Ideastream announced Thursday that it is spearheading an effort to launch a statewide news collaborative with two other NPR affiliates.
Alongside Cincinnati Public Radio and WOSU Public Media in Columbus, Cleveland’s public radio station hopes to create the public radio and digital news service by 2020.
With $70,000 in grant funding from the Gund Foundation, the three anchor stations have hired a market research firm and a consultant, Judith Smelser, a former public media executive who recently helped establish regional journalism collabs in Indiana and Texas.
“Ohio is in a great position to launch a public media journalism collaborative,” Smelser said in a statement provided by Ideastream. “Its stations have a history of working together, both through the Statehouse News Bureau and through informal content sharing among news departments. Deeper collaboration is a natural next step, and I’m looking forward to helping station leaders and journalists design the collaborative that works best for them and for their audiences across the state.”
The collaborative would provide news coverage across Ohio. A press release said that output could include “daily newscasts, a radio program, a website and a daily newsletter,” all of which would be made available to Ohio’s 13 NPR affiliated stations.
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This article appears in Oct 23-29, 2019.
