In a sign of increasing collaboration between journalism groups, NBC on Tuesday will announce a series of partnerships between its television stations and nonprofit news organizations.
Effectively immediately, NBC’s station in Chicago will work with The Chicago Reporter blog and magazine; its station in Philadelphia, with WHYY, a public radio station, and its community site NewsWorks; and its station in Los Angeles, with KPCC, a public radio station. All 10 of NBC’s stations will at times collaborate with ProPublica, the acclaimed investigative journalism nonprofit organization.
The partnerships — which NBC said would help its stations better cover their cities — are a byproduct of Comcast’s successful bid to gain control of NBC Universal, including the 10 television stations owned by NBC. As the government considered the bid last year, Comcast made a number of promises about news coverage, one of them being that it would set up such partnerships with at least five of its stations. The proposal was modeled after the relationship between the NBC station KNSD in San Diego and the local Web site voiceofsandiego.org.
The government subsequently put the partnership commitment in writing, and NBC started a casting call of sorts last May. Somewhat surprisingly, the company did not link exclusively with Web sites like voiceofsandiego.org, which is nationally recognized for its highly local journalism. Instead, it also teamed up with radio and print outlets. The Chicago Reporter, for instance, is a blog and bimonthly magazine that focuses on race and poverty issues and specializes in data analysis. WHYY, an affiliate of NPR, operates NewsWorks, a hyperlocal news site.
“We cast a wide net,” said Valari Staab, the president of the NBC-owned television stations. She said the local stations “looked for what organizations we thought could contribute unique content we couldn’t otherwise have.”
The partnerships will in some cases allow the stations to cover more news and conduct more investigations without adding more staff directly.
“The true value of the partnerships is helping local television affiliates, which have cut back under tough times in recent years, fill their many broadcast hours with valuable public service journalism,” said Scott Lewis, the chief executive of voiceofsandiego.org. At the same time, he said, the partnerships provide nonprofit news organizations with a new outlet for that journalism and an ability to “recover part of the costs in the process.”
NBC is making a donation to each of the partners. Ms. Staab would not specify the amounts. She said she anticipated that in relationships like the ones to be announced Tuesday, “different people will bring different things to the table.”
Independent local news sites might have data-mining experts who identify trends, and then “our people will make television out of it,” she said, “and talk to the people they need to talk to and get responses to what’s shown in that data.”
NBC has taken several steps this year to shore up its 10 local stations, which suffered from financial cuts before Comcast took over the company. It has added newscasts, replaced live television trucks and hired reporters in most of its markets.
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