Complete Story
 

08/14/2018

How ProPublica works with non-metro newsrooms

From Nieman Lab

Eight months into its first year, ProPublica’s local reporting network has helped: a radio reporter in Orlando survey first responders about PTSD; a newspaper reporter in southern Illinois scrutinize the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s policies nationwide; and a reporter with 27 years of experience hone his writing as his newspaper was bartered in bankruptcy court. (Among other things.)

ProPublica’s staff is no stranger to collaboration with news organizations of all sizes (see: its project with nine other newsrooms to track the missing immigrant children). In this case, they appear to have mitigated the risk of parachute-partnering with the local newsrooms in their network, instead using its resources to strengthen and amplify local reporting. My conversations with reporters participating in the network confirmed that they see this as a hand-up, not a handout. It’s not a charity case, but a true collaboration.

“It’s nice when you’re in a small newspaper in a little place like Charleston to feel like you’ve got a literal army of people at ProPublica that are on your side, trying to help you take these stories to the next level,” Ken Ward, Jr., environmental writer at the Gazette-Mail in West Virginia, told me.

“We’re really proud of our work at the Southern Illinoisan, but we have a flashlight, not a lighthouse,” said Molly Parker, a reporter at the paper in Carbondale, Ill. “Giving some of these issues that we’ve been seeing a national spotlight or introducing them to a national audience might help change the nature of the conversation.”

Continue Reading>>

Printer-Friendly Version