Agora Journalism Center – The forum for the future of local news and civic health in Oregon and beyond

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Reporting on Ranked Choice Voting in Portland’s 2024 Elections: Resources for Journalists and Editors

In June 2024, Agora Journalism Center collaborated with Sightline and North Star Civic Foundation to offer a training for journalists covering Portland’s first use of ranked choice voting this November.

How one SOJC class is building community trust in media

Engaging Students in Community-Centric Journalism to Bridge Information Gaps and Strengthen Relationships

Redefining News: A Manifesto for Community-Centered Journalism

Community-focused model of journalism prioritizes listening to and collaborating with communities to produce relevant, equitable and impactful news and storytelling.

Engaging the Emergence of Civic Media Ecosystems

As a precursor to the Online News Association’s national conference in Philadelphia, 120 community-driven innovators assembled at Temple University to address this question: “How do we advance journalism for all?”

Assessing Oregon’s Local News & Information Ecosystem

Connecting news, information, and civic health

University of Oregon students test a new framework for dialogue-driven reporting

Shifting from a scarcity mindset to one of abundance widens the lens of what’s possible

How listening sessions and a statewide media collaboration can help re-earn the trust of the public

January 6th, Disinformation, & the Critical Role of Community-Centered News

Focusing on disinformation turns our attention away from its opposite: high quality, fact-based, inclusive, and trusted information

Our Renewed Vision

We believe that vibrant local information ecosystems are critical to civic health—the ability of communities to work together to address shared problems.

Welcome to Agora

The Agora Journalism Center is focused on strengthening the local information landscape through fostering and nurturing community-centered journalism. Our four pillars are:

Building a collaborative, sustained laboratory for improving the local information ecosystem in Portland and Oregon
Creating and sharing research, case studies, tool kits and insights to disseminate across the news industry and throughout the nation
Pioneering a rigorous, ongoing assessment of the health of information ecosystems in Oregon
Developing curriculum focused on how media can innovate to regain relevance and purpose through community-centered journalism

As a program of the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism & Communication since 2015, we learn and engage primarily with our home region in the Pacific Northwest, but share and collaborate with the wider world through research, publications, digital platforms, and live events.

Let’s create healthy local information ecosystems together
Learn how we hope to engage with you, and please take a survey on the following linked pages so we can start on the right foot:

**Community Organizations**
**& Voices**

Leadership at the intersection of practice and theory

Andrew DeVigal, Agora’s director, won two Emmys for groundbreaking storytelling as the multimedia editor at the New York Times. Regina Lawrence, associate dean and research director, is a widely published authority on political communication, journalism, and civic engagement. Together, they advance the practice of community-centered journalism with a national profile at a local scale.

A strong foundation for a new chapter

In its first six years, before the pandemic and the wrenching 2020 election cycle, Agora Journalism Center established a focus on innovative civic engagement by journalists and the media. These reports, publications, projects, and tools have deeply informed our redoubled attention to understanding and improving civic health through local storytelling.

Advancing Community-Centered Journalism

A practical and provocative set of lessons and experiences for journalists who are new to the community-centered approach and those already practicing it. Damian interviews over a dozen leading thinkers and practitioners about how CCJ is implemented in various news organizations.

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Engaged Journalism: Listening to Salem’s Hispanic Community

Professor DeVigal’s Engaged Journalism class conducted a study to survey Salem’s Hispanic community’s information needs and assets. This report aims to summarize the study findings and provide recommendations to address the gap in the existing information landscape.

Read The Report

Assessing Oregon’s Local News & Information Ecosystem 2022

This report represents one step toward assessing the state of local news in Oregon and what can be done to strengthen it. Counting and mapping Oregon’s local news producers will track further changes. And by looking at initiatives underway around the country, Oregon’s newsrooms, educators, funders, and policy-makers can consider emerging innovations to build the vitality of Oregon’s local news that mean communities’ information needs.

Read The Report

The 2022 Doers Gathering explored community-centric approaches to funding and resource distribution

We invited an inspiring group of “Doers” to share their projects and visions for transforming our relationship with the land, our natural resources, and each other. The event offered the opportunity to explore promising community-centric approaches to funding and equitable resource distribution.

More About The Project

University of Oregon students test a new framework for dialogue-driven reporting

17 students in DeVigal’s engaged journalism class used the Generative Dialogue Framework (GDF) to host small-group conversations with folks across the U.S., asking them about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and their perspectives on the new vaccine.

More About The Project

Gather supports community-centered journalism and the journalists behind them

The project and platform help make journalism more responsive to the public’s needs and more inclusive of the public’s voices and diversity, helping journalists, educators, and students find each other, resources and mentorship.

More About The Project