to revenue stream: Reynolds Fellow starts multiple social journalism sites based on fellow

If you’ve ever wondered what happens to big ideas once they leave the Reynolds Journalism Institute, check out 2008-2009 Reynolds Fellow Jane Stevens’ update below. She has taken the knowledge gained from her fellowship project, Niche News Network, and created successful social journalism websites in Lawrence, Kansas. It’s been an amazing, nonstop, jam-packed two years … Continued

JurnosWiki

The JurnoWiki site was created by Jane Stevens, Amy Gahran, Adam Glenn, and Bill Mitchell in Spring 2009 as a resource for journalists. For more information contact Jane Stevens or RJI Who are Jurnos? Jurnos are entrepreneurs. Jurnos come from all walks of life. Jurnos are community managers. Jurnos are community organizers. Jurnos are catalysts … Continued

Jane Stevens’ report after the launch event: ‘With crisis comes opportunity…’

More than 100 journalists, advertising experts, community activists, technology experts, librarians, educators and students gathered — from Washington, D.C. to Hawaii, in person and virtually — for an RJI Talkfest to launch the RJI Collaboratory, a news organization incubator for Web-based entrepreneurial journalists. As the first example of how the RJI Collaboratory plans to be … Continued

Web shells

Background Web shells are the essential structure, the main building blocks of Webcentric journalism. In newspaper-speak, that’s the four- or six-column 13.5- by 22-inch nested pages of newsprint. In TV-speak, it’s the 30-minute news-weather-sports lineup. Jane Stevens came up with the term “shell” because the other names that people were using in 2002 — evergreen … Continued

Jane Stevens: Niche news networks

Jane Stevens is editorial director for Oceans Now and an associate faculty member at the Knight Digital Media Center at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism. In these new networks, the community is at the core and journalists serve that community. It is the way that things are going. Q: Are newspapers … Continued