ABSTRACT
With the downturn in newsprint circulation, cash-strapped local news organizations have nimbly experimented with new revenue streams, business models and content delivery forms. As part of these efforts, local news outlets are seeking community-based partners to amplify their messages, particularly across social platforms. In acts of audience engagement, news organizations are tinkering with digital tools to curate proximate communities and to translate complex knowledge. At the same time, news organizations are searching for practitioner expertise in the realm of data storytelling. Although a small number of hybrid programmer-journalists exist, most practitioners lack the computational knowledge required to produce data narratives, interactives or visualizations. As a result, news outlets – particularly smaller outlets operating in suburban or rural communities – must look outside of the organization for this expertise. While some news organizations are collaborating with each another, other outlets are creatively leveraging community resources. In the late 2010s, journalism outlets are forming relationships with third-party providers who can extend the news organization’s external reach and/or can expand the news organization’s internal expertise. This chapter profiles how news organizations are cultivating partnerships with a trio of actors – news nonprofits/start-ups, philanthropic foundations and civic technologists – to produce local, data-driven narratives that help inform community members about shared, societal problems. This research traces how these three actors collectively engage in the local community. Working in collaboration, journalists and quasi-journalistic actors produce civic knowledge and bolster participation through the production of data-driven community news.
