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Greetings all, it’s Wednesday, August 12th. Sometimes Plan B is just what you need. Last week, NC Local’s Lilly Knoepp planned a listening hike for The Trailhead (if you’re not getting this terrific weekly newsletter yet, sign up here). Summer thunderstorms popped up on the radar, so Lilly rounded up our partners on the hike, Mainspring Conversation Trust and Friends of Panthertown, along with a handful of other local environmental leaders, at a lovely spot along the Tuckaseegee River in Dillsboro, Innovation Brewing. We chatted about state and federal policies impacting environmental work throughout WNC, from Helene recovery on trails to restoration of stream banks. We also learned about new funding recently passed in the state budget for the Wildlife Highway Crossing program. Many years and partners led up to this historic initiative, which provides $10 million in recurring funds to make North Carolina’s transportation infrastructure safer for people and animals.
Earlier in the day, I had the opportunity to meet Sylva Herald Editor Dave Russell (who also gave me a delightful tour of the Appalachian Women’s Museum, where he sits on the board). The 100+ year old Herald is still family-owned and has played a vital role in the community, covering town council, county commission and other local news as well as sports, arts and culture, outdoor recreation, local businesses and economic development. Dave loves what he does, but is on a path to retirement and looking for a new editor.
“The job doesn’t pay much and there’s no penthouse or revolving door, little in the way of benefits (we have health insurance), and we work in a building that was ‘modern’ in 1974,” writes Dave in a job posting. But he adds there are lots of other benefits: “Sylva and Jackson County are wonderful places to live. The people are a treasure, the weather is great and traffic is rare.”
Plus, they run a four-day work week! Interested or know someone who might be? Check out this job posting and get in touch with Dave.
Today, I’m in Sanford for more community listening, so this week’s newsletter is on the compact side. But we do have some important resources to share with you, so let’s jump right in.
Glad you’re here, let’s get started. |
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C-SPAN’s Road to the Capitol partners with NC Local & other newsrooms to expand access to election coverage |
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Through the C-SPAN portal, newsrooms can download full videos or clips of candidate speeches and events. (Screenshot Roy Cooper event in July) |
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As newsrooms around the country have shrunk, so has their capacity to cover elections. To help fill that gap, C-SPAN's launched the "Road to the Capitol" initiative with philanthropic support from the Knight, MacArthur and Andrew Carnegie Foundations, along with More Perfect. C-SPAN aims to support small newsrooms in states with competitive House, Senate and gubernatorial races. North Carolina is one of those states, and NC Local is among the earliest partners on this initiative. Other nonprofit and independent newsrooms can also sign up, so we called up Rachel Katz, C-SPAN's manager for affiliate relations to learn more.
Tell us about the Road to the Capitol initiative and your reporter in North Carolina.
Rachel Katz: Right now we are in six states already, one of them North Carolina. We have a great journalist, Kevin Myers, who has been embedded in North Carolina and Georgia. He splits his time between the two, and he is going to House, Senate, gubernatorial races, covering events from start to finish, and then providing that content to local newsrooms. In true C-SPAN style, we cover everything from start to finish. We're giving the embed code so people can use it to embed right on their websites. You can download it. We have the transcript, so if you're writing something or want a direct quote, and they're all time-coded, you can go straight to the video. And he's giving some background on the event, so not just what the campaign said would be talked about at the event. After the event is over, there's a description about what was said and what the meat was of the event. And then he's gonna pull a couple clips from each event that can be posted straight to social media, or you can go and make your own clips, but those clips will also be embeddable, downloadable, and have transcripts.
You are focusing on House, Senate and gubernatorial races. Is this primarily coverage of candidates on the campaign trail?
Rachel Katz: Most of it is candidates on the campaign trail, but not always the big events that you would think of. We do meet and greets in diners. We've done meet and greets in people's homes. We've done short 10-minute stints where candidates are giving a speech somewhere. We're trying to get to some of the bigger events, but a lot of people are covering those bigger events, so it's really sending these journalists out to some of the smaller events that may not have video coverage of them. There may be journalists at all of those events, but there may not be that video record, and that's one of the things that C-SPAN finds really important, is having a video record of all of these different events that will live in this portal for all of our partners in North Carolina, but also live in C-SPAN's video library so that people across the country will have access to all of these events, and to see the small event that's happening in one of the big cities, but also the even smaller event that's happening in small towns and rural areas in different communities across the state.
Obviously some newsrooms may be most interested in what's happening in North Carolina, but everything is interconnected. That's sort of the whole point of this, that one House or Senate race in North Carolina is important to the state, but it's also important to the entire country. So you won't be limited to just seeing the content from North Carolina. You'll be able to see the content from all the states that we're going to. So if there's an issue that you're reporting on, or you want to see that this race may be affected by what's happening in Georgia or in Maine or in Ohio, you also will have access to all of that content as well.
You're providing this free to newsrooms to fill some capacity gaps. What's expected of newsrooms who sign up?
Rachel Katz: We want this to be a partnership between C-SPAN and local newsrooms of all sizes. We certainly understand the ecosystem of news these days and different newsrooms, and we want to be a partner with them and we want you to use the content. There's a little bit of crediting C-SPAN when you use the content in one of your stories. And there'll be a handful of surveys throughout the next couple months, just asking for some examples of what did you use and how did you use it, and what's the process like for you? Does this work? Does this not work?
This is new to us. We have stood this up only for a couple of months here, and we are learning along the way. November is coming very rapidly, and we can't change that, so we have to just be amenable to change along the way. We want to work with our partners to hear what works, what doesn't work, what content are you looking for, are we providing what you need, is the portal easy to use? We'll ask for some examples of what you're using and how you're using it: on social, digital, print?
We hope that this is something that we can continue, that this isn't a project that just ends at the end of 2026. Every two years there is an election, and the next one obviously includes a presidential election, so it is something that is then elevated even more. If this works and if we're getting honest and good feedback on things that we can change and not change, then maybe it is something that we can continue to do going forward.
Anything I haven't asked you that you want to share?
Rachel Katz: I welcome anybody to reach out to me that has any interest in this, even if you're only covering one issue like education or healthcare. If you want access to this to see what those candidates are saying about that, then reach out and we can have a conversation. It's very quick. I'll ask a couple of questions, I’ll answer your questions and then we just want to get people access to this content. That has always been C-SPAN's mission, is to get people access to their government. We do it in a variety of ways, through our call-in programs and through what we air on C-SPAN, but this is now a new elevated way to be able to get this content to the local newsrooms, to the people who are gonna be voting. We want everyone to be able to have access to this.
Want to sign up for C-SPAN's Road to the Capitol initiative?
Get in touch with Rachel at rkatz@c-span.org. She'll schedule a short conversation with you to learn about your news organization and answer any questions. |
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NC Local Opportunity!
Help us cover & connect Alamance County |
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The Alamance Fabric is a weekly news initiative for Alamance County, a diverse and growing county in the central Piedmont region of North Carolina.
The Fabric is powered by NC Local, a statewide nonprofit newsroom. NC Local operates as a hub of development for new initiatives, journalism and services that shed light on issues shaping North Carolina.
We’re seeking freelance reporters for original stories about Alamance County to be included in the weekly newsletter, The Alamance Fabric. In the first six months, we focused on growth & development, community voices and education. We strongly recommend taking a look at prior editions of the newsletter to get a sense of the kind of stories the Fabric publishes.
We are looking for pitches that demonstrate strong reporting and writing skills. We'd love to hear from you! Please submit pitches to NC Local through this form. |
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Bulletin Board |
Jobs |
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📌 Assistant Editor, Mount Airy News
📌 Staff Writer, The Daily News, Jacksonville
📌 News Editor, The Graham Star, Robbinsville
📌 Sports Editor, The Franklin Press
📌 Editor, The Sylva Herald
📌 Investigative Reporter, WRAL, Raleigh
📌 Podcast Producer, WFDD, Winston-Salem
📌 News Reporter/Host, WHQR, Wilmington
📌 Fill-in Announcer, WHQR, Wilmington
📌 Political Correspondent, Cardinal & Pine (Remote) 💰 📌 Story Desk Editor , WFMY News 2, Greensboro
📌 Reporter, The Gaston Gazette, USA Today, Gastonia
📌 Editorial Lead, Democracy Notes (Remote) 💰
📌 Audience analytics manager, The 19th (Remote) 💰
📌 Designer, visual storytelling, The 19th (Remote) 💰
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Resources, opportunities & events |
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🌱 NYT Local Investigations Fellowship: Applications are open for the 2027-28 cohort of local investigative fellows, who spend a year on an investigative project focused on their state or region, receiving guidance from Dean Baquet, The Times’s former executive editor, and a group of veteran investigative editors. Open to staff reporters and freelancers, fellows are based in the communities where they are reporting and make periodic trips to The Times’s offices for training and support. Application deadline: August 21.
📅 Legal briefing: election-season compliance for nonprofit news organizations. This virtual event hosted by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press will address two key questions about IRS compliance that they hear from news organizations during an election year, namely “to what extent may nonprofit news organizations accept political advertising,” and “What are best practices for nonprofits covering political candidates during an election cycle?” The event is led by David Miller (Proskauer LLP) and Gabe Rottman (RCFP). August 26, 3 pm ET.
🌱 U.S. Democracy Reporting Grants: The Pulitzer Center is offering special grants for reporting on democracy in the United States. They’re open to ambitious story ideas from a big-picture story or a series of stories. Top themes include voting rights, civil and free-speech rights, transparency of elections, and investigations into how federal and state government agencies are carrying out their work. The application is open to newsroom staff reporters and editors, and freelancers who would work closely with a newsroom committed to editing and publishing a text, multimedia, or broadcast project. Application deadline: August 31.
🌱 The South Atlantic Climate Journalism Hub: Hosted and convened by the non-profit Covering Climate Now, the South Atlantic Climate Journalism Hub is a regional partnership of newsrooms and journalists in the exceptionally climate-vulnerable US states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. Through a robust mentorship program, on-demand support, in-person and virtual events, and region-specific resources, the Hub aims to strengthen and increase local coverage highlighting the vast impacts of climate change stretching from the Atlantic coast to the Appalachian Mountains. There is no cost to join and no membership fees. Apply now.
📅 Local News Camp Durham: Blue Engine Collaborative, BlueLena and Newspack are hosting a three-day hands-on, collaborative gathering for local news organizations to tackle challenges and find solutions to immediately put to use in your business models. Subjects include: Implementing AI in your business operations; Marketing; Product development; Being an elite salesperson; Making money with video; Expanding into new markets and more. October 14-16.
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That's it for this week. Thank you Diara Townes for helping me update this week's bulletin board! Got something you'd like to share in The Hub? Get in touch anytime by replying to this newsletter or send me a note to catherine@nclocal.org. Thank you all for being a part of this community & know you are appreciated for all you contribute to the NC news and information ecosystem. — Catherine |
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