INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Tuesday marked the beginning of an extraordinary venture in journalism in central Indiana.

Mirror Indy, the first newsroom launched in the state by Free Press Indiana, was created to be a reflection of Indianapolis, nodding to the past with an eye toward the future, and WISH-TV and its parent company Circle City Broadcasting are proud to be documenting partners with Mirror Indy.

The newsroom’s site launched at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, and to celebrate the launch, Ebony Chappel , the market director for Free Press Indiana, joined News 8 Tuesday morning to tell more about Mirror Indy.

Oseye Boyd, Mirror Indy editor in chief, told I-Team 8, “The focal point is community, community-based news, community-based news accountability based news, we are all about the community.”

Mirror Indy’s pale green and white website has nothing flashy and currently no advertisers. They are a not-for-profit news organization independent of advertiser money. Donations pay the staff of reporters and editors. They have raised close to $10 million to launch the project.

Boyd, a Muncie native and Ball State University graduate with several years of experience with the Indianapolis Star and the Indianapolis Recorder, says the name Mirror Indy is more than just a catchy name.

“We choose that name because we are a reflection of Indianapolis, we love our city, we work in our city we live in our city and we are a part of our city and we want to tell those stories that our community tells us they want to hear, so it is not a top down approach to news, but a very bottom up, grassroots, we are out in the community getting stories, hey we are missing these stories, so it is really all about the community.”

Mirror Indy is a virtual newsroom with plans to have a brick-and-mortar location. The backbone of its operation is a team of seven reporters, and nine neighborhood “documentors.” The “documentors” are paid, citizen journalists who do what the name implies. 

Boyd said, “Talk about civic journalism getting regular every day folk in those meetings and that is just an awesome way to help us, all journalist we are envisioning that you will see something ‘documentors’ did and then you will think Oh that’s a good news story, it just not us the people that are going to write the news stories but any journalist could see what the ‘documentors’ are doing and use that as a bases of a news story that’s the hope.”

To learn more about Mirror Indy and how to become a documenting partner, visit its website.