This March, Erie News Now and the nonprofit Economic Hardship Reporting Project (EHRP) teamed up to hire a multimedia journalist to focus specifically on financial challenges faced especially by underserved lower income communities in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Karen Hansen spoke to Brian Trauring, Executive Vice President of Erie News Now’s parent company, Lilly Broadcasting, and David Wallis, Managing Director of the EHRP, to learn more about the unique collaboration.

Though Trauring and Wallis germinated the idea at RTDNA’s San Antonio conference last summer, well before COVID, it took on increased urgency as the economic consequences of the pandemic radiated across the country. “It’s interesting to me that we started this before the pandemic hit, and now…with the economic consequences that are so severe, it turned out to be absolutely the right time,” Trauring said.

Read the full piece here.