Expansion and Innovation

Products & Platforms

Visual Storytelling (short-form video, data viz, and Interatives)

Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Tools

Resources for Awards and Honors

Potential Partner Organizations

Products & Platforms

No news organization can do everything — and that’s even more true with news-academic partnerships where resources are at a premium and students are still learning to be journalists. It’s critical, then, that faculty leading these newsrooms make intentional, precise decisions about the products on which news will be delivered to their communities and the platforms used to create that content. 

  • Legacy products (print, radio, TV and websites) are opt-in — the community must actively choose to engage. But, audiences have become accustomed to content coming to them. So, consider at least one news product that shows up where people’s eyes and ears already are — email newsletter, app with push notifications, streaming and podcasts, social media, etc.
  • All digital products, especially social media platforms, have different audiences, tools and tones. Only commit to those that reach your intended audience with reporting that matters to them, and be consistent with your strategies.
  • Exemplars
    • The University of Montana Legislative News Service has its work published with a number of news organizations, and it uses a newsletter and Wakelet to curate and share the reporting and coverage, along with some posting to social media.
    • Northeastern’s Boston-based news organization, The Scope, uses a full plate of products to serve its audience including a website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, and periodic email newsletters.
    • The NSU-TV news service uses a website, YouTube and then a partnership with a local ABC affiliate and other news organizations to share its broadcast coverage with local communities out of Northwestern State University of Louisiana.
    • At the University of Central Florida, all reporting by students is published through a partnership with The Orlando Sentinel in an area of Florida where the newspaper no longer has local reporters.

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Products and Platforms Resources

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Visual Storytelling (short-form video, data viz, and Interatives)

Visual stories are the currency of the age — specifically short-form video. Particularly if we want to engage younger audiences (or audiences not already reached by legacy news products), these types of visual storytelling will be huge assets. Below are key sources and programs for short-form (vertical) video, data viz and maps/graphics as well as digital interactives for scrollytelling and interactive stories.

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Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Tools

AI is here to stay and new tools are on the way. News organizations need to quickly begin thinking and trying these tools in order to set proactive, ethical policy about their inclusion and allow them to create efficiencies in an already strained industry. News-academic partnerships can be a leader in this.

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Resources for Awards and Honors

Part of growing a program is gaining recognition for its quality. Below is a list of organizations that you can consider submitting student work to in order to provide encouragement for your students and the community they serve.

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Potential Partner Organizations

Our programs can thrive when supported by other organizations that have similar goals and interests. Below is a list of just some of the groups who partner with news-academic partnerships and local newsrooms — whether it’s through finances, training, tools or collaboration.

  • American Journalism Project
    • Makes grants to nonprofit news organizations, partnering with communities to launch new organizations, and coaching leaders as they grow and sustain their newsrooms.
  • Bucket List Community Cafe
    • Works as a news-academic partnership for Denver, Colorado and is looking to expand the model in other places where partnerships with already established local media aren’t an option.
  • College Media Association
    • Serves student media pros, staffs and programs with education, research and resources; communicates and works with professional media organizations and education associations on the local, state and national levels.
  • Gather
    • Makes journalism more responsive to the public’s needs and more inclusive of the public’s voices and diversity, by helping journalists, educators, and students who share these values find each other, find resources and best practices, and find support and mentorship.
  • Google News Initiative
    • Collaborates with Google-based tools focused on journalists and publishers’ business models through audience growth, digital technologies and additional revenue streams (Google for Nonprofits)
  • Institute for Nonprofit News
    • Creates a nonprofit news network that ensures access to trusted news in all communities by providing education and business support services to nonprofit member organizations and promoting the value and benefit of public-service and investigative journalism. Once a member, can participate in the NewsMatch fundraising program.
  • Journalism Trust Initiative
  • The Knight Foundation
    • Invests in free expression and journalism, arts and culture in community, research in areas of media and democracy, and in the success of American cities and towns where the Knight brothers once published newspapers.
  • Lenfest Institute for Journalism
    • Provides grant funding, runs training programs, and synthesizes best practices to develop and disseminate sustainable solutions to the business challenges facing local news providers.
  • LION Publishers
    • Strengthens the local news industry by helping independent news publishers through teaching, resources and community to independent news entrepreneurs as they build and develop sustainable businesses.
  • Local Media Association
    • Works with 3,000+ newspapers, broadcasters, digital news sites and R&D partners to help achieve business goals, and then Local Media Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable trust, leads innovative programs that promote sustainability of journalism and news media.
  • Local Media Consortium
    • Helps members — local newspapers, broadcasters, and online news outlets — by forming strategic partnerships with digital platforms and service providers to save money, increase revenue and grow audiences.
  • MacArthur Foundation
    • Works to strengthen U.S. democracy by supporting accurate, just, and inclusive news and narratives that inform, engage, and activate Americans to build a more equitable future.
  • News Revenue Hub
    • Helps news organizations build membership and crowdfunding programs, providing strategy, technology and best practices to its partners.
  • Rebuild Local News
    • Advances public policies, as a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, to counter the collapse of local news, revitalize community journalism and strengthen democracy.
  • Report for America
    • Places journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Part of The GroundTruth Project, news organizations make the case that they have urgent gaps in coverage and RFA provides emerging journalists to serve these communities.
  • Solutions Journalism Network
    • Teaches, trains and tracks the practice of solutions journalism — rigorous reporting on responses to problems — so people have access to news that helps them envision and build a more equitable and sustainable world.
  • Tiny News Collective
    • Helps communities build newsrooms by providing the tools, resources and commonwealth of knowledge to help people build sustainable news organizations that reflect and serve their communities, with a particular focus on voices historically excluded from media and media ownership.
  • Trusting News
    • Trains journalists to take responsibility for demonstrating credibility and actively earning trust through transparency and engagement through research, learning and sharing with the industry and incorporating trust-building into journalism’s standards and practices.

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