Lately, I’ve been less interested in fixing journalism’s problems. Not because I don’t care, but because after nearly 20 years of trying, I’ve realized the work we need to do starts somewhere else.
I’ve worked in newsrooms of every size, from newspapers and startups to radio, nonprofits and for-profits. I’ve won awards, been a Pulitzer finalist, built teams and burned out. After all that, I’m now focused on what happens upstream, before journalism begins.
Instead of only obsessing about information, I’m more interested in what people already know and their desire to learn more. When neighbors share what they know and ask what they don’t, they build understanding and civic confidence.
That shift pushed me to look beyond newsrooms toward fields rooted in knowledge, connection, memory and place, and toward spaces that truly invite people in. It led me to libraries.
To me, the library is the needle that threads conversation, connection, storytelling and journalism through community life.
That is the spirit of the Library Newsroom Project, which I founded in December 2023. The project tests what happens when journalism lives inside public libraries as a tool for connection, media literacy and collective civic storytelling. I built a newsroom in one branch, and I believe we can do this in more than 16,000 public library buildings across the United States. This is the focus of my time at Stanford as a 2026 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow.
What follows is a call to action, a calling card and a working draft of what’s possible.
We Built A Newsroom In A Library to See What Would Happen
It started in Sunset Park, a multicultural and multilingual neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York with a library that had just reopened after a lengthy renovation. It’s a beautiful branch with 49 affordable housing units built above it.
Instead of approaching this experiment with the newsroom instinct to ask: What’s the output? (a fair question), I began with different ones. How do we connect? How do we have better conversations? How do we serve? What can we teach? How do people make something? How do they feel ownership and empowerment instead of extraction?
Over the next few months, we planned with staff and shaped what the first public sessions could look like. But the true beginning was October 26, 2024, a warm Saturday at Sunset Park Library, when we first gathered with neighbors. About 20 of us sat in the community room for lunch and conversation. Some weren’t sure what the gathering was. Some came simply because lunch was being served, which would have been reason enough for me too.
We started with a simple prompt: Imagine your best friend visiting Sunset Park for the first time. They’ve heard so much about it, and now you get to show them what makes this neighborhood special.
Each person marked three cherished spots on a map and shared the stories tied to those places.
That afternoon set the tone.
About eight months later, in June 2025, with support from Brooklyn Public Library, the Library Newsroom Project published the first issue of the Sunset Park Sun, a community-driven, co-created publication. Everything, from the name (after several rounds of voting) and design (shaped through multiple prototypes) to the written stories and shared events, came from the community in some way.
Now, in November 2025, we’ve published six consecutive issues, with a total of more than 2,000 copies, and the December and January issues are already in the works. Some stories we have published so far include:
- A neighbor named Diana traced her lifelong relationship with the Sunset Park Library, from wandering the 1960s Carnegie building to bringing her grandchildren into the newly renovated branch. Her story preserves six decades of neighborhood history through one person’s eyes and shows how a place becomes part of a family’s life.
- Judith, a pickleball player, noticed construction delays at the rec center and pressed city agencies until she secured a new completion date. Her persistence showed what civic confidence looks like in practice. Alongside her update, we published a clear step-by-step on who she called and how she found answers.
- Ahdya wrote a direct, accessible explainer on what the Rent Guidelines Board’s latest rent increases mean for Sunset Park tenants. It clarified who is affected, how to check rent stabilization status and where residents can turn for help. It is the kind of local service journalism that does not often reach people in this form.
- Each month, two friends and neighbors, Maureen and Carmen, publish “What’s Behind the Menu,” a feature that explores the people behind local restaurants and shops. Their latest story traces the 68 year history of George’s Restaurant and shows how a family-run diner adapts to waves of immigration, shifting tastes and changing street life. It is local storytelling that blends memory, business history and neighborhood pride.
Some might call it a newspaper, a magazine, a zine or a bulletin. It is. But it is also a classroom and a signal. It is a classroom where everyone involved learns how stories are told, how information is gathered and checked and how media is made. Project leads, including myself, support anyone who’s just starting out. We offer guidance on how to write and tell stories, coaching on how to ask questions and who to call. We help with the visual side of things too, like photos and illustrations for each issue. People also learn by doing, together, which gives the work a shared foundation. And it is a physical signal to the neighborhood that their stories matter.
It’s worth noting that the group follows editorial guidelines. No one is out there flailing. And while we don’t follow AP Style, our editorial process produces a thoughtful artifact each month. The project doesn’t publish rumors, national politics or anything that isn’t about or doesn’t affect Sunset Park. We focus on stories about people, history and the issues that shape daily life in the neighborhood. Stories are edited and fact-checked by me and one library staffer, and everyone participates willingly. Subjects are not surprised by the stories; most have seen their piece before it is published. Working through this editorial process shows people how information is created and makes journalism feel less like something done to a community and more like something built with them.
Since the start, we’ve engaged nearly 200 people, with many returning for more than one session. We’ve held more than two dozen gatherings, shared meals every time, watched two documentaries, mapped favorite places, told stories and hosted a wage-theft workshop in Spanish and Chinese in partnership with Documented, a nonprofit newsroom that covers immigration in New York.
And we did all of this for just over $11,000 in 18 months, which covered printing and meals, not the labor. That work came from me and a handful of volunteers.
Most importantly, we’ve built a passionate and growing group of about 25 residents who show up for each other and for the Sunset Park Sun.
We meet in a physical space and make a physical thing together. Each month, what we create is printed, distributed and held. There is no Substack or interactive website. The slowness is by design. We want people to hold it, touch it and seek it out. The biggest complaint we get is that people can’t find it. I tell them to go to the library at the beginning of every month and ask for it, and if you walk around the neighborhood, you’ll find a few stacks tucked away somewhere.
That physicality gives the work its value, adding presence to information, relationships and the neighborhood itself. This is active engagement with your neighborhood and your neighbors.
That physical presence matters even more because local news is much thinner than it once was. According to Medill’s State of Local News 2025 report, almost 40% of all local U.S. newspapers have vanished, leaving 50 million Americans with limited or no access to reliable local news. On top of that, stories from our blocks and hallways don’t always meet an editor’s definition of news. Yet information still moves through Sunset Park every day. It flows through stoops, bakeries, bodegas, parks, church basements and WeChat threads. The Sunset Park Sun turns those everyday exchanges into a shared public record, a place where neighbors make sense of things together and leave a trail others can follow.
When the Library Newsroom Project work began, I was thinking about how to fill the informational gaps, and the cultural and social ones that sit alongside them. Even now, as we come out of COVID, many people feel isolated and disconnected. Opportunities to connect are scarce. Earlier this year, I sat at a small rectangular table with five residents. Each mentioned an event the others hadn’t heard about but said they would have gone to if they’d known. Even in a world of TikTok, Instagram and newsletters, and in a dense neighborhood like Sunset Park, finding each other is still hard. That kind of presence — real, shared and local — is exactly what we need to move society forward.
We’ve built the beginnings of something that belongs to Sunset Park, open to anyone who finds it, shaped by the people who show up and growing more confident in asking questions, telling stories and supporting one another in the process. They are civically engaged. They practice journalism. They come to the library. Together, they connect the community, the library and the flow of local news and information that surrounds everyone who lives here.
We Can Do More
The Sunset Park Sun shows what’s possible when journalism begins in the library with questions, shared learning and service, and when neighbors help make sense of their own community and the world around them. Without more places like this, the gap between institutions and communities will keep growing.
There are roughly 16,000 public library buildings in the United States, and we can do what I’ve done in Sunset Park 16,000 times. What if every one of them became a newsroom? Imagine a country where every branch has a bulletin, a place to ask questions and a space to share what neighbors know in an ongoing, structured and joyful way. Hundreds of thousands of residents making sense of their own communities. A million small, informed actions that build civic confidence. Even now, my heart races thinking about it.
I grew up in a family that relied on public systems to get by, with union jobs, public schools, free lunches, food stamps and the local library. These things held us up with both substance and sustenance when nothing else did. I think about that a lot now, especially as those systems are stretched thin, threatened and crumbling. A library is a space that is open, free and generous at a time when others increasingly are not. Working at the intersection of journalism and libraries feels like a way to strengthen the promise of a public space that supports people, connects neighbors and helps communities learn and build together.
In my year as a JSK Fellow at Stanford, I am testing how this model can sustain itself and spread. I’m learning how libraries, journalists and communities can build together. What tools make it easier to start? What structure is needed? How can this work grow while staying rooted in what makes it local and real?
I learned early in my career that it’s more productive to collaborate with like-minded people than to spend energy convincing those on the other end of the spectrum. So I always start there. If you’re reading this and have made it this far, you probably care about the same things I do. Let’s talk. Ask me questions. Tell me what your branch might need, how your newsroom could help, what your community cares about or what story your neighborhood wants to tell.
I want to hear from you. Connect with me here.
Across the country, more than 16,000 potential newsrooms are waiting to be opened. Our conversations and your interest will help build the future that makes them real. I’ll keep sharing this work as it grows, and I hope you’ll help shape what it becomes. So let’s start building your newsroom at your library!
