Month: March 2021

NC Local for March 24: One AAJA leader ‘on living and breathing this’

September 7, 2022March 25, 2021 by Melanie Sill

Check out the full NC Local newsletter from March 24, including details about the new, foundation-funded Border Belt Reporting Center in Whiteville, a few new media job postings, and links to the upcoming Collaborative Journalism Summit hosted by the Center for Cooperative Media. Sign up to get NC Local in your inbox weekly.

By Eric Frederick, NC Local newsletter editor

‘We all have our blind spots. There are a lot of things that we don’t even know we don’t know. And I would hope that everyone is open to critiquing their own assumptions and biases, and working on them. And I think if we all do that together, and if newsrooms really make good on their DEI initiatives, we’re going to be in a much better place in five to 10 years.’

That’s Waliya Lari of Raleigh, director of programs and partnerships for the Asian American Journalists Association. She came to North Carolina in 2013 and spent four and a half years as a news executive producer for WRAL after working years in journalism in Texas, her home state, and in Oklahoma. She joined the AAJA staff this year.

After the tragedy in Atlanta eight days ago, which raised many issues about bias in coverage of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, I got to chat with Lari. She talked about the challenges that face AAPI journalists, and what AAPI communities need from the media. Some of her insights, edited for length:

NC Local for March 17: Project Oasis and local news startup success

September 7, 2022March 17, 2021 by Melanie Sill

Check out the full NC Local newsletter from March 17, including links to coverage of online abuse of women in journalism (and resourcesfor combating such hostility), good work from WSOC-TV’s Joe Bruno, The N&O’s Andrew Carter, and The Daily Tar Heel, and some optimism about local news sustainability)

By Eric Frederick, NC Local newsletter editor

P roject Oasis, which was launched a year ago, is live — and it’s a wellspring of help, information and insight for the local news business.

Oasis is a collaborative initiative to build a database of the more than 700 digital-dominant, independent local news outlets in the United States and Canada, to share insight about how they are working to be sustainable, and to share research on best practices. Partners are the Center for Innovation and Sustainability of Local Media at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media; LION Publishers; the Google News Initiative; and Douglas K. Smith.

First, there’s a database that includes a map and list of all 710 publications, compiled in the middle of 2020 from a survey and research at UNC. You can sort the map and list by things such as location (there are 24 outlets in North Carolina), platforms, revenue stream, tax status (LLC, nonprofiit, sole proprietor, etc.), years in operation and editorial strategy. Each publication also has a profile.

The project also produced the GNI Startups Playbook for news entrepreneurs, with valuable guidance on building a product, finding and expanding an audience, identifying initial sources of funding and revenue, and setting up operations, including templates and a large list of resources. It was written by Ben DeJarnette of LION, with contributors Anika Anand (a LION deputy director and a UNC grad who grew up in Kinston); Conor Crowley of GNI; Phillip Smith of Journalism Growth Lab; and Smith.

And there’s a report that tracks trends in digital-native local news, written by Chloe Kizer, a Durham operations and growth consultant working with the UNC Hussman School. Among its key findings:

NC Local deep dive: Kyle Villemain on his new digital magazine The Assembly and ‘power journalism’ for NC

September 7, 2022March 10, 2021 by Melanie Sill

Check out the full NC Local newsletter from March 10, including a preview of the NC Open Government Coalition’s 2021 Sunshine Day program, leadership transitions at The Daily Tar Heel and Scalawag, job opportunities and some recent standout local journalism

By Eric Frederick, NC Local newsletter editor

Pacing his apartment as the pandemic got real last spring, Kyle Villemain recalls, he thought a lot about something he’d long considered — that local media needed “to go deep on North Carolina.” As long days of rumination passed, he decided he’d have a go at it himself.

Kyle Villemain

Nine months of intense conversation with media and thought leaders led to The Assembly, launched last month as a statewide digital magazine and billed as a place “for stories that aren’t being told — and for those that deserve a deeper look” and one “focused on deep long-form reporting and smart ideas writing.”

After growing up in Carrboro and graduating from UNC in 2015, Villemain, 28, was deputy finance director for a congressional campaign in New Hampshire and then worked as a speechwriter for UNC chancellor Carol Folt and UNC system president Margaret Spellings. After Spellings left UNC in early 2019, Villemain wrote speeches as a freelancer while contemplating what he saw lacking in the state’s news and information landscape.

What he saw, he told me, was a lot of good work but also “how much is going on underneath the surface and how much, if you’re not in the room, you’re not quite privy to what’s happening — and we need more journalism that tries to put people into the room.”

The goal, he says in his introductory piece on the Assembly site, is to redirect some of North Carolinians’ attention to a serious dialogue about the state’s politics, education, media, environment, business and arts. He says he’s emphasizing diversity — in political voices and in the backgrounds of the freelance writers and creatives who will do the work. The name, he says, is “a reference to the act of assembling a state through its disparate parts: people, ideas, and institutions.”

Villemain told me he plans to roll out five to seven long-form stories per month and several more short-form pieces — what he calls “smart ideas writing.” Long-form topics so far include the motivations of state Senate leader Phil Berger, Cecil Staton’s ill-fated tenure as ECU chancellor, and the “historical erasure” of the Black experience in Tarboro and Edgecombe County. There’s also a twice-weekly newsletter.

The Assembly is a C corporation, supported for now by subscribers (as little as $3 a month) and investors. Non-subscribers can read one free story per month. Advertising will play a small role, Villemain told me.

The Assembly is featured in today’s NC Local newsletter. Here’s more of our conversation, edited for length and clarity:

NC Local for Feb. 24: News that ‘sets up camp’ in our minds

September 7, 2022March 1, 2021 by Melanie Sill

By Eric Frederick, NC Local newsletter editor

[Also in the Feb. 24 edition: A new WUNC podcast on poet, lawyer and justice warrior Pauli Murray; free hands-on data training; the legislative fight over public notices; a long list of jobs and learning opportunities; and the latest on media habits from Pew Research. Sign up to get NC Local in your inbox each week]

I want to start this week with the good work because, although this isn’t unusual, there has been a whole lot of it lately: Reporting that holds power to account. Stories that tie the past to the present, and future. Unfinished business that needs our attention. Solutions to consider. Innovation. Challenges to our moral complacency. And many reminders of our shared humanity. It’s all there.

First up: For most of the past year, several blocks just north of Uptown Charlotte were occupied by a tent city of people who had nowhere else to live — until the camp was cleared late last week by order of the Mecklenburg County health director because of a rodent infestation. Many residents were moved temporarily to a shelter motel.

The story brought out a wealth of useful, enlightening and heart-tugging work from the Charlotte-area journalism community. There has been much more than I can possibly mention here, but among the pieces I saw that stood out: