Today’s a big day of Assembly announcements. Four in fact!
- In the Triangle, we’re announcing a new partnership with the 40-year-old INDY Week, designed to bring more local reporting to Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh.
- In Wilmington, we’re announcing a new partnership with the NPR station WHQR, designed to bring our style of deep investigative reporting to the Cape Fear region.
- And to accommodate it all, we’re moving to a new publishing schedule starting this week.
- A special television edition of The Assembly also airs tonight on PBS NC.
More on each below!
INDY Partnership
For 40 years, INDY has had eyes on places and people that nobody else was watching. At its best, it is the place to go to navigate the city in which you live. That’s exactly what a community paper should be.
It’s been a hard decade for local news, and INDY has been losing significant money. But we think locally-rooted, quality journalism is essential, and that INDY still has a deep base of support to fulfill that role.
That’s why we’re excited to be a part of its next chapter. We’ll bring our focus on longform, high-quality reporting; they’ll keep their focus on the Triangle, and in particular, Durham. Some of what the INDY publishes will remain the same, while it may shift in some other notable ways.
Several other regional and national partners are joining us to provide editorial support and capacity, including Scalawag Magazine, the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, and The Food Section.
It’s a coalition, coming together for local news. We’re pretty excited.
The INDY will remain an independent publication, as will The Assembly. We do different things, in different ways. But by working together in certain ways, we think we can do more for the Triangle.
You can read more about it on INDY’s site.
Want it to work? Sign up to be a member. We can’t do this without a couple of bucks a month from you, and your friends.
Wilmington Bureau
In a different partnership announcement, The Assembly is planting a flag in Wilmington.
Kevin Maurer, a veteran reporter whose byline you’ve already seen here quite a bit, is anchoring the effort. Together with the local NPR affiliate, WHQR, we’ll be co-reporting big stories and collaborating on a weekly newsletter that brings it all together.
Once a week, we’ll deliver compelling, original journalism about issues and topics that matter in Wilmington and across the Cape Fear region.
It’s part of our bid to bolster regional reporting across the state. Want it to work? Sign up to be a subscriber.
This all depends on you.
And if you’re in the Wilmington area, sign up for the (free) newsletter here.
Our Schedule
Starting this week, our main Assembly stories will land in your inbox on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
This is a reflection of the fact that we’re simply publishing more stories, and also that we want them to get to you sooner.
If you sign up for our other emails — like our weekly blast on Wilmington, or our weekly dispatch on the courts — those will come to you on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You’ll only get them if you sign up.
We’ll still send an email on Sundays recapping what we published that week, in case you missed it or just enjoy sitting down with longer stories on the weekend.
We’re On TV!
Tune in tonight at 7 for an Assembly television special. Julia Wall produced, shot, and edited this half-hour program, and frequent contributor Dwayne Ballen is the host. The show takes you from Statesville to Burgaw, with in-depth reporting on issues that matter in our state.
You can watch it on either PBS NC or the PBS App.