Master’s students at Northwestern University have put together a valuable new report documenting the building of GoSkokie.com, a community news site they built using primarily citizen-contributed content to cover a nearby suburb. In the report, “Hyperlocal Citizens’ Media: Connecting Communities, Improving Journalism, Building Democracy,” the students concluded:
• Audiences are no longer passive. The Internet allows them to participate in the process of reporting, distributing and interpreting the news.
• Hyperlocal citizens’ media sites are being created nationwide.
• Open source software has made launching a hyperlocal citizens’ media site relatively easy. The software is inexpensive, or even free, and sophisticated technical skills are not required.
• The choice of the content management system can have significant effects on how content is presented.
• Specific topics ? especially those already in the news ? generate the most discussion and participation.
• Users can see through staff attempts to generate discussion. One site
administrator calls these “thread-killers.”
• Photos are extremely popular. This will only increase with the proliferation of digital cameras and camera phones.
• Short, readable postings in a conversational style are better than traditional journalism articles. Articles did not draw much interest or reaction from users.
• Commercial messages — people promoting their businesses or using the site in ways similar to classified advertising — were among the first kinds of content to be submitted.
• Readers respond to postings about pop culture and other subjects that don’t necessarily meet the definition of news as journalists tend to define it.
• Multimedia postings featuring people who live in the community were popular. This may have been because of the “cool” factor associated with multimedia, but another factor is that this kind of content can be spread “virally” as people featured tell their friends and families to check out the site.
• Promotional efforts for an HLCM site do not need to be expensive. We used inperson, grassroots marketing and found opportunities for “free” press coverage.
