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Duane Childers / Hartsville Today
Newsplex Director Randy Covington leads a Hartsville Today training session. |
Today,
Douglas Fisher published a
75-page report (pdf) on the first year of a South Carolina citizen journalism project,
Hartsville Today. This community-driven news site received a
New Voices grant from J-Lab in 2005.
Hartsville Today is a joint project of the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications and the Hartsville Messenger -- a twice-weekly community newspaper in print since 1893.
This project intrigues me because I think community newspapers are one of the best, yet currently underutilized, opportunities for practical and valuable collaboration between citizen and professional journalists.
Over the last year, my colleague Adam Glenn and I have done some work with the New York Press Association, which serves community newspapers throughout the State of New York. Most of the publishers and editors in that group appeared curious but skeptical about whether citizen journalism could help their business and community/journalistic mission. Also, these people seemed a bit intimidated by online options for citizen journalism. (Community papers tend to be slower to embrace online media than metro dailies, especially since they have considerably less financial and technical resources for new initiatives.)
Therefore, community journalists, editors, and publishers should be especially sure to read the Hartsville Today report. Fisher, one of the project's founders, says the report "is designed to be a 'cookbook' for the publisher of a small daily or non-daily newspaper who may consider starting a similar site. Many of the challenges are universal, but some are different for smaller newsrooms already burdened just to get out the paper."
