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You've been sent a story from New Voices (http://www.j-newvoices.org/): The Appalachian Independent Cherie Snyder, Alternative Newspaper Facilitator, Citizens for a Secular Government http://www.j-newvoices.org/583/ Civic group will create a bi-weekly online newspaper community for the rural community around Frostburg, Maryland, modeled on the National League of Cities' Inclusive Community Program. CONTACT INFO Cherie Snyder Citizens for a Secular Government 87 Broadway Frostburg, MD 21532 (301) 689-0195 E-mail Website Twitter Civic group will create a bi-weekly online newspaper community for the rural community around Frostburg, Maryland, modeled on the National League of Cities’ Inclusive Community Program. Frostburg State University and Allegany College of Maryland students and faculty will participate.  The Appalachian Independent has launched its website: www.appindie.org. Check back for future news and updates. • August 2009 • February 2009       AppIndie slowly becoming “highly valued and much needed”AppIndie’s presence on Twitter, Facebook, and Google increases traffic August 2009 You know you’re having an impact as a budding community news organization when local town officials cite you as being “highly valued and much needed.” The Appalachian Independent earned these accolades this year for its coverage of events and news in Frostburg, Md., and nearby communities. And it received a $10,000 grant for 2009-2010 from the Ottaway Foundation in New York for general operations and to boost participation by young people in the website. The Appalachian Independent (AppIndie.org) has slowly been growing in the number of unique visitors and contributors. Project director Cherie Synder reports significant readership increases: Between January and July 2009, the number of unique visits has grown from 2,271 to 11,568, while the number of pages views more than doubled from just over 16,000 to 34,000. An important part of AppIndie’s strategy to reach new readers has been the creation of Facebook and Twitter accounts, and better use of SEO for Google. Currently the site has 12 Twitter followers, 76 Facebook friends, and has found that 33 percent of all traffic is now coming from Google. The AppIndie news story with the biggest share of readership this quarter was a major fire May 26 at the old Prichard’s Hardware store in Frostburg.  Dramatic photos that were posted for this story came from Frostburg resident Steve Sullivan, who lived just down the street from the buildings that were involved. His spectacular photos were shot after he grabbed his camera and ran to the scene in the middle of the night. Other important stories included an 11-part series on “The Raging Controversy of the Allegany County Road Patrol,” which probed possible overtime pay irregularities, and “Deluge Devastates Saturday’s Delfest Festival,” which received more than 4,234 views of on-the-scene coverage and photos of a near-tornado that struck a local concert. There is also a new series on wild flowers, “Weed or Wonder,” written by Mary Spaulding. Kara Rogers Thomas has been covering the new Mountain City Traditional Arts Center in Frostburg. Synder reports that the number of published articles has decreased, reflecting fewer submissions by core staff due to other work/family commitments (content is still primarily being generated by the core staff of 11). There are, however, steadily increasing numbers of articles submitted by readers, community members, local groups, such as the Frostburg Rotary and students at Allegany College of Maryland and Frostburg State University. In addition, an FSU journalism class intern who is assigned to AppIndie has been submitting articles throughout the spring semester. A total of 33 non-core staff contributors submitted articles that were published since March 1. AppIndie has been steadily working to increase citizen journalist submissions and reader involvement. Craig Etchison and Kurt Hoffman have held three information and recruitment sessions in the community to encourage citizen involvement, but attendance has been low. The home page of the paper also now has a large icon - WANTED: CITIZEN JOURNALISTS! - that provides information on how to get involved. In addition, the site has a “comment button” after each story to encourage reader involvement. But Synder says that recruiting more contributors and encourages readers to interact with stories on the site continue to be a challenge and the source of much discussion among the core staff. The staff is considering a number of ideas to boost the level of citizen dialogue and the number of contributors, including:  Obtaining a full time AmeriCorps volunteer (recruited from FSU or ACM) who would work to actively publicize the website and recruit citizen journalists from community groups and in the general community. Issuing a call for applications from interested individuals to serve as “roving reporters” and identifying two or three who would serve in this capacity in return for a small stipend. Recruiting an intern to work under the supervision of a core staff person and be responsible for doing outreach in the community, writing stories and recruiting citizen journalists, particularly students. In the meantime, Synder says the site has made significant technological process. A comment button has been added to story pages and the website now has Twitter and Facebook accounts. The site has also purchased three new Flip video cameras for use by core staff and reporters, as well as Adobe CS4 software so that it can create and offer podcasts. AppIndie also received approval from J-Lab for a technical contract to redesign the site and develop a community page and calendar. Sustainability has also been a primary focus for the past four months. Along with a donation button on the home page, AppIndie has sent out an e-mail letter to readers, members and supporters requesting donations towards their local match for the 2009/2010 J-Lab grant. Still pending are proposals that have been submitted to two other foundations The Snow Foundation and the local Community Trust Foundation. Tell It on the MountainFebruary 2009 Unabashedly liberal and determined to rout citizen apathy, the Appalachian Independent - motto: “The Dialogue of Democracy” - seeks to create a virtual community in the mountainous region where Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania meet. The area’s disparate towns and hamlets make difficult a physical sense of community, and its geographic and cultural isolation from urban areas limits a diversity of perspectives, AppIndie’s founders say. Launched in September 2008 by a group of nine friends, neighbors and colleagues in Frostburg, Md., AppIndie takes as inspiration Abraham Lincoln’s dictum from the Gettysburg Address: “[G]overnment of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” The Appalachian Independent is staffed primarily by volunteers. Managing Editor Richard Kerns, Community Manager Kurt Hoffman, Technical Director/Webmaster Steve Robinett and Technical Intern Ben Strozykowski receive annual stipends that total $5,500. Business Manager Cherie Snyder is unpaid. Each member of the core staff is responsible for a particular area or bureau. (For a brief overview of the staff, click here.) The Appalachian Independent strives to be a source of diverse perspectives and a new kind of news organization: “We hope to encourage critical consumers of the media and ‘independent’ thinking in our readers.” Not least, AppIndie also aims to produce stories that celebrate and preserve Mountain Maryland’s unique heritage. “It’s a core part of what we’re doing,” says Cherie Snyder. “It’s a very poor community and Appalachian heritage is not particularly known or valued.” An Oct. 30, 2008, story focused on a trip through Appalachia by a Frostburg State University professor and six students. Their intent was to survey the results of “mountaintop removal,” a controversial method of coal mining that does what it says: removes the peaks of mountains, the better to uncover seams of coal. In so doing it devastates communities and the environment. Professor Kara Rogers Thomas vividly described the scene at the top of the decapitated mountain: “Surveying the ruin, we gathered around [local resident Sam Gilbert] as he gazed over the Mountaintop Removal project on Hale Gap, near Whitesburg [Ky.]. With tears welling up in his eyes, he told us how he’d grown up at the base of this mountain. It was here that he’d learned the ways of the woods. ... Mountaintop Removal is destroying more than the mountains; it is jeopardizing a way of life for a people who maintain a strong bond with the natural world.” AppIndie focuses on the local but is also concerned with the wider world, and its contributors are not shy about expressing themselves. Craig Etchison on Dec. 23, 2008, wrote an impassioned piece about failures of the Bush administration and about the need for an informed citizenry. Encouraging citizen vigilance is an integral part of AppIndie’s mission. Helping create a “watchdog effect” - keeping citizens apprised of what their elected officials are up to - is one of the online newspaper’s core values, Snyder says.  Snyder, AppIndie’s business manager and a social worker trained in mind-body therapies, oversees the site’s Wellness section, which seeks to promote good health in a community rife with obesity and poverty. “We’re trying to build self-care skills [that] very much tie in with the concept of empowerment,” she says. After much debate, the fledgling AppIndie staff chose Joomla!—a free, open-source product—as the paper’s content-management system. Though this saved money and was philosophically in tune with AppIndie’s mission as a grassroots news site, the learning curve has been steep. Not all members of the core staff are technically skilled, so logjams and frustration have been common. Interactivity is still an issue: AppIndie’s overworked tech staff has yet to create a comment-response button to articles that would foster a writer-reader dialogue—a core part of the project’s mission. AppIndie is also still working to create an online community calendar. In addition, the tech staff is setting up AppIndie YouTube and Flickr accounts. Site users will be encouraged to submit video and still photos. In addition, AppIndie’s staff would like to dramatically increase news reporting by citizen journalists; much of the site’s current content is commentary. “Although a great majority of stories remain generated by the core [staff], there is a nascent but encouraging trend toward ‘outside’ authorship,” AppIndie reports. From early September 2008 to mid-January, 11 staff members and 33 contributors posted 239 articles on the AppIndie.org website. The staff is also working to develop a short-term marketing program aimed at increasing awareness of the paper and readership. Considerable outreach has been done in the community, including AppIndie.org spots on local radio, displays at area events and venues and a large banner hung across Water Street in Frostburg. Meanwhile, discussions are under way about using advertisements to generate revenue, with the goal of making the newspaper self-sufficient. Staff members also visited the New York office of the Foundation Center and identified several potential funding sources. Proposal summaries were submitted to three national foundations and phone contact was made with three others. AppIndie is working with two local colleges to request that the online newspaper serve as a project for a student team that would develop a marketing and/or business plan. For now, a student is conducting an online search for small social-action grants that would fund AppIndie projects to engage senior citizens, young people, minorities and other underserved populations. The Appalachian Independent receives an average of 26.5 hits per day, with a total of 4,272 unique visits since the site was launched in September 2008. Almost 17,000 pages have been viewed, with an average of 3.9 pages viewed per visit. The site has 58 registered users. - Hope Keller, 2/23/09