Vermont Climate Witness

Bill Finnegan, Tamarack Productions

CONTACT INFO

Bill Finnegan
Tamarack Productions
1 Steele Street, Ste. 111
Burlington, VT 05401
(802) 238-5938
E-mail

Web site

To create a map-based interactive experience to track how residents see climate change affecting the state’s economy, from fall foliage and maple syrup to skiing. Tamarack Productions, a nonprofit environmental awareness organization, will work with the Vermont Natural Resources Council to develop user content and create Google Map mash-ups to help users visualize weather data and real-time weather indicators.

Check back for future news and updates.

• July 2009
• February 2009
• August 2008
• March 2008
• November 2007
 
 

Collaborations Help Create Climate Content

July 2009

The first half of 2009 saw a great deal of activity on the Vermont Climate Witness Web site. After a slow second half of 2008, project leader Bill Finnegan was happy to report that a new and improved Web site was launched in spring 2009 with rich content due to new collaborations with students, teachers, and local environmental organizations.

VCW was created to empower citizen scientists and citizen journalists to connect a global, abstract issue to the backyards and everyday decisions of ordinary people in the state. At the same time VCW wanted to harness the latest developments in interactive Web sites - user-generated, multi-media content, presented through an interactive map - to support grassroots environmental activism.

In order to accomplish this goal during the term of their New Voices grant, VCW faced two main challenges: the proper use of technical resources and the consistent creation of original and meaningful content.

Originally, Finnegan says VCW saw the allocation of 42 percent of its project budget to the customization of the content and media management system by its technical partner Legitify as an investment in a strong technical platform for the site. But upon reflection, Finnegan now believes that VCW may have been better served through some combination of open-source software or existing mapping, social networking, and media sharing services. Working with a commercial Web-development company meant that VCW often slipped to the bottom of Legitify’s to-do list because of its small budget. “We were forced to put on hold some of our more ambitious additions to the site (for example, a live weather conditions widget that also presented historic climate data and climate change models) in order to get the basic functionality in place.“

On the content creation side, Finnegan says the problem was one of defining clearly the reason for the site’s existence and how those interested in climate change could contribute information. Basically, people weren’t sure just what they could actually write about. “We began to realize that part of our problem was the framing of the issue and the focus on observations or witnesses, which limited our community of contributors to people who felt they had hard evidence of changing conditions in the state.“

Finnegan adds that the lack of incentives for contributing affected the number of posts, as did the informal nature of the Web that provided little pull to bring visitors back to he site. But VCW was able to overcome many of these limitations thanks to two very successful initiatives: working with Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility to identify two interns to help create content for the site, and a new partnership with Main Street Middle School in Montpelier that saw VCW as a way to use - indeed, to go beyond—formal learning activities about climate change.

The two interns helped VCW produce content for two new features it added this spring, Actions and Voices. One intern, a recent graduate from the University of Vermont, focused on researching and writing case studies to fill the Action strand of content. The second, a sophomore at Burlington College studying activism and film, produced a series of videos of a cross section of Vermonters talking about climate change for the Voices strand of content. Over their three-month, part-time internship, they each produced a number of high quality pieces for the site, averaging one to two in-depth posts each week. Finnegan says this boost of content from a pair of “highly motivated young people” was a very efficient use of the project resources.

“Given the success of this dimension of the project, we will be seeking similar collaborations with teachers and after school programs in the next academic year.“

Meanwhile, Finnegan says VCW found the perfect collaborator in Eli Rosenburg, a science teacher at Main Street Middle School. “Eli instantly saw the potential of the Web site as a platform for integrating the seventh and eighth grade energy curriculum with local exploration of climate change.“ Rosenburg recognized that the use of new media would provide the “hook” to keep kids interested in the project. Armed with Flip cameras, the students headed out into the Montpelier community to interview expert and local citizens. Using this material, they produced stories, videos, and slideshows on the site. “Given the success of this dimension of the project, we will be seeking similar collaborations with teachers and after school programs in the next academic year. “

Finnegan says VCW will also continue its collaboration with the Vermont Natural Resources Council (VNRC) to identify potential stories for the site and content contributors. VNRC is the lead organization behind the Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network (VECAN), a loose affiliation of community organizations throughout the state. Because of time and resource limitations, VECAN has been slow to develop. So Finnegan says that rather than compete with VECAN, VCW hopes to capture stories of VNRC members and cross post them on the VECAN site.

As the move beyond their New Voices grant, Finnegan says VCW will continue to seek partnerships and funding from the environmental community to further support the mission of VCW.

—Tom Regan

Stormy Weather

February 2009

After a slow second half of 2008, Vermont Climate Witness this winter is set to launch two new site features, Actions and Reactions. The first will showcase efforts undertaken by local individuals and communities to respond to climate change. The second will feature on-the-street, video-blog discussions of climate change and weather. 

Project leader Bill Finnegan is gearing up to produce and solicit more content for the VCW Web site, which has not been refreshed since early 2008. He and Tamarack Productions (the nonprofit arm of the Burlington,Vt.-based Tamarack Media) also plan to work with a local middle school science teacher to develop and test a multimedia unit on local climate change, which will be a part of the teacher’s curriculum. Finnegan plans to broaden the unit’s reach by offering it to Vermont’s network of community media centers and public access television stations. He also seeks to collect oral histories about climate change from older Vermonters.

“I am very excited about harnessing these tools to give voice to people suffering from air, water and other toxic pollution.“

The site’s goal is to provide a platform for Vermonters to participate in a dialogue about climate change and what it means for the state, Finnegan says. As users share their thoughts and comments, they will also be creating a digital archive of climate observations that will in effect provide a time-lapsed picture of climate change in the state.

Finnegan picked up food for thought at the April 2008 New Voices grantee gathering, where he and other grant recipients discussed the potential of a multimedia, map-based tool for addressing social justice issues. Finnegan hopes that linking climate change to social issues, such as diseases attributable to environmental pollution, will bring more users to the Vermont Climate Witness site.

To that end, he has reached out to Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE), an environmental justice organization based in Boston. Tamarack and ACE have discussed plans for an interactive map and an online platform for environmental justice advocates to share their stories. “I am very excited about harnessing these tools to give voice to people suffering from air, water and other toxic pollution,“ Finnegan says.

Meanwhile, Finnegan continues to tap into the network of local climate activists, including members of the Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network and the Vermont Natural Resources Council. He will keep in regular touch with these sources to gather case studies for the new Actions feature of the VCW site.

The Vermont Climate Witness project has faced several challenges, Finnegan reports. One issue is technical: Tamarack has relied on a custom Web-development firm to build and update the VCW Web site. As the company gained customers, the VCW site—with its limited budget—slid to the bottom of the firm’s priority list. Finnegan cautions others to think hard before partnering with a for-profit Web developer: “I would strongly recommend that any similar projects harness open-source software or utilize existing online media services, such as YouTube and Flickr.“

Another, larger, challenge has been articulating the Web site’s reason for being. Even some people who had been enthusiastic about the project in the planning stage appeared puzzled once the site went live. The original idea was to solicit, collect and post weather- and climate-related observations from citizens in text, photo or video form. What Tamarack/VCW at first failed to do, Finnegan says, was tell users why their input was important and how it could help further understanding of climate change. The site failed to explain to potential users that out of individual observations could appear, over time, a comprehensive (and digitally archived) picture of climate change in Vermont. “We never fully thought through why people would want to share this information and actively participate in a small, niche online network,“ Finnegan says.

For the next six months, Tamarack plans to produce about 75 percent of the site’s content, with 25 percent created by 25 users. Finnegan hopes to reverse that ratio over time. He is working with Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility to find and interview interns to help Tamarack with content production. Finnegan hopes to increase traffic to the site by regularly posting new content.

- Hope Keller, 2/23/09

Ripening

August 2008

Vermont Climate Witness has completed its beta testing phase and is preparing now for a more formal launch this fall.  Is it raining at Lake Champlain? You can now find out by logging on to Vermont Climate Witness, which has added the live National Weather Service Doppler radar feed of cloud cover as a layer to its map.

In the meantime, VCW has been doing grassroots outreach to spread the word about the new site, which welcomes citizen scientists and citizen journalists to share their observations about the weather.  VCW exhibited at a recent sustainable living expo in Burlington, and the project was profiled in an article that was published in central Vermont newspapers:  The Rutland Herald and the Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus.

Bill Finnegan, VCW project leader, says outreach will continue to be his focus.  “As with any Web site that depends on user-generated content, we know that it is not enough simply to go live with the site and expect people to find it.  Nor is a simple blitz of e-mail lists enough to garner the attention and activity that will sustain the Web site in the long term.“

So VCW will work with its partner the Vermont Natural Resources Council’s Energy and Climate Action Network, which consists of community-based teams that are engaging citizens in discussions about climate change. VCW will put together a simple guide for using the site and distribute it through the VNRC.

VCW is on the road over the summer and fall to spread the word widely, face-to-face. And to engage new audiences, they’ve reached beyond the environmentalist community to the Vermont Ski Areas Association. If they feel they need an extra push before launch, they may place targeted advertising and a contest through the Front Porch Forum, a popular Burlington-based neighborhood electronic newsletter.

“We are also very interested in finding ways to capture the stories of older Vermonters who are less tech savvy but have plenty to teach us about the Vermont climate over the years,“ said Finnegan.  One possibility is to create an intergenerational oral history project.

Beta Testing 1-2-3 ...

March 2008

Vermont Climate Witness went live in beta version in December 2007.  Since then, it has recruited a posse of weather buffs, student activists and environmental educators to test the site and contribute seed content, as site producers fine-tune the back-end systems and the site interface in advance of the public launch.

“The transition from concept to actual functioning Web site has been an interesting and exciting process,“ says Bill Finnegan of Tamarack Productions, the project leader. “There were many things that we couldn’t fully anticipate - issues that only became clear once we created the site and people started posting.“ The testing period has helped producers simplify the site’s location tagging and create a more user-friendly system for setting up accounts, uploading content, adding comments and forwarding posts to friends.

Finnegan says the team still has some technical and content challenges ahead. “For the map interface, we are still trying to figure out the best way to represent multiple posts to the same location - we will likely add either a multi-post icon for popular locations or add more specialized statewide, regional, and city/town level views that include different information on the map. We are also working on the best way to integrate Vermont Climate Witness with existing media sharing Web sites, like YouTube and Flickr, so users don’t have to re-upload existing online video clips or photographs.“

With heightened awareness of global warming, many people tend to blame all sorts of weather conditions on greenhouse gases and carbon emissions.  So Vermont Climate Witness knows it must proceed cautiously, encouraging people to share weather stories on the site without losing credibility for featuring information that’s not really related to climate change or trends. 

Finnegan say they are developing a strategy to recruit and support a social network of regular contributors.  A key partner will be Seventh Generation the national non-toxic cleaning products company which happens to be based in Burlington, VT.  The company is leading a regional “Low Carbon Diet” initiative in which community-based eco-teams post their stories to Vermont Climate Witness as they track their personal progress using a carbon footprint tool developed by the EPA. They have also started a conversation with Greenopolis.com, a social network for green living, about replicating Climate Witness at a larger scale.

Vermont Climate Witness had originally planned its public launch for January 31 to coincide with Focus the Nation, a national teach-in, but Finnegan says his team concluded the site wasn’t ready yet. Instead they seized the opportunity to share the Beta version with the 27 schools and other organizations participating in the event around the state. The site will also do heavy promotion at March 4 Town Meeting Day gatherings around Vermont in partnership with community energy and climate groups.  They are also considering touring libraries and community centers around the state to publicly launch the site this spring.

Can I get a Witness?

November 2007

Vermont Climate Witness is gearing up for a soft launch of the site in late November, 2007. The site will encourage Vermonters to think globally, but act locally, by documenting the impact of climate change on their lives and immediate environment. The site introduction reads:

“We all know what Global Warming is. We hear it on the radio, see it on the television, and read about it in the news. Whatever the myths and truths surrounding Global Warming: its causes, its consequences, or possible solutions, ignoring the topic is no longer an option for any conscious individual. This Web site aims to create a unique regional perspective of our climate. By sharing observations seen where you live, we can together build a strong regional view of some rather drastic changes.“

Through summer, the Vermont Climate Witness project has been hard at work preparing the digital soil for the new site. Key partners in the project are Legitify, a media firm that specializes in Web development and content management, and the Vermont Natural Resources Council, the state’s leading environmental organization. Project leader Bill Finnegan of Tamarack Productions says, “We are confident we can create a powerful platform for citizen science and citizen journalism with an active community of users and contributors.“

Over the past few months, they have been working to adapt Legitify’s “Studio” Web application for a Web site driven by user-generated, multi-media content. They have refined the interface and the interactive map, which Finnegan says “must be intuitively organized to fully engage users ...  In many ways it’s been a reality check in terms of the time it takes to develop a complicated software application that is user-friendly.“

A local graphic designer has developed a logo and design for the Web site, including icons that will indicate the different types of content available through the site’s embedded Google Maps:  weather conditions, plants/foliage, wildlife/hunting/fishing, farming/sugaring, outdoor recreation/skiing, and climate action.

The project has reached out to a slew of climate experts to advise and participate:

• Lesley-Ann L. Dupigny-Giroux, the Vermont State Climatologist and a Professor in the Geography Department at the University of Vermont.
   
• Mark Breen, Senior Meteorologist at the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium and Host of Vermont Public Radio’s “Eye on the Sky” weather programming.
   
• Tom Messner, Chief Meteorologist of WPTZ NewsChannel 5 and the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center.
   
• Alexander Quarles van Ufford, Coordinator of the Climate Witness Initiative at WWF International.

During the soft launch phase, the Vermont Natural Resources Council will link to the site and help recruit 50 contributors already interested in climate change, from student activists involved in the Step it Up climate action protests to energy commission members from small towns. “This first set of users will upload seed content while testing the software,“ says Finnegan. He expects these pioneering participants to ultimately become active contributors and an important network for promoting the site.

“In an effort to get beyond those already interested in this issue, or who represent a particular perspective, we plan to involve weather buffs from the National Weather Service Cooperative Observer Program, as well as Vermont celebrities, such as artists musicians and business leaders.“

The public launch is slated for January when Finnegan says the site will be fully tested, chock-full of rich multimedia content, and buzzing with activity from a co-hort of contributors. The launch date is planned to coincide with and ride the promotional coattails of a national teach-in on global warming called Focus the Nation, on Jan. 31, 2008.

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Northwest Community Radio Network Collaborative Newscast

Jonathan Lawson, Executive Director, Reclaim the Media

• Seattle

CONTACT INFO

Reclaim the Media
PO Box 22754
Seattle, WA 98122
(206) 931-0565
E-mail

Web site

To launch an hour-long, weekly newscast culled from the best public affairs programming produced by more than 40, often-isolated community, college and independent radio stations throughout the Pacific Northwest. Seattle-based Reclaim the Media will use the newscast to anchor a new content-sharing network that will expand the pool of regional news and programming for local audiences.

Check back for future news and updates.

• August 2009
• August 2008
• April 2008
• November 2007
 
 
 

Northwest Community Radio Network Collaborative Newscast from J-Lab on Vimeo..

2007 grantee Karen Toering talks about what parts of the project make her proud, as well as what challenges it has faced. This interview took place on April 5, 2008, at the New Voices 2007 Grantee Meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn in Washington, D.C.

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Listen Up! Northwest Rides Strong Wave into its Second Year

August 2009

By Tom Regan

Early this summer Reclaim the Media’s Listen Up! Northwest (broadcast, podcast and blog) celebrated its first full year on the air and on the Web. The show is now being carried on 18 stations in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and Northern California, plus a number of online Webcasts.

“The issues-based focus of the program has helped Listen Up! Northwest become a useful resource for community organizations around the region…“

Executive Director Jonathan Lawson reports that Listen Up! Northwest remains the only regionally focused community media program currently being carried over such a broad area. The program’s podcast, available at http://www.listenupnw.org and through the Apple iTunes store, has over 750 subscribers. As a result of the program, communities in the urban centers of Seattle, Portland, and Anchorage, as well as in rural Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and British Columbia, are able to hear a unique range of stories produced by their regional neighbors - stories describing social and environmental initiatives and solution-oriented community action.  Lawson says audience response continues to be strongly positive, communicated via e-mailed comments and listener feedback from stations carrying the program.

From the beginning, one of the main goals of the project has been to pool the audiences for high-quality community radio journalism being produced around the region. Lawson believes this goal has been met, with the number of stations and organizations - now 29 - providing material to the show expanding faster than the number of stations currently airing Listen Up! Northwest.

Stations currently carrying Listen Up! Northwest:
• CJLY Nelson/Kootenay, BC
• CJSF Burnaby, BC
• KAOS Olympia, WA
• KBCS Bellevue/Seattle, WA
• KBOO Portland, OR
• KEUL Girdwood, AK
• KPOV Bend, OR
• KRFP Moscow, ID
• KSER Everett, WA
• KSOW Cottage Grove, OR
• KSKQ Ashland, OR
• KSVR Mt. Vernon, WA
• KUGS Bellingham, WA
• KWMD Kasilof/Anchorage, AK
• KYRS Spokane, WA
• Boise (ID) Community Radio
• Hollow Earth Radio
• Partytown Radio (Modesto, CA)

More significantly, says Lawson, “the issues-based focus of the program has helped Listen Up! Northwest become a useful resource for community organizations around the region working for civic engagement and positive change on environmental or social issues.“

“I often will hear from listeners thanking us for featuring stories that are not otherwise given much air time, or from organizations whose contact information we mentioned on the air,“ says producer Yuko Kodama. “Organizations want to know how to get copies of the program, to share with constituents or use as an organizing or educational tool. One listener appreciated that Native American voices are featured so prominently on the show. Others have appreciated hearing many perspectives on race on a number of shows. I’ve heard from Oregonians and Washingtonians who just appreciate hearing about community activities in British Columbia and Alberta - a world which often seems weirdly cut off from the States despite our proximity.“

Aside from the number of regional radio stations that broadcast the program, Lawson says that in the fall of 2009, the show will also be posted regularly to Pacifica’s AudioPort system. Lawson is also investigating other Web-based distribution platforms including the Public Radio Exchange. Recognizing that not all rural areas have high-speed bandwidth to download the program from the show’s Web site, rural stations will be given the option to receive current and archived programs by mail.

Stations and other organizations providing content to Listen Up! Northwest:
• Boise Community Radio
• CFRO Vancouver Coop Radio
• CJLY Nelson/Kootenay
• CJSF Burnaby
• Common Language Project, Seattle
• Crossing East, Portland
• Destination DIY, Portland
• Earthbeats
• Encounters North, Anchorage
• KAOS Olympia
• KBCS Bellevue/Seattle
• KBOO Portland
• KCAW Sitka
• KRFP Moscow
• KSKA Anchorage
• KSKQ Ashland
• KSVR Mt. Vernon
• KWMD Kasilof
• KYRS Spokane
• One America, Seattle
• Rabble Radio, Vancouver
• Reclaim the Media, Seattle
• Redeye Coop, Vancouver
• Reel Grrls, Seattle
• SCAN-TV, Seattle
• Sierra Club Radio
• Steppin’ Out Of Babylon, Eugene OR
• TUC Radio
• Womens Independent News Gathering Service, Burnaby

Lawson says that in the future, the distribution strategy will be evaluated in terms of how four goals are being met:

1. Making the program available to community radio stations for weekly broadcast, regardless of each station’s urban/rural setting, financial constraints, technology infrastructure or ability to access membership-based distribution networks such as Pacifica’s Audioport or PRX.
2. Ensuring that distribution is easy to integrate with different ways community stations already acquire syndicated programs.
3. Keeping the program easily available for individual Web listening and keyword search.
4. Modeling low-cost ways of accomplishing distribution using a combination of free software, widely adopted internet technology, and, where necessary, non-Web distribution, including physical mail.

While the long-term financial stability of the program remains somewhat uncertain, Reclaim the Media has been able to leverage some additional funding for the program and plan to begin direct station funding in January 2010.

Listen Up! Northwest has primarily been supported with start-up funds from J-Lab, an unsolicited gift from the Media Works Initiative, in kind support from KBCS, other grants and individual contributions. As the program moves into its second year, Lawson says they will attempt to diversify the show’s funding in two ways:

• By instituting carriage fees in January of 2010 for participating stations.
• By seeking specialized foundation support for gaining carriage on rural and native stations, and for supporting more radio journalism by producers covering rural and native issues.

“This fall we will conduct an interview-based assessment of community radio stations in Northwest states and provinces, to identify stations’ need for local/regional programming, their interest in broadcasting Listen Up! Northwest, and their ability to pay monthly carriage fees,“ says Lawson. “At the same time, we will also assess each station’s local public affairs production capacity and interest in journalistic collaboration through Listen Up! Northwest.“

Reclaim the Media will then set a carriage-fee schedule based on a station’s operating budget, amount of public affairs programming and other factors.

Lawson feels good about what the program has accomplished in its first year of operation.

“Listen Up! Northwest has established itself as a rare vehicle for regional collaboration among Northwest community radio stations, and an equally rare home for grassroots coverage of regional responses to environmental, economic and social issues,“ he said.

 

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Listen Up! To Radio Activity

August 2008

The Northwest Community Radio Network is on the air.  As of June 2008, host and producer Yuko Kodama has been assembling a weekly edition of Listen Up! Northwest at community radio station KBCS, in Bellevue, Wash., culling and curating contributions from station-based and independent producers in the region.  Some programs have been produced around a central theme.  For example, one edition featured stories about local agriculture while another featured a profile of the movement to save local seeds, backyard chickening, and taking over public land for farming. So far, seven stations in Washington state and Idaho are regularly airing the program, and in prime times too:  morning or evening drive. Carriage is expected to grow with greater outreach efforts, including at this summer’s GrassRoots Radio Coalition conference in Portland, Ore.

The program is available online for download or streaming.  The network is offering it for free, but asking station subscribers to pitch in $10 to $50 per month to help cover costs. Check out Listen Up! Northwest’s FAQ to glean more details on distribution and producer participation.

Reclaim the Media is planning to launch a special Web site for Listen Up! Northwest, featuring blogs, links and photos related to the stories. They also plan to offer radio production training workshops to recruit more producers to the program.  Producers receive $35 per story.  You can read submission guidelines here.

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Hear Here!

April 2008

A new collaborative radio program produced by and for community radio stations in the Pacific Northwest has finally found its voice. After months of planning, Reclaim the Media hired community media producer Yuko Kodama to produce and anchor a pilot, completed in early April. The program has a home: KBCS radio has agreed to provide office and studio space. And, the show has a name: Listen Up Northwest.

You can listen to the MP3 by clicking here.
The pilot edition featured pieces contributed by four member station producers on an environmental initiative of the Samish Nation, homelessness in Seattle, arts and empowerment in women’s prisons, and remembering Japanese internment.

According to Reclaim the Media’s Jonathan Lawson, the new producer will focus on acquiring, assigning and editing content for the program while his administrative team will emphasis fundraising, promotion and outreach/station recruitment.  Regular weekly production is under way. They hope to have 6 stations committed to broadcasting the program by May, doubling to 12 stations by fall 2008.
Station-based producers are invited to pitch stories and ideas that give a sense of regional identity. Lawson reports they’ve decided to shift some grant funds away from equipment and toward stipends to reward reporters whose stories make it into the program.

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A New News Network for the Northwest

November 2007

Reclaim the Media is confident its effort to build a regional network of noncommercial radio stations will soon lead to the launch of a collaborative, regional news and public affairs program.  The network is bringing together stations from Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

A dozen stations are represented on the project’s new steering committee, which has met via conference call to discuss content, style, production issues, and the hiring process for the grant-funded position of organizer/producer. That position was formally posted and 25 people applied for the job. The steering committee interviewed top candidates but decided to postpone the hire in order to raise additional funds from network member stations to pay this new staff person. 

In the interim, Gavin Dahl of member station KAOS in Olympia, Washington, has taken on the role as producer through an Evergreen State College internship. Dahl is producing pilot newscasts in the fall, developing relationships with contributing producers and helping secure financial contributions from member stations. A blog provides updates on issues of interest to participants.

Reclaim the Media has purchased portable recording kits for reporters to use. They have been working with the Pacifica Network to use and customize its Internet-based Audioport content-sharing system. This will enable NW Community Radio Network contributors to file their stories through the Web.

On a related note, Reclaim the Media assisted several community groups in their applications for FCC noncommercial licenses, anticipating that successful applications would expand and strengthen the radio network.

In October, Reclaim the Media held a Community Media Film Festival which offered another opportunity to promote the Northwest Community Radio Network news project to potential participants and donors in Western Washington.

And, the project got a promotional boost in the Prometheus Radio’s winter newsletter, which reaches many low-power broadcasters.

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Saint Paul City Newsdesk

Mike Wassenaar, Executive Director, Saint Paul Neighborhood Network

• St. Paul, MN

CONTACT INFO

Saint Paul Neighborhood Network
375 Jackson St.
St. Paul, MN 55101
(651) 298-8900
E-mail

Web site

To create and pay for a network of citizen journalists to cover neighborhood and municipal news for use by media outlets throughout the Twin Cities. Network stories, videos and radio pieces will be published on the St. Paul Neighborhood Network cable-access television web site and on the Twin Cities Daily Planet site.

Check back for future news and updates.

• August 2008
• March 2008
• November 2007
 
 

Saint Paul City Newsdesk from J-Lab on Vimeo..

2007 grantee Sherine Crooms talks about the work involved in getting the project going as well as surprises met along the way. This interview took place on April 5, 2008, at the New Voices 2007 Grantee Meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn in Washington, D.C.

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Show Time: A Public Premiere

August 2008

Saint Paul Neighborhood Network opened its doors to producers, community members and viewers in May 2008 when it hosted a public premiere of Saint Paul Newsdesk, a screening of pieces produced for the New Voices-funded project. The event was widely promoted on the cable channel, and the celebration was well attended and received. 

From stories about the Digital Divide to a profile of a marble collector, a visit to a gay and lesbian archive and lending library to an investigation of deaths by tasers, Saint Paul Newsdesk has produced a diverse array of features on cultural and political issues of interest and importance in the community.

A total of 20 new and experienced producers participated in the program. Project coordinator Sherine Crooms said about two-thirds of those who went through the training completed their segments. Video production clearly has a steep learning curve. “It took [lots] of time to work with people who do not necessarily have journalism training or video production experience,“ said Crooms, who is evaluating the program and thinking about creating collaborative production teams. “A different approach may be to pair writers/storytellers with producers, so a single individual isn’t burdened with story generation and production responsibilities.“

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SPNNing into Control

March 2008

The St. Paul Neighborhood Network held a competitive application process and enrolled 14 participants in News Desk, a citizen journalism initiative which aims to bring more voices from diverse communities to the cable channel’s programming. Those selected for the project went through an orientation and training program on video, lighting and editing.

The diverse group of participants includes people who’ve worked at local TV stations, an activist deep into the independent music scene, a local rap artist, a retired theater stage manager, a community activist, a youth media maker, a print reporter, a public radio producer, and more.

At the orientation, citizen journalist Robin Hickman said, “I’ve worked in media for years, but I feel like I’m missing that technology piece and this is my chance to step my game up another notch.  This is what it’s about, us telling our own stories.“

Half of the participants were already proficient in video production, while the other half brought some journalism, communication or media skills to the table. SPNN launched a blog to help News Deskers communicate with each other and pair up on productions, for technical assistance. As with all volunteer efforts, life can get in the way. Two trainees have dropped out, so project coordinator Sherine Crooms says SPNN is back in recruiting mode, hoping to enroll a few more local community producers for a total of 19.

In the meantime, they’ve identified a host for their four-part series which includes interesting features on “colorism” among young African American women, a toy store owner’s obsession with marbles, a piece about a local Martin Luther King Jr. celebration, and a profile of the pagan community in St. Paul. Other segments in post-production include coverage of community opposition to an incinerator and a new light rail train route. Features will soon be available for viewing online and the series has been slotted to begin airing on SPNN’s channels in May.

The project is developing a Web page to post preview snippets of upcoming programs, and will hold a community screening ceremony for the final productions. Stories will also be posted on Twin Cities Daily Planet, a 2005 New Voices grantee.

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Some Static on this Set

November 2007

Saint Paul Neighborhood Network is seeking to improve coverage of St. Paul neighborhoods by recruiting, training, assigning publishing and producing the work of citizen journalists working in print, radio, online and video.  SPNN is working with several collaborators to create a Saint Paul Newsdesk, including the Twin Cities Daily Planet, an online community news site.

Saint Paul Newsdesk began commissioning stories on neighborhood issues, some of which were posted on the TC Daily Planet in July and August, including a piece on AIDS prevention work, a children’s march against deportation, and community opposition to proposed tunneling under a congested intersection.

SPNN staffer Sherine Crooms, a public TV producer, developed a formal training program for Newsdesk contributors and SPNN has been recruiting St. Paul residents to apply to participate in its series of workshops on journalism, camera work and video editing. “This is an opportunity for community folk to produce short news stories in written and visual form, about issues that are important to them and their communities,“ the home page reads.

 “To encourage citizen journalism and promote democratized television these news shorts may appear on Twin Cities Daily Planet and SPNN Web sites as well as SPNN broadcasts. Each participant will receive a stipend in exchange for their 3-5 minute video submission.“

“Our goal for the training is to sustain a group of 15 citizen journalists producing video stories of Saint Paul through April 2008, “ says SPNN Executive Director Mike Wassenaar. “Citizen journalists will be recruited from the broad community of Saint Paul residents, and may or may not have technical training ahead of time. We believe this will increase the diversity of voices featured in the project.“ First video posts are expected at the end of November.

SPNN continued promotion of the project on its own channels, and through materials distributed to community based producers, youth groups and schools, civic leaders through Saint Paul e-Democracy, the Community Technology Empowerment Project, and the Twin Cities Youth Media Network.

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NewCastleNOW.org

Christine Yeres, Project Leader, NewCastleNOW.org

• Chappaqua, NY

CONTACT INFO

NewCastleNOW.org
11 Apple Tree Close
Chappaqua, NY 10514
(914) 861-2136
E-mail

Web site

A weekly cyber newspaper built from citizen-generated content for the Chappaqua area in Westchester County, N.Y., which has lost its local newspaper. The project is spearheaded by volunteers under the auspices of the Friends of the Chappaqua Library.

Check back for future news and updates.

• August 2008
• March 2008
• November 2007
 
 

NewCastleNOW from J-Lab on Vimeo.

2007 grantees Ann Marie Fallon and Christine Yeres talk about building a reputation for their site. They serve as publisher and managing editor, respectively. This interview took place April 5, 2008 at the New Voices 2007 Grantee Meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn in Washington, D.C.

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Bringing Home the Bacon

August 2008

NewCastleNOW.org is a site rich in content and advertising, with more than 15 local businesses investing in homepage ads, an impressive achievement for a one-year-old hyperlocal Web site.  That might translate into about $40,000 in income in their first year of operation, but the editors admit they are just too busy to count.  Who’s responsible for raking in the revenue?  “My neighbor John,“ says project leader Christine Yeres, suggesting that a homegrown venture in a small town can rely on the kindness of neighbors.

Girl Scout exhibit on display at the Horace Greeley House.

“We’re publishing every Friday, still up all night Thursday, mainly because we choose to live family lives on weekends,“ says Yeres, taking a breath from an all-nighter to send us a quick e-mail update.

The advertising revenue could liberate Yeres and her founding partners, Ann Marie Fallon and Susie Pender, from the intensity of the deadlines.  “It would be really great to be able to pay a few people to mind certain features we’d like to offer, like always providing town government meeting agendas each week, or the sports round up, relief from which would free us to do the stuff only we can do:  talk to people, dream up and sniff out stories and see how they connect to other stories.“

The editors are proud of their coverage of school board elections.  They’ve urged residents to wake up and pay attention.  The site has covered more mundane issues like tree removal, leash laws, real estate transfers.  But the heart of NewCastleNOW is its section called “People,“ which celebrates the winner of the citizen of the year award, the soldier just back from Iraq, the retiring teachers, the residents performing at Carnegie Hall or raising money to combat diseases, the Girl Scouts receiving honors, the athletes competing in triathlons, the people who make Chappaquans feel proud of where they live.

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57 Contributors and Counting ...

March 2008

The three musketeers of NewCastleNow.org - Christine Yeres, Anne Marie Fallon and Susie Pender - can hardly believe the pace they’ve had to keep to put out their weekly hyperlocal edition. “It’s tons of work from Tuesday night through Thursday night into Friday morning around 4 a.m.,“ says Yeres, “But then we’re free to live our lives until the following Tuesday afternoon.“

Dear Editors,

Looking back at the news in ‘07 brings to mind the lyrics of the Beatles’ “A Day in The Life” - “I heard the news today, oh boy!“ - sung with a heavy hearted sigh. But wait!  There is a shining star, NewCastleNOW.org!

You do a fabulous job in keeping us abreast of local news, opinions and events. And for me, there’s no question that by being better informed, I feel more a part of my community. Just wanted to say many thanks!

~Sharon Rosen Lopez

NewCastleNOW.org has become a vibrant, thriving local fixture, attracting 57 citizen content contributors.  Remarkably, they’ve raised enough revenue through advertising from realtors and local businesses to cover their costs. But even there, Yeres admits she hasn’t had a moment to actually calculate the receipts.

NewCastleNOW.org has clearly filled a void in the community, becoming an All Things Local Considered for Chappaqua. Stories about leash laws and emergency drills, the chamber orchestra and the Cub Scouts, are coupled with regular features such as a column by local librarians and weekly police, ambulance and fire department blotters.  The site now features dynamic slide shows of everything from the ceremony honoring the retiring police chief to high school students who spent their spring break rebuilding New Orleans. The site’s prominent links to local weather, traffic and train information are a critical and savvy service to commuters.

Meanwhile, the editors are navigating the tricky terrain of being citizen journalists who cover the place where they live. “The three of us are involved in various issues and are quite opinionated ourselves,“ explains Yeres. “But we try to cover fairly those issues we feel strongly about and believe that the advantage to us of knowing the issues from very close up - even from inside - is greater than the difficulty of remaining balanced in our coverage. And we’re pretty confident that what people want is not just straight coverage of all news, but for us to pick and choose what’s important and present it to them in an interesting way.“

Dear Editor,

As long-time residents here and after raising our four children in the school system, your presence is long overdue.  Thanks to all the folks who are taking time to cover so many topics in such an objective way. We really needed you. Keep up the excellent work.

~Vera and Bob Bruno

Even so, NewCastleNOW.org’s attention to hot issues like education and development has made some officials a bit nervous.

“We did what we said we would, and have acted in a rather newspaperly way,“ says Yeres. “We solicit articles from residents, accept pitches from anyone but don’t promise that we’ll publish, and write quite a bit of the copy ourselves. We’ve resisted soliciting instantaneous online opinion and we like it this way: people write letters, and they think about what they write.“
While NewCastleNOW.org has had great success getting residents to participate, they’re still on the lookout for more, as evidenced in a recent shout out to readers: “Calling all Sports Nuts! We want your sports news. Games, stories, scores, news!“

Even without extensive sports coverage, it’s clear that NewCastleNOW.org has a winning team that is making many touchdowns for its community.

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What do we want? New Castle News! When? Now!

November 2007

The NOW in NewCastleNOW stands for News & Opinion Weekly, an online newspaper that’s bursting with local content. The site actually got launched over the summer thanks to a news nudge from the New York Times.

Managing Editor Christine Yeres tells the story: “We had advance warning that our Web address would be mentioned in the Times.  We wanted residents to meet with something more than ‘Under Construction’ when they visited, so for five days we worked to put together a sample NewCastleNOW.org.  A severe storm passed through the week before and there was plenty of damage; school children stranded on their buses, people in their cars, waiting for live wires to be subdued. We made the storm the focus of our front page - along with a story about the three of us, our J-Lab grant and our purpose.“ 

Add an events calendar, a gardening advice column, an obituary of a beloved resident and voila: an online newspaper was born.

To promote the new site, they set up a mock wooden farm stand with a striped canopy in the library lobby. In the basket where someone might find fresh produce, they put flyers advertising the Web site and announcing upcoming planning meetings to be held at the library two in the evening, two in the daytime. The promotional strategy bore fruit:  “The meetings drew every kind of person imaginable,“ recounts Yeres, “from non-profits, churches, business; young and old, worker bees and aspiring writers, puzzle junkies, sports nuts.“ 

Smartly maximizing free promotional opportunities, NewCastleNOW founders persuaded five prominent local writers to offer a free mini-course in citizen journalism, workshops which were listed at no cost in the high school’s Continuing Education booklet mailed to every home in town.

“It feels like a barn-raising around here - in this town of both McMansions and more modest cottage homes, all equally without a news source for so long,“ says Yeres. “We’re not just delivering news, but are making the place where people can find out from one another both what’s happening in our town (issues and events)and what others think.“

The site invites readers to become writers:  “Familiarize yourself with NewCastleNOW.org.  Read it, and see if you’re moved to write it!  If you have an expertise or interest in writing for NewCastleNOW.org, either by consistently sending us events and calendar information about your non-profit, or by submitting feature articles of interest to the community, contact us.“

Yeres predicts that managing the flow of people and content will be a challenge. “We think the secret around here is to look and behave very much like a newspaper and not overwhelm people. We’ll work with them to edit their work. And we have to learn to delegate.“

“Whew!  Since we launched on October 5, it’s been a crazy-busy and very exciting ride,“ says Yeres, who holds a daily conference call with co-conspirators Anne Marie Fallon and Susie Pender. Together, the three share editing responsibility for everything posted on the site. The weekly edition publishes Fridays before dawn. 

“We come up with great stories each week from conventional sources like budget materials, police and ambulance blotters; and from odder perspectives too, such as op-ed pieces by a cowardly conservationist; a travel journal from a college graduate searching for isolated Jewish communities around the world; a woman promoting community farm markets. We’ve covered a controversial schedule change proposed at our local high school and the story of the cancellation of remaining dances by the principal.“ 

Yeres expect NewCastleNow to develop a vibrant local sports section. “We found a guy who graduated from our high school and remembered aloud to me how much it meant to him and his friends in those days to be recognized in the local paper for their sports achievements.  And we’re pairing him with a woman soccer player who feels ‘enough with the kids!‘ and wants to emphasize team sports for adults. Together, they’ll make a great section.“

NewCastleNOW is aiming to partner with local cable access TV and the League of Women Voters so that the League’s written accounts of public meetings can be synchronized with cable-TV recordings, making it possible for people to find the parts most relevant to them.  They are working to recruit contributors from Millwood (the smaller, lesser-known, non-Chappaqua hamlet of New Castle) and are inviting the town’s “constructive needlers” to write opinion pieces.

NewCastleNOW is planning to meet with the local chamber of commerce to make a pitch for the online paper to play a larger role in downtown revitalization. The site is publishing an old official report on the subject that few residents ever read. Says Yeres, “We think that we can ‘re-gift’ this material by presenting it in manageable-size chunks with pictures and related stories, and revive interest and a town-wide discussion about solutions.“

One local volunteer is pounding the pavement and the phones, promoting the site and selling ad space to businesses in the community.  And editors are keeping track of which articles are most read, using Google Analytics to see how readership is building.

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NeighborMedia

Formerly titled Neighbor to Neighbor
Susan Fleischmann, Executive Director, Cambridge Community Television

• Cambridge, MA

CONTACT INFO

Cambridge Community Television
675 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 661-6900
E-mail

Web site

An innovative citizen journalism initiative empowers local residents to use technology to bring attention to issues in their community that they deem newsworthy.  NeighborMedia’s nine citizen journalists, based in all of Cambridge’s zip codes, are using a unique combination of web and television media to promote community events, alert neighbors to proposed development, and explore difficult issues like violence and racism.  NeighborMedia content is available for viewing on the web at www.ccvcambridge.org/neighbormedia and on CCTV’s community cable channels.

Check back for future news and updates.

• August 2009
• August 2008
• March 2008
• November 2007
 
 

NeighborMedia from J-Lab on Vimeo

2007 grantees Julie Adler and Clodagh Rule of NeighborMedia discuss the rewards of their program. This interview took place on April 5, 2008, at the New Voices 2007 Grantee Meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn in Washington, D.C.

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Robust Contributions from Citizen Journalists Pave the Way for New Web Site Design

August 2009

As Cambridge Community Television’s NeighborMedia project moves into its third year, NeighborMedia journalists are more active than ever, covering a wide range of stories using television and the Web.

CCTV originally received New Voices funding in 2007 to plan and implement the Neighbor-to-Neighbor project, now known as NeighborMedia. By embedding citizen journalists in each of the city’s five neighborhoods, the project seeks to provide Cambridge residents with information to help them decide what action they need to take about local issues and events, and create a synergy between CCTV’s community cable channels and Web site.

After year one, CCTV’s community media coordinator, Colin Rhinesmith, and former program coordinator, Julie Adler, developed a list of goals for the project’s second year that included expanding the Web site’s pool of citizen journalists; developing a new training program which offers opportunities for gradual skill building; making portable, easy-to-use video equipment available to citizen journalists; and offering one-on-one technical assistance to citizen journalists.

“When you have a city of 100,000 whose boards, commissions - even the city council - is mostly uncovered by traditional media, the need for what we do at NeighborMedia is clear.“

In September 2008, NeighborMedia started towards these goals with 11 citizen journalists participating. At the start of their term, these new journalists attended an orientation where they learned about project goals and discussed the basics of citizen journalism. All were given easy-to-use Flip video cameras and learned to operate them. At that time, each citizen journalist selected an area of production to focus on:  blogging, digital photography, audio production, and/or video production. Journalists were directed to training based on their areas of focus and received access to digital still cameras, video cameras, editing software, and computers to produce Web and television media highlighting neighborhood issues and events.

As of June 2009, nine of these journalists remain active contributors. Since September, they have produced a steady flow of Web content, posting more than 150 blog entries on CCTV’s Web site. Participation on the site is increasing, with more individuals responding to articles.

Citizen journalist Karin Koch, for instance, continues to use both CCTV and the Web site to cover community issues in English and Spanish.  Another, Maria Burns Ortiz, has published three breaking news stories over the past two months, covering a fire at a church, an accident at a train station, and a bomb scare in Harvard Square.  A third journalist, Karen Klinger, is covering proposed development and zoning issues in her neighborhood that have been neglected in the mainstream media.

Reflecting on a recent story about the attempt by Zipcar, a car-sharing service, to change city zoning regulations, Klinger explained, “My story elicited dozens of comments on the Porter Square Neighborhood Association listserv which is now sending a letter to the planning board laying out its position. But none of this would have happened without NeighborMedia. There has not been a word about this proposed change in the (Cambridge) Chronicle or The (Boston) Globe. When you have a city of 100,000 whose boards, commissions - even the city council - is mostly uncovered by traditional media, the need for what we do at NeighborMedia is clear.“

This year, two journalists are hosting television shows on CCTV’s BeLive set.  Each program is being shown on Cambridge Channel 9 and streamed live on CCTV’s Web site.  In addition, journalists have begun to experiment with field production, shooting and editing more than 60 videos. On June 11, 2009, NeighborMedia journalists hosted a screening of their work at CCTV.

Meanwhile, staff members at CCTV have been strategizing about ways to develop NeighborMedia’s audience. While an attempt to partner with Cambridge’s weekly newspaper was not successful, the Web site’s use of Twitter has helped raise the program’s visibility substantially.  Since developing a Twitter account, online news outlets including www.universalhub.com, bostonist.com and even www.boston.com have linked to NeighborMedia stories. 

As it continues to work to brand the CCTV Web site as the place to go for Cambridge news and information, the group is also searching for ways to improve the Web site.  CCTV will use some additional technical assistance from J-Lab to support the work of Proof Group, a Web consulting company that specializes in informational design, to develop a new design for NeighborMedia to make it easier for readers to find stories they are interested in and comment on them.

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Blogging From the Backyard

August 2008

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but at Cambridge Community Television, you can take Cambridge residents out of their neighborhood meetings and into the digitally dominated 21st century.“  So begins a glowing article about CCTV’s NeighborMedia in Wicked Local.  The piece profiled NeighborMedia’s Karen Klinger, a longtime journalist who resigned from the board of the Porter Square Neighborhood Association to avoid a conflict of interest while reporting for CCTV. 

“I don’t think you should both cover a neighborhood association and be one of the board members,“ Klinger told the Wicked Local correspondent. Klinger is the mover behind one of NeighborMedia’s most popular features, Cambridge Eyesores, which documents decrepit and abandoned buildings that seem to have escaped official notice or attention.

In its first nine months of life, NeighborMedia’s six citizen journalists have covered gentrification of Central Square, the delayed opening of city parks, proposed development projects, and have provided information about holiday events and citywide emergencies. They have posted 110 blog entries and hosted 27 half-hour BeLive interview programs on local topics.

In recent months, NeighborMedia has taken its message of civic engagement through information to community meetings throughout the city, learning from residents about the issues that matter most to them and making them aware of the project. NeighborMedia has received a grant from the Cambridge Commission for Persons with Disabilities to produce media that brings attention to accessibility issues across the city.

Meanwhile, NeighborMedia leaders are in the process of evaluating the program’s goals and impact as they head into their second year.  Some changes they are considering include:

• Creating a larger group of technical mentors.
• Offering open office hours for technical assistance.
• Developing a new training program which offers opportunities for gradual skill building.
• Making portable, easy-to-use video equipment available to NeighborMedia reporters.

The project is recruiting additional citizen journalists. “Are you interested in digging deep into Cambridge to highlight meaningful issues and events? Are you passionate about storytelling but don’t know quite where to begin?“ Thus reads a recent email blast to CCTV listserv subscribers.  You can also check out NeighborMedia’s own recruitment page and application here.

Correspondent Sharon Steniford, who has covered the 02139 ZIP code, says it’s a rewarding experience. “You have your hand on the pulse of what’s happening in your neighborhood - things that may not be covered in the local newspaper but are important, anyway.“

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Building Skills and Community

March 2008

Since September 2007, Cambridge Community Television’s NeighborMedia project has been giving its six citizen journalists the tools they need to cover the homefront. A new Blogging 101 class is assisting reporters in strengthening their posts. And reporters have been using CCTV’s easy-to-use BeLive set to host discussions about local concerns. In fact, between November and February, the NeighborMedia team hosted 10 half-hour BeLive programs that aired Wednesday and Sunday evenings on Cambridge Channel 9 and streamed live on CCTV’s Web site.

Each NeighborMedia citizen reporter zooms in on the ZIP Code where they live, posting and hosting about a slew of issues:  Gentrification and development, traffic issues and snow emergencies, energy efficient homes, and even a coyote sighting in a local cemetery. A new project called “Cambridge Eyesores” invites residents to help photograph and document abandoned businesses that cause urban blight.

The recent gunshot death of a Haitian-American teen prompted messages in memory of a promising young man.

“I knew not Lucien, but his face is familiar to me. Surely I have bumped into him on some basketball court around the city, I must have said ‘hey now’ ... with a ‘y’all be safe’ to boot. I must have seen him amongst the gaggle of teens who weekly liven up the CCTV hallways - and matter of fact he made his mark by getting involved at CCTV in 2005.“

While NeighborMedia members have been writing, uploading photos and anchoring on-camera conversations, they haven’t yet leapt into the heart of field production. To address this challenge, CCTV has recruited a seasoned community TV producer to serve as a technical mentor.  They’ve also offered a new four-session class in news production, which will lead students through the stages of planning, shooting and editing stories for broadcast.

In the meantime, a CCTV video editor is creating monthly wrap-up shows using segments produced by the NeighborMedia team. Those shows are airing on Channel 9 and on Blip TV.

And, the citizen journalists are hitting the streets to promote NeighborMedia, attending community meetings throughout the city to make residents aware of the project and get their input about issues of concern.  As NeighborMedia coordinator Julie Adler described in her year-end blog post, one clear goal of this outreach is to inspire more engagement from the community.

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Lights! Camera! InterAction!

November 2007

Over the last few months, Cambridge Community Television (CCTV) staff has been implementing a comprehensive outreach plan, hiring a project coordinator, recruiting 7 citizen journalists, and a team of news correspondents for Neighbor to Neighbor, newly renamed NeighborMedia. CCTV has promoted the program to city departments and community organizations that are searching for ways to promote their issues.

In April of 2007, CCTV began a collaboration with the CTC VISTA, a program that connects Americorps*VISTA members with nonprofits that use information and communications technologies to address the needs of low-income communities.  Through this program, CCTV recruited a Boston University College of Communications graduate Julie Adler to coordinate all aspects of the NeighborMedia project. 

Over the summer, CCTV interviewed candidates for its citizen journalist positions. Each must have a history of working in the neighborhoods in the Zip Code to which they are assigned. The citizen journalist’s job is to identify important local issues not adequately explored in the media, and lead the planning and production of news segments to cover those concerns. 

Seven journalists were invited to join the NeighborMedia team. These individuals attended a training program where they learned about the project and some basics of citizen journalism with Lisa Williams, founder of Placeblogger and H2otown.  After orientation, participants jumped right in, creating blogs on CCTV’s Web site.  They’ve written about topics such as greening of Cambridge schools, the delay in opening a much-anticipated public park, and the Arts Central festival in Central Square.

The citizen reporters have been using CCTV’s BeLive single-camera studio to hone their interviewing skills and get comfortable on camera.  Since mid-September, the NeighborMedia team has produced six 27-minute BeLive programs which aired on Cambridge Channel 9 and streamed on the CCTV Web Site.

“While NeighborMedia journalists have been producing a wealth of content, many are struggle with the technology,“ says CCTV Director Susan Fleischmann.  So, CCTV staff members are recruiting technical mentors to assign them in field production. And they are seeking an intern to edit video segments into a monthly NeighborMedia program.

The project is also monitoring closely NeighborMedia’s effectiveness in facilitating civic engagement, while working on building CCTV’s Web capacity to foster more participation and interactivity on local issues. Recently CCTV launched a Groups feature on its Web site in an effort to foster a dialogue about events at CCTV and in the larger community.

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Bilingual Interactive Environmental Journalism

Donica Mensing, Director, Graduate Program in
Interactive Environmental Journalism, Reynolds School of Journalism, University of Nevada - Reno

• Reno, NV

CONTACT INFO

Reynolds School of Journalism
Mail Stop 310
University of Nevada Reno
Reno, NV 89557-6531
(775) 784-6531
E-mail

Web site

A Spanish language newsletter and Web site highlight issues of importance to the Latino population in North Lake Tahoe. Environmental concerns are just part of the challenges this community deals with; employment, economics, housing, and community cohesion are closely related. Several Latino residents are writing regularly for the publication, which is distributed in the Kings Beach and Incline Village communities.

Check back for future news and updates.

• August 2009
• August 2008
• March 2008
• November 2007
 
 

Bilingual Interactive Environmental Journalism from J-Lab on Vimeo..

2007 grantee Donica Mensing talks about getting the community involved in environmental journalism. This interview took place on April 5, 2008, at the New Voices 2007 Grantee Meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn in Washington, D.C.

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Nuestro Tahoe Struggles with Contributors, Sustainability

August 2009

By Tom Regan

It’s a problem familiar to many community news sites - how to keep contributors contributing. After a very active first year, Nuestro Tahoe’s community news site has struggled to keep contributions coming.

“We have one primary Latino writer who has journalism experience,“ says project director Donica Mensing, who is also an Associate Professor at the Reynolds School of Journalism, University of Nevada, Reno. “He was the one-person editor/reporter for a Spanish language newspaper in Reno but was recently laid off. He has helped the project since the beginning, but is now taking a more active role. We also have two active contributors from two different community organizations.  Most of the contributors who started with us early on have either moved or gotten busy with other activities.“

Mensing notes that best way to get contributors is to talk face-to-face about what they want for their community, and then discover together how participating in Nuestro Tahoe can help them.

“Phone calls and e-mails haven’t been very effective at getting participation,“ she says.

Traffic to the Web site has also been disappointing. Early in the life of the project, Mensing and her team started producing a four-page newsletter, first in English and Spanish and eventually just in Spanish.

“We distribute 400 copies of our (mostly) biweekly publication throughout the community, and most are picked up,“ says Mensing. “This seemed to generate more attention and readership among our community than the Web site. We advertise the Web site in the newsletter but it has yet to generate much traffic. We need to do more work on our Web site to increase participation.“

Mensing says immigration has been the most popular issue examined, with poor housing conditions and health issues also generating interest.

Work in the area of immigration has been the most satisfying aspect of the project she says.  Knowing that working immigrants in the community have an opportunity to participate in bringing issues to the attention of their neighbors is rewarding.

But while the work may be rewarding, Nuestro Tahoe is struggling with sustainability and long-term survival.

“There is a local foundation that would potentially be interested in contributing in the future,“ says Mensing. “We have kept them abreast of our progress and they have categories of funding that would be appropriate for future support. We had plans for advertising sales but haven’t had the personnel to get our ideas implemented.“

Mensing admits that she is most disappointed in Nuestro Tahoe’s ability to get more traction in the community.

“One significant barrier is not living in the community myself and having to commute an hour to get to meetings. The second disappointment is the rate at which people get interested and then disappear. I don’t feel we’ve yet found the right combination of nurturing, supporting and follow up that we need.“

Mensing knows that this problem with contributors will not come as a surprise, but it is a strong reminder again that a project like this takes a tremendous amount of commitment and follow-up.

“It’s difficult to do without having the day-in and day-out opportunities to interact with people and talk about the project. That said, when we hold regular meetings, people do come and they always express great appreciation for the idea and the opportunity to participate.“

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Living La Vida Tahoe

August 2008

Nuestro Tahoe made its debut in the Spring of 2008. Billed as “A place for Spanish and English speakers in North Tahoe to work together on community issues that affect all of us,“ the Ning site functions as part newspaper, part social network, and part community service center. In May and June, the bilingual journalism project also published a free bi-weekly print edition with stories relevant to the local Latino community:

Kings Beach improvement plan voted down
Youth Take Charge to Make a Difference
Traditional Mexican Charreada Rodeo comes to Truckee
Garbage Problems in Kings Beach

Along with project leader and University of Nevada Reno journalism faculty member Donica Mensing, all of the content is written by community members, many of whom are immigrants from Latin America. The print publication aims to serve community members who may not have Internet access. One article discussed the parents’ role in children’s educational success; another featured an interview with the Deputy Sheriff.

The biggest story in May was the planned visit to Tahoe by famed labor activist Dolores Huerta, who worked alongside Cesar Chavez and leads the movement he started for farm workers’ rights.

Nuestro Tahoe also profiled a local “person of the week.“ In the May edition, it featured a short interview with Marcelo Castro, who has lived in Incline Village for 18 years. A proud father of two University of Nevada Reno graduates, Castro is a maintenance service worker and handyman, a member of the Lion’s Club, a square dancer and sculptor.

Now, Castro can also call himself “citizen journalist.“ The June 13 edition of Nuestro Tahoe featured a front-page article he wrote about a recent Boys and Girls Club fundraising event.

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Nevando en Nevada
(Snowing in Nevada)

March 2008

Mother Nature proved a formidable competitor in the race to launch University of Nevada Reno’s Bilingual Environmental Journalism project, an eco-news initiative that aims to engage Lake Tahoe’s growing Latino community.  UNR’s Donica Mensing says record snowfall made travel from Reno to Tahoe tougher than ever. “Roads are often closed and when they are open it can take two to three hours to make the journey in winter conditions. This has prevented us from making the in-person contacts we need to be successful.“

Despite all that, Mensing says the project is back on track, emerging from hibernation, and looking forward to a spring in full bloom. “While we regret the slow startup time, we are committed to the project and excited by the steps we are taking and response we are receiving from the community.“

Some of these steps include:

• Working with a class of middle school students in Incline Village that is half-white and half-Hispanic. A graduate student will be meeting with the students weekly throughout the spring to guide them as they document each other’s lives. Some of that work will be published on OurTahoe.
   
• Conducting four citizen journalism workshops for the King’s Beach community during March. These workshops will be in English with simultaneous Spanish translation.  Attendees will be divided based on skills and experience, but organizers expect the first in the series to go over the basics of computer literacy and social networking.  Subsequent workshops will cover creating short videos, taking photographs, and reporting:  How to identify story ideas and sources.
   
• Creating a Ning (social networking site) in Spanish for the participants of the workshops and north Lake Tahoe residents. “We hope this site will help them maintain contact with each other and begin an informal network that can be maintained over time,“ says Mensing.
   
• Redesigning OurTahoe. Just recently the site moved from a Drupal-based to a Wordpress-based platform to make it easier for users to contribute content to the site and easier to offer a Spanish-language version of the site.
   
• Getting ready to offer OurTahoe in Spanish, with the help of an automatic translator plugin - they’ve installed a Spanish/English widget - and human translators who are getting started translating stories into Spanish.
   
• Distributing a simple newsletter in Spanish that summarizes the content on OurTahoe and the social networking site and provides citizen journalism tips from the workshops.
   

In its last report, UNR had decided to refocus the project on fire prevention and issues.  But now, that issue sparked little interest among residents, so they’ve returned to their original focus of providing hyperlocal, bilingual and environmental news. Mensing says, “The residents we talk with are much more concerned about personal issues and immediate community problems related to development, education, health and housing. Our thinking now is that we will need to engage people with journalism on the issues they find most immediately relevant.“

Along the way, the UNR project will build some bridges of understanding between different communities. In a recent blog post on OurTahoe.org, the graduate student called “Nevada Journalist” explained the motivation behind his participation:

“As the immigration debate continues, it seems the gap between American-born citizens and immigrants, particularly Hispanics, widens ... Perhaps nowhere is the division so obvious as it is in Incline Village, where the rich are really rich, and the poor equally so ... 

“As my project for this semester in the journalism graduate program at the University of Nevada, Reno, I will be working with ... a dozen seventh graders, equally split down ethnicity, and teach them the basics of journalism. They’ll photograph and write about their own lives, then work with each other to edit their work. In the process, I hope, they will learn something from and about one another. What it’s like to walk a mile in each other’s shoes, or zapatos, so to speak. And as they learn from one another, maybe we can learn something from them.“

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Bilingual News: The Fire Next Time

November 2007

Initially, the Reynolds School of Journalism in Reno proposed to create a bilingual Web site that would serve the growing Hispanic population of Kings Beach, a small town on the shores of Lake Tahoe, Nevada. To that end, project coordinators met with several Hispanic community leaders in Kings Beach to learn more about the community and its interests.

Then came the Angora Fire, the largest forest fire in the Tahoe Basin in over a century. It destroyed 254 homes and 11 commercial buildings. The community was unprepared. Out of the ashes rose the phoenix of a new journalism project: a comprehensive online resource about catastrophic wildfire prevention.

Donica Mensing, Director of the Graduate Program in Interactive Environmental Journalism at UNR, says, “Our informants tell us [this issue] will dominate public conversation around the lake for quite some time. ... The Tahoe community will need to figure out how to prepare for the next catastrophic fire and, at the same time, how to reduce the chances that it will occur.“

So, the Bilingual News project has found itself a new niche and a sense of urgency.

“We see this discussion as a unique opportunity to test our ideas about the next form of journalism,“ says Mensing. “Progressive-era political institutions, which centered primarily on the role of expertise in policymaking, are today morphing into more interactive and democratic institutions ... the next form of journalism will facilitate this process. Lake Tahoe’s dilemma with respect to catastrophic wildfire represents a very good natural experiment for our ideas.“

As journalism students plunge into covering the aftermath of the Angora blaze, they will not ignore its effects on the Hispanic community at Lake Tahoe. “Hispanics represent a significant part of the labor force that will rebuild homes, reshape landscapes, and build defensible spaces. Hispanics also work on fire treatment crews and in the service industry in disproportionately large numbers. Any new policies touching on these activities will necessarily have a large impact on this community,“ Mensing says.

The fire illuminated another chronic problem: The lack of affordable housing in Tahoe, which is largely a resort community of second homes.  Hispanics are the fastest growing segment of the workforce and least likely to be homeowners. Given the high cost of housing, these workers must often live far away from their jobs, which has implications during natural disasters.

Ourtahoe.org, a drupal-based community Web site, serves as the platform this coverage. Student reporters assigned specific fire-related beats will write stories, create multi-media packages, blog, facilitate online and face-to-face group discussions, and edit wiki pages on issues. A Spanish-fluent student will serve as a translator for other students when they interact with people in the community who are solely Spanish-speaking. 

That student will also lead a spring semester project that will involve holding citizen journalism workshops for Hispanic residents, working with them to publish their content on the Ourtahoe.org site.

The project will offer a Spanish-language version of the site and will hire a fluent Spanish-language editor to translate English stories and field queries from the Latino community about this edition. As members of the Tahoe community are recruited and invited to post stories and blogs, that editor will translate Spanish postings to English.

Finally, the project is inviting students at South Lake Tahoe High School to blog about their family’s experiences as a result of the fire and document what Lake Tahoe means to them.

Since re-focusing the project on the fire, Mensing says they’ve recently had a bit of a reality check, that fire and other environmental issues are not such pressing concerns for many people they hope to reach. “They have talked with us about youth problems (delinquency, drug use), immigration problems, health problems, work-related problems,“ says Mensing. “When we mention that environmental issues affect every other issue at the Lake, they fail to see the connection.“ So, the UNR team is beginning to reassess its ideas, thinking about the role of journalism in educating, setting the agenda or responding to community needs.

The UNR folks have also decided that since Internet access in the Hispanic community is largely confined to libraries and schools, they will distribute a printed newsletter version of the Web site in order to reach that community.

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Anansi’s Web

Formerly titled Neo-News Network
Lori Peterson, Coordinator, Neo-News Hotline
Central District Organization

• Gary, IN

CONTACT INFO

Central District Organization
P.O. Box 64
Gary, IN 46402
(317) 679-3746
E-mail

Web site

To build a news and information hotline for Gary, Ind., accessed via web, phone, mobile text messaging and mailing lists to supplement available media. Content will be generated by students and young professionals and coordinated by the Central District Organization, a group led by young professionals who have returned to Gary to live.

Check back for future news and updates.

• November 2009
• August 2008
• March 2008
• November 2007
 
 

Anansi’s Web from J-Lab on Vimeo..

2007 grantee Lori Peterson talks about what parts of the project make her proud as well as what surprised her. This interview took place on April 5, 2008, at the New Voices 2007 Grantee Meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn in Washington, D.C.

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A good idea still struggling to find a way to work

November 2009

By Tom Regan

Anansi’s Web, based in Gary, Ind., is a great example of how a really good idea sometimes has trouble taking root in its community, frequently for unforeseen reasons. A 2007 New Voices grantee, the site is currently dark—site organizers are not generating news content for either the program’s Web site or hotline.

The program ran into numerous problems in its second year. While it initially partnered with Street Level Youth Media (SLYM) in Chicago, the partnership ultimately dissolved over problems with transportation and the SLYM’s facility.

“I discovered SLYM after reading the Community Media Workshop’s email newsletter,“ says Peterson.  “They offered a workshop entitled ‘Get On My Level,‘ which taught youth how to express themselves using graphic and web design.  After meeting with the trainers we discovered that they were having a hard time recruiting youth into the workshop while we had a solid group of youth that needed training.  Also, the training, equipment and facilities at the Common Ground facility is unmatched by anything here in Gary.

“Because the Gary youth were (at the time) the only youth participating in the workshop, the trainers were able to tailor the training to the local issues the youth brought and I was able to work more closely with the trainers on content.“

“We were most pleased with the opportunity to get youth involved in community issues.“

But the cost of transporting the youth was never included in the Web site’s budget.  A local church allowed the group to use its van, but they were responsible for the gas.  During this time gas prices were at an all time high and it simply got too expensive, says Peterson. Ultimately, the gas problem was secondary as the SLYM facility was destroyed in a fire.
Peterson admits she doesn’t have a good grip on how many people have visited or are visiting what is left of Anansi’s Web because the project uses Blogger to host its Web site and did not install the analytic widget. Perhaps more surprising, Peterson admits that one reason her group didn’t move faster to host its own Web site is that it was doing much better on social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace.

While it was in full operation. Peterson says that she was most pleased with the opportunity to get youth involved in community issues.

“We were able to take youth to City Council, school board and sanitation district meetings,“ says Peterson. “The youth were then able to share their take of these meetings and issues with their peers but also the community at large. Anansi’s Web asked youth to articulate their side of the story on issues that mattered to them.“

Young people in the program began with graphic art design and blogging.  (Much of their work can be found at http://www.sl-goml.blogspot.com/).  Their first project was creating avatars of themselves (the faces you see on the blog).  During a discussion about the community conducted via Google Chat, the question that informed their next project arose: Where is Your Community?  Youth created posters and stapled them to the abandoned buildings that inspired them and on city hall.

They collected surveys from community residents and as they developed their graphic design skills in Adobe Flash Player, the youth combined the message and general sentiment from the surveys, added their own original music and produced a video.

15 total youth went through the program and created 8 pieces/projects.

But Peterson admits that she and her fellow organizers weren’t ready to deal with the personal nature of the feedback they received from these young people, which centered around how the project was being effected by the problems they faced in their everyday lives in the Gary community. And when fate dealt them yet another blow (the lost most of their equipment in a robbery), the program stalled.

“What worried us was the number of personal issues and challenges our youth raised that we were not equipped to address. Additionally, we encouraged our youth to be creative in their expression and invited their ideas. However with our limited budget and capacity, we could not build on many of their ideas, and after our office suffered a break-in resulting in the loss of our video camera, our video documentary project quickly deflated.“

Before their equipment was stolen, the team of young Web producers was working on a video documentary based on the top three topics the youth and community residents surveyed identified as pressing social issues: education, political corruption, recreation/lack of youth activities.

But Peterson says Anansi’s Web is not dead. In August, the site’s organizers (Peterson and Kim McGee, Youth Program Director) received 501c3 non-profit designation and are currently researching grant opportunities for the program. Individual donors, community and corporate sponsorships are other areas that organizers will try to cultivate in the coming months.

Perhaps even more hopeful, many of the youth that worked with the program and created content for Anansi’s Web are still in close contact to the project’s organizers. One of the site’s youth program participants is now on staff as a field organizer, while another early participant is now a member of the site’s board of directors.

Finally, Peterson says she was pleasantly surprised by just how far her New Voices grant for $17,000 was able to take Anansi’s Web.

“We were able to sustain a youth program over two years,“ Peterson says. “In the first year we were even able to provide generous stipends [$10 an hour for $10 a week] to the youth participants. Our program is recognized in the community, and our youth have showed noticeable improvements in school and in their civic participation.“

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Caught in Anansi’s Web

August 2008

Over the summer, student enrollment in Anansi’s Web has dwindled. Project coordinator Lori Peterson says the attrition has made the project easier to manage, but not as robust. Nonetheless, the youth continue to create media projects that express their views, share their experiences, and foster dialogue about problems and solutions for Gary.

Anansi’s Web has made a commitment to move more in the direction of citizen journalism. Peterson says she, along with a youth member of Anansi’s Web and the editor of Gary Life Magazine, attended citizen journalism training offered by the Community Media Workshop, based at Columbia College in Chicago.

Founded by journalists, the Community Media Workshop helps neighborhood activists get their message to the media by training them how to tell their stories, amplify their voices, create new media and build bridges to media institutions.

Peterson also has some strong people on her side. Her steering committee includes Tavetta Patterson of Gary Life Magazine, Daylan Dufelmeyer of After School Matters, Steven Evans of Street Level Youth Media, and Kimberly McGee of Purdue University Calumet Social Justice Club, who is also the Central District Organization‘s Youth Program Coordinator.  At a recent meeting, they evaluated the project and all shared concerns about its structure and sustainability.

One goal of Anansi’s Web, formerly known as Neo-News Network, was to launch a Web-based mobile hotline where youth “newsgetters” can post hyperlocal news and announcements about community-building events. The company contracted to develop the hotline and related Web interface didn’t work out.  Disappointed but undaunted, Peterson is reaching out to new potential partners and hopes to deliver a new information hotline for Gary, Ind., this fall.

With the start of a new school year, a new crew of student participants will meet for three days of structured programming aimed at generating ideas and content.  Peterson says the group will discuss social issues on Tuesdays, attend weekly workshops on video production at the local community television station, WJPN, on Wednesdays, and learn to write stories and post them to the blog and hotline on Thursdays.

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LOCAL Parentis: Youth Bring the Peace Out

March 2008

Anansi’s Web (the program formerly known as NeoNewsNetwork) has launched a new blog for student participants in its graphic and Web design internship program. Coordinator Lori Peterson says the blog, called “Get on My Level,“ will enable youth to “share their voice on a range of issues specific to their local community of Gary, Indiana, including education, racism and violence.“  For example:

CHAT: WHAT ABOUT THE COMMUNITY?
ROCHE: So now that we have everybody on a computer ... 
let’s get this conversation started ... 
When you look around your neighborhood, at the buildings, at the schools, etc., what do you think isn’t working well? 
What concerns you?

LiL.Bit: um ... thinking ...


BLACK PRINCE:  nobody cares is what i think, thats why the neighborhoods are bad.


ROCHE:  What do you think they should be caring about?


BLACK PRINCE:  the neighborhood


CHARISE:  they should be caring about tha teens that getting pregnant

ROCHE:  OK


BLACK PRINCE:  and the people that’s getting killed

On Tuesdays and Thursdays the students continue to commute to Street Level Youth Media in Chicago where they learn Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign. On Wednesdays, they meet in Gary, hammering out tough social issues and strategizing how to get their messages out.  They recently produced a series of provocative posters aimed at shaking local residents out of apathy and into action.

Central District Organization, the project’s sponsoring organization, has developed a partnership with Gary Life Education Initiative, an offspring of Gary Life Magazine.  In addition to finding a home for the print projects the students created last year, Gary Life is providing professional mentors to match with youth according to their career ambitions.

Managing a project focusing on empowering poor youth of color has been an eye-opener, says Peterson. Commuting to Chicago for trainings has proven expensive, given the cost of fuel. The project is still trying to launch a mobile hotline, the core of its original proposal. The vendor can only provide a long-distance area code, a potential cost-barrier to access.  Peterson says they are researching options, including using an easy to remember toll-free number.  And they have been networking to generate interest among other community organizations that could use the hotline to post news and events.

---

Neo-News: Can You Hear Me Now? Not Yet

November 2007

What was originally conceived as a basic information hotline backed up by a Web site has been transformed into what Neo-News is calling “a blog-styled, open-source type phone line” where people and organizations can call in and post their own voicemail or text messages to the hotline.  Residents and community groups will be able to purchase annual subscriptions at a yet-to be-determined nominal fee and that subscription will give them a pass code to record and access messages, announcements or any other news approved by the administrator of the Central District Organization.

For example, “For today’s headlines, press 1; events, press 2,“ explains coordinator Lori Peterson. “When callers from the general public dial the hotline number, they can press their line of preference and listen to all of the messages posted in that category.“

To date, they have been shopping for vendors willing to build a system that can accommodate various functions and levels of permissions for administrators and users. They have chosen Apps Communications from the Chicago area. The service will cost more than $1,000 to set up, including training) and the five lines will cost about $125 per month to maintain.

Learning Curve Ball:  Volunteers don’t have unlimited time. Says Peterson, “We underestimated the importance of dedicating paid staff to this project.“  As a result, they were unable to establish their planned summer internship program.

In the meantime, NeoNews has renamed itself “Anansi’s Web.“ According to the African folk tale, Anansi (a spider) created the sun, stars and moon and taught people the basics of agriculture.  Another Anansi story tells of how the spider tried to hoard all of the world’s wisdom in a calabash.  When he discovers the futility of keeping all knowledge to himself, he releases it into the world. “It is in this spirit that we hope to connect people to ideas and information through our community news project,“ says Lori Peterson.

In Fall 2007, Anansi’s Web kicked off an internship program that paid six high school and GED students to participate in a series of graphic design, Web skills and video production workshops offered by Street Level Youth Media in Chicago.  The youth’s first project was a series of posters about sexual assault and violence. 

The Central District Organization has set up a MySpace page that as of November 2007 had 27 friends.

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Greater Fulton News

Formerly titled Fulton Hill Interactive Portal
Dr. Judy VanSlyke Turk, Director, School of
Mass Communications, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Richmond, VA

CONTACT INFO

School of Mass Comm.
Virginia Commonwealth
University
W. Main St/VCU Box 842034
Richmond, VA 23284-2024
(804) 827-3707
E-mail

Web site

To train local citizen journalists and build a news and information portal for Fulton Hill, a low-income neighborhood in Richmond, Va. Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Mass Communications will work with the Fulton Hill Neighborhood Resource Center to help local residents produce stories, photos, audio, video and a Fulton Hill wiki.

Check back for future news and updates.

• August 2009
• August 2008
• March 2008
• November 2007
 
 
 
 

Greater Fulton News from J-Lab on Vimeo..

2007 grantee Jeff South talks about the creation of site content, advertising to generate a greater audience and the support of New Voices. This interview took place on April 5, 2008, at the New Voices 2007 Grantee Meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn in Washington, D.C.

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GreaterFultonNews.org grows into the future

August 2009

If you want a measure of just how much GreaterFultonNews.org has grown in a little more than a year, you just need to look at the number of unique visitors to the site over that period. In July, 2008, 511 visitors came to the site. One year later, that number has blossomed to 4,215.

And along with the growth in readership has come accolades. This past fall the site received special recognition from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) - where it is based - and that reflects a significant impact in the community, said Jeff South, the project’s director.

VCU marked its 40th anniversary in 2008. As part of the commemoration, the university conducted a competition to designate “40 Acts of Caring” - the 40 most successful university-community partnership projects. VCU announced the award at www.40th.vcu.edu/caring/capacity.html. The Fulton Hill project was recognized, with other “40 Acts” winners, at a ceremony last October 24 at VCU’s Siegel Center.

GreaterFultonNews.org has also been able to consistently generate content. Since July 2008, more than 220 top-level articles and about 300 comments have been posted on the site.

Most of the content comes from residents of Fulton Hill and neighboring communities. They make up the lion’s share of the 570 people who have registered to post articles or comments. Some of the articles that citizens have contributed include “Register early for the run to River 10K,“ “MLK Day of Service @ RNC,“ “Sector 111 Community Report for Sept.“

While there is widespread participation in the Web site, a relatively small number of users (such as Vicki Mallonee, the site’s Webmaster, and John Murden, a prolific blogger) still account for most of the articles posted. Mallonee has generated significant original content - even racing to a crime scene one night to get pictures and ask police what had happened.

Meanwhile, readers can comment on any article. The comments have attracted widespread community participation and often are as interesting as the initial article, said South.

GreaterFultonNews.org has been able to consistently generate content. Since July 2008, more than 220 top-level articles and about 300 comments have been posted on the site.

In addition, VCU journalism students have added a considerable number of original stories. They include students from the School’s Multimedia Journalism Master’s Program; from MASC 203 Journalism Writing; and from the School’s Capital News Service course. In addition, during the Summer 2009 semester, students in MASC 303 Reporting for Print and Web wrote a series of articles about homelessness in Richmond. These articles were published on RVANews.com, which provides content of interest to the entire metro area, and they were promoted on GreaterFultonNews.org.

Another major new area of content was coverage of the Virginia General Assembly. This was made possible by the VCU School of Mass Communications’ Capital News Service program. And the students who were reporting from the assembly provided focused coverage of the legislators who represent the Fulton Hill area: Sen. Henry Marsh and Delegates Jennifer McClellan and Dolores McQuinn.

South has also offered to conduct additional citizen journalism training workshops for community leaders recruited by the Neighborhood Resource Center of Greater Fulton Hill (the site partner on the project). The goal is to develop (as Murden said) “a few good citizen editor/publishers who can harness the community’s inherent connectivity.“

South points out that the Fulton project also had impact not in a geographic way but on the citizen journalism community as a whole: Lynne Perri used comments from Mallonee, Murden and others in creating an interview guide for citizen journalists, now available at www.kcnn.org/interviewing.

GreaterFultonNews.org has also put a link to the guide and other Knight Citizen News Network learning modules from the Greater Fulton News site - http://greaterfultonnews.org/citizen-journalism-resources/

—Tom Regan

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Citizen Journalism - Citizen Action

August 2008

GreaterFultonNews.org has taken one small step for citizen journalism, but a giant leap for its community. It has hired its first part-time administrator.  She’s local resident and graphic designer Vicki Mallonee, whose job is to post, post, post - blogs, photos, other content - monitor citizen contributions, and make improvements to the overall design.

A recent provocative post shows that Mallonee is determined to engage her neighbors in a conversation about community needs:

“Would anyone be interested in starting a Neighborhood Association for the Fulton Hill Area? ...  Now I know what comes to mind when you think of a Neighborhood Association - You can only paint your house a certain color, you have to have your trashcans hidden by a wooden structure or you can’t put lawn ornaments in your yard. ... An association can help bring the community together, it gets people involved in the happenings of the community, addresses safety issues, crime, blight, but overall it gathers homeowners together to protect their property values and to improve the neighborhood.“

And so begins a dialogue on the value of community organizing.

GreaterFultonNews.org is a thriving community site in a city that’s gaining a reputation for its many placeblogs. Even Richmond.com couldn’t ignore the trend, covered in a recent story called “A Hotbed of Citizen Journalism.“

There’s a sense of urgency to some of the Fulton Hill posts: “Hail of Gun Fire from Woodcroft Apts this evening!“ But mostly the site shares good news, like the opening of a new dog park, plans for new community gardens, coverage of school board elections, and a discussion of Richmond History.

This summer, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Mass Communications, the administrator for the project, sent a team of public relations students to the Fulton Hill community.  They talked to residents, solicited feedback and will pull the results together in a marketing plan and awareness campaign to boost participation in the site.

Even before the push for traffic, the site is on a strong trajectory.  The number of unique visitors doubled each month in the first four months of the year.

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Building Capacity for Change

March 2008

“This is not a newspaper or magazine. We are a neighborhood news blog, a grassroots publication with no staff reporters or editors. We are dependent on readers and contributors for all of our content.“ 

So begins Greater Fulton News’ call for community volunteers.

“We would especially like to find someone to report on events at the local schools, and would be delighted to have representatives of the local civic organizations. This is a chance to share your insights, knowledge, and opinions.“

And the sharing has begun. Launched at the tail end of 2007, GreaterFultonNews.org is a collaboration between the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Mass Communications and the Neighborhood Resource Center (NRC), a grassroots educational and cultural center in Richmond, VA. The site features contributions by VCU journalism majors along with postings by local residents, from calendar listings about community meetings to announcements about lost dogs. A Fulton Hill channel on YouTube hosts videos on the site, including student-produced profiles of Big Mama’s soul food cart and Joyce’s Beauty Lounge.

VCU has held four training session for both youth and adult residents on different aspects of content creation.  Presenters gave a show and tell about other citizen sites and talked about good journalistic practices and editorial/column writing. Participants brainstormed ideas for their site.  In later sessions, they got the chance to play around with the equipment and learn how to post blog entries, and edit and upload photos.

As a powerful new tool for community engagement, the project may encounter some editorial dilemmas. Locals are somewhat cautious about the face Fulton Hill projects forth to the online world.  According to VCU’s dean Judy VanSlyke Turk, “Neighborhood residents did show a preference for avoiding content that puts their neighborhood in a ‘bad light.‘ No one has yet written anything very critical, yet residents seem concerned that this might happen.“

So, the partners are developing a set of rules about what can be posted, explains VanSlyke Turk. “There’s been a great deal of discussion of freedom of speech vs. some degree of control over content to project a positive image of the community; the Neighborhood Resource Center staff and the neighborhood associations are leaning toward something less than a fully free site.“

But some speech on the site remains completely free: classified ads.  GreaterFultonNews.org does hope to raise enough revenue through advertising to cover its basic costs. Right now, it is offering an incredible deal, charging only $5 for a small banner ad for six months.

To help make the project sustainable, it has also recently posted a job announcement, hoping to hire someone in the neighborhood for five hours a week: 

“The Web manager is responsible for monitoring all posts, comments, images, video and sound published to the Web site, making sure that they adhere to the site’s publishing guidelines. The manager will work with community organizations (including the civic and business associations; nonprofit organizations; local business owners; churches; and other community groups) to regularly develop and publish stories that focus on the Greater Fulton area. Knowledge of basic HTML required; experience with WordPress or other blogging tools and image editing software, such as Photoshop, highly desired.“

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Fulton: Full Steam Ahead

November 2007

A new citizen-fueled news site for Fulton Hill is set to officially launch in December 2007. 

Since May, the team from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) has met regularly with representatives of the Greater Fulton Hill neighborhood to build a trusting relationship while developing a plan for the site. At VCU, participating faculty divvied up responsibilities for training citizen journalists, tech development, Web site management, and project coordination. 

The project held its first town meeting in September 2007 to acquaint the community with the Web site plan and recruit participants to the training program. Organizers promoted the event by distributing flyers to every household in the neighborhood.  At the meeting, they screened a local teenager’s video about his first day of the new school year, to demystify the process and show residents how easy it is to share their stories and make media. Community members at that meeting voted in favor of the Greater Fulton News as the name for their site.

The project has purchased an LCD projector, a voice recorder, a still digital camera and media card for neighborhood news contributors to use.  And, local TV Channel 12 donated computers to the Neighborhood Resource Center, greatly expanding the community’s access to the Internet, since most residents do not have computers at home.

Four citizen journalists attended a training workshop in September.  Another training was planned for October.

A community activist who started a successful news blog for his neighborhood of Church Hill has been helping with development of the Fulton Hill site.

In the mean time, project leaders are drafting rules and crafting a tutorial on posting content and compiling a list of resources for citizen journalists. Advanced TV News students have been assigned to create a package of stories about the Greater Fulton Hill neighborhood to be posted to the site. And a Flickr site has been set up for posting photos.

Judy VanSlyke Turk of the VCU School of Communications says that in recent months, project leaders have even begun to look ahead beyond the launch, discussing sustainability of site. They’ve been asking themselves, “Who will serve as Webmaster after the first year of the grant? How can community activists be compensated after the grant expires for their work with the project? How can we sustain the VCU-Greater Fulton Hill relationship after the expiration of the grant?“

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The Eminent Domain

Formerly titled Building Blocks
Alyssa Katz, Editor, Pratt Center for Community Development

• Brooklyn, NY

CONTACT INFO

Pratt Center for
Community Development
379 DeKalb Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205
(718) 636-3486
E-mail

Web site

TheEminentDomain.org is a news, information and networking resource for New Yorkers working to influence the shape of their neighborhoods and make sure that development is an asset to their communities, not a force for displacement and destruction. The site aggregates local real estate development news, offers original reporting and analysis, discussion forums, and a calendar of community meetings and public hearings about Harlem (Manhattan), Coney Island (Brooklyn), and Kingsbridge Armory (the Bronx).

Check back for future news and updates.

• July 2009
• August 2008
• March 2008
• November 2007
 
 

The Eminent Domain from J-Lab on Vimeo.

2007 grantee Alyssa Katz talks about the benefits of empowering the voice of the people. The interview took place on April 5, 2008, at the New Voices 2007 Grantee Meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn in Washington, D.C.

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Eminent Domain Poised to Resume Publication

July 2009

Although it took longer than staff would have liked, Alyssa Katz reports that The Eminent Domain is poised to resume publication in a much more robust form in September of 2009, and to fulfill its promise as an information resource, a space for discussion and community building and a journalism training ground.

Beginning this fall, The Pratt Institute Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment will be sponsoring nine student fellows to work at the Pratt Center and engage in planning projects in neighborhoods throughout New York City. “We’re going to bring them into The Eminent Domain as regular contributors and coordinators of contributions from others, including colleagues and members from community organizations they are working with,“ said Katz.

But Katz notes this new direction comes after a difficult period. Last year The Eminent Domain made the “difficult” decision to discontinue its collaboration with NYU’s Department of Journalism. Originally, this partnership supplied the intern support that made the site possible, so without this reporting support, the site suspended publication temporarily in October of 2008. At this point in time, following the urging of the Pratt Center’s then-director Brad Lander, Katz tried to reconfigure the project as part of One City/One Future, a citywide collaboration between dozens of labor, community, civic, and other organizations concerned about development in New York City and the policies that govern it.

Katz contacted the project’s other two partners, NYC Jobs With Justice and the National Employment Law Project about using The Eminent Domain to inform and engage a wide audience about news developments at the neighborhood and citywide level. But they were reluctant to integrate The Eminent Domain with One City/One Future. NY Jobs With Justice, the group responsible for the project’s media development, had “strong concerns” about time commitments and the ability to influence key audiences. But Katz believes this stance grew out of an “old media” model in which the object is to create media events for major news organizations to cover. “Generating one’s own media was not understood to have value, especially within a political network in which public statements must generally be approved by consensus among a large number of players,“ said Katz.

“We will be promoting the Eminent Domain aggressively on the new Pratt Center website and expect it to be a significant driver of traffic there.“

With its new focus, however, Katz believes that The Eminent Domain will be an integral part of the fellowship experience for those at the Pratt Center. It will give Pratt graduate planning students an opportunity to develop skills in reporting, writing and information sharing, and especially in translating “the often impenetrable technical language of city planning into accessible terminology and stories.“

Each class of fellows will work with the Pratt Center for a full year. Katz will work with the fellows individually and as a group to develop a focus with each contributor. As she does with her journalism students at NYU, Katz will ask each student to stay abreast of important developments in their field of focus and to connect neighborhood issues and specific technical challenges to timely issues of larger significance.

Even in its dormant state, said Katz, The Eminent Domain has continued to serve as a valuable resource for those interested in learning about and from community organizing and development in New York City. About 2,500 unique visitors used the site to find information that’s “hard to find elsewhere.“ And as The Eminent Domain moves forward, it will be part of a reinvigorated Web presence for the Pratt Center, which will launch at the end of June 2009. It will enable the organization to provide consistently updated information and analysis on city planning and development issues. “We will be promoting The Eminent Domain aggressively on the new Pratt Center Web site and expect it to be a significant driver of traffic there,“ said Katz.

The Eminent Domain will focus on the larger landscape of development in New York City, regardless of whether the Pratt Center is working on a project, though in many cases students will have the opportunity to produce content that grows out of the projects that they are working on in the field.

Katz said The Eminent Domain looks forward to sharing lessons with other neighborhood-focused organizations working to build news reporting into their efforts to strength communities.

—Tom Regan

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Power to the People

August 2008

The Eminent Domain is emerging as a safe place for residents of New York City communities to speak out about the challenges of coping with neighborhood change. In recent months, the site has had some success getting citizens to post stories, giving a sense of urgency and authenticity to its coverage of the ins and outs of development.  A poignant post by Danyelle puts a human face on gentrification:

“I love Brooklyn. This is my home. This is where I’ve lived my entire life. ... Brooklyn is dying a slow and terrible death, where she is silenced by the tearing down of her walls and the demeaning voices of developers and gentrifiers are engulfing her and the rest of us. It kills me to know how money has overpowered the integrity of my borough ... and what’s good just seems to be falling to the wayside.“

FUREE’s 5th Annual Convention.

In another post, a public housing resident shared his views about a new condo project displacing his local supermarket. Another offered coverage of the FUREE (Families United for Racial and Economic Equality) convention. And Reverend Billy (of the street theater stop-shopping gospel choir) attracted attention when the focus of the most recent Mermaid Parade was a protest of gentrification in Coney Island.

Reverend Billy.

Early in the year, the Pratt Center for Community Development, which administers The Eminent Domain project, held a training session for members of FUREE, sparking interest in contributing content to the site. The workshop covered the fundamentals of community journalism, including discussions of who the audience is and what your responsibility is to them. Alyssa Katz, the project coordinator, says she hopes to produce similar sessions for community groups in other neighborhoods around emerging development issues.

As The Eminent Domain continues to find its place and its voice, it is developing a niche and a following. “The journalism on our site will lead the way for other journalism to follow,“ says Katz, “by putting civic issues on the agenda - such as the growing movement for better mass transit in the city’s outer reaches - that are of deep concern to many city residents but not adequately reflected in commercial media.“

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Information is Power at The Eminent Domain

March 2008

Launched at the end of 2007, TheEminentDomain.org is populated with more than a dozen posts of original reporting and analysis on development in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx. Plus:

• The site aggregates local news coverage under the banner “This Week in Accountable Development.“
• A regularly updated calendar promotes events related to city planning, design and community organizing.
• The “PLANguage” page translates obscure jargon into plain language while unpacking an alphabet soup of acronyms (with links) for departments, agencies, laws and policies related to urban planning.
• Neighborhood FAQs that include a timeline of what’s happened so far, what’s going on now, a who’s who among the parties engaged in a development project, how-to get involved, and answers to pointed questions like “I don’t live in the area, so why should I care?“

Editor Alyssa Katz says they launched Dec. 10, 2007, the same week the New York City Council held contentious hearings about Columbia University’s plans for the future of West Harlem. Columbia reportedly agreed to create a $76 million community benefit fund as part of the University’s expansion over 17 square blocks of Manhattan.

“Our coverage occupied a unique space, stressing the importance of community involvement in the process but appropriately skeptical of both the deal and the manner in which it was reached. That kind of informed analysis is essential to meaningful public participation in the planning process and not available elsewhere.“

Katz says she and her New York University intern are deliberately posting at a moderate pace in order to make TheEminentDomain.org a more open and welcoming space to community contributors who might be turned off if the site seemed little more than a personal blog.

To elicit and solicit postings from the people, the Pratt Center is offering several trainings for residents and members of Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition and FUREE, the community group in downtown Brooklyn.

“Our session is also going to include a workshop on ‘What Is News?‘ to sharpen members’ story judgment,“ says Katz. “The story judgment here has to be excellent, since the coverage has to be meaningful ... to other New Yorkers interested in how citizens can engage with planning for development.“

Katz says she’s beginning to look at opportunities to gain participation from city-wide organizations working on development issues, groups that embrace the center’s commitment to information-sharing as a vehicle for promoting democratic local engagement.

Outreach to promote the site is picking up. TheEminentDomain.org plans to pursue ad swaps with other Web sites covering New York City issues, such as streetsblog.org and gothamgazette.org. “We also expect our original reporting to be picked up by blogs covering city neighborhoods and development, Google Alerts on our issues, and news aggregators such as PlanNYC,“ says Katz.

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The Eminent Domain: Building Power and a Livable New York

November 2007

Based on feedback from community members, partners and journalists, the Pratt Center has decided to change the name of its project from Building Blocks to The Eminent Domain: Building Power and a Livable New York.  According to Editor Alyssa Katz, “The name carries special relevance for New Yorkers involved in community planning, who’ve become concerned about the growing use and abuse of government powers to condemn property.“  In Web lingo, Eminent Domain also means “a prominent and influential Web site,“ which this site aims to become. 

TheEminentDomain.org is currently being designed. Site producers are using WordPress along with some customized features, including a glossary of urban planning terms, a directory of key government players, links to Web sites of interest and brief guides to each of the 3 communities of coverage.

The Pratt Center has also decided to change geographic focus, to add downtown Brooklyn and drop Coney Island, while continuing with its commitment to covering Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx and Columbia University expansion in Harlem and Manhattan.

“We made this decision for several reasons,“ says Katz. “A reliable and widely cited Brooklyn information and discussion site has been covering Coney Island quite successfully. ... The dailies have been doing a decent job as well. Development in Coney Island is reaching an impasse between the owner of much of the property and the city, so there will be relatively few events and issues to cover.“

Pratt Center has forged a partnership with Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), a membership organization based in downtown Brooklyn and surrounding neighborhoods (including two major housing projects) that advocates for local residents in the development process. FUREE had been thinking about creating its own online forum for community discussion, a Web site where participants in a teen writing project could post their stories. Now, its members will contribute to TheEminentDomain. “FUREE and the Pratt Center are especially excited about creating a space on the Web where elite decision-makers and neighborhood residents will be part of the same conversation,“ says Katz.

Another content coup: The lead community organizer participating in negotiations over the redevelopment of the Kingsbridge Armory in the Northwest Bronx has agreed to post regular updates.  The Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition is the primary partner for the new Web site.
Although its role in the zoning process over Columbia University expansion has ended, Pratt partner Community Board 9 will still wield influence in public discussion and leaders will use TheEminentDomain Web site to get information out about its activities.

Katz says Pratt Center is hoping to partner with the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University (NYU) School of Law, which publishes PlanNYC, an online portal for the latest research, media stories and public documents related to housing and development throughout NYC.  Katz proposed to add an RSS feed of PlanNYC headlines to TheEminentDomain home page. But the Furman Center expressed reservations that the RSS feed might imply an endorsement of the work of particular community groups or the views posted by citizen bloggers. 

“The concern generated a useful discussion of the editorial process, and our plans to edit and fact check all contributions,“ says Katz. “We’ve agreed to discuss the proposition further once we have a full template for the site completed.“

In fall 2007, Pratt Center hired an NYU journalism student intern to aggregate content and compile resources, including a public events calendar, news articles and blog links.  TheEminentDomain.org is scheduled for a soft launch on November 30 and a full launch in late winter 2008.  Once up and running, the intern will contribute original reporting of meetings and hearings, and will help fact check submissions by community partners and others.

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News Desk on Access SF

Zane Blaney, Executive Director, Access SF

• San Francisco

CONTACT INFO

Zane Blaney
Access SF
1720 Market St.
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 575-4947
E-mail

Web site

To train San Francisco nonprofits to produce a monthly community news program with a neighborhood focus for cable access television and video blogs. Five special interest desks will produce stories targeting youth, LGBT issues, arts and culture, age and disabilities, and multi-lingual stories. Each special interest desk will have its own video blog, supported by Access SF, the city’s community television corporation.

Check back for future news and updates

• July 2009
• August 2008
• March 2008
• November 2007
 
 

News Desk on Access SF from J-Lab on Vimeo..

2007 grantee Carter Paige describes how he realized the original vision of the project by working closely with citizen journalists. This interview took place April 5, 2008 at the New Voices 2007 Grantee Meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn in Washington, D.C.

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Access SF Launches “The Street” Segments and Site

July 2009

Cable casting on San Francisco Public Access increased dramatically starting in mid-December 2008. Typically between regularly scheduled shows on the city’s secondary public access channel, computer-generated “bulletin board” screens play as a station break. Rather than run the bulletin boards during periods where there was no regular programming, segments from “The Street” would fill the open time slot.

As of June 2009, 40 segments have been completed. They include (to name but a few):

• Local farmers market
• Night Life at Academy of Art and Science
• Political speech by 10-year-old supporting gay marriage at City Hall
• Creative presentation on a typical commute for a college student
• Aftermath of a hit and run incident in a residential neighborhood
• Spectator point of view on Rose Bowl Parade
• Protesters in Financial District against Federal Reserve System

From the staff’s standpoint, the success of “The Street” is a credit to the dedication and strength of the core team of volunteers. Very little direct involvement was made to shape what they now have on their cable channel and Web site.

But the success did not come easily.

Maintaining participation from the beginning was a challenge, as many of the participants in “The Street” were college students with other work or volunteer commitments. Determining a regular schedule was a challenge. Eventually, all concerned were able to find a 2-3 hour period to meet as a team. While few of those who started dropped out, an absence at a meeting or a withdrawal from the project had an impact on the entire team’s level of commitment and workload.

The citizen journalists involved with the project were given full independence with the focus of each piece. While there were deadlines and regular check-in meetings, there were no assignments to cover a specific event or story. Although they had access to Access SF editing facilities, field equipment, computers, studios, and conference room, many of the participants also used their personal media equipment to help in the production of their pieces.

After reviewing the feedback from the core team, staff found that participants were struggling with the concept of the project. First impressions included feelings of inadequacy and apprehension. While the concept was straightforward - “Capture the world around you” - producing clear, concise content was a challenge to each individual. Participants expressed concerns like, “Is this good enough? Am I good enough to produce this for TV?“

One of the best ways to confront this challenge turned out to be meeting as a group. Assembling in the conference room and sharing pieces in production was the motivation needed to retain participation and develop perspective and refine technical skills. And having a venue to gather peer input was quite beneficial.

The staff suspects Access SF a long-term project where the full impact of activities will not be measured until five years of continuous participation and content has been accumulated.

Staff found that creating a virtual meeting space through Google Groups helped to reduce the time spent on “phone tag,“ leaving messages on answering machines and trying to coordinate meetings, check-ins or sharing design concepts. Having a virtual meeting group had an unforeseen benefit - it helped with the composition of the final report. Having date stamp tools illustrated the development of the project in a linear fashion.

Access SF staff members also said that if they were able to “redo” the final years, they would make a few changes:

• they would purchase additional 8 GB or 16 GB Flash drives and three more Flip cameras.
• Rather than the “vague” task of finding a topic, giving participants an assignment would have streamlined the process of evaluating what the core team had video-taped as their work in progress.
• Rather than having the core team created the “conceptual look” and name of the project, a task that many of the core team had little experience doing, valuable time could have been saved if the staff had created the foundation and allowed the core team to build on it.

The staff suspects this project is a long-term project where the full impact of activities will not be measured until five years of continuous participation and content has been accumulated. After that period of time, the scope of viewer input, the visibility of journalists in the community and the “trend” in community coverage will provide a better picture of the impact of the project and the relative value for the communities involved.

—Tom Regan

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Access SF: Gaining Momentum

August 2008

In its first year, NewsDesk on Access SF has provided TV production training to 30 individuals representing 16 nonprofits in the Bay Area. Those producers-to-be learned how to use Access SF’s two-camera studio and half went on to participate in workshops on news gathering, interviewing techniques and story construction. Volunteers were given portable flip cameras to gather video in the field about their community organizations. That footage was integrated into segments which were later combined into a series of final 30-minute NewsDesk programs cable-cast on a rotating schedule.  Access SF also created a Web page for NewsDesk, including a video player where visitors can watch the seven programs produced in all.

Bryn Murray, of the local nonprofit World Savvy, says the production training was valuable. “I’ve learned to view our work from the outside in which gives me quite a different perspective.“

All of the eight participating groups that completed both phases of training have indicated an interest in continuing to produce citizen journalism shows on Access SF.  For example, James Ross of the Quesada Gardens Initiative plans to produce a live call-in show focused on his neighborhood.

In the coming year, Access SF will offer more workshops to deepen the skills of current participants.  They will learn how to develop and produce short reports that will air as interstitials, brief segments that air in between regular programs. And participants will learn how to create blogs and vlogs using video-to-Web software. Eamon Martin and Brendan Conley, producers from the award-winning Global Report, which has empowered hundreds of citizen journalists, will help lead the effort to teach NewsDeskers how to produce a studio-based news show. 

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Turning the Beat Around:
New People and New Partnerships for News Desk

March 2008

Some of the names and faces have changed, but the mission of Access SF’s NewsDesk remains the same: To give local community nonprofits the tools and skills to produce a monthly cable news program with a strong neighborhood focus. The departure of two longtime station staffers (to for-profit media companies) has forced some delays and the loss of some professional contacts and connections. 

But just as the Chinese character for chaos includes the character that means opportunity, Access SF is seizing the day and recalibrating plans to train a corps of community partners to create content.  Instead of trying to cultivate local TV news professionals as mentors, Access SF will draw on the talents of its own seasoned staff to act as the advisory board and do the training.

NewsDesk originally envisioned five special interest desks producing video blogs featuring stories targeting youth, LGBT issues, arts and culture, age and disabilities, and multi-lingual issues. But on re-examination, Access SF realized that the organizations that signed up to participate in the program (see list below) did not necessarily fit into the special-interest categories set forth in its proposal. As a result project leaders have decided to forego the special interest format and focus the programming more broadly.

Between February and April, Access SF will train its key nonprofit partners. It will post their training curriculum, photo galleries, video excerpts from training events, and test segments online. They will use an existing in-house live series, SF LIVE, as a testing ground for nonprofits to gain on-air experience. SF LIVE unfolds on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 5 p.m. - 8 p.m. on Comcast Channel 76, Astound Cable Channel 30, AT&T Channel 99 and streaming on Access World at www.accessf.org.

From March to June, Access SF will work with nonprofits on producing two 30-minute programs for cablecast each month, for a total of six shows.

In addition to previously announced partners Chalk/Youthline, Booker T. Washington Community Services Center and Excel After School Program, Access SF is also working with a diversity of other local organizations that will become video producers. These include:

• World Savvy, a group whose mission is to get youth engaged globally.
• California Institute of Integral Studies, an accredited institution of higher education for intellectual and spiritual pursuits.
• Senior Action Network, a citywide federation of groups organizing to improve the lives of retirees.
• SF Living Wage Coalition, an economic justice advocacy group for low-wage workers.
• Ozcat Entertainment, a non-profit promoter of local performers.
• Quesada Gardens Initiative, a neighborhood improvement and community building project.
• Streetside Stories, a local literacy group that helps young people find their voice.
• Praise Time, a gospel TV ministry.
• KPFA - La Onda Bajita Rafe Café, a radio program aimed a Chicano youth.
• Independent Arts & Media, an organization promoting civic dialogue.
• Just Think, a youth media literacy and training group.

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A Cable Access Project In Process

November 2007

Access SF has identified key partners for outreach, training and production of its News Desk, a program to recruit new producers from and develop more coverage of diverse communities.  he final product will be six 30-minute News Desk TV programs, but along the way dozens of San Franciscans, young and old, will learn the tools of television news production.

The Booker T. Washington Community Center offers skills and job training to low-income teens of color. Booker T. staff and teens will be trained to serve as crew on the programs. The teens will also develop a special interest Teen Desk aimed at covering stories of interested to 12-17 year olds. Eight youth have been selected for field and studio production training at Access SF this winter.

CHALK YouthLine is a leading youth and young adult technology program. This group will develop a Youth Desk that will create content appealing to ages 18- 24. CHALK youth have been trained in the station’s flash studio and main studio, and several will serve as on-air talent for the programs.

Excel After School Programs of the San Francisco Unified School District will develop an After-School Desk which focus on community health issue and will include a live call-in program for middle and high schoolers.  Training will take place in late November and December and test segments will be produced at the start of the new year.

Access SF is working with two of its staff members who are fluent in Spanish and Cantonese to develop original language training materials for nonprofits that participate in the development of a Multi-Lingual Desk.

Access SF has recruited an advisory board of local TV news people, video bloggers and others who will support the development of community news training for nonprofits.

On Monday, December 10, Access SF will host an open call community meeting in its main studio to begin a full-scale outreach to local nonprofits that can serve as partners in developing additional special interest desks that will focus on Age & Disability, LGBT community, Multi-Lingual, and Arts and Culture.

Throughout the winter, Access SF will begin posting its training curriculum, photo galleries and video excerpts from training events.  They plan to use their in-house live series SF LIVE as a testing ground for nonprofits to gain on-air experiences.  In the spring, Access SF plans to work with local nonprofits to produce the six half-hour programs featuring segments from five special interest desks in each episode.

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New Voices: 10 New

Citizen Media Ideas Are Funded

For immediate release
April 4, 2007
Contact Jan Schaffer
(301) 985-4020 jans@j-lab.org

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Ten new ideas for amplifying community news will receive $12,000 New Voices grants to launch news sites for under-covered communities, embed TV reporters in neighborhoods, network regional radio programs, and map the local impact of climate change, J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism announced today.

“These award winners are embarking on new ways to harness the collective wisdom in their areas and diversify input on local and regional issues,“ said Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab, which administers the grants.

With the 2007 awardees, a total of 30 community news start-ups have been selected to receive New Voices funding from among 533 applicants since 2005. This year J-Lab received 105 proposals.

“Citizens are increasingly using digital media to enrich community, enhance public discourse and enliven democracy, and the New Voices grantees are helping to pave the way,“ said Gary Kebbel, journalism program officer for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which funds the New Voices initiative.

“I am always struck by the ingenuity of these projects, which stems from an intense desire to create or protect a sense of community through communication,“ said New Voices Advisory Board member Donna Reed, vice president of news and multimedia strategy, Media General Publishing Division.

“We, in media, should draw from these ideas because they are all about the voiceless being heard.“

The grant winners will receive $12,000 to start up their projects. They will be eligible for $5,000 follow-up grants next year if they successfully launch and supply matching funding. The deadline for 2008 proposals is Feb. 20, 2008.

The 2007 New Voices grant recipients are:

• Vermont Climate Witness. To create a map-based interactive experience to track how residents see climate change affecting the state’s economy, from fall foliage and maple syrup to skiing. Tamarack Productions, a nonprofit environmental awareness organization, will work with the Vermont Natural Resources Council to develop user content and create Google Map mash-ups to help users visualize weather data and real-time weather indicators.
  
• Northwest Community Radio Network Collaborative Newscast. To launch an hour-long, weekly newscast culled from the best public affairs programming produced by more than 40, often-isolated community, college and independent radio stations throughout the Pacific Northwest. Seattle-based Reclaim the Media will use the newscast to anchor a new content-sharing network that will expand the pool of regional news and programming for local audiences.
  
• Saint Paul City Newsdesk. To create and pay for a network of citizen journalists to cover neighborhood and municipal news for use by media outlets throughout the Twin Cities. Network stories, videos and radio pieces will be published on the St. Paul Neighborhood Network cable-access television web site and on the Twin Cities Daily Planet site.
  
• NewCastleNOW.org To create a weekly cyber newspaper built from citizen-generated content for the Chappaqua area in Westchester County, N.Y., which has lost its local newspaper. The project is spearheaded by local volunteers under the auspices of the Friends of the Chappaqua Library.
  
• Neighbor to Neighbor. Cambridge Community Television will embed citizen journalists in each of the five neighborhoods of Cambridge, Mass., to report on local issues and events, feature local viewpoints, and facilitate participation in local issues. Five neighborhood segments will be produced and edited into a monthly 30-minute program to air four times each week, streamed live on CCTV’s web site and archived. Segments will be incorporated in the Cambridge Media Map.
  
• Bilingual Interactive Environmental Journalism. To develop bilingual news and interactive narratives for OurTahoe.org to help the Spanish-speaking residents of the Lake Tahoe Basin understand environmental threats to the area. The Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada-Reno will spearhead content creation and solicitation through its Graduate Program in Interactive Environmental Journalism, aided by local newspaper partners.
  
• Neo-News Network. To build a news and information hotline for Gary, Ind., accessed via web, phone, mobile text messaging and mailing lists to supplement available media. Content will be generated by students and young professionals and coordinated by the Central District Organization, a group led by young professionals who have returned to Gary to live.
  
• Fulton Hill Interactive Portal. To train local citizen journalists and build a news and information portal for Fulton Hill, a low-income neighborhood in Richmond, Va. Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Mass Communications will work with the Fulton Hill Neighborhood Resource Center to help local residents produce stories, photos, audio, video and a Fulton Hill wiki.
  
• Building Blocks. To launch a news and information site to inform New York City residents about major real estate development projects that affect their neighborhoods. Spearheaded by the Pratt Center for Community Development, the project will initially provide news articles, Q&As, public hearing calendars and discussion forums focusing on the redevelopment of Coney Island in Brooklyn, the reuse of the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, and the expansion of Columbia University onto a 17-block area of Harlem in Manhattan.
  
• News Desk on Access SF. To train San Francisco nonprofits to produce a monthly community news program with a neighborhood focus for cable access television and video blogs. Five special interest desks will produce stories targeting youth, LGBT issues, arts and culture, age and disabilities, and multi-lingual stories. Each special interest desk will have its own video blog, supported by Access SF, the city’s community television corporation.

“The winning grant applications show, once again, that communities aren’t waiting for mainstream media to do the job; they’re moving ahead with their own creative ideas,“ said Peggy Kuhr, a New Voices advisor from the University of Kansas.

Advisor Peter Levine sees the New Voices grantees contributing to an active civic renewal movement in the U.S. “Dissatisfied with formal institutions, citizens are working together on community problems, building new associations – and creating their own news media.“

Participating in the selection process were New Voices Advisory Board members:

• Charles B. Fancher, president, Fancher Associates Inc., Annapolis, MD.
• Jane Brown, executive director, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.
• Bill Gannon, Director of Online Production & Programming, Lucasfilm Ltd.
• Bruce Koon, former executive news editor, Knight Ridder Digital.
• Peggy Kuhr, Knight Chair on the Press, Leadership and Community, University of Kansas, Lawrence.
• Peter Levine, director of CIRCLE (Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement), University of Maryland, College Park.
• Adam Clayton Powell III, director of the Integrated Media Systems Center, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California.
• Thomas Kunkel, dean, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park.
• Jan Schaffer, executive director, J-Lab.

Project updates will be posted at www.J-NewVoices.org. For more information, subscribe to J-Lab’s newsletter online or by e-mailing news@j-lab.org.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. The Knight Foundation especially supports ideas and projects that create transformational change.

J-Lab, a center of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, helps news organizations and citizens use new media technologies to create fresh ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism and the J-Learning.org and Knight Citizen News Network [kcnn.org] web sites.

####

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2006 Grantee Updates

Community Correspondents Corps Ethnic News Service Chicago Talks MURL Building Blocks

Learning to Finish Route 7 Report Monroe County Radio Project Great Lakes Wiki Rural News Network Trenton Policy Options

Click here for 2005 Grantee Updates.

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Community Correspondents Corps

Whitesburg, Ky.

• If These Mountains Could Speak: Giving Voice to Appalachia, End of Year One: November 2007
• Citizen Correspondents are Starting to Produce Radio Stories, Spring 2007
• Citizen Radio Stories to Air, November 2006
• Appalshop Trains Nine Citizen Contributors for Community Correspondents Corps, August 2006

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Ethnic News Service

San Francisco

• Bay Voices Amplifies the Lives of Youth of Color, End of Year Two: October 2008
• Ethnic News Service:  Still Buffering, End of Year One: November 2007
• Seeking Untold Stories in San Francisco’s Ethnic Communities, Spring 2007
• Students Reporting for Ethnic News Service, November 2006
• Ethnic News Service Finds Partners in Preparation for Launch, August 2006

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Chicago Talks

Chicago

• Community News for Chicago, City of Neighborhoods, End of Year Two: October 2008
• Successful Soft Launch, End of Year One: November 2007
• Politics, Immigration Issues Fuel Connections Site, Spring 2007
• Students Gear Up for Feb. 27 City Elections, November 2006
• Chicago Neighborhood Journalism Project Seeks Out Community Input, August 2006

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MURL Building Blocks

Philadelphia

• MURL Expands Mission to Include Training and Community Media, Follow-up: July 2009
• MURL: Freedom and Speech, End of Year Two: October 2008
• MURL: Building Community and Cultural Competency, End of Year One: November 2007
• Digital Cameras will Seed Datacasts, Spring 2007
• Building Blocks Project Launches, November 2006
• Temple’s MURL Launches “Building Blocks” Blog, August 2006

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Learning to Finish:
Solution that Leads to Graduation

Charlottesville, Va.

• Crossing the Finish Line to Graduation, End of Year Two: October 2008
• Learning to Finish Launches Graduation Rate Calculator, End of Year One: November 2007
• Drop-out Wiki Tries to Entice More Interaction, Spring 2007
• Forty Wiki Articles, Discussion Guide Focus on Dropouts, November 2006
• Learning to Finish Campaign Launches with Wiki, August 2006

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Route 7 Report

Athens, Ohio

• Route 7 Report: Regular, Dependable, Popular and in Print, End of Year Two: October 2008
• Route 7 Report:  Please Come to Our Town Next!, End of Year One: November 2007
• Route 7 Report Launches as Newsletter and Web Site, Spring 2007
• Citizen Newsletter Web Site Launches, November 2006
• Route 7 Report Launches Early for Elections, August 2006

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Monroe County Radio Project

Morgantown, W.V.

• Monroe County Radio Creates a Buzz, End of Year Two: October 2008
• Monroe County Radio: The Long Distance Challenge, End of Year One: November 2007
• Community News Airs Amid Setbacks, Spring 2007
• Radio Program Expands to 15 Minutes,
Web Site To Launch in March, November 2006
• “Monroe County Today” Radio News Program Launches, August 2006

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Great Lakes Wiki

East Lansing, Mich.

• Great Lakes Wiki: A New Generation of Environmental Reporters, End of Year Two: October 2008

• A Great Wiki for the Great Lakes, End of Year One: November 2007
• Great Lakes Wiki Edited 500 Times in First Month, Spring 2007
• Great Lakes Wiki Gearing Up for Hard Launch, November 2006
• Michigan State Journalism Class Develops Great Lakes Wiki, August 2006

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Rural News Network

Missoula, Mont.

• Keith Graham’s 10 Lessons Learned on how to Engage Community Members , October 2008
• Rural Journalism 101: Covering the Basics, End of Year One: November 2007
• Rural News Network Teams Citizen Reporters with Student Journalists, Spring 2007
• Rural News Network Site to Launch in March, November 2006
• Rural News Network Recruits Town Mayor, Librarian as News Correspondents, August 2006

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Trenton Policy Options

Princeton, N.J.

• Template Catches On, February 2009
• Slow and Steady Build-Out, End of Year One: November 2007
• Colleges Help with Issues Briefs for Policy Options Wiki, Spring 2007
• Trenton PolicyOptions.org Pilots Policy News, November 2006

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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 repor