Wait, how is it August already?

I’m unsure, but I can tell you I’ve been collecting a lot of news to share with you. Let’s start with a report from the Center for Community News. As a reminder, this program out of the University of Vermont has the mission to “grow and support partnerships between college reporting programs and local news outlets.”

In July, the CCN announced it got $7 million from several funders, including the Knight Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, to “ramp up research, programming, education, and advocacy for student reporting programs, which are playing an increasingly vital role in reporting local news for Americans.”

The CCN just published its latest impact report.

Meg Little Reilly, the CCN’s managing director, shared some big takeaways:

• University-led reporting is now filling significant gaps in local information that have been left by the newspaper industry as it recedes. Where it was once an additive, it's now essential in many communities. Without the reporting that these university partnerships provide, whole beats and even regions would be underserved.
   
• Our methods for measuring the breadth and impact of student reporting haven't kept up with its growth. Our hope is that, one year from now, news-academic partnerships will have more standardized and reliable methods for measuring how many stories were published and how many people saw them. It will be easier to make the case for the value and promise of this field when we can capture its impact. 
   

• Demand for student reporting — from newsrooms, communities and students — is still greater than supply. Universities have a huge opportunity before them today to step into their role as civic pillars and invest in these reporting programs.

More to share:

• Yesterday was another tough one for local news. Axios laid off 50 staffers, or 10% of its workforce. The Tampa Bay Times, which Poynter owns, also announced buyout offers, with the goal of cutting 20% of total staff.

• Here’s Kati Kokal’s guide to creating a community aid network to support laid-off colleagues. 

• Last week, Wired wrote about “zombie alt-weeklies … stuffed with AI slop about OnlyFans.” That piece included such content at the Riverfront Times, a once-beloved alt in St. Louis. After this tweet thread from the site’s new editor, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jessica Rogen reported “The Riverfront Times and its new executive editor, JD Davis, appear to share a phone number with an OnlyFans creators promotional company.”

• From E&P, read about the work of staff at the Uvalde Leader-News, who covered the mass shooting at Robb Elementary in 2022. That work is the subject of a documentary from ABC News called “Print it black.”

• The National Press Foundation created Guidelines for Covering Women in Politics, which includes how to cultivate women sources, how to avoid tokenism as well as references and resources. 

• One bright spot: MLK50: Justice Through Journalism is a nonprofit newsroom in Memphis. This week it announced a $1 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation as part of MacArthur’s work with Press Forward.

That’s it for me. We weathered a tropical storm with about two days of rain. I’m grateful as always that it wasn’t worse and thinking of everyone impacted by Debby. Hang in there.