News & Record's citizen media plans

The Los Angeles Times is the latest to report on the much-watched experiment by the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., to use the Web to better tap the community. Aside from the dozen or so blogs launched, the paper is planning to integrate citizen journalists into the Web site within the next three to six months.

Feeling that towns in outlying areas are under-covered, the paper will try to recruit correspondents to file reports about their neighborhoods. Finding reliable writers and getting them to contribute in a meaningful way remain open questions.

The paper already permits registered users to submit articles onto its website. The stories undergo light editing for spelling and grammar. Only one story has been held back for concerns over libel.

Thus far, submitted stories include an announcement about the observation of household hazardous waste day, another about the dangers of carpenter bees, and a grandfather's writing about his grandson's grand slam in a Pony League baseball game

May 25, 2005 | BY JONATHAN DUBE