National grant to start local journalism centers

A new national initiative to bolster journalism as newspaper staffs shrink will put some reporters to work for Florida public radio and TV stations.

Florida's PBS and NPR stations will share in a $10 million national grant to establish local journalism centers in five regions of the country, according to an announcement today from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Washington, D.C.

Officials at Tampa's WUSF TV and radio operation also announced that Florida's share will be $1.2 million.

The money will be used to hire reporters and editors who will develop stories for WUSF and WEDU in Tampa, as well as WGCU Public Media (Fort Myers), WMFE Public Media (Orlando), WMNF, 88.5 FM (Tampa) and WUFT (Gainesville).

The focus in Florida will be coverage of health care under what is being called "The Healthy State Collaborative." The two-year project will create stories for television, radio and the Internet about health care issues and policy and will include audio, video, text, photos, blogs, social networking and mobile applications.

As the lead station of the collaborative, WUSF Public Broadcasting will be responsible for administering the grant, hiring staff and meeting the goals of the initiative.

There will be eight staff positions created including five reporters, an executive editor, a senior multimedia manager and a "community outreach specialist."

JoAnn Urofsky, general manager of WUSF Public Broadcasting, said a reporter will be stationed at each of the public radio stations in the collaborative and the management will be at WUSF, 89.7 FM, which already has a staff of six.

"We are so pleased to receive this grant," Urofsky said. "The establishment of (local journalism centers) will give us an opportunity to provide programming and content to a wide array of audiences about an issue that is so important to so many Floridians."

The hiring process already has started and the first reports should begin within three months.

"This is a commitment to journalism," said Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit organization created by Congress. "As we look at this environment and the impact on newspapers, we just felt we had to ... try something innovative and ensure that we hired real journalists as part of this initiative."

Experienced journalists shed by failing newspapers could provide a pool of applicants, she said.

The new regional news desks could feed content to national news shows on PBS and NPR, as well as to local stations, officials said.

The goal is to have the local news effort become be self-sustaining within two years, Harrison said. "If it's of value to the community, there's potential to get foundation support or individual support," she said, "even in this troublesome economy."