It took me a few years, one pandemic and a library science degree to realize I didn’t need to rebuild trust in journalism. I just needed to move the newsroom to where that trust already lives: the public library.
This exploration, and what became the Library Newsroom Project, began in the spring of 2019 when I left my job at ProPublica to help launch a new nonprofit newsroom called THE CITY. I served as its first Director of Engagement. Our tagline was “Reporting for New Yorkers,” though it has since changed to “Reporting to New Yorkers.” Either way, it is a bold statement. Providing journalism for New Yorkers means having language access, time, physical presence and regular, relevant coverage.
To meet that challenge, I had an idea to work through public libraries, not the newsroom.
I wanted to bring people together in a trusted, familiar space, hold structured conversations about their neighborhoods and the issues they cared about and create timely, responsive local news together.
This was not a panel discussion. This was not a tabling event. This was not a journalist from an unfamiliar outlet standing in front of a room asking people what they should report on, only for those words to disappear into a notebook and never be seen or heard again. The idea was to commit to a few places and return regularly, building familiarity first, then understanding, then a relationship and ultimately journalism.
Brooklyn Public Library embraced the idea and offered to host the project at three branches across the borough. We called it the Open Newsroom.
When we convened in the libraries, my team (mostly students in the engagement journalism program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY) didn’t ask residents to tell us what to report. We were asking them to engage with each other through a few simple prompts: What’s good about living in your neighborhood? What’s challenging? Who do you talk to about these things? Over time, we held dozens of sessions with hundreds of people, in person at first and then online during the pandemic.
The output was practical. As the pandemic brought confusion over rent relief and unemployment benefits, we turned what we heard — the questions, concerns and fears — into weekly newsletters sent out by email and text. It explained what was changing, where to go and how to get help. In partnership with Documented, a nonprofit newsroom that covers immigration in New York, we translated it into Spanish.
We later evolved this model for New York City’s 2021 primary. While most outlets focused on, or maybe obsessed over, the mayoral race, we noticed that many basic questions about city council, borough presidents, ranked-choice voting and the voting process were being overlooked. In addition to a series of public sessions, workshops and another text and email based newsletter, we organized a set of events we called Voterfests across the city with the intention of blending culture (like a K-pop dance group) and fun (like poetry recitals and drum circles) with primary election information (like several types of translated voter guides). We also set up a craft station where kids made civic engagement sandwich-bag puppets, which ended up being pretty popular. For the Voterfests, we partnered not only with libraries but also with other community-based organizations.
We slowed things down and centered on service and clarity. This work went on to earn recognition from the Online Journalism Awards for excellence in newsletters. We reached thousands of people, and anecdotally, helped make sense of a very information heavy moment.
Over time, things clicked for me. I was struck by how natural the idea of serving the public felt inside libraries. I had spent much of my career pushing, prodding, arguing, fighting, pleading and even begging for community participation in journalism. And yet, despite claiming to be “the voice of the people,” many news organizations are incredibly hesitant or don’t actually want the people to participate. Many journalists naturally shape the final outcome, which can unintentionally limit how people take part in the process.
Still, I knew that collaborating with libraries was not the same as understanding them. I wanted to see what it actually takes to sustain an institution built entirely around public service. So, in early 2021, while I was still at THE CITY and building the Open Newsroom, I decided to pursue my master’s in library and information science at Pratt Institute in New York City. It opened up the discipline to me in a way you simply cannot grasp through a partnership meeting on Microsoft Teams or a library tabling event. I was able to study the history of librarianship, its challenges, its evolution, its innovations and the ways libraries work, function, stay afloat and measure success.
One of the many things I learned is that these two disciplines, journalism and library science, are not that far apart. They face many of the same challenges. The internet and social media have changed how people engage with both. Funding is precarious. AI is stressing them out. And both are rethinking who does the work and what that work is for. Their traditions and cultures are shifting. At their core, journalism and libraries are natural partners. And I see them converging. My work is to help that convergence happen.
In libraries, service is the starting point. That is their job. Every decision begins with the question: How can we serve this community? I have come to believe, and I know I’m not alone, that this should be the first question in journalism, too.
I left THE CITY and the Open Newsroom in the fall of 2021. I took a unique role at The New York Times, launching a new initiative called Headway as its Public Square Editor. THE CITY continued the Open Newsroom but adapted it into a speaker series and tabling events, which differed from the original intent.
I wanted to carry forward what I’d learned about organizing structured conversations and building things with people at the library. But I needed to move the idea outside the day-to-day churn of a newsroom.
Through that experience, I realized that while most of the questions, curiosities, celebrations and challenges residents share will never make it into the newspaper, they still matter deeply. They reveal the living record of a place. But those stories often stay hidden unless people have a place to hold them.
The Open Newsroom showed me what was possible, but I also saw its limits. For it to live up to its potential, it had to exist fully within a space that puts community first, that prioritizes service and that values information and knowledge whether or not they have a news hook. And that space was obvious. It was the library.
If the library shaped the idea of the place, a bit of serendipity in the archives shaped the idea of the thing. Before I officially launched The Library Newsroom Project in the fall of 2023, something in the archives found me. Archives do that sometimes; they surprise you with something unexpected that suddenly makes everything click into place.
Made By Those Who Live There
I was digging through the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) collection at the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives in Queens. I was looking at a handful of NYCHA complexes in Brooklyn near a few libraries I was considering working with. Tucked away in a box, in a folder, wedged between a run of news clips about NYCHA, I came across a press release titled: GLENWOOD HOUSES “REPORTER” REPEATS AS PRIZE-WINNER FOR BEST HOUSING AUTHORITY TENANT NEWSLETTER.
The five-page typed document described a ceremony for an annual competition celebrating the best NYCHA tenant-run newsletters, with awards like Best All-Round Publication, Best Editorial Content and Best New Publication, honors that treated tenants as a real press corps. The release mentioned almost a dozen tenant newsletters that were recognized for their work. I was fascinated.
I started doing more research into what these were. For decades, a number of NYCHA developments produced their own publications, supported by the Housing Authority itself. In addition to the annual competition, there was also a six-week training program that taught tenants how to write, edit and produce their own newsletters.
It was an effort that felt exactly like what I wanted to build. It was a powerful, structured, repeatable example of neighborhood-driven and neighborhood-led community journalism created by NYCHA residents. Versions of these newsletters existed across the country, too.
They were more than updates. They helped neighbors know one another and stay connected. They made everyday life visible and gave residents a sense of belonging to something shared. While the Daily News, New York Post and New York Times covered citywide news, these newsletters told the stories of graduations, 100th birthdays, garden contests and block parties. They informed through service, celebrated through storytelling and connected through their shared environment. They were written by neighbors, for neighbors.
What struck me most was how visible everyone was in these pages, in both the people and the information shared. The writers and the readers shared the same view of the buildings, the same walls, courtyards, celebrations and challenges. The stories did not observe community from afar. They came from within it. It was a reminder that people have always known how to tell their own stories. They just need a place to do it.
That press release quotes Housing Authority member Blanca Cedeno, who at the time was serving as NYCHA’s vice chairwoman. She says:
“As the ‘eyes’ and ‘ears’ of communities which don’t nearly often enough get the kind of attention they deserve from the major media, you define and articulate the deepest concerns of your neighbors. To us, this ceremony is fully as important as the annual Pulitzer Prize awards and you, no less than a foreign correspondent or a Walter Cronkite, are worthy members of the greatest press corps in the world.”
Cedeno’s words captured exactly what those newsletters meant for their communities. That is what the Library Newsroom Project is designed to be.
If you work in a library system, a newsroom, a foundation, a school, a community group or if you’re simply curious, I want to hear from you. I’m spending a year as a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford exploring ways to grow and sustain this project. Connect with me here.
