(Buffalo, NY) –– WNED President and CEO Donald K. Boswell announced today that the public broadcaster’s news and information service, WNED-AM 970 (94.5/HD2), would be part of a major journalism initiative launched by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).  Funded by CPB, one new reporter will be hired and stationed at WNED’s downtown Buffalo headquarters. 

Overall, CPB will increase original local reporting capacity in seven regions around the country and fund a planning project to develop an open information architecture to harness the collective power of the public media network.

WNED-AM is one of CPB’s seven Local Journalism Centers (LJCs), combining CPB and participating stations’ resources within a region for a ground-breaking new approach to newsgathering and its distribution. The Centers will form teams of multimedia journalists, who will focus on issues of particular relevance to each region; their in-depth reports will be presented regionally and nationally via digital platforms, community engagement programs and radio and television broadcasts. 

As part of the “Upstate New York” LJC, WNED-AM joins WXXI (Rochester), WMHT (Schenectady), WRVO (Oswego), and WSKG (Binghamton) to focus on the push to remake the regional economy in upstate New York by focusing on innovation technology to stimulate development.  Partner stations will hire a total of five reporters, an editor and a managing facilitator to develop feature reports and news spots as well as an interactive web portal. 

“Even as digital technologies and the Internet make the wider world more accessible, there’s no denying that attention to local issues is declining in most journalistic endeavors,” said WNED-AM Station Manager & Director of News and Public Affairs Jim Ranney.  “This initiative will enhance our local reporting ability and allow reporters to move beyond traditional media to provide in-depth coverage with a high-degree of community engagement and involvement.”

“By focusing on the ‘Innovation Trail,’ our LJC’s extensive multi-media reporting will help the public gain a better understanding of the impact of investment in research and technology projects across the region, the ways that colleges, universities and medical centers are working to create opportunities in emerging technologies, and other industry efforts to transition from a manufacturing base to a knowledge economy,” Boswell said. “We’re proud to be a part of this Local Journalism Center and look forward to serving Western New York and the upstate region with quality journalism that meets the high, established standards of public broadcasting.”

The total CPB and station investment over two years is approximately $10.5 million, with an expectation that each Center will become self-sustaining by the end of the two-year funding period.  The LJC-generated content will also be made available to the entire public media system and will be made available to the public across multiple platforms including television and radio broadcast, online, through social media and mobile. 

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress in 1967 and is steward of the federal government's investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operations of more than 1,100 locally-owned and -operated public television and radio stations nationwide, and is the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television and related online services.