More journalism startups are building their businesses around a community-first approach

Award-winning journalist, educator and former SOJC senior instructor, Lisa Heyamoto shares her insights on the intersection of media startups and community-centered journalism. As the director of Teaching & Learning at Local Independent Online News Publishers, she’s seeing that “the path to a successful news business isn’t simply about doing great journalism — it’s about meeting communities where they are, understanding their information and civic needs and providing clear utility and value.” In September, Lisa served as the guest curator on Gather, the platform led by the Agora Journalism Center to support community-minded journalists.


Gather will offer a platform to explore questions around community engagement

The Agora Journalism Center at the School of Journalism and Communication (SOJC) at the University of Oregon is launching a digital community that the launch team hopes will serve as a space for anyone interested in questions around how to make “journalism more responsive to the public’s needs, more representative of the public’s diversity, and more inclusive of the public’s voices.”