The Miami Herald is one of the five newspapers part of J-Lab’s Networked Journalism Project, and compared to the other papers, the Herald is taking a different approach to community coverage with West Kendall Today. The site is hosted on MiamiHerald.com as part of its community news network, and it’s authored by Ana Acle-Menendez, who once worked for the Herald in the same community. She was approached by the newspaper with the idea, reports Mark Briggs in Poynter.org.
Acle-Menendez says she enjoys not having to worry about technology or advertising, and she shares content with the paper. The downside? “All the community channels on The Miami Herald’s website look the same, except for the colors at the top and the logos,” she tells Poynter. “I can’t design it differently or add a bell/whistle that the others won’t have.” The Poynter story doesn’t get into the numbers — Acle-Menendez owns the site, but the financial arrangement is unclear.
There are many shades of collaboration between entrepreneurial journalists and local media, all struggling to find that balance. But the balance isn’t the same for everyone. Some journalists want more control, others want less. And at the same time, there’s that nasty word “scale,” which is beginning to matter more as deep-pocket competitors like AOL’s Patch and Yahoo move into the same space.