UPDATE as of April 5, 2011: Oregonian News Network welcomes MyEugene.
MyEugene was recently selected to partner with The Oregonian – the largest news organization in the Pacific Northwest – for a one-year pilot program that is sponsored by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at American University, a non-profit organization funded with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to spearhead the project.
Launched in 2009, the goal of the “Networked Journalism Project” was to help five traditional news organizations explore ways to collaborate with community news sites and blogs and also determine if there were revenue opportunities to support such a collaboration. The program’s first-year participants were: The Seattle Times; The Miami Herald; The Charlotte Observer; Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times; and TucsonCitizen.com.
In 2010, J-Lab – inspired by the success of the first-year participants (who also opted to continue their programs into a second year) – selected four more news organizations to join the program, one of which was The Oregonian. Each news organization also received a $50,000 grant from J-Lab to help expedite the program.
In November 2010, MyEugene applied to become one of up to seven community news partners to work with The Oregonian for the one-year project. In March 2010 MyEugene officially joined the program as the first partner to be chosen. The Oregonian will select the remaining partners this week according to Cornelius Swart, project coordinator for the program, which is now dubbed the The Oregonian News Network.
“We want to broaden and expand the definition of local news…while keeping The Oregonian relevant,” said Peter Bhatia, editor of The Oregonian, during an introductory meeting held at the newspaper’s offices in Portland last month.
“Journalism is a vital force in civil society and I think it needs a willful effort to sustain it,” said Swart. “I’m excited about working with all these energetic and creative independents and with veteran reporters. And I’m excited about the potential to work on collaborative news projects as well. It’s all pretty exciting.”
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I’m so excited!
Thanks Mikayle.
Congratulations! Great news!
Thanks April! Needless to say, our story queue is a little jammed right now. :0) That’s good news indeed.
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