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Key Findings

Click on each heading to read more.

  • Engagement is Key:

    Robust and frequent content begets more content and whets the interest of potential contributors. The sites that have engaged their communities in multiple ways show the most promise.

  • Citizen journalism is a high-churn, high-touch enterprise:

    Citizen journalism math is working out this way: Fewer than one in 10 of those you train will stick around to be regular contributors. Even then, they may be “regular” for only a short period of time. Projects that expected to generate content by training a corps of citizen journalists had to develop alternative plans for stories or they struggled with little compelling content.

  • Sweat equity counts for a lot:

    Projects built on the grit and passion of a particular founder or corps of founders have created the most robust models for short- and long-term sustainability.

  • Community news sites are not a business yet:

    While many all-volunteer sites are showing great promise for sustainability, other site founders want to develop their sites as a sustainable business that can pay staff or contributors.

  • Social media is game changing:

    Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools are ushering in a New Age for Community News, creating robust recruiting, marketing, distribution, collaboration, reporting and funding opportunities.

  • Technology can be a blessing and a curse:

    Community news sites would not exist without the tech tools for building easy websites and creating digital content. However, efforts to build custom websites led to frequent and lengthy delays and repeated advice to start simply.

  • Legacy news outlets are not yet in the game:

    Projects that counted on partnerships with legacy news outlets ultimately found it best to go it alone as newsroom cutbacks left editors with no time to partner. Once launched, though, the New Voices projects found that partners came knocking.

  • The academic calendar is not good enough:

    University-led projects built with student journalists need to operate year-round to avoid losing momentum and community trust. They hold great promise but must surmount great hurdles.

  • Youth media should be supplemental:

    Projects that sought to train middle or high school students to report on news in their community produced infrequent content and fell prey to high trainer turnover and a need for great supervision. They should be secondary or tertiary, not primary, generators of content.

  • Community radio needs help:

    While showing promise as community news outlets, community radio as well as cable access television stations need additional support and stable project leadership to deliver daily newscasts.

  • More numbers:

    Not all New Voices projects are still online. Several project managers outline what went wrong to cause their news site to shutter.

It is always hard to measure a moving target. The New Voices projects continue to adapt to their realities and most have demonstrated a hearty resilience. Several continue to confound our expectations - in good ways. Although we cite numerous specific examples, these anecdotes reflect overall experiences. It must also be noted that J-Lab, over the last five years, has evolved, too, adjusting some of rules of the road to foster success. 

The New Voices projects continue to adapt to their realities and continue to confound our expectations—in good ways.

While sustainability is a key interest of J-Lab and the Knight Foundation, we also examine, as a measure of success, other markers of community impact and meeting community information needs.

While the majority of the New Voices grantees judged their efforts to be both successful and sustainable, we pose an overarching question: 

What if it’s more important for a community’s demand for news and information to be whetted and sustained by a community news venture rather than for a particular community news site to operate continuously? 

It is too early to tell, but we would expect that if a robust New Voices site faltered in the future, the community would see to it that another takes its place.

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