This newsletter covers what’s working in local news. See something I should feature? Let me know.
Here’s an interesting/hopeful thing about the contraction of local news — some places might already have what they need to replenish the information landscape.
That’s the case, at least, where there are also universities.
I’ve been following the work of the Center for Community News for a while now, and a new report out last week shows where there’s potential.
From the report’s introduction: “Public radio broadcast signals reach nearly 99% of the U.S. population. Public media is ubiquitous, free to listeners, and independent of shareholder pressures. In that vast network of public airwaves, there are more than 180 university-licensed public media radio stations. And yet, most of those stations do not have reliable reporting partnerships with their host universities.”
The Center for Community News looked at the landscape for universities and public radio stations, and it found a lot of opportunities.
For instance:
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Public radio stations are often located on college campuses.
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Both public radio stations and colleges and universities share public service missions.
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With internships drying up in local news, universities have an opportunity to help train student journalists through partnerships with those stations, offering those stations more reporting and work that could attract new audiences.
The finding that most stood out from the report for Richard Watts, the center’s director, is that in a survey of 95 public radio stations in 38 states, 91% want to collaborate more.
“Universities have resources that they can bring to the local news crisis, and should,” Watts said.
Resources don’t just mean students, he added, “but it’s also our space and our faculty and our access to actual alumni dollars. We have resources and we need to be engaged with this.”
With an increased emphasis at universities for more hands-on learning, he said, “What better way to do that than to write real stories that real people need?”
Here’s maybe the best part, at least for newsrooms — it doesn’t require extra work on their end. The report looks at different types of collaborations and success stories. The most successful models, Watts said, have a faculty member working closely with the radio station. That person is responsible for assigning, editing and collaborating.
When the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign hired someone for that role, it went from five student-produced stories in a year to more than 350.
And often, that faculty member is known by people in the newsroom, Watts said, and perhaps even worked there.
So why isn’t this happening more?
There’s inertia within academia, Watts said. But newsrooms that want to partner, including print and digital, should look for former colleagues and peers within the school itself to get conversations going.
“It’s good for our students and it’s good for democracy,” Watts said. “It just makes so much sense.”
You can learn more about the Center for Community News, which is based at the University of Vermont, here.
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