Should a Colorado Library Publish Local News?

From the Columbia Journalism Review:

Voters in Longmont—who previously approved a publicly owned fiber-optic broadband network, and now have some of the fastest internet speeds in the nation—could be asked to consider new taxes to fund a “library district,” a special governmental subdivision that would operate a community library. Roughly a dozen residents are pushing to explore the library district to include some form of community news component.

What a tax-funded, library-governed local news operation would actually look like in practice is so far unclear—it’s early and the group is still hammering out ideas. Some proponents have talked about the possibilities of a newsroom, a print publication, and doing audio and video production. On his personal blog, Longmont resident Scott Converse, who runs the local nonprofit site Longmont Observer, recently suggested the community write editorial independence “into the library tax district bylaws…to ensure the newsroom focuses on the needs of the community and not any special interests.” Newspapers, he wrote, “are on that same continuum of knowledge sharing and learning that libraries have been brilliant at for centuries.”

Read the Complete Article (approx. 1140 words)

See Also: The Libraries Bringing Small-Town News Back to Life (via The Atlantic; Jan. 28, 2018)

See Also: Its Paper Closed, One Community Bounced Back With a Librarian In Charge (via Poynter; Jan. 11, 2018)

Filed under: Journal Articles, Libraries, News