I’ve been watching a growing number of organizations explore collaborations between journalists and creators with great interest.

In March, the Lenfest Institute and the Google News Initiative announced the creation of the News Creator Summit Series. Project C offers “insight, resources, and connections this new generation of journalists needs to build something lasting.” API has a guide on journalist/influencer collaborations.

And, last week, New York Public Radio and URL Media announced a project focused on creator-led events and revenue initiatives. From the announcement:

“The NYPR-URL collaboration formalizes the organizations’ multi-year working relationship, which has included co-promotion of live events such as ‘Mamdani’s First 100 Days: Lessons from La Guardia,’ guest expert interviews on WNYC and various revenue oriented activities. Future work will help elevate civic conversations, community voices, and trusted messengers, while creating new opportunities for partners, creators, and audiences.”

What I like about this latest project in particular is this:

1. It includes a powerful legacy media brand through New York Public Radio
2. It includes an innovative and growing network of news organizations rooted in and run by the communities they serve through URL Media
3. They’re focusing on partnerships, community building and revenue

That seems like a very smart recipe to try and reach people where they’re getting information through trusted partners. Via email, I chatted with URL’s S. Mitra Kalita about the project, what journalists should learn from influencers and the folks she’s following. Kalita is URL’s CEO and co-founder, the CEO and publisher of EpiCenter-NYC, and before that she had a long career in very big newsrooms, including working as the senior vice president for CNN Digital. I always love hearing what she’s excited about and working on.

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Kristen Hare: What will these creator-led events and revenue initiatives look like? And how will URL newsrooms and New York Public Radio fit into them?

S. Mitra Kalita: We are building collaboratively from what we’ve seen work in programming, experiences and events. These will be creative, reflective of the diversity of NYC and, hopefully, fun or thought-provoking or both. URL Media partners have already successfully collaborated with WNYC. We did so for an event marking Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first 100 days in office that allowed us to reach new audiences.

Hare: I’d love to hear how you’re thinking about creators and what journalists and newsrooms should be learning from them.

Kalita: Creators is a broad term that encompasses a lot of people! Mommy bloggers, TikTokers, YouTubers, etc. URL Media recently onboarded several creators and the common thread is that they are, like our publishers, trusted messengers in the communities they serve. Yashica Dutt, for example, is among the most recognized global voices on caste, and has been prescient on the importance of the South Asian vote in Mamdani’s rise and, more recently, on the effectiveness of Gen Z protests in India. Nick Valencia is a needed voice on the fear in immigrant communities right now and also can zoom out and frame stories for broader audiences. While we have newsletter writers and independent journalists, the creators we have brought on are primarily using video to engage their audiences, and this format is an important one for newsrooms to learn from.

Hare: Are there any other creator/newsroom collabs you’re seeing that we should be paying attention to?

Kalita: URL Media and New York Public Radio’s announcement comes against a backdrop of more collaborations and solidarity in media. Some other inspiring examples right now: Ariane Datil is The Philadelphia Inquirer’s first-ever social video host, and focuses on a lot of digital culture and lifestyle content and brings audiences along the way. I love Krishna Sharma’s videos at The Baltimore Banner. I think how Chicago Public Media is taking a gifted domain name — chicago.com — and pledging to build the platform with community is noteworthy.

I also want to call out some excellence in community collaboration that is less oriented toward virality and more about trust and leveraging local networks. Queens-based outlet Epicenter, which I also founded during the pandemic, frequently works with houses of worship, public libraries, PTAs and food pantries, to name a few. We also set up events at beloved third spaces such as Art Retail Therapy, the World’s Borough Bookshop and Espresso 77.

Our approach rises from within these communities and neighborhoods to inform how we cover issues, produce resources and create experiences that address a multitude of needs. For example, we know navigating NYC public schools can be daunting, so we create guides for multiple touch points — for the next back-to-school event, we are designing a zine to distribute along with school supplies. A lot of the partners in the URL Media network work in similar ways. The Kansas City Defender inherited the collection of Missouri’s oldest Black bookstore and made it their first-ever headquarters. El Tecolote in San Francisco is one of my favorite newsrooms, mostly because it’s less newsroom, more public art gallery and backyard gathering space.

So I see our focus on producing joint events — for both New York Public Radio and URL Media — as an important part of the community building our organizations already do.