She’s starting her own. Angie Newsome’s nonprofit news site, Carolina Public Press, alters the local media landscape. Can it change people’s lives?

by Jess McCuan . photo by Matt Rose

She came to journalism somewhat late in life. Angie Newsome had always wanted to write but didn’t go to into journalism until age 30. Now, her most recent journalistic endeavor, Carolina Public Press, is ramping up just as her family life is ramping up, too. The 38-year-old Asheville mom has a one-year-old, Iver, and another baby due in May. So why launch an ambitious project now? “That’s a good question,” she says, laughing. VERVE interviewed her in early March, the day the Carolina Public Press website launched. “I feel out of breath,” she said. “It’s like I just ran up Mt. Mitchell and back.”

But instead of asking “Why now?” Newsome asked herself: “Why not now?” Newspapers are clearly in trouble. After a journalism master’s program at UNC-Chapel Hill, Newsome was a reporting fellow at The Poynter Institute. Then she spent three years on staff at the Asheville Citizen-Times. What you hear about the death of newspapers is partially hype and partially true, she says. “Resources that communities have to get fair and balanced information is decreasing,” she says, which opens up space for online media. “We’re not going to replace a daily newspaper. We just want to add to the conversation. We can devote time and resources to longer pieces and go places where—for lots of reasons—daily newspapers can’t go.”

In the case of Carolina Public Press, that means freelance writers and photographers go to places like Macon County to document the ways a $2.4 billion state budget shortfall affects schools there. In her first weeks online, Newsome has run several budget analysis stories, and a feature on a new approach to treating autism.

None of it is sexy stuff—something Newsome is well aware of. But since she’s a nonprofit, she doesn’t have to sell ads or compete with local news outfits for scoops. Her two-year, $70,000 grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation (plus a smaller grant from the Community Foundation of WNC) doesn’t give her gobs of money to work with. But it does free her from having to chase stories that get big clicks. “We’re not going to be writing about the latest car wreck or shooting,” Newsome says. “We’re looking at—what’s the bigger impact of this? What does this really say about our region or our community?” So far, the Charlotte Observer has called about content-sharing, as has the Raleigh Free Press blog.

In the coming months, Newsome plans to hold workshops on how to make requests through the Freedom Of Information Act, a law that allows disclosure of previously-unreleased government documents. Will the Wikileaks scandal get people interested? Perhaps. In the meantime, she’s just glad to be running an interesting news experiment. “There have been a lot of late nights and early mornings,” she says. “It’s exciting to be excited about journalism again.”

For more, check out www.carolinapublicpress.org.