Deep South Today aims to solve the challenges facing local news through a networked hub of nonprofit newsrooms serving the most challenged region in the United States. Our vision is to create an infrastructure for impact-driven newsrooms that allows local players to focus on audience and editorial while receiving support in finance, administration and fundraising from a centralized hub.
Deep South Today newsrooms will have editorial independence and local leadership. Our goal is to build on the lessons learned at Mississippi Today about audience and editorial, and the operations capacity we have established, and apply them to new sister newsrooms, adjusting our practices and processes for efficiency with each launch.
While the newsrooms may have different areas of focus, they will all be centered on serving local readers’ needs and not single-issue or national news. Each newsroom will be asking and answering, “What do people need to know about this region or place? Why does the South matter, and what are the possibilities for its future?”