KUAF Partners With Statewide News Outlet, Arkansas Nonprofit News Network

Matt White

Melissa Brogdon, a nurse who recently finished a contract at a Central Arkansas hospital ICU, said that if hospitals don't have enough staff to keep up with the influx of COVID-19 patients, "a larger number of them are not going to survive."

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – KUAF, the local National Public Radio affiliate for Northwest and Western Arkansas and licensee of the University of Arkansas, is the newest partner in the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network or ANNN.

Founded in December 2016 by longtime Arkansas Times editor Lindsey Millar, ANNN is an independent, nonpartisan news project dedicated to producing journalism that matters to Arkansans. The network seeks to support newsrooms in Arkansas that lack sufficient resources to do sustained reporting on complicated issues. 

From ANNN's website, "The internet has upended traditional publishing revenue models; advertisers don't rely on the news media to sell their products anymore. With less support from advertisers, news outlets produce fewer stories on complex topics in the public interest."

With funding from grants and donations, ANNN hires writers, editors, fact-checkers and photographers on a contract basis to cover a story or topic. Their reporting is then distributed for free among statewide media — including radio, TV, newspapers and websites — which publish all, or localized parts, of it. 

David Ramsey's report on the record number of active COVID-19 cases in the state and the toll it is taking on hospitals was the first report published by KUAF as a part of the partnership. Kyle Kellams, KUAF news director, spoke with Ramsey and Benji Hardy, ANNN's editor, about the partnership and the ongoing pressure on the state's hospitals. 

You can hear that conversation here and read a follow-up report by Ramsey here, on the state's request for five intensive care unit beds and five general medical-surgical beds that was made Wednesday, Dec. 2, to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.