Co-op citizen journalism model

At the J-Lab Citizens Media Summit at the Online News Association conference, Maureen Mann, editor of The Forum in Deerfield, N.H., said she and others in the town decided to start a paper because no media was covering their local area. "We sat around and complained that this town needed a newspaper."

They applied for a J-Lab grant and got it.

"If the major media ever covered us, we weren't be here today."

The Philbrick James Forum is a group of about 15 core volunteers that have set themselves up as sort of a cooperative, paying $25 to join and agreeing to volunteer 100 hours of work a year.

Their goal was to create a newspaper that covered four local towns. They wanted to print it because not everyone in their rural community has high speed access.

Biggest concern was where they'd get content, so they starting "browbeating" people in the town to write. And soon they had regular contributors. Originally they were people who really wanted a newspaper. Now, it's grown to people who are interested in specific areas - such as local development or sports. When they publish anything on controversial subjects, they try to get people from multiple perspectives to provide balance.

The politicians were skeptical and nervous at first, but now they have grown to appreciate it and some are even writing for it.

Through its first nine months, The Forum has grown to 72 bylined contributors from 10. The site gets about 3,500 unique visitors per month from a population of about 16,000 (only about half of whom have Internet access).

They have published two print editions, and those are what's expensive. Their goal is to have advertising cover the print edition. They're almost there.

Interestingly, The Union-Leader is now starting to cover the area slightly more.

"So I think we've had some effect. I think we have made a difference."

The next big step is training people to write and report, and edit - basics skills, such as who, what, wheb, where, why and how.

"We don"t pretend to be profedssional journalists. We are citizen journalists. We do try to provide the news. We try to get the people in the news to write about it."

Oct 05, 2006 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT | PERMALINK

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