Terry Parris Jr. Expands Library Newsroom Project to Miami, New Jersey, and Boston

Terry Parris Jr., a John S. Knight fellow at Stanford, is scaling his Library Newsroom Project (LNP) after a successful Brooklyn pilot. The project, which began as a partnership with Brooklyn Public Library's Sunset Park branch, has produced a free monthly print bulletin called the Sunset Park Sun, now in its 13th edition. LNP aims to create community-led newsrooms in public libraries nationwide, with Parris Jr. envisioning 16,000 such spaces where neighbors can investigate local issues and share findings publicly. New pilots are planned for Miami with teenagers and WLRN, in New Jersey with a $68,000 budget across three libraries and the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University, and in Boston's East Boston neighborhood using media-literacy funds. The project emphasizes resident-led reporting, with tools like an Assignment Board of nearly 90 questions and a Story Board that uses a Python script and Claude skill to turn public records into reporting prompts. Parris Jr. stresses that journalism practices can live inside libraries, enabling communities to create and share information. Success is measured by recurrence and ownership, with the ultimate sign being when residents say 'our newsroom' instead of 'Terry's project.'