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How can we reach beyond the local news choir? Spotlight PA’s founding editor has ideas
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Articles by Sophie Culpepper

Sophie Culpepper is a staff writer at Nieman Lab covering local news. She previously co-founded the hyperlocal Lexington Observer, where she reported on public schools, local government, economic development, and public safety among other topics as the digital news nonprofit’s only full-time journalist for two years. She is a proud alum of and forever believer in student journalism, and was a managing editor at her independent college newspaper, The Brown Daily Herald.
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“We’ve realized that we can’t do it all, and have made the decision to no longer have a staffed newsroom in Wichita.”
The Kansas City Beacon seemed to be a nonprofit news success story. So what’s going wrong in Wichita?
“If you’re not reaching the people that you want to reach, then what’s the point of doing the work?”
“We don’t know whether or how this nonprofit and its fund will operate, and likely won’t for some months (nonprofit governance is many things, but fast is not one of them).”
The Associated Press now has content sharing partnerships with nine nonprofit newsrooms across 10 states.
“I was fixated on trying to build a place that could pay good writers good money to spend more time than normal on big stories.”