Join the team who make community journalism possible in New Britain
The New Britain Progressive’s community journalism is only possible because of activist volunteers journalists.
We are looking for new members of the team! Could that be you?
The New Britain Progressive is dedicated to empowering the New Britain community with facts — the simple idea that the news should be about empowering people with the truth rather than being just another agent of the powerful. We believe that is the real purpose of freedom of the press.
The New Britain Progressive, covering news in New Britain and surrounding communities since 2016, is a publication of the New Britain Independent Newspaper, Inc. We are an all volunteer organization, managed under a volunteer board of directors. Our mission is serve the community, not to turn a profit for any person or corporation. So we are free to serve the people, first and foremost. To reach our Editor, Rhona Cohen, our Deputy Editor, Tim O’Brien, or our organization, generally, email to [email protected] or call (860) 348-3964.
Some of our recent news and community coverage includes:
This kind of community journalism will only happen if people who care about the community join in the volunteer effort to make it happen. Maybe someone like you!
Here are some of the ways you might be able to get involved:
Reporters – writers
You may not think of yourself as a journalist, but there is a good chance that you know about something that would be informative to people in the community. It might be something in your neighborhood, community group or congregation — anything from a fun community event to serious concerns, it is all important. And the New Britain Progressive has a big audience to share it with.
The New Britain Progressive also provides the only real critical journalism of city government in New Britain, and the New Britain Progressive provides coverage to critical community concerns that are usually swept under the carpet. Doing this journalism takes hard work, researching facts and exposing the truth, but it is core to what the New Britain Progressive does so well. The more people who can be a part of our volunteer investigative journalism team, the more we can do!
You do not need any experience, just a desire to do good. And we welcome aspiring journalists who would like to serve the community as volunteer journalists, while also showing their talents providing real news coverage.
Reporters – photo and video journalism
In addition to volunteer writing, volunteers also contribute their efforts as photo and video journalists. If you take photos at a community event or about something serious happening in the community, those images might be very important to the work of another person writing for the New Britain Progressive on the same topic. Or, if you can provide a few facts about the story behind the photo, it might help someone else write up an article based on your photo. While you can certainly take photos and write an article yourself, being just a photojournalist helps the New Britain Progressive’s coverage.
We have also done video journalism as part of our community news coverage, and having people interested in doing more of that would be very helpful — especially if you know or would like to learn video editing.
Community Events Each Week
The New Britain Progressive provides a weekly update on upcoming community events and meetings. These upclude:
- City government and other meetings
- Community organization meetings
- Recreational and community activities
- Nonprofit organization and other community services events
- Festivals and cultural events
- Religious events
- Music, theater and other arts performances and events
- Local sporting events, especially NBHS home games and meets
- and more
Assembling this part of our news service takes loving dedication by our committed volunteers, and creates a valuable service for the New Britain community that many people read. How good of a job we can do in keeping this events list complete and up-to-date is based on how many dedicated volunteers we have sharing in this important work.
If you have a love for the vibrant community New Britain is, you can help it by participating in updating community events published by the New Britain Progressive.
Graphic artists
From simple digital photo cropping and resizing to creating new digital art, a great amount of volunteer graphic art can be seen on the New Britain Progressive website. This is another thing that our organization can do a better job of with more people volunteering their efforts. In addition to supporting our news and community events coverage, we anticipate graphic arts volunteers having an important role in supporting our growing advertising sales efforts. If you are an aspiring graphic or digital artist, the New Britain Progressive also provides a great platform to show your talents being used in the real world — and in a way where your volunteer effort makes the world a better place!
Administrative Support
Even though we are a volunteer not-for-profit organization, the New Britain Progressive and New Britain Independent Newspaper, Inc. have administrative support work that is vital to being able produce our news service to the community. Your interest in supporting the community journalism of the New Britain Progressive in one of these areas of volunteer effort would be truly appreciated!
- Advertisement sales. The New Britain Independent Newspaper, Inc. sells ads in the New Britain Progressive as an important part of the way our local journalism service is supported. Part of our plans are to greatly increase our ad sales, in order to increase the possibilities for this news service. We are looking for people who are interested in helping to build the relationships in the business and larger community to see value to them in reaching the audience the New Britain Progressive reaches. As with all of our work, this role is strictly volunteer-only, but an important part of building the New Britain Progressive for dedicated people who want to show their talents.
- Accounting. If you are someone who knows accounting and all of the things related to it that a small, non-tax-exempt, not-for-profit organization needs to do, your volunteer efforts in support of the New Britain Progressive in this area would be very helpful.
Signing up!
Thanks so much for your interest! Feel free to sign up here so we can meet to see if we are a good fit together.
Note: The New Britain Progressive, and its parent organization, the New Britain Independent Newspaper, Inc. is a strictly volunteer organization, and all work done by everyone involved is unpaid. As a not-for-profit organization, no one gains a profit from the New Britain Progressive or the New Britain Independent Newspaper. In fact, please also consider making a donation to help with the costs of running our community news service.