Across the country, local newsrooms are asking the same question: How do we not only hire reporters, but keep them?
In Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region, a new partnership between Report for America and Press Forward Blue Grass, an initiative of Blue Grass Community Foundation, is testing a bold answer.
The two organizations have launched an innovative pilot designed to rethink traditional reporter placement and long-term newsroom sustainability. The experiment is built on a simple but powerful belief: community trust is the foundation of sustainable local journalism, and trust starts with people who already belong to the communities they serve.
Traditionally, Report for America selects host newsrooms nationwide and journalists with professional experience or journalism education apply to join those outlets. Selected reporters are then deployed to their host newsrooms, with costs shared between the newsroom and Report for America.
This pilot flips that model.
Instead of recruiting reporters first, the initiative identifies trusted community members, individuals already embedded in local networks, and equips them with the necessary reporting skills to thrive in professional newsrooms.
The shared hypothesis is clear: If trusted community members are placed into hyper-local reporting roles and receive extensive training, community trust in local news will grow and local newsrooms will become more sustainable.
The Woodford Sun is one of three news organizations to be selected, and Scott White will be the Sun’s “RFA fellow.”
“Community trust and newsroom sustainability are deeply linked,” said Melissa Newman, executive director of Press Forward Blue Grass. “Reporting skills can be taught. Community embeddedness cannot. This pilot recognizes that the future of local journalism depends not only on professional training, but on belonging. When reporters are rooted in the communities they serve, trust grows, and so does the likelihood they will stay and build long-term impact.”
Kim Kleman, executive director for Report for America, is already looking toward a future where the project being piloted in Kentucky can be expanded nationally.
“What we at Report for America love about this pilot is that, typically, we require that applicants who want to become core members are already journalists. In fact, many newsrooms have said, ‘Give us the most experienced people you can find,’ we require a professional internship and these people usually come very experienced as journalists. But we know that, especially in rural areas, it’s hard to find people who want to go and stay there for three or more years.
“What this pilot does for us is: this is the first time we will be taking non-journalists into the program with Melissa’s great training at the forefront, and then Report for America – we offer more than 52 training sessions per year for our reporters, so between both trainings, we are just so looking forward to seeing what happens with this pilot. We will be learning as we go along, to some extent, but we are so excited. We are looking for this to be a template, not only for more members of the Lexington community, but this could go national and we are so excited about those prospects,” said Kleman.
Sun Publisher Ben Chandler said, “This is a really exciting opportunity . . . to grow our reporting staff with local folks who know our community well. This is also the first financial help we have received under our new nonprofit status. So, since we are now ‘community owned’ our partnership with Report for America makes perfect sense, and I know our community will directly benefit from this as well.”
The pilot begins training March 2026, with full-time newsroom onboarding scheduled for June 30, 2026. To reduce financial barriers for participating newsrooms, Press Forward Blue Grass is helping to absorb risk during this experimental phase by covering half of the newsroom’s required Report for America cost share and providing a $3,000 stipend per reporter to support benefits. This financial design enables innovation without placing the full burden on local news organizations.
The pilot includes three distinct host organizations representing different facets of today’s local news ecosystem. In addition to the Sun, the other Kentucky outlets selected are MediaLEX and CivicLEX.
A defining feature of this pilot is education. Those selected as Report for America fellows will complete three foundational courses from the “News Media & Civic Engagement: A Place-Based Learning Series — Story & Place,” developed by Dr. Newman.
“This is an amazing opportunity to receive a quality, though expedited, journalism education to make me a better newspaperman for our community,” White said. “Getting to work with Melissa Newman and the other fellows is already creating dividends.”
The goal is not simply to train reporters, but to develop place-based journalists who understand both professional standards and community context. For Press Forward Blue Grass, the pilot will generate data and program insights to inform future investment, replication and long-term sustainability models. And, for Report for America, it offers an opportunity to test innovative, community-rooted approaches that could reshape how local journalism is supported nationwide.
If successful, the pilot could influence how the industry approaches recruitment, retention and trust-building, particularly in regions where traditional pipelines into journalism have narrowed.
The Bluegrass Region has long been a place where collaboration and experimentation thrive. By bringing together legacy newsrooms, civic information providers and trusted community voices, this pilot aims to contribute not only to local impact, but to the broader national conversation about the future of journalism.
Because the future of local news may not lie solely in finding reporters to fit communities, but in helping communities become the next generation of reporters.