Ideas

How can media help people feel like they are part of a common purpose and foster the information and engagement that citizens need to be citizens? These and other questions were addressed at a 3-day gathering of some 20 funders, media makers and civic engagement experts at the Rockefeller estate in Tarrytown, N.Y.

In New Orleans’ topsy-turvy world of journalism — where alliances shift, talent is raided, and a newspaper war is blossoming — WWNO public radio has, for the past year, steered a determined course. Informed by research and bolstered by a sense of opportunity, it is erecting, piece by piece, the components for an all-news format, complete with its first news director, hired in February.

Public broadcasters have always done partnerships, but in the last year these and other public-media outlets have begun piecing together the infrastructure for local-news reports that will offer more than cutaways in “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” As a result, they are airing more investigative and enterprise journalism than ever before.

Montclair State’s Center for Cooperative Media is betting there are returns on getting newspapers, broadcasters, bloggers, and wire services all in the same building. The germ of the idea came at a 2011 meeting in Newark.

If all goes as hoped, in coming months St. Louis Public Radio (SLPR) and the St. Louis Beacon will formally merge their two newsrooms. It will be the first time a public radio station with a staff of journalists has combined its operations with another daily-news producing outlet.

Can Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB), working with local newspapers, TV and radio stations, and bloggers, make a substantial state news report in the face of cutbacks elsewhere? In March 2013, OPB hired a former Associated Press reporter to undertake this ambitious vision.

There are few surprises in the latest nonprofit journalism study by the Pew Research Center’s Project on Excellence in Journalism. There are still, however, many questions to be asked. And there is much merit in taking a deeper dive into discrete clusters of nonprofit news sites.

Four years ago, UrbanMilwaukee.com zeroed in on South 2nd Street, a pocked roadway in the city’s Walker’s Point section that seemed “ripe for improvement,” said site co-founder David Reid.