Supported by a grant from the Knight Foundation, the project will contribute $50,000 to each of the four new cities involved. This will help fund a project co-ordinator at four news organisations, a stipend for at least five local partners and training for a one-year project.
The project, which was first piloted by five organisations last year, aims to uncover and develop ways in which traditional newsrooms and hyperlocal/community media can share and magnify the content of each outlet and develop new advertising networks, according to a press release.
The news organisations involved this year will be the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Oregonian in Portland, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and KQED Public Radio in San Francisco.
"The first year of the Networked Journalism project taught us how five different partnerships could approach the idea of collaboration in five entirely different ways," Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab said in the release.
"There is much more to be learned from these kinds of experiments."
According to the J-Lab, which works to develop interactive news ideas, the first year partners started the project with 25 sites but this has now grown to 65. All the partnerships will now continue for a second year.
"At a time when anyone can publish local information, partnerships like those offered by the Networked Journalism project add voices to the community dialogue and serve to inform and engage residents," John Bracken, director of digital media for the Knight Foundation added in the release.
The J-Lab is now organising a report on the lessons learned so far to look at how project collaborations could work in the future.
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