Jason Pramas on HorizonMass, a news nonprofit that brings students and professionals together

Photo courtesy of Jason Pramas

On the latest What Works podcast, Dan talks with Jason Pramas, executive director of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and editor-in-chief of a new project called HorizonMass. (Ellen expects to return for the next episode.) Along with Boston journalist Chris Faraone, Jason is a co-founder of BINJ, which partners with community publications on investigative stories and civic engagement initiatives, and offers training programs to promising young journalists.

Now Jason is making a bold bet on the future of news by training a new generation of journalists. He’s launching HorizonMass, a statewide digital news publication with a focus on public interest journalism. At HorizonMass, college interns work as reporters, designers, marketers and editors alongside more experienced professional freelance writers.

Later on, in Quick Takes, Dan looks at some data about news referrals from social media giants, specifically Facebook and X, or Twitter, or whatever it is this week. Large news organizations had become reliant on both of those platforms while the sort of local news outlets that we track here at What Works were more dependent on Facebook alone. In any case, those days are drawing to a close, and it’s long past time for community journalists to be asking themselves: What’s next?

You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

Author: Dan Kennedy

I am a professor of journalism at Northeastern University specializing in the future of local journalism at whatworks.news. My blog, Media Nation, is online at dankennedy.net.

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