2025 Mississippi Community Journalism Workshop

Sean Mussenden, Ph.D., DataHub Director, Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, and Derek Willis, Lecturer in Data and Computational Journalism, Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland; and Blake Kaplan, Regional Executive Editor, McClatchy

Newsrooms are experimenting with how generative AI can empower them to work more efficiently and to stretch the possibilities of their reporting. 

Researchers from the University of Maryland encouraged local newsrooms to focus on use cases like:

• Turning unstructured text into data, like sports agate and legal notices.

• Surfacing ideas and entities in documents, images and video.

• Creating searchable transcripts from audio and video.

• Experimenting with new story formats.

At McClatchy, reporters are experimenting with building bots that can:

• Monitor a police scanner and send alerts for headline-worthy incidents.

• Listen to celebrity podcasts and deliver a digest of timely topics for follow-up reporting.

• Follow local court cases via online filings and prepare daily summaries.

• Compare whether a proposed headline accurately reflects the content within the story.

Some do’s and don’ts:

• Don’t use AI to generate facts. 

• Do use AI for what it does best: Summarization, transcription, translation, finding needles in haystacks, identifying patterns, idea generation, problem solving.

From Poynter: AI Ethics Guidelines: A Starter Kit for Newsrooms

Director Ed Simpson, Ph.D, Associate Professor Lindsey Maxwell, Ph.D., and Professor Fei Xue, Ph.D., School of Media and Communication, University of Southern Mississippi

The Greene County Herald, a family-owned newspaper since the 1920s, continues to serve a deeply rooted readership in southeastern Mississippi. Located between the larger markets of Hattiesburg and Biloxi, the paper maintains an impressive 73% market penetration. Its owner, Russell Turner, currently supports operations by taking on outside design work — yet the question remains: what does long-term sustainability look like?

To explore that, researchers at the Roy Howard Community Journalism Center at the University of Southern Mississippi selected the Greene County Herald as a micromarket case study. Their goal was to understand what small-town audiences actually want from their local news — and what that means for the future of community journalism.

Using a combination of surveys, interviews and focus groups, researchers conducted a deep audience listening process alongside a content audit of the paper's full year of coverage. Key findings included:

• Local trust still matters: The value of a known, trusted local owner was affirmed by readers. Turner, deeply embedded in the community, is respected — but stretched thin, even missing this presentation to deliver newspapers.

• “Refrigerator journalism” is alive and well: Readers still appreciated seeing names and faces of local people in the print product, confirming that the tradition of personal storytelling remains a powerful draw.

• Opportunity to better align content with interests: Analysis revealed a mismatch between what the Herald covered and what the community wanted to see — specifically, interest in more coverage of local politics and the economy.

• Digital potential remains untapped: There is demand for more timely updates. Researchers pointed to opportunities to introduce digital subscriptions or memberships, and to use social media more effectively to drive real-time engagement and website traffic.

Looking ahead, the Roy Howard Center is continuing its partnership with the Greene County Herald. The next phase will involve testing content prototypes that reflect what the community wants, and exploring how local businesses might support the outlet financially.

Megan Griffith-Greene, Faculty, and Kelly McBride, Senior Vice President, Poynter

This interactive session focused on how news organizations can better understand, articulate, and demonstrate their value to their communities — and why doing so is critical for long-term sustainability, trust and support.

Guidance and perspective from our experts from Poynter:

Journalism is having to find new ways to communicate its own value.
Despite being skilled communicators, journalists have historically struggled to explain the value of their work to the public. People inside journalism assume their audiences understand why their work matters, but in reality, people often don’t see or trust that value. This disconnect can be even more acute when audiences feel excluded or misrepresented.

Communicating value isn’t about PR. It’s about relationships.
Effective communication of a newsroom’s value isn’t about ad campaigns or branding slogans. It’s about having authentic, ongoing conversations with the community — in person and online — about why the work matters and how it serves local needs.

The audience relationship starts with listening.
In the past, newsrooms set their own agenda for coverage; today, news organizations must orient around what the audience wants and needs. The practice of community listening includes understanding what people actually want to know, care about, and need in their daily lives — and using those insights to shape coverage. It's also about including underrepresented voices in both the reporting and staffing.

Trust is built through transparency and relevance.
Audiences want to understand how editorial decisions are made, who is being represented, and why some stories are chosen over others. They value content that is clearly useful, locally grounded, and responsive to their lived experiences. All news organizations — nonprofit and for-profit alike — need to have a clear mission statement and ethical standards visible on their websites. These statements can be unique, tailored to reflect the news organization’s promise to its audience.

Everyone in the newsroom needs to be able to talk about the mission.
Whether at a community event, on social media, or at the grocery store, every member of a newsroom should be able to explain what their outlet does, why it matters, and how it helps the community.

From the funnel to the hourglass.
Rather than casting a wide net to get as many clicks as possible (the traditional funnel model), newsrooms should now focus on deepening engagement with their core audience — forming a more narrow, trust-based relationship that grows over time. This is key not only to subscriptions but to broader community support.

Additional research-backed guidance from Press Forward — Words That Work: Making the Case for Local News

Richard Lake, Director of Video, and Bashirah Mack, Video Producer, Mississippi Today

“Readers are not growing tired of journalism. They are finding it on platforms that resonate with them.”

That was the message of Mississippi Today’s video team, who shared their experience in translating in-depth reporting into short vertical videos in sessions for both our student and professional audiences.

The MT video team sees strong engagement from videos that break down investigations of any type, or show how local, state or national politics affects you. Also working: Stories about weird topics, and big stories related to Mississippi’s college towns.

Among their top tips:

• Scripting is critical: Aim for a sweet spot of 90 seconds — and remember that you only have three seconds to catch the audience’s attention. Speak directly to your audience. 

• Be accessible: The only hard-and-fast rule in vertical video is to make content accessible to the audience. That means breaking down complex topics, and putting reporters themselves on camera in locations that don’t look overly produced.

• Consider staying power: Invest time on videos for topics that have more shelf life and can best stand out among users’ many thousands of options on platforms like TikTok. Videos can build on written reporting, but they can be published later than the original story.

See the work: Mississippi Today TikTok channel

Eric Feder, Director of Local Legal Initiative, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; Charlie Mitchell, Associate Professor, University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media

A new investment from Press Forward’s national infrastructure grants is enabling the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to expand its Local Legal Initiative program to provide free legal support to local journalists and newsrooms. Mississippi is one of two states included in this grant.

About the RCFP Local Legal Initiative
The LLI program provides local news organizations with direct legal services to pursue enterprise and investigative stories in their communities. The Reporters Committee is hiring a dedicated attorney in Mississippi to help local journalists and news organizations:

• Defend their rights to gather and report the news

• Gain access to public records and court proceedings

• Hold state and local government agencies and officials accountable

Additional challenges in Mississippi

In addition to connecting with the national LLI program director, Mississippi journalists raised the everyday legal challenges they face, including:

• Having to wait for Mississippi Ethics Commission processes around open meetings and public records for deadline reporting.

• Lack of knowledge among local elected officials and school board members about open meetings and records laws.

Legal resources from RCFP: https://www.rcfp.org/resources/