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“A journalism think tank announced grants Monday to help five news organizations, including The Miami Herald, work with community groups on new cooperative approaches to gathering and presenting neighborhood news on the Internet.
American University’s J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, based in Washington, is funding the one-year project with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The money will be used to support a liaison at each news organization and provide small stipends to local content partners.
“We think this network is an important new way of expanding community news coverage at a time when it’s hard to launch fresh initiatives,” said Miami Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal. “We very much look forward to being a part of this national experiment and trying to figure out new ways of providing community news.”
For its part, The Miami Herald is reaching out to community organizations, existing community newspapers and journalists interested in creating local reporting groups to publish geographically distinct websites on the same platform.
The goal is to develop a network of channels on the Web that provide community news from across South Florida, where users can find news, information, conversation, commentary and advertising from bloggers, school groups and news organizations large and small.
In addition to The Miami Herald, the other news organizations taking part in the pilot project are: The Seattle Times, The Charlotte Observer, Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times and Tucsoncitizen.com, a newspaper that became a Web-only news outlet in May.
“We hope this project will help traditional news organizations and new media makers begin to figure out how to amplify good content coming from their communities — sharing it, even monetizing it for all participants,” said Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab. J-Lab is a center at American University’s School of Communication.
J-Lab will assemble ideas and lessons learned into an overall report on how such networked journalism collaborations might work.
Those with a hyperlocal website or community newspaper or those involved with a local neighborhood group interested in taking part in the pilot project through The Miami Herald should contact Elissa Vanaver, vice president/Community Affairs, at 305-376-3628 or e-mail evanaver@MiamiHerald.com.”
http://www.miamiherald.com/business/breaking-news/story/1190126.html?storylink=pd
