Graham Media Group has opened a new coffee shop in Detroit that doubles as a community meeting center and a television studio connected to its local NBC affiliate.
The new space, called Fairgrounds, opened to the public on Wednesday. It operates as a traditional coffee shop while allowing the public to connect with reporters and other newsroom personnel at WDIV (Channel 4).
In a statement this week, Graham Media said the coffee shop will allow its local journalists to meet wiht members of the community to solicit story ideas and conduct news gathering outside the traditional newsroom setting.
The station describes Fourgrounds as a first-of-its-kind concept for local television, combining a neighborhood business with an ongoing editorial presence rather than a temporary pop-up or community event.
“Journalism only works if a community trusts you enough to hand you their stories,” Stephanie Slagle, the Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer at WDIV, said in a statement.
Slagle said the space gives the station’s journalists an opportunity to build that trust through direct conversations with residents rather than relying only on scheduled interviews, newsroom calls or public events.
Fourgrounds serves coffee supplied through a partnership with Great Lakes Coffee, a Detroit-based roaster. The shop is open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. A website associated with Fourgrounds promises online ordering will come in the near future.
Local television stations have long used satellite studio space in public areas to conduct community outreach initiatives. In Sacramento, NBC affiliate KCRA-TV (Channel 3) previously leased space at the Arden Fair Mall, operating a secondary TV studio that allowed members of the public to learn more about the broadcasting industry. (The station eventually moved out of the mall, and the space was leased to Verizon for a retail store.)
Other stations that have opened satellite studios or pop-up experiences in public spaces include WFMJ (Channel 21), a family-owned NBC affiliate that operated from the Eastwood Mall in Ohio, and KOSA-TV (Channel 8, CBS), a Gray Media-owned station in Texas that produced local newsrooms form a studio located at Music City Mall.
In the early 2000s, regional cable news station WRNN opened a TV studio inside a shopping mall in Palisades, New Jersey. The New York Times said the station was the first in the country to open a TV studio and community outreach center inside a shopping mall.
