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You've been sent a story from New Voices (http://www.j-newvoices.org/): Hartsville Today Douglas J. Fisher of the University of South Carolina http://www.j-newvoices.org/64/ USC students, with help from the IFRA Newsplex, team with a local paper to improve and expand its community news coverage on the Web. CONTACT INFO Hartsville Today The University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications Columbia, SC 29208 (803) 777-3315 E-mail Web siteUSC students and Newsplex advisors will team with the twice-weekly Hartsville Messenger to expand community coverage by recruiting and training citizen journalists to contribute reports, moblogs, video and audio to either a new or improved Web site as part of a pilot program that will result in a how-to guide for smaller news organizations seeking to embrace citizen journalism. Hartsville Today has released its citizen media “cook book,“ a guide for community groups or newspapers looking to create a citizen news site. You can download it at Doug Fisher’s blog, Common Sense Journalism. Jump to progress reports: • Final Report: October 2007 • May 2006 • February 2006 • November 2005 • August 2005   User-generated Posts Give Hartsville Today a Hometown Feel Final Report: October 2007 “When we first started telling people about the site at Rotary Clubs, they worried, ‘what’s to keep folks from posting naked pictures?’” says Graham Osteen, Publisher of the twice-weekly Hartsville Messenger. “But nothing lewd has happened. It’s served its purpose until now, as a way for the community to communicate and share.” And share they have. Community contributors to Hartsville Today (HVTD) have even created some of the site’s most popular features, like a Pet of the Week page and weekly best-sellers list from the local bookstore. Photo galleries, especially citizen posts of old photos and postcards of historic Hartsville, give the site a hometown feel. Doug Fisher of the University of South Carolina School of Journalism, the academic partner in HVTD, says a recent posting inquiring about a shrine to a deceased resident best “represents the soul of the site.” Regular posts by a paid stringer  during the two-year grant period were important in keeping the conversation local, lively and relevant to readers’ lives. That woman, although no longer paid, remains a valued, regular contributor to the site who has encouraged others, such as “Sandy Sue,“ to become regular contributor as well. When “Sandy Sue” recently challenged the cleanliness at the new Pizza Hut, she generated more than 150 posts in response. Osteen says that situation got a little dicey since Pizza Hut is an advertiser for the newspaper. “An editor got a call from a district manager, but he told them to go in and post their own comment.” Osteen says Hartsville Today also breaks some news, including game summaries of Friday night high school football scores, which people rely on since the print newspaper isn’t published on Saturday. One challenge has been getting the newsroom to integrate HVTD into its routine.  “But now,” says Fisher, “reporters say they check it fairly regularly, and they have gotten stories and story ideas out of it.”  The print newspaper also reverse publishes some of the copy from the Web site in its Monday edition.  The site has strengthened people’s connection to their local paper and the community. “People tell us they come to HVTD for news they don’t get in the paper,” says Fisher, “And they use it to give feedback to the paper.”  Fisher pointed to a recent example where readers complained about front-page crime coverage. The founders acknowledge the site itself hasn’t brought in much advertising.  Fisher suggests that sales staff are concerned that selling ads for the site might hurt the legacy newspaper. Osteen admits, “When you have sales reps who get commission on print, they aren’t going to beat the drum on the Web site,” although he says the paper is starting to offer combos. And while the newspaper’s market territory is the whole county, Fisher says one saleswoman told him that trying to sell HVTD outside of Hartsville is difficult because people don’t see it as being from their town. “That’s good, actually, because it means it has a strong community identity. But it does pose a challenge for sales staffs whose territory is wider than that.”  Fisher calls this a “hyperlocal conundrum” for existing media operations that have relied on a wider base for revenue. Fisher says that despite these challenges, it’s been gratifying to see that readers care deeply about the site, making it their home page, and posting positive and negative comments freely. “They appear to have a sense of pride and ownership in the site and they complain when it seems dull.  One community member wrote, ‘What happened? This site used to be an interesting and lively exchange of views and opinions but lately it just reads like a boring episode of ‘Leave it to Beaver.’” Fisher says periodically there are rumors the paper will be sold, and “almost immediately come the ‘I hope they don’t shut down this site’ messages.” As a result, Fisher says they’ve learned a lot about moderating community conversation: “No matter what you do, someone will be mad, so the best thing is to be transparent and if you sense hurt feelings try to assuage them back channel. We’ve learned to try to give people a second chance, but not get into an extended debate with them.” Fisher says the one big disappointment is that HVTD hasn’t attracted significant participation from minority communities. As the academic arm of this partnership, Fisher says he plans to continue to work with newspaper staff to help them introduce the idea of user-generated content into their workflow. He plans to work with sales staff to get more ads on the site and to overcome the barriers to selling digital. And, of course, continue research into various aspects of the project, especially evidence of community building.  The Hartsville Today Cookbook (click to download PDF) has been downloaded 20,000 times. According to Fisher, the number of hits peaked during the summer at more than 40,000 a month. Hartsville Today Begins to Take Hold in Community May 2006 At a recent Kiwanis Club meeting to hear about the town’s new Hartsville Today citizen media venture, one man approached project leader Doug Fisher with a small complaint: “I’ve made Hartsville Today my home page, and it’s loading a little slow,“ he said. “We’ll get it fixed,“ Fisher promised, with no small delight. It was another welcome sign that www.hartsvilletoday.com was working its way into the daily information flow of this South Carolina community of about 20,000 people. In the seven months since Hartsville Today went live on Oct. 27, 2005, it has tripled its Web traffic, posted 380 stories and photos, and attracted 100 people who have registered to add content to the site. “The site has created a certain buzz,“ Fisher said. When one poster wrote about a recent alligator sighting at a local lake, one of the site’s new stringers reported people gathering at the lake the next day with cameras hoping for a gator glimpse. Among the first-year benchmarks: Site traffic increase to more than 5,000 in April from 1,700 last October. Fisher figures that about 70 percent of these visits are from actual users; the rest are from spiders and robots. The 100 people who have created site accounts have posted 211 stories and 169 photos – and the image galleries have only been working properly since March. Its partner, the twice-weekly Hartsville Messenger, has provided deadline coverage of events, especially sports, and re-published stories from the site. The site hosted two training sessions in writing and photo editing in mid-March at Coker College. Sixteen people attended. Fisher said there was a jump in contributions after the training, and post-session surveys were very positive. “Those who attended overwhelmingly said they would tell others about Hartsville Today and they would encourage others to contribute,“ he said. The site invites contributors to be “community storytellers” rather than citizen journalists.  However, Fisher said there have been some delays and disappointments to go along with the successes: The site did not hire a stringer until May, missing most of the spring recreational sports season that it had hoped to cover. Minority participation appears to be low. Few of those who have registered on the site come from the city’s primarily black areas. Some features on the site are inactive or not working, awaiting attention from the Daily Messenger’s Web staff.  The “Report Inappropriate Content” and “Contact Us” links are inactive, awaiting a decision on who will handle those contacts. A news aggregator that is supposed to take headlines from local blogs is not working, and a planned “Our Hartsville” wiki has not been implemented. The site only has one advertiser. The Messenger, which is responsible for selling ads on the site, is in the process of training its sales staff to sell ads in the newspaper, the paper’s web site, www.hartsvillemessenger.com, and the Hartsville Today site. Coming soon:  A cookbook on how small newspapers can integrate citizen media ventures into their other activities and deal with resistance at the news organization. “We have learned that nurturing a site like this is a continuing effort that must be as integrated into the newsroom’s operations and culture as possible,“ Fisher said. Hartsville Today: Focal Point for Community Conversations February 2006 When the local Byerly Foundation wanted to convene Hartsville, S.C., residents earlier this year to discuss community needs, it reached out to Hartsville Today to promote the talks and collect the ideas that surfaced. Residents identified several concerns when they first met on Jan. 31, including better housing and public safety, a revitalized downtown area and a more developed town identity. However, what they most needed, the group said, was better communication in the community. That’s a need that Hartsville Today intends to help meet. In January alone, Hartsville Today received more than 3,000 visits and more than 22,000 page views. Users looked at between five and six pages per visit, on average. But the citizen media start-up is still seeking to expand its stable of contributors.  Through the first week of February, Hartsville Today had 71 stories posted from 18 contributors.  Graham Osteen, publisher of the Hartsville Messenger, which partners with the University of South Carolina on the project, has promised to expand marketing efforts to seek new sources of stories. The university has also increased recruiting efforts. It has contacted Boy Scout and Girl Scout council offices to spread the word among area troops, and the project has reached out to local minorities, especially the area’s growing Hispanic community. Jim Faile, Messenger managing editor, has spearheaded this effort through contact with Hispanic religious leaders. “These kind of recruitment efforts allow the paper to forge new or deeper connections with a broader spectrum of Hartsville,“ said project leader Doug Fisher, professor at USC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Still, Fisher emphasized the need for contributions from dedicated volunteers and Messenger staff writers. “The most successful sites, as judged by frequency and content of postings, have generally been those with a core of paid or volunteer staff,“ Fisher said. “That staff, even if an army of one, provides the focus that successfully drives any editorial product. Sites such as Backfence.com in suburban Washington, [D.C.], YourHub in Denver and Bayosphere in San Francisco have faced second-guessing as the early hype gave way to the reality that if you build it, they won’t necessarily come.“ Fisher said that Hartsville Today will explore those questions, such as what level of involvement the local publication – in this case, the Messenger – needs to have to make a citizen media site successful. “Simply throwing open the gates and inviting the community in is likely to produce less-than-desired results,“ he added. Going forward, Hartsville Today plans to hire stringers who will take cell phones and cameras to cover spring events, especially recreational sports. The Messenger staff has also pledged to look for more opportunities to use the site to extend its coverage, including posting sports reports immediately after games rather than waiting for the Messenger’s print runs on Wednesdays and Fridays. “It’s this kind of dependable, targeted content that will help generate income for the site and, we hope, posts from the rest of the community,“ Fisher said. Breaking News, Blogs and Wikis to Come November 2005 HartsvilleToday.com went live on Thursday, Oct. 27, and the next night it delivered a first for the community: Same-night coverage of the local high school football game. The big news was that the local Red Foxes had defeated their archrival Sumter. In the past, this South Carolina community of 10,000 had to get that news from the Item, a daily newspaper that is 35 miles away and doesn’t circulate much in Hartsville. “The site was in its infancy, and so we can’t say that word spread like wildfire through the community,“ said project leader Doug Fisher, professor at the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications.  But it was a start. By experimenting with HartsvilleToday.com, Fisher and local paper The Hartsville Messenger, which publishes on Wednesdays and Sundays every week, are trying to build a template for a community newspaper to deliver more breaking news and more content contributed by the community. WHAT WE USE: Drupal content management system.Someone, however, dropped the ball on a Web report for the following Friday-night game, and the partners are working to be sure that doesn’t happen again. The partners have been recruiting a pool of contributors, which “continues to be a challenge,“ Fisher said. Of the 45 people who indicated an initial interest, about 20 came to the launch party.  Some Coker College students are also becoming contributors. Many contributors expressed concerns that the site’s content would not be edited. Others asked about how much “journalism” a person would need to know to write for the site.  “In our recruitment, we have studiously avoided ‘citizen journalism’ in favor of ‘community storytelling,‘“ Fisher said. “You don’t need [journalism training] to write a good letter to your friends or have a good conversation with your family, do you? So don’t worry about it. Just write.“ The site is using Drupal as its content management system because it allows for categorizing forum submissions by topic, such as arts, entertainment and reviews; business; education; faith; hobbies and clubs; and sports. “We felt this structure would work best … possibly attracting more postings if people were able to clearly see how their writing might apply to a particular topic,“ Fisher said. Still to come, as the site continues to build out, are blogs and a photo module. Discussions are underway with a local cellular phone provider about the possibility of donating picture phones.  Prospective contributors were still grappling with how blogs would differ from other writing on the site. “Keeping it simple allowed for us to focus on the message of contributing rather than on explaining the differences,” Fisher said. Site developers are also looking for Wiki software for an “Our Hartsville” encyclopedia that would allow users to build a compendium of significant people, places events and organizations in town. Plans are also afoot to tap students at USC’s experimental Newsplex newsroom to help publicize the Web site and encourage community involvement. Wrote one contributor on the day the site launched: “A site that allows ‘regular’ people to post does not have the safeguards of an editor gatekeeper but at the same time does not have the obstacle of inverted pyramid or newsworthiness as defined by the editor. This will be an interesting site as we discover what each of us individuals thinks of as news.“ Nine Citizen Journalists Will Help Launch Hartsville ProjectAugust 2005 UPDATE:Hartsville Today has launched at www.hvtd.com! The site is The Hartsville Messenger’s community news site, and is a collaboration with the University of South Carolina’s Ifra Newsplex. Worthy of note is the Messenger’s decision to avoid the term “citizen journalism,“ in favor of “community storytelling.“ The Messenger in Hartsville, S.C., is calling all citizens “involved with any type of group, school, church, sports team, agency or civic organization.” The twice-weekly newspaper wants them to help expand community news coverage by participating in its new citizen journalism project. “We are looking for citizens of all ages, races, creeds and colors to participate,” wrote Messenger Editor and Publisher Graham Osteen in his July 8, 2005, column. “These new ‘reporters’ are not limited to writing, they will also be able to take video or still pictures with cameras or camera phones, or do audio reports.” So far, nine contributors have been recruited. They include a Hartsville city employee, the executive director of a local science and mathematics foundation, a volunteer firefighter, the CEO of a regional medical center, an elementary school teacher, a retired teacher, an employee of Sonoco Products Co., a funeral home director and an artist. The Messenger is collaborating with the citizen journalists and the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications in a pilot project intended “to broaden the scope of journalism in that town by giving those who live, work, play and receive their education in Hartsville a digital community center,” Osteen said in a July 20 column. Osteen and USC journalism professor Doug Fisher recruited the first contributors. They expect to recruit additional participants as the local colleges, Coker College and the Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics, start the fall term. Fisher has done some research with the paper’s staff and conducted informal interviews in the community and found that The Messenger’s Web site is largely unknown and rarely visited, but there is interest – especially among young people – in an outlet that would let people tell their own stories, post reviews, and provide a calendar of what is happening. Rather than housing the project’s content on the newspaper’s site, The Messenger has decided to create a new site for the project to present a more contemporary image and to avoid being restricted by the paper’s publishing schedule, Fisher said. The newspaper has registered a site name that will be aliased as Hartsville Today, OurHartsville, or something similar. “We are . . . striving for a name that does not promise more than can be delivered in terms of frequency and content but that clearly fosters a sense of community and newsiness,” Fisher said. The Messenger hopes to launch the site by September 20. Meanwhile, plans are afoot to design training for the citizen journalists and work out an advertising and revenue plan.