A User-First Framework for Sustaining Local News - Harvard ...

“New Web‐only publications may be covering various parts of the community. A
consortium of arts organizations may have a reliable events calendar. Television or radio
stations may have continued some substantial elements of government news coverage.
An alternative weekly may have good reviews of films and theater and concerts.
Bloggers may be assembling information from parents at various levels of the local
school system and a nonprofit group may be gathering well‐researched local health
information.” 112
One of the most significant partnerships between a news organization and users is
the Public Insight Network that Michael Skoler championed at Minnesota Public Radio.
More than 80,000 people have signed up to offer their ideas and tips to the station’s
reporters about topics in their areas of interest or expertise. 113 The network partners with
users by including them in a far more sophisticated Rolodex than the best‐sourced
journalists ever dreamed of developing.
Such arrangements with users help sustain journalism in a number of ways. On one
level, they improve the diversity of information collected. Longer term, they strengthen
ties with users in ways that make them far more engaged stakeholders in the news. The
sign‐up form for the Public Insight Network says nothing about contributing to MPR,
but a listener engaged in that kind of collaboration seems like a pretty good prospect for
donating, too.
Marrying up Bloggers with the Mainstream
Foundations are playing a key role in the partnerships emerging during journalism’s
transition, in some cases helping to start up news organizations and in others provoking
(and paying) entrepreneurs to think differently about the software and services that can
add value to news. 114
J‐Lab, the journalism nonprofit funded by the James L. and John S. Knight
Foundation, provided a nudge to get more newsrooms partnering with blogs and other
community news initiatives.
Kathy Best, managing editor for digital news and innovation at The Seattle Times,
said the paper used a $5,000 grant from J‐Lab to help create incentives for local bloggers
to collaborate with the paper. Best said The Times hopes to rely on the “hotbed of
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