Capital B Gary has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
We’re excited to announce that the Indiana city and the surrounding region will be the second local market in the Capital B network — joining Capital B Atlanta, which celebrated its one-year anniversary on January 31.
Atlanta and Gary couldn’t be more different. One is at the center of a large, growing metropolis and the other is a small city; one is in the Southeast and one is in the Midwest. But, with their unique populations, media ecosystems, and news landscapes, they are both somehow perfect places for Capital B’s local journalism mission: to reach Black residents with the trustworthy information they need to navigate their lives, and to build our understanding of a community’s needs by engaging with the people who experience that community each day.
In Gary, where the population is nearly 80% Black, there’s a unique opportunity for Capital B to build a newsroom in a Black city that has too long been underserved by mainstream media. We’ll do this while partnering with new and existing local and regional outlets as part of the Indiana Local News Initiative, which will help us to create a robust stream of information for folks that deserve a 360-degree view of their community, not just news about what happened on its worst days.
The Indiana News Initiative is a new, nonprofit effort that will launch independent newsrooms, help organizations like Capital B get more philanthropic investment, and foster collaboration among media outlets statewide.
Launching Capital B Gary as part of a collaborative allows us to start out of the gate with supercharged partnerships built in across the state, and we’re looking forward to the various ways we’ll be able to serve Black people in Northwest Indiana.
But we need to do a few things first. Capital B’s organizational model is set up with centralized business and operational resources, as well as some centralized core editorial services like copy editing and audience development. One thing we can never centralize is local expertise.
So starting today, we’re searching for an editor to lead the Gary newsroom and build out an editorial strategy to serve the audience we’re hoping to grow in the region.
We also want to hear from more people who know and love Gary and NW Indiana about what they want from a startup newsroom. If that’s you, please fill out the survey below (or share with folks who fit the bill).
If you’re interested in updates, follow @CapitalB_Gary on Twitter and Instagram, and sign up for our Gary newsletter here. And if you want to become a founding member of this newsroom, consider making a contribution.
