“I’ve read a lot about The Seattle Times and the News Partner Network, a collaboration between The Times and more than 40 community news sites to share story links and photos among the sites. In 2009, The Times was one of five news organizations that received funding through J-Lab to build a local news network involving at least five community news sites.

As you can see, The Times took that project and ran with it, building what is likely the most extensive collaboration network involving a newspaper and community news sites. In discussions last week with Bob Payne, partnerships and audience engagement editor at The Times, and representatives of four of the partner sites, I heard both what makes the network work and where some of the ongoing challenges lie.

Bob makes it clear that this is about collaboration, not about The Times trying to big-foot the community sites. The Times highlights the work of the community sites on its website and links to the stories. That means The Times doesn’t get the web traffic; the pageviews and unique visitors accrue to the community sites, not the newspaper’s site.

The Times doesn’t want to substitute its own news judgment or editorial practices for those of the sites. The site publishers are the experts in their communities, Bob said. The benefit The Times derives from the partnership is extended reach; Times readers are able to connect into community news that the newspaper would never cover, or that it would cover only in brief. In this way, The Times burnishes its role as a news and information hub for Seattle.” Source: Janet Coats, The Patterson Foundation