Improving News, Improving Community

On the future-of-news beat, it’s easy to see which projects and innovations get the most attention. From automation to augmented-reality, the more experimental the idea, the brighter the spotlight; not to mention the more funding it can hope to attract. But when it comes to local news in underserved areas, sometimes the most welcome addition to the media landscape is pure manpower. To that end, “Write for Arkansas” is a project to improve and increase local news coverage by placing five reporters in existing newsrooms throughout the state for two years, in areas that needed it the most.

The project is funded in large part by a Knight Community Information Challenge grant and was organized by the Arkansas Community Foundation. “The landscape of media is changing -- people are getting their information in new and different ways,” says ACF’s communications director, Sarah Kinser. “In many cases that may mean that they know more about national news from what they see on television or on the Internet than they do about what’s going on in their own local government. That’s particularly true in some communities in Arkansas, because we are a rural state.” Write for Arkansas wants to reverse that trend.