The nonprofit Poynter Institute on Tuesday announced a pilot project establishing a “public editor” to serve the Indianapolis news market.
The Indianapolis Public Editor project will “act as a bridge” between the area’s newsrooms and “test the effectiveness” of independent accountability and public education in a local news market, the news release said.
The public editor will be a news media critic focused on how Indianapolis outlets provide coverage in line with the needs of local communities.
The project is led by Poynter’s senior vice president Kelly McBride, chair of The Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at Poynter, and has received grant funding from the Lumina and Hearst Foundations. Poynter is currently accepting applications for the role.
“The goal of a local public editor is to help the people who live in Indianapolis understand their news ecosystem better,” McBride said, “and ultimately enable people to hold their local journalists accountable for what they need from them, and also when appropriate, to elevate great journalism.”
The public editor will examine the entire news ecosystem that serves Indiana’s capital, answering questions from the audience and explaining how journalists throughout the market make decisions about coverage. Those columns will appear on the project’s partner newsrooms, which currently include the Indiana Capital Chronicle, Mirror Indy and WFYI public radio.
Additional newsrooms are considering joining the project at a later date.
While a public editor works closely with journalists and newsrooms to write about coverage, their loyalty is with the news audience, the release said.
“The public editor can get your questions answered. They have the experience and the credibility to encourage journalists to respond,” McBride said. “They also have the experience to understand the journalism process.They are often explaining how the process works and why the process isn’t meeting the needs of the public.”
Mirror Indy Editor-in-Chief Oseye Boyd said her newsroom is participating to help increase community understanding of what Mirror Indy does and why.
“This not only provides an opportunity to increase media literacy in our city, but also allows community members to hold us accountable in how we cover them,” she said.
Greg Petrowich, WFYI president and CEO, said the Indianapolis public radio station was eager to participate.
“At a time when public trust in news is at a critical low, the role of a public editor offers transparency and education around how news is gathered and reported,” he said.
McBride said the goal is to hire the public editor and begin the work before the end of 2025. The public editor will live in Indianapolis and have a journalism background.
The project also plans to hold public events with the news audience, the public editor and news organizations. There are only a handful of public editors in the U.S., and those that exist tend to work for a single news organization, such as McBride’s role at NPR.