By Jan Schaffer Unfettered by competitive pressures and fortified by trust in their brand, local public broadcasters are finding new ways to engage in more local news – especially more investigative and enterprise journalism – than ever before. From unprecedented mergers to unique partnerships, from shared workspace to shared reporters, creative approaches are positioning public

In 2011 The National Association of Science Writers (NASW) got a bit of a windfall – some $250,000. It came from fees the Authors Coalition of America collected for reproducing members’ printed copyrighted material, mostly in Europe. To cycle the funds back to its writers, the association invited grant proposals. One of the strongest came

For those who live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, one website working on a micro budget, is doing the hard work of in-depth reporting – not only for the region, but for the state’s other news outlets as well. CarolinaPublicPress.org, (CPP) launched in March 2011 by former Asheville Citizen-Times reporter Angie Newsome,

“They strengthen us, we strengthen them. We are utterly interdependent.” Since mid-2011, KPBS Public Broadcasting in San Diego has started a 6:30 p.m. television newscast, added another at 5 p.m., moved to an all-news radio format – and invited a four-year-old investigative news start-up to move into its newsroom. Now KPBS and inewsource.org are planning

The germ of the idea came at a 2011 meeting in Newark, N.J. What was going to happen to news coverage once Gov. Chris Christie spun off the state-owned New Jersey Network (NJN) of radio and television stations? As the group of funders, journalists, academics and public broadcasters from New York City and Philadelphia mulled

In March 2013, Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) hired a former Associated Press reporter to undertake an ambitious vision:  Build a robust statewide news network with OPB as the linchpin. For her first several months, Julia Silverman, OPB’s Director of Content Partnerships, has been traversing the state, talking to nearly every daily, weekly, tribal and college newspaper, television

If all goes as hoped, in coming months St. Louis Public Radio (SLPR) and the St. Louis Beacon will formally merge their two newsrooms.  It will be the first time a public radio station with a staff of journalists has combined its operations with another daily-news producing outlet. This is not an easy thing to