School of Journalism and Communication

Agora Journalism Center

The forum for the future of local news and civic health

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:

News & Media Organizations
Community Organizations
& Voices
Academics & Educators

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.

Andrew DeVigal
@drewvigal
Regina Lawrence
@lawrenceregina

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.

The Eight Dimensions of a Civic Story

Eight years of listening to 2,118 Oregonians, across seven information needs assessments, reveals what people need from local news to take part in civic life. This report introduces the eight civic jobs they described and the Civic Story Rubric behind the Oregon Civic Beat and Newsstand.

Read The Report