New Jersey is a required stop on any roadmap for local news

New report calls for a more intentional, equitable approach to meeting civic information needs

If you care about journalism, protecting democracy, or increasing civic participation, the best way to do that is to focus your energy (and funding) on collaborative efforts, startups and community groups — not on legacy news organizations.

At least, that’s what Chalkbeat’s Elizabeth Green, City Bureau’s Darryl Holliday, and Free Press’s Mike Rispoli say in a new report published Thursday, titled “The Roadmap for Local News: An Emergent Approach to Meeting Civic Information Needs.”

If you haven’t read the report yet, go do that first — or at least check out this great overview by Laura Hazard Owen in Nieman Lab.

The report calls for an “immediate infusion of philanthropic resources” into the following four areas:

1. Coordinated work around the goal of expanding “civic information,” not saving the news business
2. The production of civic information
3. Shared services to sustain new and emerging civic information networks
4. Public policies that support the expansion of civic information while maintaining editorial independence

Screenshot of the Glossary of Terms found in the report. Read the full report here.

The report makes it clear that in order to protect the future of journalism and democracy, we need to focus less on propping up failed and crumbling legacy media systems and more on creating civic information networks and a functioning infrastructure to support that transition. We also need a new level of investment in civic media, with leaders in philanthropy, journalism, and democracy coordinating their work to provide and expand that kind of civic information.

“The goal,” according to the report, “should be to allow civic information providers to focus on what they do best — meeting the information needs of their communities — by coordinating the business and operations components of their work across the network.”

The Center’s director, Stefanie Murray, was interviewed in a group for the report and we’re proud to have made a small contribution to its creation.

The good news: There are already organizations working to build the kind of future envisioned in the report. Initiatives like the NJ Civic Information Consortium (mentioned in the report) and the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University are such examples.

The Center and its hundreds of partners across the Garden State have been working for more than a decade to build and support the kind of local news and civic information landscape described throughout the report. We are happy to see that vision getting the attention (and hopefully the funding) it deserves.

Here are just a few examples of organizations and initiatives that are working to make that vision a reality in the Garden State:

• Stories of Atlantic City is a collaborative project focused on telling restorative, untold stories about the city and its people. The project works on stories and information sharing that inspires hope, change and highlights experiences of resilience despite challenges.
• Stories Invincible is an initiative to support restorative narrative reporting by and for communities of color in South Jersey that aims to highlight stories from Camden-based journalists and media makers that fill information gaps and serve as symbols of hope.
• The Newark News + Story Collaborative was founded by Brit Harley to bring together local reporters and media-makers to respond to the information needs and concerns of Newark residents.
• The NJ News Commons (and the NJ College News Commons) is an ecosystem-based coalition of organizations and people (and colleges and students) across the Garden State working collaboratively to provide and support the creation of quality news and information for New Jersey residents.
• The South Jersey Information Equity Project was conceived at the Center for Cooperative Media in late 2019 through a partnership with the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists with the goal of addressing media inequity in South Jersey, specifically by seeking to improve the quality and quantity of news and information produced by and for communities of color.
• The NJ News Commons Spanish Language Translation Project is a statewide collaborative effort that aims to increase the amount of quality statewide news available to Spanish-language news audiences.
• Black in Jersey was founded by Tennyson Donyea in 2021 as a hub for Black lifestyle news in the Garden State with the goal of creating an ecosystem for diverse voices who have historically been left out of mainstream colonial discourse.
• The Community Information Cooperative is a nonprofit that seeks to use policy and organizing to make journalism more democratic. Specifically, the CIC calls for local public funding methods via “community information districts.” The Bloomfield Information Project is an initiative of the Community Info Coop that works to equip people with the tools and information they need to strengthen local democracy in Essex County, NJ.
• Stormwater Matters is a collaborative news project that uses solutions journalism to explore the issues of flooding and stormwater management in the Passaic River basin and throughout northern New Jersey.
• Community information needs assessments are under way in three New Jersey communities, led by the Center for Cooperative Media and funded by the Google News Initiative, with the goal of gathering robust data from each community about their information needs, challenges, and gaps and providing them to local publishers.
• The NJ Diverse Sources Database is a publicly accessible list of experts of color across New Jersey that was created to help journalists in the state better reflect the communities they cover and connect them with trusted local experts who can provide new perspectives and insight to their stories.

A video documenting the last decade of the Center’s work in New Jersey and beyond.

“This report truly aligns with the mission of the Center for Cooperative Media, and we are so proud to be working toward building the future of local news and civic information it describes,” Stefanie Murray said. “At the Center, we strive every day to empower local news organizations and civic information providers to make a real difference in their communities.”

New Jersey continues to serve as both a testing and proving ground for new experiments and approaches to local news and civic information, and this report offers further proof that New Jersey is a required stop on any roadmap for local news.

Joe Amditis is the assistant director of products and events at the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University. Contact him at amditisj@montclair.edu or on Twitter at @jsamditis.

About the Center for Cooperative Media: The Center is a grant-funded program of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism, and in doing so serve New Jersey residents. The Center is supported with funding from Montclair State University, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, the New Jersey Local News Lab (a partnership of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, and Community Foundation of New Jersey), and the Abrams Foundation. For more information, visit centerforcooperativemedia.org.