The Plucky Wire collaborative connects newsrooms with a free way to share reporting and broaden reach

If we do our jobs right, then we will be helping all these small newsrooms create local reporting jobs all over the country.”

Johnny Bassett, CEO, Plucky Works

Developed by Plucky Works, Plucky Wire launched in 2024 to give community newspapers an affordable alternative to the major newswire services that rarely feature local news.

“We’re not Google. We’re not The Associated Press, but we are quickly growing,” said Plucky Works CEO Johnny Bassett. “And we’re really excited that we’ve made it this far, and we’re really excited for what the next couple years are going to bring.”

The newswire service was born out of the Granite State News Collaborative in New Hampshire. In 2018, the collaborators commiserated over having seen major wire services become more costly and yet still leave them with gaps on their local pages. That need became more urgent during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Granite State News Collaborative’s Director Melanie Plenda began using Google Drive to help editors share stories with each other.

The innovative approach solved an immediate problem, but limitations also became clear over time. There was no easy way to track where stories were published, and the only way to notify editors about a correction was through an email blast to all the collaborators. The tool became cumbersome to search as more stories were added, reaching 20,000 articles by 2024.

Bassett set out to create a solution similar to AP StoryShare, which would be affordable to small, local newsrooms. He drew on his experience digitizing local news stories in the Philippines and building basic journalism research tools. Plucky Wire has since grown into a team of four, connecting a network of more than 400 collaborator newsrooms across the country.

“If we do our jobs right, then we will be helping all these small newsrooms create local reporting jobs all over the country,” he said.

Plucky Wire’s name was inspired by the plucky community newspaper editors who fight to provide their communities with local journalism despite the odds stacked against them.

“They are the underdogs,” said Bassett.

Among them is Carol Robidoux. Robidoux is the founder and publisher of Ink Link News in New Hampshire and a founding member of the Granite State News Collaborative. She said that Plucky Wire’s service enables her to easily locate reporting that complements Ink Link News’ coverage without duplicating efforts.

“I can curate stories for our readers from across New Hampshire that they might otherwise never encounter, while directing them to reporting produced by other local news organizations,” she said. “In that sense, Plucky Wire helps us fulfill one of the original promises of the Collaborative: that by sharing our work, all of our newsrooms — and ultimately our readers — are better served.”

Plucky Wire provides a free platform for local newsrooms around the country to share reporting of interest to their communities and the broader public.

The wire service is free to use. Plucky Wire’s revenue is derived from other paid consultative services, such as single-outlet onboarding, collaborative onboarding and ongoing support.

Plucky Wire is one tool offered by Plucky Works, which is pilot testing three new tools to save newsrooms time and money: Inbox, Calendar and Assignments.

• Inbox is a tool for press release distribution. Editors receive press releases in ready-to-publish formats, and distributors can track where their press releases are published.
• Calendar helps editors manage and publish community events.
• Assignments helps editors streamline work with freelancers and citizen journalists.

While Plucky Wire first aimed to reach the small community papers struggling to stay afloat, it is now poised to reach a broad range of newsrooms.

“We started out very scrappy and very small,” Bassett said. “Now we’re getting a fair bit of momentum.”

Alyssa Choiniere is a freelance journalist based in southwestern Pennsylvania. She is writing a nonfiction book for Rutgers University Press, “Be Home Before the Streetlights Come On: The Political Hijacking of Child-Trafficking Terror.”