Taking the plunge into "cit-j"
By Doug Fisher
Citizen journalism. Participatory journalism. Hyperlocal journalism.
Community storytelling.
Whatever you call it, the idea that news is a conversation and that it's
time to integrate readers into the news process is creeping, and sometimes
rushing, into newsrooms.
Independent sites like WestportNow in Connecticut, H2otown outside of
Boston and Baristanet in New Jersey often began as part-time ventures
covering places largely ignored by local media. The Bakersfield Californian
pioneered with Northwest Voice from which it also produced a printed neighborhood
edition. Now, most sizable papers have, or are considering, ways to get
the public involved on the Web. Florida's Fort
Myers News-Press has assigned
two "mobile journalists" – mojos – to report and
recruit others to do hyperlocal journalism.
Among the most well-known ventures is South Carolina's BlufftonToday,
a radical remake of Morris' Carolina Morning News with a Web-centric strategy
incorporated into a free print edition. It has reported penetration of
more than 70 percent. TheColumbiaRecord.com is like Northwest Voice, although
The State does not do a separate print edition. Anderson has YourHub as
Scripps rolls the concept that started in Denver out to its papers.
A year ago, the University of South Carolina journalism school and the
Hartsville Messenger, with Knight Foundation funding through J-lab, began
creating HartsvilleToday.com. The premise: Massive changes the Internet
is wreaking in large newsrooms eventually will creep into even the smallest.
What can small papers learn from HVTD, as we call it, to be prepared?
Can small newspapers, especially nondailies, connect better with their
communities? And can such a site help the nondaily stay more timely in
an already 24/7 world?
We're still learning, but the answer is a qualified yes to those last
two. We are doing a longer report for J-lab, but I want to share some
of what we have learned.
Sweat the details: You put tremendous time into setting up your
newspaper; do the same with your online community site. Start with the
name: What image do you want to project?
What do you want the site to do: Provide a way for people to file more
traditional stories, as we do at HVTD? Allow more personal commentary,
like blogs? Promote social networking or more feedback for your staff?
Each requires a slightly different approach.
Will you link to other sites? We think it shows users we trust them,
and if they can get to the other sites from us they'll start with us.
How will people report inappropriate content, and to whom in your newsroom?
Messenger Managing Editor Jim Faile says that five-person newsroom is
still grappling with these issues. How will you monitor things in case
a contributor comes up with a good story or photo, as has happened in
Hartsville? (Most software produces RSS or "news feeds" that
can be monitored through an online reader like Bloglines.com.)
Think like a user, not a publisher: How would you find information
and stories you wanted? It's not likely to be the traditional 1-A, Metro,
Sports, Lifestyle mix. At HartsvilleToday, a homepage window shows you
five or six of the latest posts and another shows you a rotating selection
of posted photos. We also have "channels" such as Faith, Arts,
Neighborhoods and Sports (high school/college and recreational) for some
structure. But we are adjusting that as we see what users do with posts.
Make sure you have an events calendar where people can post notices.
Everything should be in natural language, not legalese or technical boilerplate.
We've avoided calling the site "journalism," preferring "community
storytelling," after we found several potential contributors scared
about the "j" word.
Don't expect to flip a switch and it will run itself: Publisher
Graham Osteen estimates you'll spend $5,000 to $10,000 to get the site
set up. There is free, open-source software, but someone still has to
install and tweak it. Hartsville has access to Osteen Publishing's in-house
experts; if you have to hire someone, systems administrator Ed Schaal
says make sure you have their full attention for at least a month. After
that, it may take a couple of hours a week to tweak things.
If you build it, they won't necessarily come: We talked with community
groups, churches, Scout groups, you name it. We had banners and cards
printed; we walked up and down Hartsville's main street passing out fliers.
We made dozens of phone calls. We bought digital cameras to lend, and
we did training through USC's Newsplex. We hired two stringers not only
to find stories but also recruit participants. It is an ongoing effort.
As Osteen wrote in an editorial: "One of the keys, as one person
put it, is what's 'necessary for any participatory project is a sense
of ownership.' … A sense of ownership will develop, I believe,
through a concerted effort on all fronts."
Pictures drive traffic: But you knew that from newspapering, didn't
you? Make sure your site has easy and widely promoted abilities to post
pictures.
Our visits have gone from almost 3,300 in January to almost 7,000 in
June. Page views are up from 22,000 to close to 45,000. Even backing out "indexing
spiders," that's not bad for a town of about 10,000 people. And such
sites can produce some good stories (for instance, AP's first word of
a major fire came from HartsvilleToday).
But it's also an ongoing struggle to turn people from viewers to posters.
The Messenger staff has filed things like Friday night football on cycle,
but that has been uneven, and the paper is still unsure how to sell the
site and how to work it into newsroom routine. Recruitment efforts also
have shown the paper may have more work to do in the town's minority community.
But people keep saying they are visiting. They talk about the stories.
And after one Kiwanis meeting a man came up and said he had a small complaint.
He'd made HartsvilleToday his homepage, and it was loading a little slowly.
We knew we'd made it.
If you want a more detailed outline of the issues in setting up a site
like HVTD, e-mail me.
