Series

When we founded The 51st, we wanted to lead a news organization shaped by D.C. residents. And the Community Connector program has become an integral way of doing so.

From the outset, we knew we wanted to highlight art and help people connect with other residents who had a positive vision for Birmingham. Here are methods that helped us fill a historic theater for a fun and engaging evening.

If cultural experiences beyond the Blues were offered, would visitors be interested? And what could be done to help local residents build capacity to compete with the larger tourism industry?

By partnering with teachers, editors and writing mentors embedded in the communities that newsrooms hope to serve, journalism can build pathways for people with lived experience to join the civic conversation.

We asked four summit participants to share more about the ways they are empowering communities with skills and opportunities to have influence in their local news ecosystem.

Here's a list of frequently asked questions about influencer collaborations to help publishers navigate this sometimes tricky terrain.

We spoke with seven creators who have worked with both local and national newsrooms, and two who were hired to create content for social media sites. One theme came through clearly: successful newsroom-creator partnerships depend on mutual trust, creative freedom and a shared respect for how audiences connect online.

For us, we knew one of our biggest hurdles to success would be challenging the assumptions, both spoken and unspoken, we held for others. Here’s what we’ve learned over the past three years of gathering multigenerational problem-solvers.

We’ve seen students become more confident and eager to get involved in their communities when we provide nonpartisan information that equips students for conversations with local officials and createe the space for them to connect with those local leaders.

When we began asking what kind of stories still mattered to Baca County, we realized many of them weren’t “breaking news” but generational memory. And the paper was the last remaining platform that treated those memories with care and context.