A new kind of breaking news powered by non-traditional news media

CHNG News is a breaking news network devoted to highlighting leading thinkers and journalists who chronicle stories of social and cultural impact. The network is comprised of 100 individual city feeds covering the top cities in the US, each displaying news of social impact on the website CHNGNews.com, Twitter, Facebook and other social media. The mission of CHNG News is to provide local news consumers with a comprehensive series of breaking articles on social impact related to their locale or community.

Where CHNG News fits in the media ecosystem

News consumers normally discover and follow socially conscious news from national publishers like Mother Jones or Ashoka. Finding the same caliber of news at the local level is a hurdle because the traditional local media report on an entrenched menu of crime, car crashes, weather and sports. CHNG News focuses on syndicating the non-traditional media — the local bloggers, indie news publishers, nonprofits, civic groups, academics, enterprises who can analyze, dissect and expose local news and events of social impact with an authority and sensibility that is complementary to traditional media.

Topics covered by CHNG News at the 100-city level

• Arts Funding and Education
• Child welfare
• Civil liberties and human rights
• Civic planning and sustainability
• Environmental protection and global warming
• Ethnic, cultural and LGBT news
• Food production and sustainability
• Global trends in social change
• Immigration reform
• Income inequality and homelessness
• Political and election reform
• Racism, sexism and hate crime
• Women’s rights

Growing CHNG News

CHNG News is a partnership with the Social Venture Network (“SVN”), a network of innovative business leaders and entrepreneurs committed to social change, and The Breaking News Network(“BNN”), the largest community media network devoted to the public good spanning over 400 cities globally. Over the last five years, The BNN has cultivated a loyal follower base of 700,000 who appreciate curation of the best media and blog feeds in 400 cities, presented in a noncommercial format that generates good will. In addition, the BNN has nurtured a unique media program that provides media access of its social media feeds to over 8,000 community newsmakers, comprised of journalists, thinkers, civic and arts organizations, and good causes, across its 400 city feeds.

CHNG News will adopt the same methodologies used by the BNN to syndicate news feeds and support collaborative media access. There are two methods to generating breaking social news. First, CHNG News curates RSS feeds of local bloggers, indie news publishers, nonprofits, civic groups, academics, enterprises in each city, instantly syndicating their articles upon publication. Second, CHNG News authorizes media access to community newsmakers committed to social impact, many of whom are already among the 8,000 authorized on the BNN.

Sponsorship Model

CHNG News will develop a sponsorship model intended to support the media outreach of selected national and local organizations committed to social and cultural impact. One benefit of sponsorship is authorization of localized media access for a specific set of their member base through both CHNG News and the established BNN. By authorizing media access to sponsor organizations, CHNG News becomes a media channel for advocacy, and sets the foundation for sponsors who want to develop a media based advocate network that reaches local levels.

Growth Accelerators

CHNG News will be a social news network separate but complementary to The Breaking News Network, which has been focused on reporting every type of breaking news in a locale. CHNG News will grow the reader base by 1) leveraging the BNN’s established position as a community news resource in CHNG News’ 100 cities, and 2) developing national and local advocacy networks across the 100 cities for CHNG News’ sponsors.

Examples

There are no publishers where one can find news with social impact at the local level. Traditional local news doesn’t cut it, local social and progressive news is the province of non-traditional media: like @malwarwick, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, and Cal’s environmental resource center, and indie local news like Berkeleyside. I’ve created a single city prototype at chngnews.com/berkeley and the Twitter feed @chngberkeley.