Julia M. Hunter

In June 2019, I co-founded a nonprofit local newsroom dedicated to providing in-depth public service journalism serving Hopkinsville and Christian County, Kentucky. Hoptown Chronicle puts a special focus on public policy and community issues, the downtown business district, arts and culture, and the region’s history.

  • Designed and develop hoptownchronicle.org.
  • Define and track editorial impact to share with funders.
  • Manage engagement and fundraising initiatives, three NewsMatch campaigns that collectively raised more than $100,000 from individual donors.
  • Researched and developed the launch and iterated on Hoptown Chronicle’s two newsletter products, which today each have open rates of more than 55%.
  • Created a COVID-19 data page that provided readers with the only local source of comprehensive information during the coronavirus pandemic. The page generated more traffic than anything else on the site and was routinely shared amongst local healthcare leaders.
  • Implemented a citizens agenda approach to election coverage and created a voter guide highlighting candidates’ answers to the community’s most pressing questions. This initiative also led to a partnership with the local League of Women Voters, which used the questions identified through our community surveys during candidate forums.

User-Generated Content & Audience Engagement

Here are some of the efforts that have helped to inform our coverage and built trust with readers.

Testimonials

“Look in Hoptown Chronicle and you’ll see exactly what happened.”
– Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear

“Having easily accessible, accurate information about COVID and local and state government is so important to me … Hoptown Chronicle has really stepped up to fill that need, and added a nice dose of humanity, too.”
– Sarah B.

“The interactive [COVID-19] maps are super useful tools and easy to use. With so much info floating around, it’s nice to just be able to examine the data.”
– Nikki D.

Here are some of the newsletters I’ve written or edited for Hoptown Chronicle:

Here’s a sampling of the WNA Weekly Briefing, a weekly member newsletter that I produce for members of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association:

Previously, I published the Wisconsin Openness Report, which included coverage of open government issues facing Wisconsin newspapers:

In 2018, I led communications and programming efforts for the launch of the WNA Foundation’s Wisconsin Civics Games. The competition garnered statewide and national praise for bolstering civic education among Wisconsin youth — and even became a model for other states. In the last year, student participation has grown by 50%.

Watch the inaugural event.

Testimonials

“I believe that civics education is frankly more important than ever, and the newspaper association’s work to make this opportunity available to the school districts in this state is a great step forward.”
– Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers

“I learned many things I hadn’t from the school social studies curriculum. As a member of a village committee in the town where I live, I found that the topics I learned about while preparing and studying for the competition helped me do a better job of serving my local constituents.”
– Samuel Kaufmann, Waunakee High School student & 2019 Wisconsin Civics Games finalist

Play Video

Since joining the WNA in 2014, I have managed educational development and event planning for the association’s more than 200 members. Here are some examples of educational lineups and events I’ve developed:

See sessions that I’ve presented.