BeaverCountian.com has joined the Pittsburgh Media Partnership, a collaborative of more than 40 newsrooms working to strengthen local journalism across southwestern Pennsylvania.
The partnership is housed within the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University in Downtown Pittsburgh and serves Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Lawrence, Washington and Westmoreland counties. Its purpose is to support and promote local journalism across the region for the public’s benefit.
The idea is simple: news outlets that often compete for the same readers are better off when they work together. The partnership encourages collaboration among member outlets, develops and distributes resources, and builds capabilities that smaller newsrooms like BeaverCountian.com struggle to afford on their own.
At the center of the effort is a shared newsroom that brings together professional journalists, recent graduates and students to fill gaps in local news reporting. Stories produced there are made available to member outlets for publication. The partnership also places student interns with its members and runs programs and events aimed at helping newsrooms carry out their missions, creating pathways into journalism careers along the way.
For BeaverCountian.com, which has covered Beaver County since January 2011, the partnership means more collaboration with fellow journalists, more resources for its operation and more attention on the issues that matter to taxpayers here.
Other members of the partnership include news organizations very familiar to Beaver Countians, including KDKA, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, TribLIVE, Pittsburgh Business Times, and the Beaver County Times.
The move by BeaverCountian.com follows another recent addition. In August, Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic began providing the publication with free, ongoing legal support through its Local Journalism Project, funded by The Heinz Endowments and The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Learn more about the Pittsburgh Media Partnership at PghMediaPartnership.org.
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