Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute

Join Reynolds Fellow Michele McLellan and New York University Journalism Professor Jay Rosen for a gathering of leading pioneers of online local news sites. Learn what's working - and what needs work - from the frontlines of community news on the Web.

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About the survey

RJI conducted telephone interviews with 66 local online news publishers whose sites met our criteria for producing original news, working to be accurate, fair and transparent, and developing revenue in April and May 2010. The oldest site started in 1998 but about two thirds of the sites were founded in 2008 or 2009. The sites vary widely in reach – from 1,200 to 400,000 unique visitors a month. The online publishers are predominantly white men, more than half college educated. They range in age from 22 to 68. Our goal was to learn more about their successes and their challenges.

Bio :

• With more than 20 years of newsroom experience at the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., and The Oregonian in Portland, Michele McLellan has worn a variety of different hats: ombudsman, politics editor, assistant city editor, staff writer, and special projects editor, among others.
• From 2003 to 2007, as founder and director of Tomorrow’s Workforce at the Medill School of Journalism, McLellan explored the learning needs of professional journalists and worked to help newsrooms build robust professional development programs.
• In 2004 she co-founded the Frontline Editors Project, a partnership of Tomorrow’s Workforce, the Knight Chair in Editing, and the Poynter Institute’s News University. The project conducted research and developed a sophisticated profile of effective frontline editors, which was used to create two online distance learning modules and other resources for frontline editors.  McLellan served  as coordinating director from its inception until 2007.

Author/Editor:

- Author, Leadership 3.0 blog for the Knight Digital Media Center, focusing on how traditional newsrooms are transforming themselves into multiplatform organizations.

- Co-author, with Tim Porter, of the book “News, Improved: How America’s Newsrooms Are Learning to Change,” documenting how midcareer training for journalists drives quality and innovation in the news media; published April 2007 by CQ Press.

- Editor for Assignment Zero, an experiment in online crowd sourcing sponsored by Reuters and Wired magazine. The article I coordinated and edited, “Creative Crowdsourcing: The Open Book,” was featured on wired.com in 2007.

- Primary author, “The Newspaper Credibility Handbook,” published in 2001 by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

- Contributor to news industry publications including Nieman Reports and The American Editor.

Education

- Nieman Fellow at Harvard University
2001-2002
studying interdisciplinary ethics and online learning platforms.

- University of California at Riverside
1974
BA, French literature.

Contact:

michele.mclellan@gmail.com