Neighborhood News Network, Tampa, FL 1999
Partners:
Using a database of more than 300 community groups and media organizations, the Weekly Planet created an email “wire service” for community news to compliment the “Public Life” newsletter launched earlier with Pew support. Grass roots organizations would send the Planet staff news about what they were doing and, about once a week, the Planet would package those stories and send them out via email to some 650 subscribers. The hope was that the community groups would find out where they had projects in common and how they could work together, while at the same time their stories would receive attention from more mainstream media organizations.
As part of the project, journalism students from the University of South Florida and the University of Tampa were tapped to write up the best stories for the Weekly Planet. The partners also planned to use broadcast journalism students to produce a monthly “Neighborhood News Hour” on the public access cable station and were seeking further funding to cover production costs.
Contact:
Ben Eason
President and CEO
Creative Loafing
1310 E. 9th Avenue
Tampa, FL 33605
Phone: (813) 248-8888
Email: ben.eason@creativeloafing.com