And somehow we’ve arrived at November! Lots to report of the last two months of start-up hustle here at ONE.

True to our word, we’ve been deeply involved in outreach to communities, hosting a series of conversations about ways to get Oregonians the trusted, fact-based local information they need. It’s a lot.

Those efforts include listening sessions in rural areas as well as in communities of color.

Last month we recruited and hired a troupe of community liaisons in the Columbia River Gorge who are conducting detailed in-person surveys, in both Spanish and English, to determine where residents get their local news and what they think about it. Their work will help shape  three focus groups in The Gorge later this fall, including one for Spanish speakers.

ONE also mapped out the media landscape for Oregon’s Asian American/Pacific Islander communities, is surveying Russian residents and working on an outreach plan for Black Oregonians.

What for? Well, ONE’s earlier research identified several gaps in local news, the largest in rural Oregon and among communities of color. A key part of  our mission is to address news gaps through collaborative journalism, which is industry-speak for when journalists work together across newsrooms to build specialized teams and projects to improve coverage.

So before we convene any collaborations, we’re trying to understand what Oregon newsrooms would look like if Oregonians got to drive them. There’s a lot of need out there, a mix of ways to deliver news, and a host of potential partnerships that we could forge with existing media organizations and journalists to bolster what’s already there for the betterment of Oregon. There’s also a need to build diversity in newsrooms and develop the kind of talent pool that doesn’t leave a lot of Oregonians feeling like the news isn’t by or for them.

So the most important thing on our minds most days is: what do people actually want? We’ll report more about that in a couple of months, when we know for sure.

Next steps? We’re on a dogged course to wrap up the bulk of our listening by the end of the year. We’ll spend the first part of 2024 designing our response and finally letting people know what it is we plan to do with a grown up Oregon News Exploration.