New School University, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts

The Journalism + Design Lab (the Lab), housed at The New School University, is dedicated to building and nurturing resilient and equitable news systems for the future. It grew out of the Journalism + Design major, which was launched at the university in 2014 to bring design thinking – an approach to product design in which feedback from users is factored into the creation process – to the practice of journalism. The Lab works with newsrooms and community-based partners to carry out research and integrate the practices of design thinking into local reporting, with the goal of reaching and engaging new audiences and responding to the news and information needs of those in news deserts. This grant provides flexible support to the Journalism + Design Lab to carry out a set of activities to scale its approach to developing community news networks to meet the news and information needs of diverse local communities.

The Journalism + Design Lab (the Lab), housed at New School University, is dedicated to building and nurturing resilient and equitable news systems for the future. It grew out of the Journalism + Design major, which was launched at the university in 2014 to bring design thinking – an approach to product design in which feedback from users is factored into the creation process – to the practice of journalism. The Lab partners with newsrooms and community-based partners to carry out research and integrate the practices of design thinking into local reporting, with the goal of reaching and engaging new audiences and responding to the news and information needs of those in news deserts. This project grant supports the Lab to partner with community groups in five underserved areas around the country – from rural towns to immigrant communities – to identify and nurture community news networks where they already exist, and to build them where they do not. Its goal is to strengthen and expand informal news mechanisms already serving those communities, such as WhatsApp groups, church flyers, and block association newsletters to create sustainable community news networks that help bridge the gap in local news and information created by a declining professional news industry. Learnings from each location will be documented and shared broadly as “proof of concept” for the development of a national network of community news networks to meet the news and information needs of underserved communities.