Two local newsrooms have been selected for the second round of Open Campus’s local story partnerships. These collaborations encourage in-depth reporting focused on higher education.
The newsrooms are MinnPost and Honolulu Civil Beat. Both are nonprofit newsrooms and, like Open Campus, are part of the Institute for Nonprofit News, a membership organization of several hundred independent news outlets.
The newsrooms were selected from a pool of more than a dozen story pitches. MinnPost and Civil Beat’s projects focus on college access and workforce training.
In the partnerships, Open Campus awards newsrooms up to $10,000 to report an ambitious, local higher ed story. Open Campus editors collaborate with the teams behind the chosen projects, offering higher education expertise, data analysis, and editing support.
The initiative aims to deepen local coverage of higher education around the country, particularly in rural areas. The partnerships expand on the existing Open Campus Local Network, which already supports dedicated reporters on the higher-ed beat in 14 markets.
Open Campus has already completed projects with The Assembly in North Carolina and The Montana Free Press and has projects ongoing with Arizona Luminaria and The Salt Lake Tribune. The Assembly’s reporting detailed the struggles of an online-education initiative. Shortly after it published, the initiative’s CEO stepped down.
Open Campus plans to take additional story pitches in the future. The projects are made possible through support from Ascendium Education Group.
About Open Campus
Founded in 2019, Open Campus is the only nonprofit news organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to higher education. It’s built on an innovative collaborative model, combining a national newsroom that knows higher ed deeply with local newsrooms that know their communities deeply. Open Campus has put local reporters on the higher-ed beat in partnerships with 12 newsrooms around the country. Learn more about our model.