Hartsville Today’s “Cook Book”

Available for Download

The experiences of Hartsville Today offer guidelines to new citizen media and online news projects.

Click here to download the PDF version (1.1 MB).

After a year of developing and running Hartsville Today, University of South Carolina journalism instructor Douglas J. Fisher and Publisher Graham Osteen of the twice-weekly Hartsville Messenger have released their citizen media “cook book.” The 72-page guide, titled “Hartsville Today: The first year of a small-town citizen journalism site,” covers developing and designing the Web site, recruiting and training volunteer contributors, using paid staff, generating ad sales and more.

“In addition to covering all the aspects, we think it is the first major extended study of such a site, the postings and their contributors,” Fisher said on his blog, Common Sense Journalism.

Although the report is taglined, “A guide especially for small daily and non-daily newspapers,” it should also prove useful to community groups who want to create their own citizen reporting site and educators who are looking to incorporate citizen journalism lessons in their classes.

The cook book was created as part of a New Voices grant to Hartsville Today from J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism.

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