The City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism is testing a new model for journalism with an innovative hyperlocal news project with The New York Times.
In an age in which free Craigslist online classifi eds, self-reported news blogs and a plethora of Web news sources are sapping advertising revenue from print media, many news organizations are searching for new, more viable business models.
Officials at The New York Times and the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism think they are on to something with a new partnership focused on Web-based hyperlocal journalism that may inform how traditional news sources and journalism schools move forward.
CUNY is not only providing interactive media instruction to budding professional journalists, but some of its students are helping train citizen journalists to contribute content to two New York Times Web sites dubbed The Local.
Launched in March, one news/blog site covers the Fort Greene and Clinton Hill neighborhoods in Brooklyn, N.Y., and another site reports on Maplewood, Millburn and South Orange in New Jersey with the street corner insight of a longtime resident. Staffed by Times Deputy Metro Editor Mary Ann Giordano, two Times reporters, student interns from CUNY and other schools, and a host of citizen journalists, the project is taking community journalism to a new level for the newspaper.
“The Times’ goal, like ours,” said Jeff Jarvis, who oversees the interactive media program at CUNY, “is to create a scalable platform (not just in terms of technology but in terms of support) to help these communities organize their own news and knowledge.”
“The Times needs this to be scalable; it can’t afford to — no metro paper can or has ever been able to afford to — pay for staff in every neighborhood and town,” Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?, wrote in his blog buzzmachine.com upon announcing the CUNY-Times partnership.
