Sophie Culpepper

1 week ago | niemanlab.org | Sophie Culpepper

Newsrooms in Colorado that once employed hundreds could now “fit around a large dinner table,” Larry Ryckman, publisher and co-founder of The Colorado Sun, told me in December. Leaders at newsrooms like the Sun, seeing the rapid collapse of local news around them, are thinking about how they can do more to compensate for what’s being lost in their own backyards. One model they are betting on: Regional hubs.

1 week ago | niemanlab.org | Sophie Culpepper

Houston, with a population of more than 2.3 million people, is the largest city in Texas — and the Houston Landing had funding to match. The nonprofit news startup raised $20 million well before it began publishing, from the American Journalism Project and the Knight Foundation along with local philanthropies the Houston Endowment, Kinder Foundation, and Arnold Ventures. But less than two years after the Landing officially launched, its board has voted to shut the news outlet down.

2 weeks ago | niemanlab.org | Sophie Culpepper

LINK: splc.org  ➚   |   Posted by: Sophie Culpepper   |   April 7, 2025Some of the gnarliest debates in my student newsroom were over granting anonymity and takedown requests. As staff writers and editors, we were taught to consider our duty to our readers when granting anonymity — and weigh that seriously against the risks a given source may face if named. Takedown requests, meanwhile, required a vote from our board of directors, including its student members.

4 weeks ago | niemanlab.org | Sophie Culpepper

As LinkedIn post ledes go, Spotlight PA CEO and editor Christopher Baxter’s on a post last week was intriguing: “I recently had lunch with a staunch, pro-Trump Republican and highly successful business leader, and his views on local news changed my own.” In the post, Baxter, the founding editor of the six-year-old nonprofit local newsroom focused on investigative and public-service statewide journalism, goes on to describe how what began as a “sharply partisan” conversation uncovered common...

1 month ago | niemanlab.org | Sophie Culpepper

LINK: www.wunc.org  ➚   |   Posted by: Sophie Culpepper   |   March 11, 2025If you care about public media and have read any news mentioning the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2025, chances are it’s been something scary / depressing / grim about how the president wants to defund it (not a new threat, but one that feels more real than it did a few years ago). That’s why an announcement Tuesday morning from WUNC caught my eye.