Media alliances fuel community journalism efforts.

Jarvis, John

If it seems that all the media choices across the United States are looking more and more alike, it's not your imagination. Traditional media in the United States have never been as consolidated as now.

Since 1983, the number of companies that provide Americans with media has dropped more than eightfold, from 50 firms back three decades ago to just a half-dozen now. Put another way, there are six media behemoths--CBS Corp. and Viacom (both subsidiaries of National Amusements Inc.), Disney, General Electric, News Corp. and Time Warner Inc.--that now control 90 percent of what is listened to, read or watched in the United States.

And yet within this ever-narrowing field of media variety there are those in the journalism industry bucking the trend, most notably in the form of collaborations between public radio stations and online media. The common objective of these collaborations is to provide high-quality reporting to members of their communities via new avenues in the digital age.

In St. Louis, an announcement Oct. 5 highlighted the efforts of the online nonprofit news organization St. Louis Beacon and St. Louis Public Radio to "explore forming an alliance to better serve the community through journalism."

A press release from public radio station KWMU noted that "a letter of intent was signed by Margaret Wolf Freivogel, a founder and the editor of the St. Louis Beacon, and Tim Eby, St. Louis Public Radio general manager. The letter expresses the shared belief that the Beacon and St. Louis Public Radio can serve St. Louisans better together than they can separately. As a result of this action the two news organizations will begin exploring options for strengthening regional news reporting by using their individual assets in combination."

"By combining talents and resources, our organizations will again make this region a national leader in journalism that serves the community," Freivogel said in the press release.

The collaboration between St. Louis Public Radio and the St. Louis Beacon recently paid dividends for voters in the region surrounding St. Louis, when the two entities combined efforts with the Nine Network of Public Media to launch the website beyondnovember.org. Richard Weiss, the website's managing editor, said Beyond November is designed to be a resource for voters and a tool to hold elected officials accountable to their constituents.

In addition to attracting attention from members of the community, these media collaborations are picking up funding to fuel their efforts. Beyond November, for example, was seeded with a grant from the St. Louis-based Deer Park Foundation.

Another media collaboration that has attracted attention and funding involves the Greater New Orleans Foundation, a community foundation serving the 13-parish region of metropolitan New Orleans. It was awarded $102,000 by the Knight Foundation in September to help expand the city's NPR affiliate, WWNO, as part of an effort to increase local news reporting in southeast Louisiana. The award was part of the Knight Foundation's 2012 Knight Community Information Challenge, which contributed $3.67 million in matching funds to help the winners "take a leadership role in addressing issues relevant to their communities."

The public radio station, which had been devoted almost exclusively to classical music, will implement a new service to cover education reform efforts, arts and culture. Plans also call for WWNO to add a reporting staff and to team up with two local online news organizations. One of those organizations is The Lens, "the New Orleans area's first nonprofit, nonpartisan public-interest newsroom, dedicated to unique in-depth reporting projects, as well as exclusive daily stories." The Lens was co-founded in November 2009 by journalists Ariella Cohen and Karen Gadbois.

Not to be outdone, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the principal funding entity for the New Jersey News Collaborative project, was one of the winners of the Knight Foundation's 2012 Knight Community Information Challenge. With the $802,000 in challenge funding it received, the foundation intends to develop a network of news organizations and journalists in New Jersey. Along with fellow founding partners Montclair State University and New Jersey Public Radio (NJPR), the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation "will work on a range of projects to expand coverage, engage the public and provide training and services to the news ecosystem," according to information on the Knight Foundation's website.

The collaborative project will include activities such as "hiring reporters to focus on New Jersey issues, coordinating collaborative reporting projects, offering website-in-a-box functionality for new organizations and journalists, and developing creative community engagement projects."

Chris Daggett, the foundation's president and CEO, says the two founding partners are New Jersey Public Radio and the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University'.

"NJPR is our lead editorial partner," Daggett told writer Amanda Hirsch for a PBS story that ran Oct. 9. "They will be hiring three to five New Jersey-based reporters to cover the state. They also will be leading collaborative reporting projects and hosting town hall forums."