Community Journalism Interest Group

Community Journalism Syllabus Exchange

2012-01-12T10:21:00.000-05:00

We have started the community journalism syllabus exchange at our Yahoo group, with the first contribution by Bill Reader of Ohio University. His syllabus covers a course specifically on community journalism.

You will find it in the "File" area of the Yahoo group .

Please contribute your syllabi. As a member of the Yahoo group, you can post them yourself and we'll see that you've done that. (To do so, you needed to create a Yahoo log on when we sent you the invitation. Some of you are getting this message because we enrolled you but you never responded to that initial message asking you to create a log on.)

If you can't post them, send them to teaching chair Andrea Frantz frantza@rmu.edu or COMJIG head Joe Marren marrenjj@buffalostate.edu for posting.

AEJMC seeking comment on FCC action

2012-01-10T17:27:00.002-05:00

AEJMC, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, is seeking comment on this draft statement regarding the FCC's proposal to require TV stations to put their license renewal files online. To respond to the draft, please contact kabrads@bgsu.edu by 9 a.m. Central Time Jan. 11:

AEJMC DRAFT Statement 


The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), a nonprofit, academic organization of more than 3,600 journalism and mass communication educators, students, and media professionals, is committed to “defend and maintain freedom of communication in an effort to achieve better professional practice and a better informed public.” 
AEJMC would like to respond to the Federal Communications Commission Order on Reconsideration and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in connection with “ the Matter of Standardized and Enhanced Disclosure Requirements for Television Broadcast Licensee Public Interest Obligations.” 
AEJMC supports the FCC’s important proposed rule change because this would bring closer to reality broadcasters’ transparency in fulfilling their “public-interest obligations” to communities. The rule change would exponentially expand the public’s access to the broadcasters’ “public-inspection files,” now on paper, by requiring them to make them available online. AEJMC applauds the FCC for its overdue effort to “ modernize the way television broadcasters inform the public about how they are serving their communities.” 
As Steven Waldman, the lead author of the FCC report titled " Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age ," cogently noted in his Columbia Journalism Review article of December 29, 2011, the proposed FCC rule change mandating online access will impose little additional burden to broadcasters, since broadcasters are already required to assemble these materials. 
From journalism and mass communication educators’ perspective, AEJMC believes that putting these political files online would enable educators and researchers to better teach and research how the public-owned airwaves have been used for political advertising. Equally important, investigating the broadcasters’ “pay for play” arrangements would be much easier if these records are included in online public files. 
AEJMC disagrees with broadcasters that the proposed FCC disclosure regulations could create problems for them in terms of additional cost and manpower from compliance with the regulations. Their objections seem to be more transparency-averse than cost-motivated. For putting the public inspection data online at the FCC would entail little additional cost for the broadcasters. 
Professor Jeremy Harris Lipschultz, director of the University of Nebraska-Omaha School of Communication, who for more than twenty years has been sending students in his Media Regulation and Freedom course to inspect local public files, recently said , “Some operations are downright hostile about the current obligation of public inspection during regular office hours.” 
In conclusion, AEJMC urges FCC to err on the side of more transparency, not less, on the part of broadcasters’ obligations for public-file inspections. This is all the more compelling than ever, given that off-line information about the broadcasters’ records for operating TV and radio stations for the “public interest, convenience, and necessity” is more often a case of “practical obscurity.” This should no longer be allowed in the Internet era. The media transparency proposal of FCC would be one effective way to tackle the physical inertia inherent in the files in the broadcasters’ file cabinets.

Louisiana editor and weekly win Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity, integrity in rural journalism

2012-01-03T16:39:00.004-05:00

Stanley Nelson at The Concordia Sentinel

Stanley Nelson and the weekly newspaper he edits, the Concordia Sentinel of Ferriday, La., are the winners of the 2011 Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism.

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues presents the award in honor of Tom and Pat Gish, who published The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., for more than 50 years. Tom Gish, who died in 2008, and his wife Pat were the award's first recipients.

Nelson and the Sentinel showed courage and unusual tenacity in investigating an unsolved murder from the era of conflict over civil rights, and in January 2011 named a living suspect in the 1964 killing of African American businessman Frank Morris. A grand jury was convened and continues to investigate. A prosecutor on the case, David Oppeman, told James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times, “I told Stanley the other day he is the hub in this and everybody else is just a spoke. He did the work that needed to be done.”

The newspaper showed integrity and courage in the face of reader resistance to its dogged, detailed reporting in more than 150 stories. “The owners of the Concordia Sentinel never hesitated in following the story,” Nelson wrote in the fall edition of Nieman Reports, of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. "While most readers read the stories with interest and outrage over what happened so many years ago, many of the most vocal were those who detested the coverage and who questioned our motives," Nelson told the Institute for Rural Journalism. “We knew some would be angered to read about the parish's ugly racial past,” he wrote for Nieman Reports. “Some canceled subscriptions. We were threatened. Our office was burglarized. One irate reader called to find out my ultimate goal. ‘To solve a murder,’ I said. ‘You can't do that,’ she snapped. ‘You're just a reporter!’ She hung up. We pressed on.”

For much more on Nelson, the Sentinel and the Gish Award, click here.

New research: Small-town readers still prefer paper

2011-12-23T09:01:00.002-05:00

A new report from the Reynolds Journalism Institute finds that in small communities, the newspaper is still the preferred way of getting local news.

Before we go too far on this, however, keep in mind it is a multivariate problem that also goes to the availability of such news online and the penetration of easy access to online (still not so great in some rural areas).

COMJIG research sessions

2011-12-05T09:54:00.003-05:00

We're trying something new this year with our research sessions at the AEJMC conference in Chicago. Along with ComTECH, we're participating in a high-denisty research session from 5 to 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 10.

Because we want to increase our visibility and try to bring in more research papers, we can have up to 10 research presentations at the Chicago conference. of teh 10, five can be presented at the high-density session and we can have up to five posters at the Scholar-to-Scholar session (also on Friday afternoon, from 1:30 to 3). Please see teh sked in a previous posting.

Now it's up to us to spread the word to kith and kin that COMJIG can be THE place to get their research noticed.

The HD guidelines are directly below from AEJMC:

Rationale:
The high-density format may be thought of as a cross between a traditional paper presentation panel and a scholar-to-scholar session. The hybrid allows more individuals to be placed on the panel (thus the name “high-density”). The key is that the individual presentations must be SHORT to allow for individual discussion with members of the audience. To insure this, your chair and discussant will be strictly enforcing the timelines discussed below. This format allows the audience members to hear the detail on those research projects that interest them the most.

Format:
Presenters will be given 4 minutes to provide an overview or summary of their paper. This time limit will be strictly enforced. You will be stopped if you exceed the time limit. No questions are taken between presentations. Since you have a short time for presentation, you are encouraged to limit audio-visual and lengthy discussions. Think of this as an executive summary or an extended abstract.

The discussant for the panel will not comment on the individual papers. The discussant’s function is to facilitate discussions between the presenters and the audience members. To achieve this goal, presenters are asked to spread out in the room so that individuals who would like to speak to them may do so. Audience members will then be able to spend some time hearing more about or asking questions about those research presentations that most interest them. To help the audience members find the proper presenter, a sign will be made with your paper title and authors. These will be taped to the walls around the room (or at tables, if available). After all the presentations are over, you must go to the area with your sign.

Presenters should prepare handouts containing outlines, key points, executive summaries, etc. for their study to distribute to the audience members. This one-page handout will help the members of the audience to comprehend your brief presentations and to select those papers they would like to hear more about. Since there will be many presenters and only one LCD projector, do not prepare materials for the discussion with individuals. It is suggested that you have limited projected material for your 4-minute presentation.

If the guidelines outlined here are followed correctly, there will be nearly 30 minutes for individual discussion. This will allow audience members to get more information on several papers.

Sked for Chi-town

2011-12-03T15:23:00.006-05:00

John Hatcher and I spent the weekend in Louisville putting some of the finishing touches on COMJIG's Chicago sked (yeah, I know, tough gig but somebody had to do it, right?) We think that we have an interesting lineup of scholarly panels so make sure to pack your thinkin' cap for next August.

Just a reminder that this will be the 100th aniversary for AEJMC back in its founding city so things are a bit different this time around. We're on a Thursday to Sunday sked instead of the traditional Wednesday-Saturday rotation. But anyone in the Windy City on Wednesday, Aug. 8, won't be disappointed or left looking for something to do (are there things to do in that toddling town?) that day because COMJIG is part of a group presenting a pre-conference session from 1 to 5 p.m. titled "Legal Issues for J-Schools as News Producers: Challenges & Opportunities."

The conference formally opens on Thursday, Aug. 9, and we have two afternoon panels:
1.) A PF&R panel with our buds from CCJIG at 3:15 titled "African Media, the Arab Spring & Democratization: The 'un-seen' and 'un-mentioned' Social Side of the News Revolution."
2.) That's immediately followed with another PF&R session at 5 (so walk quickly between the rooms) with a co-sponsored session with the good folks from GLBT on "The Tragedy of Today's GLBT Journalism."

Friday, Aug. 10, is a busy day. Unfortunately, however, the sked gods hiccuped when we were going about our biz because there is a dark cloud coverng our silver lining. We have four sessions but two of them conflict. Blame it on the Bossa Nova, blame it on the sheer madness of the chip auction (any excuse in a storm is a good excuse I always say), but we'll just have to endure. First, the good news:
1.) Our scholar-to-scholar session is from 1:30 to 3 p.m.
2.) We're cosponsoring a 3:15 p.m. research session with our ol' reliables from CCJIG on "Mobile Me, Mobile We: Building and Bridging Communities With Media."
3. & 4.) Here's where things get sticky and we'll have to make the best of it. We have a conflict from 5 to 6:30 p.m. We're co-sponosring a PF&R session with SPIG on "Social Media & the Ethnic Press in Chicago" AND involved in a high-density research session with CTECH at the same time. And there's another problem. We'll really have to help the research chair find, cultivate and nurture some quality research papers. So start spreading the news. (Yeah, I know, I know, it's Chicago and I'm quoting "New York, New York," but Frankie sang about both towns so I think I have a loophole here.

Although New York (and maybe Chicago) are cities that never sleep, maybe you should get some sleep because Saturday, Aug. 11, will be a busy day.
1.) It can start as late as 12:15 with the traditional J-Lab lunch with friends from the Council of affiliates and CCJIG, but then it gets busy as the afternoon and evening wear on.
2.) At 3:30 p.m. we're working with Media Management on a merger of essentially two panels: "Starting Startups in the Business of Journalism" and "Changing the News: Exploring a Connective Journalism."
3.) Our biz meeting is at 7 p.m. on-site and our executive meeting will follow somewhere on- or off-site.

Our formal presentations end Saturday, but remember that the conference continues through Sunday, Aug. 12.

On a personal note, I've told anyone who will listen, friends and foes alike, that last year in Albuquerque I plunked two chips into teh container in teh middle of the room. This year, two prople tied my mark, though they didn't break it. I swear the container was much, much, much wider this year. When the first person swished in his two chips a woman sitting near me leaned over and asked, "Didn't you get two chips in last year?" Ahhhh, fame endures though the good that men do is oft interred with their bones but they remember the chips you sink.

See you in August!

Readers in smaller communities may prefer the paper, but ...

2011-12-01T08:42:00.001-05:00

A new study from the Reynolds Institute and the National Newspaper Association is being framed as "readers in areas served by community newspapers continue to prefer the community newspaper as their sources of local news and advertising."

From the release:

The survey, in its sixth year, shows consistent trends.

Readers prefer the printed copy to the online version, with 48 percent saying they never read the local news online.

They prefer to receive advertising through the newspaper (51%) instead of on the Internet (11%). And only about a quarter of respondents said they had found local news through a mobile device in the past 30 days. Slightly more (38%) said they had received local shopping information by mobile device.

They also have a strong preference for government accountability through newspaper public notice, with 80 percent saying the government should be required to publish notices in the newspaper.

Let me suggest a slightly different interpretation. If a quarter of your market said it was using a device to access your product -- in this case mobile -- would that be an "only" to you or a cause for management to start thinking strategically in that area?

If more than a third said they received local shopping information on a platform -- mobile -- and the suggestion was that perhaps not all of them are going to your site, would that be a cause for concern? Or are you willing to write off more than a third of your audience - a segment likely to grow? (Unfortunately, the release talks about a "trend," but provides no trend data or a link to the time series raw data files. You should also read the footnote to the study carefully because the methodology has changed a bit.)

Yes, it's clear community papers continue to have an important place in the media mix of consumers, but I don't think it's all unicorns and rainbows as the release might suggest with this quote:

"The survey shows a majority of respondents believe that the newspaper does a better job of providing background and depth on stories essential to citizens,” Anfinson said. “Further, the newspaper is more useful to them personally than any other news source. It not only highlights the strong bond between local communities and their newspapers, but demonstrates that people do value good journalism."

If I'm running a business, I'm not willing to give up a quarter or a third of my market, yet I've sat in many a meeting in recent years where community publishers defiantly act as though digital is the enemy or, if they have digital assets, seem largely clueless about them. Bad move.

(Also published on Common Sense Journalism.)

Why we need community papers - follow up

2011-11-29T10:37:00.001-05:00

A little over a week ago, I mentioned here how Ed Henninger had put out a call in defense of community media to explain why we need community papers.

He's got some comments on his blog worth reading
http://edhenninger.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/its-time-for-us-to-tell-others-why-community-newspapers-matter/#comments

and

http://edhenninger.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/why-community-newspapers-matter-in-your-words/

The theme that runs through many of them is that community papers are the glue that helps hold communities together but also that the stories get action. This is from a woman at the Catholic Herald:

Someone wrote to us once to let us know that a story my coworker at the time wrote about a fundraiser, generated an additional $1,000 donation for his cause. After an article I wrote about a program that helps couples heal after having a stillborn baby, I received an email from someone who was touched by the article. Even better, the woman in charge of that program emailed me to let me know that she received a phone call the day it was published from a family who lost a baby—the grandmother wanted to know how she could help.

And this from another comment:

On Friday, a young mother came in our office to place a thank-you ad. Her baby boy died in a tragic car accident on the family property only weeks earlier. Of course, our newspaper covered the story but the story didn’t end with the facts.

As I talked to her, she related how she couldn’t have been standing in front of me without the prayers and support of her family, friends and community. She told me how the local churches prayed for the family and how they received cards from people they didn’t know — these individuals just wanted to share their grief. Others anticipated their needs by providing meals or just a shoulder to cry on. As I looked at her written words of thanks, I started immediately to think how I would sensitively handle this situation and honor her child. I took some of the words she said describing her child and worked them into a concept. The ad hasn’t run yet, but I hope it will help in the healing process.

That’s why I like working for a small-town newspaper. There’s a certain type of person who wants to live in such a community. And in my experience, most of these people value decency, reach out to their fellow man, and are solid individuals with solid morals. They say “Bless their heart…” when bad news happens and slip a 50-dollar bill to the minster or sheriff to help with a family’s need in an anonymous fashion. Of course, our headlines carry the drug arrests and other crime stories, but for the most part, we carry the stories of someone’s engagement and wedding, what’s happening in 4-H, and the goings-on of local politics.

Editor at weekly putting heat on secretive energy projects says official struck him

2011-11-23T13:25:00.003-05:00

A thrice-weekly newspaper's watchdog reporting about local-government support of two secretive energy projects got physical this week, as the county's energy and development director punched an editor in the arm, according to a story in today's Appalachian News-Express of Pikeville, Ky. The criminal complaint by News Editor Chris Anderson said Charles Carlton "approached me and hit me with a closed fist in the left arm above the elbow" as he opened the newspaper's front door for Carlton, who said, "You son of a bitch; what are you people harassing me for?"

"According to court documents, Anderson said the incident occurred shortly after he had sent an open- records request to Pike [County] Judge-Executive Wayne T. Rutherford’s office, which would have been forwarded to Carlton for fulfillment," News-Express Editor Russ Cassady wrote. His story said Carlton issued a statement repeating a denial that he hit Anderson, but said "It was a reaction through frustration because it seems every time I spend considerable amounts of time and energy negotiating with large national and international companies the newspaper intervenes at critical moments and makes it very difficult for me to get anything accomplished."

Cassady wrote that Carlton "has been at the center of controversy since late last month, when the News-Express released the results of an investigation of a pair of coal-to-liquid fuel plants proposed for Pike County. Carlton, in his capacity as director of energy and community development, figured heavily in both the projects and in the News-Express investigation, which found that the county may have illegally provided equipment and labor to a private company working on private property." For that story and two sidebars, click here.

Today's story notes, "This incident is the second in less than two years in which a News-Express staffer was involved in an altercation regarding a news story." In the first, Pikeville Mayor Frank Justice hit former editor Jerry Boggs in the face and later issued a public apology. The online News-Express is subscription-only, but the pages containing today's story are posted here and here.

A call to speak up for community newsrooms

2011-11-21T17:47:00.000-05:00

Ed Henninger, a designer, fellow consultant (though he does it professionally, while I just dabble) and designer (OK, I tell him, some things can't be helped) has put out a clarion call for the best paean to community journalism.

Here's how he puts it in "It's time for us to tell others: Why community newspapers matter": As he puts it:

IT’S TIME WE GAVE community newspapers the credibility and respect they’ve earned—and we can lead that effort. Right here.

Like you, I’m tired of community newspapers being considered the “bottom of the heap.”

Like you, I’m tired of young journalists considering community newspapers a place to learn the business before they go on the “greatness” at The New York Times, The Washington Post or USA TODAY.

It’s about time journalists understand and appreciate the value of what all of those small newspapers do for readers and their communities.

The folks with the best comments get a PDF of his book, Henninger on Design.

Surely someone from COMJIG can win a copy. Go for it! (And, yes, Ed is a pretty darn good designer.)

Harrisburg paper broke Penn State story in March; reporter calls it 'huge testament to local news'

2011-11-20T13:35:00.000-05:00

Uncovering the story of a former Penn State football coach's alleged rapes of boys "was all local journalism," Harrisburg Patriot-News reporter Sara Ganim told Howard Kurtz this morning on CNN's "Reliable Sources."

"Its a huge testament to local news," Ganim, a 24-year-old Penn State journalism graduate told Kurtz, who initially referred to the 71,000-circulation Advance Publications newspaper as "The News-Patriot." Ganim said, "It was all local journalism, going to my sources. ... I spent a lot of time knocking on doors and getting shooed off properties."

Ganim said the newspaper "did have some pushback" to her stories that first reported the investigation, starting March 31, but "I actually expected a lot more than we got. . . . For the most part people were happy that we were bringing this out." The stories didn't get much play beyond Pennsylvania until ex-coach Jerry Sandusky was indicted this month, perhaps because they were based on interviews with people who had testified before a grand jury, reporting that was difficult for non-local media to match, Ganim said.

The story of Sara Ganim "is also the story of a family-owned media company, Advance, of a second-generation newspaper editor, David Newhouse, of a publisher, John Kirkpatrick, who understands what a newspaper means to a community, and of a newsroom that has the deep local connections and also the courage to keep going no matter what the potential cost to its own reputation," Carl Lavin writes on his 07newsroom blog.

For Ganim's original story, click here. For her latest summary, focusing on authority figures and "What did they know and when did they know it?" go here. Her last-Sunday story about why the probe took so long is here.

Les Anderson dies

2011-11-14T10:18:00.001-05:00

A friend to many of us, Wichita State journalism professor Les Anderson has died.

It's truly a loss in journalism education. I was proud to call Les a friend. Last time he and I had seen each other for any amount of time was a few years ago at the Chicago AEJMC convention during a Tribune tour.

Les was a COMJIG member for a number of years.

Here is the Friends of Les Facebook page for more.

COMJIG response

2011-10-17T08:25:00.003-04:00

What follows below is my e-mail to the Council of Divisions about its written report following the COMJIG interview with COD reps this past August in St. Louis.

Comments?

> Hello Tony,
>
> I'd like to take a bit of your time to respond to the report "AEJMC
> Assessment of the Community Journalism Interest Group." The report
> came out of the oral interview the Council of Divisions
> representatives had with Andris Straumanis and me back in August in
> St. Louis. I consulted with past and present COMJIG officers and we
> would like you and the committee and the COD to know our thoughts.
>
> To be honest, we were surprised by the report. Personally, I thought
> it was negative and that the last line, "AEJMC should closely examine
> whether the group's status should be renewed" was threatening.
>
> I thought that Andris and I stated quite well why COMJIG's original
> mission and charge has changed and grown. The committee seemed to be
> asking us to continue to define ourselves along the old model of
> COMJIG being the "small newspaper" interest group/division. It's true
> that COMJIG grew out of the Newspaper Division (as a founding member I
> remember the meetings quite well), but COMJIG has had to grow with
> technology. Thus, we feel that we have to be the group that is open to
> all. COMJIG isn't just about the legacy media communicating with the
> audience along the traditional gatekeeper model, it also has to
> incorporate the non-traditional media seeking a dialogue with the
> audience textual and non-textual. Being hyperlcoal has to include broadcasting, the 'Net, etc.
>
> Andris and I were asked what separates COMJIG from the Civic and
> Citizen Journalism Interest Group. So, then, I'd like to answer that
> question again by pointing out our call for papers for the past
> several years, which I and other officers helped write:
>
> The Community Journalism Interest Group (COMJIG) is interested in
> research focused on any and all aspects of community journalism. We
> emphasize that community need not just be defined as within
> traditional geographical or social boundaries, but that given
> technological advances it may also be applied to journalism and its relationship to communities of interest online.
>
> Our goal is to identify and present original, meaningful research that
> advances the understanding of the role of journalists and news
> organizations as members of communities, geographic or digital. We
> have particular interest in issues unique to those situations where as
> a function of geography or technology the community and news
> organization tend to be or have the potential to become highly engaged.
>
> I believe from that it's obvious that COMJIG isn¹t really about
> citizen journalism, per se. The key is that COMJIG is the place where
> people can discuss both "community" and "journalism" at a critical
> juncture of the media history timeline.
>
> Two new books, "Foundations of Community Journalism," by Bill Reader
> (former COMJIG head) and John Hatcher (current COMJIG program chair
> and vice head), and "Emus Loose in Egnar: Big Stories From Small
> Towns," make the distinction better than I do. Each also points out
> the distinction between community and citizen journalism. The latter
> book reports what many of us have noted for a few years now, that
> community journalism is the bright spot in traditional journalism,
> having been less affected by the digital transformation than
> metropolitan media. But it also must adapt to the digital era, and
> much of the research and service activity of COMJIG members is
> directed to that end. Also, the current issue of AJR has an article that places "hyperlocal" news sites (as more and more spring up) in context with community journalism.
>
> There is also a new journal put out by the Texas Center for Community
> Journalism that is now looking into key research on community
> journalism and it is partnering with COMJIG. And there is also the
> Convergence Newsletter run out of the University of South Carolina
> that highlights some community journalism efforts since convergence
> levels the playing field between the daily monopolies on the block and
> community news organizations, print and broadcast and websites.
>
> I would also note that we are trying to address some of the issues
> raised in the report. For example, the report says we (and all
> divisions and IGs
> actually) have to be more aware of diversity. We are thinking about
> this when we seek paper judges and panel members. Going hand-in-hand
> with that are recruitment efforts to draw in a more diverse group,
> both in their research interests and in their backgrounds.
>
> We also:
>
> * Have plans in the works for a syllabus exchange. It will likely be on our
> Yahoo page.
> * Are trying to drive traffic to the blog and our Facebook page where we
> can communicate better and more efficiently.
> * Are looking into "recruiting" grad students at either the mid-year in
> Oklahoma in March or the Southeast Colloquium (also in March) in
> Virginia. As a former COMJIG officer put it, we're probably better
> able to help budding scholars because our smaller size can easily
> translate into more care and nurturance of grad students than some of the larger divisions.
> * Are working to increase our research presence by having the vice chair
> and research chair "recruit" people. For example, when I was research
> chair I sent out a couple e-mails a day to those who had presented at
> AEJMC in the past reminding them that we existed. We can also deepen
> our research presence by having a stronger push for research papers
> and panels that couple with other divisions and interest groups and
> which look at both the research aspects of our field, as well as
> issues of diversity and international comparisons of community journalism.
> * Will get better with our blog postings.
>
> Taken all together I think that we not only stated our case clearly in St.
> Louis, but are working on necessarily expanding our core mission. The
> lack of research papers may not show this, but we can concentrate on,
> say, PF&R and/or teaching to validate our presence, as was mentioned at the meeting in St.
> Louis.

Reminder: Deadline for panel proposals Oct. 21

2011-10-14T13:08:00.000-04:00

Dear COMJIG members,
A reminder that the deadline to submit panel proposals is on Friday, Oct. 21. Please take a moment and reflect back on what we've presented in the past and on the direction you'd like to see this interest group go when we meet in Chicago in August of 2012.
If you've read the report from AEJMC on our self assessment, you know that they would like to see our interest group give greater emphasis to research and to diversity. I'm sure those are things many COMJIG members also want for our group.
Panel presentations offer a great vehicle for exploring these areas. We can have panels that focus on areas of research and theories we think are important to the understanding of the community-journalism relationship. We can explore these ideas in collaborative discussions with other AEJMC interest groups and panels.
Please consider submitting an idea -- either as a more formal panel proposal, or a simple email with your thoughts on a panel you'd like to see happen.
You can read the details of the call here.
Question? Contact program chair John Hatcher.

Community Journalism Conference

2011-10-10T16:52:00.000-04:00

From Brian Steffens:

These are challenging economic times for all of us. But this is also a time of opportunity for community journalism.

The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, the Missouri School of Journalism, and the Missouri Press Association have put together a free conference for community newspaper publishers and editors.

While only a few seats remain available for onsite participation, you, your management team and your staff are invited to watch LIVE on Thursday, October 20, beginning at 10 am Central and ending at 5 pm; and again Friday, October 21, beginning at 9 am Central and ending at 2:30 pm.

Your link to watch is: http://www.rjionline.org/live

To learn more about "Community Newspapers: Tomorrow Has Arrived," please review the agenda, speaker bios, etc.:
http://www.rjionline.org/events/community-newspapers-tomorrow-has-arrived

Heath: 'Postalgeddon' for community papers

2011-10-07T01:58:00.001-04:00

Max Heath, postal expert for the National Newspaper Association, has a column laying out dire consequences for community newspapers under the Postal Service's consolidation plans.

Late in the column he mentions the push to get online paid PDF subscriptions counted for circulation.

Given that we've held several discussions during the past two AEJMC conventions where there were clearly those saying they won't touch the Web, this might be the thing that starts tipping the balance.

Interesting question: If the holdouts are forced online over something like this, even with a paid PDF for formerly outlying circulation, where's the tipping point where other subscribers start migrating?

Community Journalism and Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T13:10:00.002-04:00

Just read a moving tribute to Steve Jobs by Lisen Stromberg of the Palo Alto Patch, a hyperlocal news service. What's great about this post is that it isn't about how Jobs' technology affected community journalism. It's about what Steve Jobs was like as a neighbor.

Small markets, big careers

2011-10-03T12:44:00.005-04:00

"Downsizing is the new normal in journalism, whether it means going from staff to freelance or from covering a larger market to a smaller niche," writes Nicole Martinelli on IJNet.org.

She interviewed Gregg McLachlan, communications consultant and author of the 2010 book Big stories, Small towns: The essential journalism guide for working and thriving in smaller markets.

McLachlan, who runs WorkCabin Communications in Ontario, Canada, advises journalists in small towns to not get too comfortable from the lack of competition. "Try not to follow into a trap so common in smaller markets too -- getting too comfortable and going to the same sources time and again... Yes, you may be in a smaller market, but there’s still a big community of sources out there," he said in the interview.

He also echoed themes heard in COMJIG sessions during the last two AEJMC conventions, where the role of digital media in community journalism has been discussed.

"In many smaller markets, the web and social media continue to be tools that are not being used effectively," McLachlan said. "There is still that mentality that the 'newspaper comes out tomorrow, so read the whole story then.'"

Read the full interview at IJNet.org.

Facebook shortcut for COMJIG

2011-09-29T18:56:00.003-04:00

We now have enough likes on Facebook to get a shortcut to our page there: http://www.facebook.com/COMJIG

Enjoy

Some thoughts about COMJIG from AEJMC

2011-09-29T14:36:00.003-04:00

I post this to solicit comments from members about COMJIG. We recently went through an assessment process and then the top officers met with an AEJMC team that interpreted our self-assessment and they, in turn, made some suggestions. But it's the very last line that may cause some concern.

I've asked other COMJIG officers for their views and all agree that we need to do more on diversity, but then we seem to differ. Officers say the report can be viewed as either a wake-up call to do more and do it better, to keep doing what we're doing and do more reaching out, or to provide AEJMC with a remedial education on what COMJIG is all about. Please read over the following report and comment on what you think it means for COMJIG, as well as any thoughts on what we can do more of, &/or how we can do things better.

Thanks,
Joe

AEJMC Assessment of the Community Journalism Interest Group (2006-2011)

2010-11 Assessment Committee members: Tony DeMars, Council of Divisions; Marianne Barrett, Standing Committee on Teaching; Ann Hollifield, Standing Committee on Research; and Randall Beam, Standing Committee on Professional Freedom and Responsibility.

I. Overview: The Community Journalism Interest Group (COMJIG) was formed in 2004 and in its early years was quite strong. Its status was renewed in 2007 and that year, the group created a 24-page teaching booklet, “Community as a Teaching Resource” and collaborated with other groups and divisions on panels. In 2008 the group had five PF&R sessions including a mini-plenary. Currently though, the group faces some challenges. Perhaps the most significant in terms of its long-term prospects is the confusion over its mission and its ability to differentiate itself from the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group.
Over the past five years, COMJIG has co-sponsored a number of activities with Civic and Citizen Journalism including the annual J-Lab luncheon. The two groups have discussed merging, but have decided to remain separate. When asked by the assessment team what its mission is, the group’s officers were not clear. They seemed to be defining community very broadly—ethnic, religious, geographical and other communities. The team suggested the group narrow its focus, and concentrate on becoming specialists in what it means to be a community. COMJIG, like many other AEJMC divisions and interest groups, also needs to devote attention to improving its diversity. In 2010-2011 there was no ethnic diversity among the group’s officers, panelists, moderators or discussants. Further, there is only one woman officer. Women, have, however, served as paper judges (3), panelists (3) and moderators (1).

II. Research: COMJIG has consistently struggled with research paper submissions. It received 12 in 2010, but only 8 in 2011. The difficulty in attracting submissions may in part be due to the confusion over what the group is and how it differs from Civic and Citizen Journalism. The assessment team offered the group several suggestions for bolstering the number of submissions, many of which are linked to focusing on what it means to be a community. The team also suggested the group consider participating in the mid-winter conference as a way of raising its research profile, particularly among graduate students.

III. Teaching: Over the last five years, COMJIG has largely focused on Teaching and PF&R, alternately between the two one year to the next. It has occasionally devoted some of limited programming slots to research. Most notably, in 2006-2007, COMJIG participated in a mini-plenary in which its contribution was “Community as a Resource.” As noted in the overview, the group compiled a 24-page booklet that provided teaching tips. In 2010 COMJIG co-sponsored three panels on teaching. The group has as one of its goals a syllabus sharing clearinghouse. Outside of the convention, the group produces a blog and each officer is responsible for posting to the blog at least once a month.

IV. Professional Freedom and Responsibility: As noted above, because of its limited number of programming slots, COMJIG focuses on PF&R and Teaching in alternating years. In 2011, it concentrated on PF&R with a particular emphasis on public service. Among its activities was co-sponsorship of the J-Lab luncheon, something it has done for the last several years, and was sole sponsor of a panel on community newspapers’ efforts to move content online. The group also launched a survey of state newspaper and broadcast associations and ethnic community news organizations to get input on how COMJIG and the academy could better serve the industry. Although the group is to be commended for its efforts in this regard, the assessment team wondered about the efficacy of the survey especially given the group’s limited resources. In its 2010 report, COMJIG noted its “orientation as a bridge between the academic and professional worlds means much of what we do has PF&R aspects. . .” That orientation is clearly reflected in the group’s activities.

V. General Comments and Suggestions:
The Community Journalism Interest Group seems to be at a crossroads. It continues to struggle with attracting paper submissions, has seen turnover in its membership, although its membership seems to have stabilized somewhat in 2011, and is having difficulty clearly defining its mission and differentiating itself from the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group. The group recognizes the need to recruit new members who can help revitalize the group. The assessment team suggested narrowing what the group is trying to do and focusing on becoming specialists in what it means to be a community. The group should also make an effort to reach out to women and people of color. The team suggested finding a place in the group’s officer ranks for everyone who volunteers to review papers or perform other tasks during the year. To date, except for its blog, the group does not participate in any out -of-convention activities. The team suggested the group consider participating in mid-winter as a way of raising its research profile and attracting paper submissions, especially from graduate students. Given the group’s challenges, particularly with respect to its mission, AEJMC should closely examine whether the group’s status should be renewed.

What's the word?

2011-09-22T10:44:00.004-04:00

Community journalists may be wondering what the Project for Excellence in Journalism will say when PEJ on Monday unveils what it terms "groundbreaking research that paints a new, more nuanced portrait than captured before of how people learn about their community." That quote comes from PEJ Director Tom Rosenstiel. He says the research is groundbreaking because of a paradigm shift in methodology of data collection. Instead of the traditional method of simply asking people where they got their news about their community, the researchers took a path less traveled. It wasn't exactly a "Eureka!" moment, but the new approach instead asked people to say where they got their info in 16 different areas, from the all-important weather report (according to Paul Simon, we get all the news we need on the weather report) to where is a good place to eat (that's right, restaurant reviews).

The research of the sublime to the mundane was done with help from Pew's Internet and American Life Project and the Knight Foundation.

"The results paint an entirely different picture of local news than we have seen before, one that pinpoints the role of the newspapers more completely versus television, the internet and even volunteer newsletters and word of mouth," Rosenstiel said. "We can see a whole ecosystem of local news and information. This should help different media understand and communicate their role."

The report can be found here on Monday.

Will print be dead by 2020?

2011-09-22T09:53:00.000-04:00

Russell Viers contends much of print will be dead by 2020 - and he's making the argument aimed at community papers, not the big metros. Interesting debate at his blog with Kevin Slimp and others. Worth considering the graphs.

Welcome, COMJIG members

2011-09-19T18:53:00.000-04:00

If yo are coming here as a result of the postcard sent in cooperation with the Texas Center for Community Journalism, welcome. Whether you are a new member or one returning and rediscovering the blog, we're happy you're here.

If you are a new member, you also should have received an email from me (Doug Fisher) about our Yahoo group, which we use like a listserv to get information out to members from time to time (no, we don't bombard you with emails).

Please read that email closely. We need you to select one of three options so I can get you on the list.

And don't forget to visit here often, or to put our RSS feed in your reader or to subscribe to an email feed of posts.

-Doug Fisher

Judy Muller on weeklies

2011-09-13T17:41:00.000-04:00

Judy Muller, whose latest book extols small-town papers, has a column in the L.A. Times: Where newspapers thrive: At a time when doomsayers are predicting the death of traditional journalism, thousands of small-town weeklies are doing just fine, thank you.

Among those mentioned is M.C. Sprengelmeyer, who was part of a COMJIG panel in Denver.

"Waiter, there's a lede in my soup"

2011-09-08T12:44:00.002-04:00

Sometimes we get so caught up in our jargon that we forget that one person's escargot is another's plate of snails.

But what the link below represents is a chance for community journalists to connect with the people we talk to and write for. Sure, we define community journalism as hyperlocal journalism, but the idea of having a "bricks-and-morter" so-called news cafe with an online one is intriguing. It also gets us out in the street.

Anyone out there doing this? (That is, having a presence away from the newsroom in the community.) Is it a worthwhile idea, or something that the Daily Monopolies down the block need to think about more than community news organizations?

Have experiences to share? Let us know, please. Let's talk.

http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/09/chats-dont-have-to-be-online-a-newspaper-finds-success-with-its-downtown-news-cafe/

Community Journalism Interest Group Call for Panel Proposals

2011-09-02T10:48:00.000-04:00

The Community Journalism Interest Group is seeking panel proposals for the AEJMC national conference in Chicago, Illinois. While the interest group will seek to offer a diverse program, we hope to receive some proposals that make a thematic connection to AEJMC’s centennial celebration in 2012. The panel proposals are due by Oct. 21, 2011. The proposals should include the following information:

• Summary of what the session topic will be
• Possible speakers, including names if possible
• Suggested co-sponsoring divisions/interest groups (A listing of other AEJMC groups can be found here.
• Estimated cost, if any
• Name of contact person for the session
• Email proposals to COMJIG vice chair John Hatcher.

As the vice chair of the Community Journalism Interest Group I'm here to facilitate ideas for panels and teaching sessions. This past August, Andris Straumanis and Joe Marren did a great job with our programming. You can see a summary of what we offered on the COMJIG blog.
Chicago is a city that is ripe for COMJIG-related panels thanks to the rich tradition in community journalism research via the Chicago School and the vibrant community media that include ethnic media, online communities and a vibrant neighborhood press. We are eager to create panels that explore these areas.
We are also hoping to explore panels that will look at issues related to diversity and to exploring community journalism as an international phenomenon. We have already had some initial discussions with interest groups and divisions interested in partnering with us in these areas.

I'm here to help you in this process as much as possible, but I need your ideas. Even if you do not have a formal panel proposal, please help us brainstorm a list of possible panels. The easiest way to do this is to comment at the end of this post. I’ve already tried to start the brainstorming with one blog entry here. You can also “like” our Facebook page and share your ideas there.

Nominating Committee slot filled

2011-08-29T08:52:00.005-04:00

According to our bylaws, the head of COMJIG appoints a member of the two-person Nominating Committee, whose job is it to offer a slate of candidates for IG office.

Earlier this month in St. Louis we elected Hans Meyer of Ohio to chair the committee. Former COMJIG head Andris Straumanis, at University of Wisconsin at River Falls, has agreed to also serve with Hans on the committee. (I backed into the lede there; thank God I'm not a student anymore.)

Thanks to both.

The bulk of their work will be done as we approach the 2012 national conference next August in Chicago. Most of our officers agree to continue to serve, but please give careful consideration if either Hans or Andris approaches you.

Thanks.

Some sad news

2011-08-28T20:34:00.003-04:00

It is with sadness that I pass on the following information: Von Whitmore died Aug. 25 from ovarian cancer.

Von had served as the chair of the Council of Divisions since the Denver Conference last summer, and had served as vice chair of the Council for the three years before that.

She was last at the mid-Winter meeting in Albuquerque. I didn't know her well, but she was always a genuinely nice person to me.

All paid up?

2011-08-20T14:37:00.004-04:00

As community papers struggle to stay afloat, one media organization has an idea for its holdings. Thoughts?

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-medianews-group-adds-paywalls-to-23-more-newspapers/

Training redux?

2011-08-19T15:04:00.005-04:00

As more and more community news orgaizations -- legacy media and new media (which I now understand is a cliched term) -- turn to contributions from so-called "citizen journalists," the temptation is to wonder what are readers/viewers/listeners/scrollers/clickers getting for their buck?

In other words, are they getting the real story, or just a rehashed press release? If you're an editor or publisher you may wonder how can to train these people. Follow the link to see i fthis may be up your alley. Thoughts?
http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/08/bleacher-report-ups-its-game-by-taking-contributors-to-school/

Welcome back

2011-08-15T12:50:00.005-04:00

As we scurry about getting ready for a new academic year, and as we recover from traveling home from St. Louis (I don't know about anyone else but storms delayed my connecting flight home by several lonnnnnnnnnng hours), the temptation is to put off COMJIG matters until we've relaxed and are ready. But, really, why not now? So, with that in mind, let me propose a few things here and now:

1.) In my remarks when I was voted in as COMJIG head last week, I was remiss in not thanking Andris for the wonderful job he did as head of the interest group last year. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. It was great working with him this past year and I am also looking forward to working with our new officers this upcoming year. A special thanks, also, to Doug Fisher who maintains all things webby.

2.) At our meeting last week we talked about raising our profile. So when I get back from several meetings this afternoon I plan on e-mailing our good friends at TCU and asking them to mention us in their new online journal. I'm also going to ask them if they would be willing to co-sponsor a postcard mailing to get our name out there and try to increase submissions for panels and papers.

3.) And that brings me to this point: We really should be thinking about doing more at the mid-year meeting in Oklahoma and at the Southeast Colloquium (in Richmond next spring). Any ideas? In the past we have talked about shared panels and such. I think this is an opportunity to attract those eager grad students who can swell our ranks and get us thinking in new directions.

4.) We really should be doing more with diversity. I spoke with Heidi Flowers, the head of the PR/advertising division, because they are also looking to do a panel on a diversity issue. So this might be a way to pool talents and save a chip at December's chip auction/planning session. Any thoughts?

5.) I also spoke with Kirsten with CCJIG and we're both confused about our IG members' wishes for next year. Our impression was that since we share some members that we want to at least get together socially. Is that the thought? It may be logistically impossible to sked two rooms close together at the same time so that we can meet together either at the start or end of the biz meetings and then also meet individually with our own group. So please, send me your thoughts on that.

6.) I'm not very tech savvy, but we've been trying to get a syllabus exchange for several years now. During an assessment review with AEJMC last week I asked if they could offer any help on getting such an exchange going and they suggested a web site. I don't think my school would sponsor such a site, but does anyone else have any ideas?

So it seems as if I asked more questions than offered anything. But let's talk.

Thanks for your time and patience.
Joe

Done with AEJMC11? Not so fast... help me brainstorm

2011-08-13T16:08:00.001-04:00

I know, I'm tired too, but while it's still in your noggin' help me, the new program chair for COMJIG, think about what kind of programs you'd like to see us support and plan for next year in Chicago. I met this morning with the other program chairs and started talking with some of them about the programs and partnerships that we can co-sponsore for next year. I will be asking in a more formal way for proposals for programs in a few weeks, but I thought I'd take a moment and scrawl down my own ideas and hope that it encourages others to share as well.
Remember a couple of things:
- We'll be in Chicago, home to a great assortment of community-related media of all kinds and home to the Chicago School, whose research contributed mightily to our undsertanding of community media.
- It is the 100th anniversary of AEJMC and they want to mark that milestone.
So, here are a few of the ideas I have -- many based on what I've learned at AEJMC this year.
- Theory and Community Journalism: I would love to see some kind of panel focusing on what the big theoretical ideas and questions are in community journalism. Everyone seems interested in commununity as a concept now. I'd love to see us lead the way. This comes after having completed co-editing Foundations of Community Journalism with Bill Reader (working with MANY COMJIG members) and in talking with Chip Stewart, editor of the new peer-reviewed journal, Community Journalism, who stressed the need to list the key questions that need to be explored in community journalism right now.
- Chicago school scholars and their contribution: A look at either one or all of the amazing scholars that added so much to our understanding of ethnic media (Park) and the relationships between communities and media (Janowitz). Jack Rosenberry wrote a chapter on this for our book, so maybe he's a good pick for a panel on this.
- International perspectives on community journalism. I'm very excited about this idea because my own research has moved toward this area. It could either be a more broad look at how culture contributes to the norms of community media or a look at more specific case studies such as the role of community radio in devleoping nations (where COMJIG's Al Cross might be able to help). The new program chair in ICD seems most receptive to these kinds of collaborations. If we had the funds, I'd love to bring some people over from some of the South African community radio stations, but that's a pretty steep price tag. I'd also like to entice community radio scholar Tanja Bosch of Cape Town to pay us a visit and share what she knows (Ohio U. graduate, by the way).
- Ethnic community media in Chicago: I almost want to say, just like we did last time, because the panel hosted by Liz Hansen of Eastern Kentucky in Chicago was just perfect. I would like to do it again. Maybe it needs another wrinkle.
- Communities of interest? Are there opportunities to partner with either GLBT or Religion to look at these issues. The door is open.
My hope is that that an emphasis for COMJIG in 2012 is to emphasize our scholarly interests, which should not be hard to do with so much great resarch being done by so many people.
So, this is raw and doesn't even have hyperlinks at the moment, but I thought I'd make an attempt to at least start the conversation.

COMJIG rewards best faculty, student research

2011-08-12T09:14:00.008-04:00

COMJIG Research Chair John Hatcher (right) presents the award for best graduate student research paper to Mark Poepsel of the University of Missouri at Columbia. Poepsel's work, "Community News as Collective Action," was among three COMJIG research papers presented during the Aug. 11 Scholar-to-Scholar session during the AEJMC convention in St. Louis. Poepsel recently completed his doctorate and has been hired as an assistant professor at Loyola University in New Orleans. (Photo by Andris Straumanis)

Dianne Garyantes of Rider University accepts the award for best faculty paper from COMJIG Research Chair John Hatcher during the AEJMC convention in St. Louis. In her research, "Culturally Competent News Coverage," Garyantes suggests that the concept of cultural competency -- used in such fields as education, health care and social work -- can be applied to journalism, particularly through multimedia reporting. (Photo by Andris Straumanis)

New COMJIG Facebook group

2011-08-12T00:14:00.000-04:00

As another way of reaching members, we've created a Facebook group.

We've trying to give you as many ways to access us as possible

Visualizing community

2011-08-03T14:43:00.000-04:00

Though not strictly community journalism, I'd suggest reading Jonathan Stray's post on "Visualizing Communities."

It should make us all think what we mean when we say "community" (and I hope it also would get more folks to think about submitting research in some of these areas to COMJIG).

Plus, there are some great visualizations.

See you in St. Louis

2011-08-03T14:23:00.003-04:00

Just a reminder that we have a full range of programming for the COMJIG portion of AEJMC (no more alphabet soup, OK, I promise. really. honest. no foolin') in St. Louis next week.

To review:
Things start off Wednesday morning at 11:45 with a PF&R panel titled "Emerging News Ecosystems and the News," co-sponsored with the Newspaper Division.

Make sure to get plenty of rest because we have a full slate set for Thursday:
Our own Al Cross starts the day with "Going Digital, Going Mobile With Community Newspapers," a PF&R panel at 11:45 a.m.
That's followed by our Scholar-to-Scholar session at 1:30 and the refereed paper session at 3:15 p.m. Research Chair John Hatcher has more info on both of those.
At 5 p.m. is a panel titled "News With a View: Journalism in a Post-Objective World," co-sponsored with our good friends at the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group (CCJIG).
But that's not all. Oh no, not by a long shot, so we hope you packed a snack in lieu of dinner because the joint biz meeting with the folks from CCJIG is at 6:45 and then the COMJIG exec board meeting is at 8:30 p.m. (Last year, the CCJIG folks brought a cake to the biz meeting. Chocolate. What do we have to do to get them to bring one again this year? Hmmm?)

Friday winds down with a session at 5:15 p.m. called "We Handle the Rest: Taking the Load off Independent Photojournalists." It's a teaching panel co-sponsored with (naturally) the Visual Communication Division.

See you in St. Louis.

Nominations sought for Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism

2011-08-02T18:22:00.000-04:00

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues seeks nominations by Sept. 1 for the annual Tom and Pat Gish Award that recognizes courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism. The award is named for the couple, right, who published The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., for almost 52 years. Last year’s winner was Samantha Swindler of the Tillamook Headlight-Herald in Oregon for her investigative reporting at The Times-Tribune in Corbin, Ky., and the Jacksonville Daily Progress in Texas. Earlier winners have been the Gishes; the Ezzell family, publishers of The Canadian Record in texas; and former publisher Stanley Dearman and Publisher Jim Prince of The Neshoba Democrat of Philadelphia, Miss. For more details see http://www.ruraljournalism.org/.

The Institute seeks nominations that measure up, at least in major respects, to the records of previous winners. Nominators should send detailed letters explaining how their nominees show the kind of exemplary courage, tenacity and integrity that the Gishes and other winners demonstrated in their rigorous pursuit of rural journalism. Documentation does not have to accompany the nomination, but will be needed in choosing finalists, and additional documentation may be requested or required. Letters should be postmarked or emailed by Sept. 1 and mailed to: Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, 122 Grehan Journalism Building, University of Kentucky, Lexington KY 40506-0042. For more information, contact Al Cross at 859-257-3744 or Al.Cross@uky.edu.

Paper reports a rumor, to protect the object; social media may cause more such cases

2011-07-27T18:38:00.001-04:00

Report a rumor? Sometimes it's called for. The Times Tribune of Corbin, Ky., made that decision this week because a rumor made viral by social media was raising the possibility of retribution and discrimination against an innocent person and his business.

Michele Baker's story began tightly: "A Corbin business has suffered a downturn due to an apparently false rumor circulated on social media outlets that the owners refused to serve uniformed soldiers." It quoted the owner, an India native who said he is a U.S. citizen, as denying the rumor and noting that his daughter is in the local high school's Reserve Officer Training Corps; and it quoted the local police chief: “We have had a dozen calls this morning and we are trying to verify the allegations. We are trying to stop the rumors.” (Baker photo: The Pak-N-Sak store)

Having established the official concern, the newspaper weighed in on its own authority, reporting, "Attempts to contact the servicemen who were allegedly refused service have been unsuccessful. Allegations of business owners refusing to serve soldiers are rampant on the Internet." And it kept the story short: 325 words. There's just as long a story in how the 6,000-circulation daily decided to report a rumor that exploded on Facebook and Topix, the website with discussion threads for seemingly every community.

Managing Editor Becky Kilian said she first heard the rumor Saturday, and by the time the office opened Monday, "It was pickling up multiple threads on Topix and was spreading to Barbourville, in the next county." She said that the police chief mentioned it to her in a conversation about another matter and "We were both concerned that if the rumor continued unchecked that it might contirbute to an inappropriate action on someone's part," beyond the ethnic slurs and gullibility displayed online.

Baker went to work on the story, and "In every aspect in Michele's reporting, it looked like a myth," Kilian said. "It might as well have been a Bigfoot sighting." When a Google search found similar cases elsewhere, involving ethnic or racial discrimination, Kilian knew the paper needed to publish an unusual story. "With the discrimination against a minority and the inflammatory langauge that was being used," she said, "it needed to be addressed."

"This is the first time I think in my career as a journalist that I've ever been involved in a story that dealt with a rumor like that," said Kilian, a Corbin native who has been a journalist for 10 years and returned to her hometown as a reporter two years ago. She became managing editor of the Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. paper last year.

"I just wish there was some way to educate people" that just because they read something on the Internet that doesn't mean it's true," Kilian said. "I wish we could teach news discernment." Situations like this call for editorial discernment, too, and the prevalence of social media mean that journalists may have to make calls like this more frequently.

"So far today's story seems to have garnered a great deal of attention," Baker said in an email to The Rural Blog. "I received a call from a man who said he was among those who helped spread the rumor and the he now regrets it." To read Baker's story, click here. To read some of the discussion on Topix, click here.

Spend Thursday afternoon with Community J scholars at AEJMC

2011-07-26T12:17:00.000-04:00

The Community Journalism Interest Group has a great lineup of presentations from scholars exploring numerous aspects of communities, journalism and their intersection at this year's AEJMC annual convention in St. Louis. And, planning for these events is quite easy to do: Simply set your Thursday afternoon aside for back to back sessions focusing on community J:

- Poster session: Thursday from 1:30 to 3 p.m.
- Panel session: Thursday from 3:15 to 4:45 p.m.

These presentations are where scholars who presented peer-reviewed manuscripts will present their work. As you can see from the more detailed look at these presentations as well as the abstracts of the papers, the topics are timely and varied -- they also, I think, show the importance of looking at the new media landscape from the perspective of the community media scholar.
I hope you will attend these sessions, engage our scholars and offer them thoughtful feedback that will enable them to revise their manuscripts and work toward publication in top tier journals. These scholars have already received outstanding feedback from our dedicated group of reviewers, who offered some meaningful feedback and evaluation of the research papers submitted to the interest group this year.

SCHEDULE
POSTER SESSION
Thursday: 1:30 pm to 3 pm / 145

Community Journalism Interest Group
Topic — New Terrain: The Shifting Definitions of Journalism and Community
48. A New Community Journalism? The Deseret News’ Shift Toward Gemeinschaft
and a Values-centered Audience
Richard G. Johnson and Quint Randle, Brigham Young
49. Community News as Collective Action*
Mark Poepsel, Missouri-Columbia
50. Patched In: Corporately Owned Online Community News Sites Pursue
Different News Topics Than Independent Ones
Jack Rosenberry, St. John Fisher

Discussant: John Hatcher, Minnesota Duluth

* Top Student Paper, Community Journalism Interest Group

PANEL SESSION
Thursday: 3:15 pm to 4:45 pm / 167

Community Journalism Interest Group

Refereed Paper Research Session:
Discourse and Knowledge: Exploring the Community-journalism Relationship

Moderating/Presiding: Tommy Thomason, Texas Christian

At the Community Level: Culturally Competent News Coverage
of a City Neighborhood*
Dianne Garyantes, Rider
Community News along the Rural-Urban Continuum: Looking for News
in All the Wrong Places?
Gary Hansen and Elizabeth Hansen, Eastern Kentucky
Yes We Censor: The Impact of Commenting Policies on Two
Nonprofit Community Journalism Websites
Rebecca Nee, San Diego State

Discussant: name, affiliation

* Top Faculty Paper, Community Journalism Interest Group

ABSTRACTS
Community Journalism Interest Group
1. At the Community Level: Culturally Competent News Coverage of a City Neighborhood • Dianne Garyantes, Rider University • This study represents the second phase of a larger study that examined the cultural competence of journalists reporting on inner-city communities. This phase explored journalists' reporting and news texts, and found support for the importance of ""micro"" knowledge to interpret cultural cues and the need for ""insider"" news sources to negotiate one's ""outsider"" status. However, reporters also need to go beyond ""insider"" news sources to provide culturally competent coverage of the community.
2. Community News along the Rural-Urban Continuum: Looking for News in All the Wrong Places? • Gary Hansen, University of Kentucky; Elizabeth Hansen, Eastern Kentucky University • Access to news on local politics and community issues is critical to community life. Using data from 1,154 respondents to a mail survey sent to a random sample of Kentucky households, both sources of local news and ratings of them are examined at various locations along the rural-urban continuum. Results demonstrate different media and information environments along the continuum and suggest many people may be looking for news in all the wrong places.
3. A new community journalism? The Deseret News' shift toward Gemeinschaft and a values-centered audience • Richard G. Johnson, Brigham Young University; Quint Randle, BYU • In August 2010, the Deseret News, a daily newspaper in Salt Lake City, announced a significant change in direction. It would begin to produce content based on core values that were consistent with teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns the newspaper. This article examines whether the Deseret News has shifted from traditional metropolitan journalism to a more community-oriented focus. In an exploratory constant comparative analysis, it examines two months front-page content in 2011 and compares them with the same dates from 2010. It explores the sociological construct of Gemeinschaft and the principle of community journalism. The data from 2011 show a substantial difference in coverage, providing far more content directed toward a values-oriented community.
4. Yes We Censor: The Impact of Commenting Policies on Two Nonprofit Community Journalism Websites • Rebecca Nee, San Diego State University • This qualitative, multiple case study looks at the impact of commenting policies on public engagement with two of the oldest U.S. digitally native nonprofit community journalism sites, Voice of San Diego and the New Haven Independent. Findings suggest an effective commenting community can be created by requiring registration, providing appropriate technical supports, and having journalists monitor and enforce strict guidelines. Human resource demands and other attempts at community engagement by these news sites are also addressed.
5. Community News as Collective Action • Mark Poepsel, University of Missouri • Online news is a collective good. It is difficult, at times impossible, to exclude people from access to information once it is made available digitally. One's consumption of news does not subtract from the ability of another to use the same information. This basic economic theory helps explain the difficulty of establishing a working business model for online news. This theoretical approach also lays the groundwork for a discussion of alternative approaches to funding community news in a digital environment. This study examines a community news website in the American South. The website is supported in equal parts by advertising and by voluntary contributions. Theories of collective behavior are applied to a textual analysis of notes included with voluntary contributions to the news website in relation to the journalistic and social ideals of the site's publisher/editor. What results is a case study of a conversation between a community news publisher and that publisher's audience in the context of the moral imperatives underlying collective action. Social responsibility, altruism and an appreciation for the ideals of news in democratic society are examined as factors influencing decisions to contribute to community news. Identifying key elements of voluntary contribution can help with future funding efforts. The extension of theories of collective behavior has both theoretical and practical implications for community news if it is to survive in an economically challenging media ecosphere.
6. Patched in: Corporately owned online community news sites pursue different news topics than independent ones • Jack Rosenberry, St. John Fisher College • A content analysis found differences in news topics covered by independent online community news sites and ones that are part of the Patch.com network owned by AOL. Patch sites tended to have a greater emphasis on social ritual coverage while the independent operators favored coverage related to community structure.

Alaska Native corporation says it will close its chain of six rural weekly newspapers

2011-07-23T19:34:00.005-04:00

UPDATE, Aug. 3: The editor of the Cordova paper is buying it, thus preserving the oldest paper in the chain, but others are scheduled to print their last editions the week of Aug. 15. "The company said it continues to entertain offers for the individual publications," Alaska Dispatch reports.

The Alaska Native corporation that has published a chain of six weekly newspapers for rural Alaska for 19 years is liquidating its newspaper company after failing to find a buyer, leaving most of the rural communities without a local news outlet.

Calista Corp. said Alaska Newspapers Inc. is unprofitable and will stop publishing some time next month. ANI publishes The Cordova Times on Prince William Sound, The Seward Phoenix Log on the Kenai Peninsula, The Dutch Harbor Fisherman in the Aleutian Islands, The Bristol Bay Times in Southwest Alaska, and The Tundra Drums in the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta (the corporation's service area), The Arctic Sounder in Northwest Alaska and the North Slope, and First Alaskans magazine. Richard Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News, in a comprehensive story, notes that The Cordova Times is 97 years old.

About three years ago, the company brought its field reporters into its Anchorage office, occasionally sending them out to their coverage areas, then re-stationed reporters in (from west on Google map) Unalaska, Bethel, Seward and Cordova. It started a content-sharing agreement with Alaska Dispatch, an online publication founded in 2008 and funded since 2009 by Alice Rogoff, former chief financial officer of U.S. News & World Report. The Dispatch's Craig Medred writes, "Newspapers in rural Alaska have been struggling like those elsewhere as news increasingly moves to the Internet." He notes the withdrawal of the Daily News to its home area, and lists the other dailies in the state and their owners, none based in Alaska.

"We genuinely hope the communities affected by this will find a new media voice to tell their stories," Calista CEO Andrew Guy said in the corporation's announcement.

ETHICS: Quandary in a small town sports department

2011-07-19T10:00:00.001-04:00

I received this from a former student now working at a smaller newspaper in a large Southwestern state and thought it might make both for a good discussion here and as an ethics case study/discussion in classes.

I think it is emblematic of some of the things that community journalists face that their larger-publication brethren don't.

So let's have at it in the comments. What would you have told the student? My thoughts follow the note (all of this is used with the person's permission):

Since football season wrapped up, I've been "honored" a lot. I guess my first-year here everyone was just feeling me out but a year later they've gotten use to me and my coverage. …

At the football banquet, they gave me a plaque thanking me. At the tennis banquet, same thing. Those I appreciated, and know there's nothing you can do about someone calling you up on stage and handing you a personalized something. Then came the hockey banquet where I got a $50 Outback gift card. And then on Friday, the family of a girl who plays basketball and softball gave me a card thanking me for all my work but that I didn't know had a $50 Chili's gift card in it.

I've gotten a few leftover T-shirts that the coaches had lying around in my closet. I never wear any apparel from either of my teams to any game. I might wear a T-shirt when I got to Walmart, but I usually wear the other stuff when I'm back in Carolina or if I'm just staying in for the day. Keep in mind none of this stuff I solicited. …

Is there a moral dilemma in accepting any of this stuff? I know people are just trying to express their appreciation for the job I'm doing and I really am thankful to have a great community to work with. Plus, I'm broke so a steak from a good restaurant is appealing to my appetite and a few new T-shirts keep me from spending money on new ones.

I believe none of the stuff I have received has affected or will affect my coverage. At the end of the day, I have a certain number of pages to fill and I have to go to the event(s) that help me fill those pages. I'm putting in my 50-plus hours giving everyone as much coverage as I can. … The girl whose parents gave the gift card happened to be the best basketball player on the team the last two years, so she earned the right be interviewed and photographed; but I think anyone will tell you I try to get every kid I can in the paper at some point in the year, trying to keep it fresh.

I've had the discussions before about accepting stuff from bowls (food, gifts, etc.) and I basically came to the conclusion it's a personal decision or up to whatever the paper says you can and can't do. This is just something I'd like a veteran to weigh in on.

Here was my response:

Always a quandary, where do we draw the line - at being human?

The gift cards are problematic. It's a real bear for a community journalist because you have to continue living in the community. But the very fact that it's bothering you shows that it's problematic. 

You have plenty of personal integrity. Just raising the question shows that. And that's why it's a problem. You know you aren't going to be bought by a $50 gift card, etc. But you also know that, as a result of that personal integrity, appearances mean as much as reality. And there's no way to control appearances.  

So here's what I would do:

If you can, try to meet personally with those who gave them to you. Thank them profusely and tell them how honored you are that they think so highly of your work - that there is no greater praise than readers - and the parents of the children you cover - thinking you are doing right by their kids.

But then explain that thank-yous beyond an occasional kind word are problematic - you'd never want anyone to have reason to question your ethics - especially any opponent whom you might also have to write about.

So ask if they wouldn't mind if you treated the gift as recognition not only for your work, but also for all those others (editors, former professors {grinnn}) who help make such work come together. And so it is a gift to the paper that would be honored to be able to use it to support an organization like Salvation Army or, better, the local kids' home that could really use the cards to thank their volunteers or show their kids a good time.  

Before you do this ... 

Go to your editor, outline this strategy, and get it blessed. There may be things you don't know about that could give the editor blowback (for all you know, one of these parents sits on the local Kiwanis with old eddie, and maybe said something about doing this and the boss, wanting to be a good guy or girl, said sure, OK). 

Either way, sleep easy. You know your integrity.

The Nature of Communities

2011-07-18T16:04:00.003-04:00

Back when I was a doctoral student at Iowa State University in the mid-1980s, I took a class in community sociology. One of the first issues that came up was the question of what was a community. We read about George Hillary's 1955 study that came up with 94 different definitions. As the class progressed, we never managed a unified definition of what constituted community, but we did look at a variety of approaches, including location, interest and interaction.

This same question has come up over the last week as I've been working with a group of colleagues on a definition of community journalism. I'm not sure we're any closer now with a group of community journalism scholars than that group of doctoral students was 25 years ago. But the discussion is still worthwhile.

A Nieman Report published this summer from Michael Skoler does a great job of looking over this issue, considering the importance of viewing communities as something more than just an audience with shared characteristics. He writes:

"[N]ews organizations need to think of themselves first as gathering, supporting and empowering people to be active in a community with shared values, and not primarily as creators of news that people will consume."

You can read the whole article here.

Rural journalism doing fine, writer discovers

2011-07-08T19:57:00.002-04:00

(First posted to The Rural Blog) "With newspaper ad sales falling at an unexpectedly abrupt rate, many publishers at mid-year were laying off staff, requiring unpaid furloughs, consolidating plants and taking other measures to buttress their bottom lines," Alan Mutter notes on his newspaper-industry blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur. But he's writing about daily newspapers, mainly those in metropolitan areas.

In contrast, "Rural journalism is surviving, even thriving," Geoff McGhee writes for the Rural West Initiative of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. The writer of this blog item, the director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, was a major source for Lane's report. He uses our definition of community newspapers, those with circulations of less than 30,000. But his report is not mainly figures; he also writes about community journalists "developing a relationship with the local readers that some people say that mainstream journalism has lost, a relationship with all the complications that intimacy and proximity bring."

McGhee also relies on Judy Muller, a former ABC News reporter who is a professor at the University of Southern California, and her new book, Emus Loose in Egnar: Big News from Small Towns. (We'll have a separate report on the book in a later blog item; Judy was interviewed by Bob Edwards for his Weekend radio show; to listen, click here.) And near the end of his 3,238-word article, he quotes a Mutter blog post from March 15, 2010 about the business side of rural newspapering, perhaps threatened less by the Internet than population loss and other demographic changes. Rural papers may be doing well in relative terms, but they face many of the same challenges as metros. (Read more)

Loose Emus - good report on state of rural journalism

2011-07-08T11:23:00.002-04:00

Geoff McGheee uses a review of Judy Muller's new book, "Emus Loose in Egnar: Big Stories from Small Towns," to launch a discourse on rural journalism - which, not surprisingly, he finds to be a lot healthier than the general j-meme (although, as he also notes, many are "an advertiser or two away from red ink"). But he also notes that too many also are failing to deal with digital well.

"I think the holy trinity of the small town paper is obituaries, the police blotter, and high school sports," says Muller. "That's what people care about. The police blotter is where you find out who's doing what to whom. The school superintendent beating his wife, from there it gets blown into a bigger story. The high school sports thing is so huge, I can't even explain it to a person who doesn't live in a small town. And births, not just obits, tend to dominate. If you leave town, and you subscribe online, those are the things, 'Oh my God, old Pete just died' — that might seem insignificant to someone outside of a small town, but every single birth and death means something."

Also:

Muller takes us to the town of Hardin, Montana, which built a $27 million jail complex on spec, then launched a doomed campaign to house Guantanamo Bay inmates. The issue touches off a furious wrestling match among the local paper, the Big Horn County News, the local gossip sheet, the Original Briefs, and the Crow tribe's newspaper, the Apsáalooke Nation. Muller's storytelling shines as she leads us through the maze of conflicting agendas, local feuds, and the befuddlement of a newly arrived national reporter at the News, who tries to play it straight and gets virtually run out of town for his efforts.

His editor laments, "Mike came in with what I call the ‘Tin Man’ reporter concept: you are protected, you don't associate with the people you cover, you have no relationship to them, nor do you have the desire to develop one." Muller says that the reporter is now working for a small paper in another state. "He gets it now," she says. "You can still tell the story, but you write it in a way that makes it clear you are part of the community."

Al Cross is quoted extensively.

The roots of community journalism

2011-06-20T11:06:00.000-04:00

Al Cross has a good piece in Nieman Reports this month on the roots, and some of the challenges, of community journalism.

The pull-quote says it all:
‘In community journalism, there is no place to hide, and if you want to hide, then you have no business in this business anyway.’

We need your help in studying Digital Creative Industries

2011-06-17T17:54:00.000-04:00

I'm part of an EU-US study group looking into university training and digital creative industries (which includes journalism). The study is being funded to produce a set of recommendations for high-level policymakers and to create industry advisory panels.

While it may sound a bit exotic, it has implications for smaller communities. The EU experience, especially in Britain, so far has been that DCI can also be an economic driver for communities.

Details are on my blog http://bit.ly/DCIstudy

If you would take a minute to read what I've posted and lend your thoughts or recommendations, I'd appreciate it.

- Doug

Community Journalism: Courage and tenacity

2011-04-05T18:12:00.000-04:00

American Journalism Review has an extensive piece on how the Times-Tribune in Corbin, Ky., won the Gish award given by Al Cross and the Instituted for Rural Journalism and Community Issues this past Friday:

Samantha Swindler, then the managing editor of the daily Times-Tribune in Corbin, Kentucky, had been spearheading an investigation of the local sheriff when a Kentucky state trooper came to her office and told her, "You really need to be careful." ...

Another day, her reporter on the story, Adam Sulfridge, received phone calls from three different law enforcement officers telling him to leave his house because of a credible death threat.

Both Swindler and Sulfridge bought pistols "because, quite frankly, I thought my reporting might get me killed," Swindler wrote in an article for Nieman Reports. She never had to use hers, but Sulfridge -- who lived and reported in the county seat, Williamsburg, in closer proximity to the sheriff -- had his pistol close at hand when two men drove to his house on a dead-end street. In her article, Swindler describes the driver as a "man we suspected as part of a group of drug dealers associated with the sheriff."

"That was the only time I actually had to pull my gun," Sulfridge recalls. The men drove away, and a week later the driver was arrested on federal drug charges.

But Swindler and Sulfridge didn't back down. They kept asking tough questions, the paper kept running stories, and in November the Whitley County sheriff, Lawrence Hodge, was indicted and arrested on 21 counts of evidence tampering and abuse of public trust.

Louisiana reporter's crime-solving gets LA Times coverage

2011-04-03T10:26:00.003-04:00

James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times writes about the efforts of a small-town Louisiana newspaper reporter to solve a Civil Rights era crime...

The Mississippi fairly glides through this old cotton country, nothing if not strong and serene. But look a little closer at the big river and you'll notice an upwelling here and a dark eddy there. Something powerful, it appears, lurks beneath the surface.

In this hollowed-out little town of 3,511 people, a newspaperman named Stanley Nelson can be found most days clattering away on a decade-old Mac computer. He moves with a slow and purposeful calm. But he too has been roiling the waters.

Free-newspaper volunteer wonders if anyone collects data or does research on free papers

2011-03-26T23:15:00.001-04:00

I received the following message from someone who has helped publish a free community newspaper for several years and wonders is anyone has collected information about free papers or conducted any research on them. As she mentions, such publications get little notice, perhaps because they aren't included in state press-association directories and have few organizations of their own. Here is her message and contact information:

Over the years I've been involved in a free community monthly newspaper here in New Marlborough, a rural area in far western Massachusetts. New Marlborough is a town, large in area, which consists of about 1,100 people spread between five villages. Our newspaper, The New Marlborough Five Village News, is about 10 years old and during that time it's become very important to most people who live here for getting meaningful local information of the sort not found in the large commercial papers in the larger nearby towns.

Surrounding towns have similar free newspapers. They're often overseen and directed by people who've had significant careers in journalism, who manage to tolerate, support, and sometimes educate people like me who have no background in writing at all. We have Jon Swan who's written all his life, most recently an article for Smithsonian about Iceland. Next door in Sandisfield, their paper's somewhat directed by Setsuko Sato, an NPR producer, and her husband Simon Winchester, author of recent bestsellers including The Professor and the Madman, and in Norfolk, Conn., there are writers galore including Lloyd Garrison.

Anyway, the point is that I think these papers are wonderful, fulfill a big democratic mission -- occasionally even some muckraking -- and operate almost entirely beneath the radar. I'm wondering if anyone has studied them, if there are any repositories of information or statistics about them. I thought you might know.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope to hear from you.
With best wishes,
Ann Getsinger
P.O. Box 307
Mill River, MA 01244
413-229-2119
http://www.anngetsinger.com/

Call for Papers: April 1 fast approaching

2011-03-10T13:40:00.000-05:00

Just a reminder of the call for papers for AEJMC (we also still need a few reviewers)

http://www.aejmcstlouis.org/home/archives/771

The Community Journalism Interest Group (COMJIG) is interested in research focused on any and all aspects of community journalism. We emphasize that community need not just be defined as within traditional geographical or social boundaries, but that given technological advances it may also be applied to journalism and its relationship to communities of interest online.

Our goal is to identify and present original, meaningful research that advances the understanding of the role of journalists and news organizations as members of communities, geographic or digital. We have particular interest in issues unique to those situations where as a function of geography or technology the community and news organization tend to be or have the potential to become highly engaged. Quantitative and qualitative methods are equally welcomed, as are attempts at mixed methodology. Theoretical groundings are appreciated. Only serious and complete research-based studies will be considered. Do not submit opinion essays, incomplete pilot studies, literature reviews, or other incomplete or unscholarly works.

Papers should be a maximum of 7,500 words long (about 25-pages, double-spaced) and adhere to APA or Chicago citation style. Please provide a running title on each page and include an abstract of no more than 75 words.

In evaluating papers for research presentations, COMJIG makes no distinction between faculty and graduate student work.

COMJIG encourages graduate student submissions in its Top Student Paper competition. To be considered for the competition, papers must be wholly the work of students. The author(s) of the top student paper will receive a $100 award and a certificate.

Likewise, COMJIG encourages faculty submissions in its Top Faculty Paper competition. To be considered for the competition, papers must be wholly the work of faculty. The author(s) of the top faculty paper also receives a $100 award and a certificate.

For more information, contact COMJIG Research Chair John Hatcher by e-mail (jhatcher@d.umn.edu) or telephone (218-726-7325).

Patch's business model

2011-03-04T12:38:00.002-05:00

Patch.com may not have come to your community yet, but it has become quite active in the suburbs around Minneapolis and St. Paul, even reaching into western Wisconsin.

From conversations with Patch editors, we have learned the company's efforts at developing hyperlocal online news sites seem quite deliberate. Not every community is bound to be Patched. Besides obvious elements such as population and potential for advertising revenue, Patch also considers the degree of community engagement before deciding to open a site.

Nicholas Carlson of Business Insider is skeptical about the company's chances.

"The only way Patch wins," he writes, "is if it can prove that local, geographically-pinpointed traffic is more valuable than national, broad-based traffic – by several multiples."

Has Patch set up shop in your community? If so, how is it doing?

Support COMJIG: Be a paper reviewer

2011-02-23T11:33:00.000-05:00

Dear Supporters of Community Journalism,
As the Research Chair for the Community Journalism Interest Group, I am in the process of trying to recruit people who can help in reviewing papers for our refereed conference presentations at the AEJMC convention this August in St. Louis. We are expecting our largest number of submissions this year and we’re hoping to enlist the help of as many reviewers as possible to make the process a valuable one that will encourage scholars to submit work to us again in the future.
If you can help, please do two things before March 4:

1. Contact me directly (jhatcher@d.umn.edu) and let me know of your interest in participating. I will add you to my list.

2. Go to the All-Academic site through the AEJMC website or to this address http://www.allacademic.com/one/aejmc/aejmc11/ and create an account (username and password) in the All-Academic System. Go to the right side of the page and scroll down until you come to “Click here to create new username and password.”
I would like for you to create your account by Friday, March 4, 2011. This will allow for assignments of papers to proceed quickly and you will have immediate access to your assigned papers to judge soon after the All-Academic system closes for paper uploading.
Creating your username and password now will also allow you to submit papers and download conference papers when they are available. Because All-Academic recognizes you by your created account, you can submit, judge and download papers all from the same created account. You will not be able to view anything yet with All-Academic, but creating your username and password will allow us to complete the process of updating the site for the St. Louis Paper Call. Each year is unique, and if you created an account last year, you will need to do so again this year.
Thank you for assisting the Community Journalism Interest Group of AEJMC. Your input is invaluable. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I look forward to working with you this year.
Sincerely,
John Hatcher
Research Paper Competition Chair
jhatcher@d.umn.edu

Community photojournalism - Blum on why posed photos aren't bad

2010-12-15T23:27:00.000-05:00

Newspaper designer Ed Henninger, who does a lot of work for community papers, has turned his monthly column over to an oldie but goodie from Ken Blum, who ran community papers for three decades and now is a consultant (or "adviser," as he prefers it).

The title of Blum's column, In Defense of Post Photos, speaks pretty much for itself, but some excerpts:

But here's the confession of a former photojournalist: I sometimes encouraged group pictures and posed pictures to appear in the community newspapers I used to run.

Why? Because my audience, the readers of our products, like them. And it's my job to see that my audience is as happy as possible with the product they read every week. ...

Because community journalism is personal journalism. Because those 400 little-leaguers have 4,000 moms and dads, aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers and preachers who are interested in them.

In the personal world of a community newspaper, a picture of a human face is a picture that tells a story.

I don't in any way want to disparage the great work many dedicated photojournalists are contributing to community newspapers. Nobody appreciates a good picture in a newspaper more than I do. There are many times I still wish I was out there chasing fire trucks or climbing trees to get the perfect angle for a good feature photo.

But when it comes to some types of posed pictures, some photographers need to chill out a bit and recognize their value to a community newspaper.

Networked neighborhoods study

2010-12-15T11:49:00.000-05:00

Out of London, an interesting set of documents forms a study of online network neighborhood news sites, how people use them and the impact on those who do use them.

You'll find them at networkedneighbourhoods.com.

I've only gotten to the summary (PDF), but the general thrust is this: "The research shows that they serve to enhance the sense of belonging, democratic influence, neighbourliness and involvement in their area. Participants claim more positive attitudes towards public agencies where representatives of those agencies are engaging online."

Among other things:

42% of those surveyed said they met someone in their neighborhood online
75% said participation on the sites made it more likely people would pull together to improve their neighborhoods
69% felt a greater sense of belonging
From a quarter to about two-thirds (depending on the site) said people make negative remarks online, but three-quarters said they are quickly countered.

In other words, these are the sorts of things traditional community media once did and, where they continue to exist, often still do. I have not come across details yet on what community media might have pre-existed in these areas, the attitudes of those surveyed toward any existing media and their community-building roles, or any effect such sites might have had on those relationships.

But this looks to be useful reading and a block on which to build further research.

[Also posted on Common Sense Journalism]

Grant-funded Write for Arkansas reporter, editor promote community journalism at university

2010-12-09T15:06:00.000-05:00

From today's edition of The Arkansas Publisher Weekly:

This August five new pairs of feet hit the streets to begin covering local news across Arkansas. Through the Write for Arkansas initiative, a collaboration between Arkansas Community Foundation and the Arkansas Press Association, five community newspapers – the Texarkana Gazette, The Courier of Russellville, the Stuttgart Daily Leader, Areawide Media of Salem and the Madison County Record – received grants to fund an additional reporting position each.

While the primary purpose of the grant program is to support the vital work of community newspapers by increasing their reporting capacity, an important secondary goal is raise awareness of the continuing need for trained, professional journalists to cover local issues.

To that end, Write for Arkansas reporter Sarah Morris of the Stuttgart Daily Leader and her editor Lesley Valadez traveled to Arkansas State University last month to speak to first-year journalism students about the field of community journalism. Their main message, Morris said, was that “journalism is still alive and the need for community reporting is still there.” Morris and Valadez gave students advice on advancing their careers in journalism. “We talked about how internships and multimedia skills were also important in grabbing the jobs,” Morris said.

The young journalists in training were especially interested in how multimedia is shaping the future of community news. “The main questions they asked were what types of internships I held and how they helped, as well as what type of multimedia the Stuttgart Daily Leader used. They were interested in knowing how it was working out for us.” . . .

As the Write for Arkansas initiative moves forward, the reporters plan to seek additional opportunities to reach out to student journalists and encourage a future generation of community reporters. Learn more about the Write for Arkansas initiative at http://www.writeforarkansas.org/.

Convention lineup set as Marren scores twice

2010-12-05T00:48:00.009-05:00

Two of COMJIG's chips await the next round of programming Dec. 4 during the AEJMC midwinter meeting in Albuquerque. (Photo by Andris Straumanis)

The Community Journalism Interest Group's program for the AEJMC convention in St. Louis is set, thanks to the work of Program Head Joe Marren (Buffalo), who joined Andris Straumanis (Wisconsin-River Falls) at the association's midwinter meeting in Albuquerque, N.M.

COMJIG's programming will begin Wednesday, Aug. 10, but the interest group's biggest day of the convention will be Thursday, Aug. 11, with a series of panels, presentations and meetings. Programming will continue on Friday, Aug. 12.

Here's the lineup:

Wednesday, Aug. 10

11:45 a.m. "Emerging News Ecosystems and the News," a PF&R panel co-sponsored with the Newspaper Division.

Thursday, Aug. 11

11:45 a.m. A PF&R panel, led by Al Cross of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, focusing on community newspapers' efforts to move content online. The session is co-sponsored by the Newspaper Division.

1:30 p.m. Scholar-to-Scholar session, when several COMJIG research papers are expected to be presented along with papers from several other divisions and interest groups.

3:15 p.m. Refereed paper session.

5 p.m. "News With a View: Journalism in a Post-Objective World," co-sponsored by the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group (CCJIG).

6:45 p.m. COMJIG and CCJIG joint members' meeting.

8:30 p.m. COMJIG executive board meeting.

Friday, Aug. 12

5:15 p.m. "We Handle the Rest: Taking the Load Off Independent Photojournalists," a teaching panel co-sponsored with the Visual Communication Division.

Those readers who have been to an AEJMC midwinter "chipping" session will find this meaningful: Marren, no stranger to the basketball court, was one of few program heads who managed to land a chip in the bowl at the center of the room. Not only that, but he did it twice, the second time with COMJIG's last chip.

Smaller-market publishers show less confidence

2010-11-27T01:24:00.002-05:00

A little late discovering this, but a survey released at the end of October by Cribb Greene & Associates found dropping numbers among mid- and small-market newspaper execs when it comes to their papers' expected financial performance.

The survey still found that of the 239 executives surveyed, 51 percent think advertising revenue will be up in the coming year. But that's down from 71 percent in the spring survey.

And then there was this:

Respondents were less optimistic in answering the question "Would you recommend the newspaper business as a career for your children?" This litmus test question last spring produced 39% "yes" responses, which has decreased to 31% in the current Survey.

The site has a link to a more complete PDF of the survey. A pullout box on the right side of the post with participants' comments is also worth reading.

A call for giving weekly papers their due

2010-11-24T16:36:00.004-05:00

In the Summer 2010 issue of American Journalism, Beth H. Garfrerick issues a call for researchers to give weekly newspapers special separate recognition.

Unfortunately, full text is not available except through the expensive EBSCO database, and since it is in the Research Notes, it's not even in the limited PDF of abstracts available on the AJHA site. But a few excerpts:

The history of community weekly newspapers in the United States has been largely ignored in spite of the fact that for much of the twentieth century, weeklies far outnumbered dailies and served a larger population. I believe it is time that we give weeklies their due, appreciating and exploring the role that these strong local voices played in our country’s history and recognizing them as an important feature in the history of journalism.

She notes that journalism historians have traditionally applied a "developmental" context to weeklies, seeing them as inferior, "as nothing more than smaller, low-quality versions of their larger daily counterparts." But, she writes:

I would argue, however, that the professional, developmental perspective is not the proper one to apply in evaluating community weeklies. Because of the inherently “localized” nature of the community weekly, the accepted standards of “professional” practices in journalism do not apply in full to community weeklies. They differ in content, context, and purpose from daily newspapers, responding to the specific needs of residents in sparsely populated regions. Despite the fact that most journalism history works have considered weeklies and dailies together when referring to newspapers, weekly community newspapers deserve a category of their own and attention rather than avoidance when it comes to explaining the role of newspapers in everyday lives.

Journalism historians should consider community weeklies more seriously as an important part of journalism history because they reflect the cultural, political, and technological changes taking place in American life.

Garfrerick also discusses the differences between suburban and traditional community weeklies, and their different economic roles in their communities (traditional community weeklies sought to keep shoppers at home; suburbans benefited from ads from large retailers in shopping centers and downtowns) And she concludes:

Journalism historians should consider community weeklies more seriously because these small-town publications reflect in a more personal way the cultural, political, and technological changes experienced in American life. Thus, community weeklies are worthy of taking their respective places among the pages of journalism history. For without the story of America’s small-town newspapers,
that history remains incomplete.

It's a well-written explanation of why weeklies - and by extension community journalism - are important. If you can get your hands on it, I recommend reading it.

Call for reviewers for AEJMC Southeast Colloquium

2010-11-04T17:07:00.000-04:00

Peer reviewers are needed to review papers for Newspaper Division, AEJMC's Southeast Colloquium beginning in early December.
The deadline for submissions is Dec. 13, so it is anticipated papers would be mailed for review by Dec. 15. (Submissions are in physical, not electronic, form.) Reviews would need to be completed by Jan. 15 so that authors can be notified by the end of January. The colloquium is March 17-19 at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C.

We would like to have enough reviewers so that no one person is handling more than three papers, and preferably fewer.

Please volunteer by letting Doug Fisher know at dfisher@sc.edu. Please include your preferred mailing address and any areas you feel especially qualified to review in.

Obit for ordinary man shows community journalism at its best

2010-10-01T10:27:00.004-04:00

This morning reading through my Twitter feed, I came across a link to an obituary for Neil Alan Smith, a 48-year-old St. Petersburg, Florida dishwasher. He had been killed coming home from work, the victim of a hit-and-run driver.

The St. Pete Times had an item about the death up on its web site, to which a reader posted the comment, "A man who is working as a dishwasher at the Crab Shack at the age of 48 is surely better off dead."

Not surprisingly, the Web editor deleted the mean-spirited comment. But that wasn't the end of this story. The Times decided that it needed to run a full obit to show the commenting troll was wrong, that every life does matter. The obit by reporter Andrew Meacham gives the background on the story and then starts the feature portion of it this way:

This much is certain about Mr. Smith: A number of people miss him.

He had a small but loyal network of co-workers and friends who are planning soon to celebrate his life.

They all describe Mr. Smith as steady and dependable. He rode his bicycle nearly 4 miles each way from the Hollywood Trailer Park on Fourth Street N to the Crab Shack on Gandy Boulevard, where he had worked for the past 10 years. In a business known for turnover, that is considered a long time.

The obit goes on to give as much of the story as could be told about Mr. Smith, a story about a part of our world that rarely makes it into the newspaper. And you know what? Mr. Smith had a more compelling story than anything else I've read in a long time.

Despite coming from a major paper in a big, urban area, this is, I think, true community journalism at its best. And it's reporting we can all do no matter where it is we work.

Poynter expert says weeklies holding up well

2010-09-29T20:20:00.004-04:00

The Poynter Institute's media business expert Rick Edmonds attended a session of the New York Press Association and reached the conclusion that "battered print model is holding up comparatively well for many smaller papers serving rural areas and suburbs."
Read Edmonds' full post.

Proposal Call for COMJIG conference in St. Louis

2010-09-29T17:26:00.004-04:00

The Community Journalism Interest Group (COMJIG) is accepting panel proposals for the 2011 AEJMC Conference in St. Louis, Aug. 10-13.

Proposals should consider that COMJIG defines community as more than just geographically centered. Community may also refer to social characteristics such as interest, ethnicity, culture, religion and occupation. Also remember that community journalism includes print, broadcast, online, etc.

Proposals are due Friday, Oct. 22.

Panel proposals must include:
1. A working title and panel description.
2. A statement of whether the panel would be a Teaching, Research or Professional Freedom and Responsibility panel. PF&R panels focus on free expression, ethics, media criticism and accountability, racial/gender/cultural inclusiveness or public service.
3. Suggestions for divisions or interest groups that might be interested in co-sponsoring the panel. For ideas on co-sponsoring opportunities, there is a list of divisions and groups at www.aejmc.com/?page_id=190.
4. A statement of why the topic is important and a brief description of issues the panelists could discuss (no more than a few hundred words, please). NOTE: If your panel is chosen for presentation with a co-sponsoring division or interest group, you will work with a representative from the co-sponsor to make sure that the interests of both divisions/interest groups are represented on the panel.
5. Names and institutional affiliations of possible panelists.
6. Your name, mailing address, phone number and e-mail address.
Send panel proposals by Oct. 22 to Joe Marren, COMJIG program chair, at marrenjj@buffalostate.edu

If you have questions, contact Joe Marren by e-mail or phone (716-878-3794).

C-SPAN Video Archives as a Resource for Teaching Community Journalism

2010-09-15T10:53:00.005-04:00

I was searching through the wonderful C-SPAN video archives today looking for resources on community journalism. While I wasn't able to find a great deal directly related to this topic, here a number of interesting programs I came across that may be useful in classes on community journalism. All are available as streaming programming from C-SPAN:

Pulitzer's Gold
Roy Harris, Jr. talks about his book Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism. The focus is on the future of community and public service journalism. Harris is joined by Pulitzer Prize winning reporters Elizabeth Mehren and Sacha Pfeiffer. (Originally broadcast 8/27/09)

Journalism and New Media
A panel of journalists and media executives look at how news organizations are using multimedia. (Originally broadcast 4/14/08)

Civic Journalism in Practice
Tom Still of the Wisconsin State Journal talks about the practice of civic journalism and how it affects the community. (Originally broadcast 12/27/97)

Connecticut Post
Brief talk with Robert Laska, publisher of the Connecticut Post. (Originally broadcast 4/18/97)

Distinguished Writing Award Winners
A panel of ASNE Distinguished Writing Award Winners talk about encouraging good writing in the newsroom, including theme, narrative and story. (Originally broadcast 4/11/97)

Political and Community Reporting - 1
Jan Schaffer of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism talks about the meaning of civic journalism. (Originally broadcast 12/9/96) (As of today, the audio and video on this clip is bad)

Political and Community Reporting- 2
Editors of daily newspapers talk about the definition of and merits of civic journalism. Among the speakers is Michael Gartner, editor of the Ames Daily Tribune at the time, and former editor of the Des Moines Register and the president of NBC News. Gartner is interesting in his strong opposition to civic journalism and the Pew Center for Civic Journalism. Other speakers include Jennie Buckner of the Charlotte Observer, Edward Fouhy of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, Craig Klugman of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, and Steven A. Smith of the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph. (Originally broadcast on 12/9/96)

News Media and the Public
Broadcast of a forum of newspaper editors discussing "Journalism Values: Who Are We?" James Fallows of the Atlantic is among those featured. (Originally broadcast 4/17/96)

Al Cross Presentation on the Health of Community Newspapers

2010-08-30T16:04:00.002-04:00

Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues (and member of COMJIG), gave a presentation on the health of community newspapers at the Denver AEJMC meeting. The Texas Center for Community Journalism has posted his PowerPoint slides on the web. Take a look.

Community Journalism Synchronicity

2010-08-27T14:49:00.004-04:00

This morning I was preparing for class discussion in my reporting capstone class, in which we're going to be working on community-level coverage of school finance issues. I was working on definitions of community and community journalism, and looking at how community newspapers are doing compared to the newspaper business as a whole.

As I was doing this, an e-mail came in from my friend Howard, who works as a city planner in a suburb north of Atlanta. He writes:

We have several 'neighborhood news' type newspapers that publish around the county and region. Recently, we've had inquiries from some of them wanting to bid out the opportunity to be our legal ad provider. Actual competition to be our "newspaper of general circulation!"

I find it interesting that these little mom & pop deals are cropping up all over, and seemingly expanding in the case of the Sandy Springs Neighbor, when it would seem print news in general is dying on the vine, or has been dying lately, anyway.

I don't know that I would agree with his "dying on the vine" comment, but I certainly understand Howard's point of view.

But Howard's note reminds of a couple of key issues we all need to think about:

First, it is not particularly useful to talk about the "newspaper industry" as a whole, as though the New York Times, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Phoenix New Times, and New Prague Times were all the same kind of thing. They are all very different in terms of what their goals are, how they operate, and how much money is involved.
Second, I find it fascinating that my friend and I, each in different positions with different concerns, were both thinking about the role of community newspapers in the 21st century.

SNPA Conference on Community Journalism

2010-08-26T18:19:00.001-04:00

The Southern Newspaper Publishers Association is holding a conference on the future of smaller newspapers Sept. 15-17 in Atlanta.

For those interested, here is the rundown

The Role and the Future of Community Newspapers (read more about this session)
- David Dunn-Rankin, president and publisher, The Sun, Port Charlotte, Fla.
Save Yourself
Bold, Original Thinking for the Future of the Newspaper Industry
- Kay B. Lee, community initiative entrepreneur, The Center for Community Preservation and Planning, Covington, Ga.
Masters of the Web: Paid Content Models that Work
- Randy Morton, publisher, Statesboro Herald, Statesboro, Ga.
- Ted Jatczak, director of sales and marketing, Kentucky New Era, Hopkinsville, Ky.
- Doug Toney, editor and publisher, New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung, New Braunfels, Texas.
Mobile Technology and the Future of Media
- Renu Kulkarni, executive director, FutureMedia, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga.
Local Search
- Christopher P. Reen, executive vice president, The Oklahoman, Oklahoma City, Okla.
Interactive Database Marketing: You've Got E-Mail Addresses – Now What? (read more about this session)
- Michelle Novak, sales and marketing specialist, Presslaff Interactive Revenue, Norwalk, Conn.
Ideas that Drive Gains in Circulation (read more about this session)
- Steve Learn, circulation consultant, LEARNing More Circulation Idea Service, Killeen, Ala.
The Ben Franklin Project (read more about this session)
Local content that really matters.
Building local content without increasing costs.
Developing social networks and user-generated content.
- Jon Cooper, vice president/content, Journal-Register Company, Yardley, Pa.
You can Make Things Happen, Watch Things Happen or ...
How to Deliver Nearly Flawless Execution
- Tony Marsella, president and COO, Ranger Data Technologies, Augusta, Ga.
What I Would Do on Monday if I Were Your Sales Manager
- Mike Blinder, president, The Blinder Group, New Port Richney, Fla.

Rural broadband

2010-08-12T10:15:00.000-04:00

One of the things that came up in discussions at the recent AEJMC meeting was rural broadband and mobile, and how news organizations that have largely bypassed the Web may not be able to afford to do the same with mobile.

This column by Al Tompkins of Poynter has some statistics on rural broadband and mobile and a link to a White House document (PDF) listing the various broadband projects being funded under the federal initiative.

Community Journalism steps forward to defend FOI in S.C.

2010-08-11T14:18:00.000-04:00

It was not a big paper, but a community weekly that stepped forward in South Carolina to press the first prosecution of officials for willfully violating the state's Freedom of Information Act.

The story from the Hometown News (and my blog post with a link to another AP story).

And then there is the reporter's clarion call to why community newsrooms are important:

Don’t underestimate community journalists

Hometown News
By Jay King

I’ve been a journalist for the better part of the past 20 years, and throughout most of that time I’ve worked for community newspapers, that is, weeklies.

It’s something we weekly reporters are used to, but invariably we’re viewed by fellow journalists and many of the people and officials we cover as a collection of amateurs incapable of playing in the “big leagues.” For myself, I have adopted something of a tolerant view of my fellow professionals and tend to think of myself as being held to a higher standard since we community newspapermen are much more involved in our communities and are more accountable to our readers week in and week out.

The situation in Holly Springs serves as a case in point. I really don’t want to appear to be tooting my own horn, but it should be remembered that only a community newspaperman found out about the illegal Holly Springs Fire Commission meeting of June 16 and was the only media representative present during that meeting.

Read the rest ...

Community media and mobile

2010-08-11T12:52:00.000-04:00

At AEJMC, there was a bit of a debate about local media and their ability to withstand the mobile onslaught. I am of the opinion that even the smallest community newspaper will eventually have to confront this. Here are two articles to consider. The first is about Facebook about to launch its geolocative service (imagine the potential for advertising there).

http://www.lostremote.com/2010/08/10/facebooks-places-feature-about-to-launch/

And this is the Dave Morgan article linked to in the above post
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=133350

The comment attributed to the ValPak person in the comments area is worth considering.

Which then raises the questions for many j-schools - if, when and how do we get into the "mobile" game, which is a different world from the Web world we know.

Doug

COMJIG Minutes, 2010 Denver

2010-08-11T08:45:00.002-04:00

Community Journalism Interest Group minutes, Aug. 5, 2010, Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel
(Updated and corrected Aug. 26)

The meeting began with a joint meeting with the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group. COMJIG Head Doug Fisher, South Carolina, called the meeting to order in Governor’s Square Room 16 at 8:36 p.m. Pending arrival of CCJIG Head Mary Beth ~~Cahill~~ Callie, Fisher asked if anyone had announcements.

Chip Stewart, Texas Christian, announced that he is co-editor of a new online Community Journalism journal that is assembling an editorial board, will start seeking submissions this fall and will try to get its first issue out next summer. The journal will define community broadly, not just geographically; civic-and-citizen submissions are welcome if they have a community connection.

Fisher told the joint meeting that the two groups were asked last year to consider merger, but study has shown that they have less overlap than believed, only 24 out of the approximately 100 members in each group. He said he and ~~Cahill~~ Callie see no benefit from merger; a combined group would get no more programming chips, and the two groups work together well already. (In a later communication, Callie said the conclusion on CCJIG's part came out of a conference call among their officers.)

Fisher proposed that both groups do a joint paper call to explore interstices of the two interests.

Glenn Scott, former research chair of CCJIG, said the groups need to make commitment to spend chips on a session and agree to have a team of reviewers for just those papers. Fisher said each group would commit a half chip each, and might even be able to bring in the Newspaper Division or another group and have a mini-plenary.
The joint meeting was dissolved and the COMJIG meeting was called back to order in Governor’s Square 9 at 8:45 p.m.

Minutes from the meeting at Boston, which were posted on the COMJIG blog, were approved.

Fisher thanked the officers for their help in the past year. He said research being presented at the conference showed a broadening of the group beyond traditional labels of rural and geographic, a message that he said members need to get out. He reported a balance of $1,025.92 in the group’s account.

Vice-Head Andris Straumanis, Wisconsin River Falls, said the group’s sessions so far had been good, with good attendance. Research Chair Joe Marren, Buffalo State, said the group attracted more papers than normal, 12 (one couldn’t be accepted because she identified herself), little more than half from grad students. Six were accepted, three for the research session and three for scholar-to-scholar.

Teaching Chair Eileen Gilligan, SUNY Oswego, announced that her university’s Center for Community Journalism had officially closed.

The group unanimously elected the following slate of officers: Joe Marren, vice-head and program chair; Eileen Gilligan, teaching standards chair; Ralph Hanson, Nebraska-Kearney, professional freedom and responsibility chair; Al Cross, Kentucky, secretary and membership chair; John Hatcher, Minnesota-Duluth, research chair.

With election of new officers, Straumanis succeeded Fisher as head. He asked for an got a round of applause for Fisher for work as head, including a 53-pp. renewal report. He said renewal of the interest group is expected. He said the report is good overview of what the group is, what it stands for, where it has been and where it is going.

Straumanis said his goals for this year are : (1) raise research submissions to 18 from 12, partly by soliciting more from individuals; (2) revive the discussion on having COMJIG develop a closer, ongoing relationship among professionals in community journalism, beyond our individual relationships, starting with survey of professionals to see what they need and how we might help; (3) create the long-discussed syllabus and assignment exchange, particularly assignments, to get good examples that might help teaching.

Under old business, the group discussed dues, still at $5. Straumanis said raising the dues to $7.50 or $10 could fund more speakers, and he noted that travel of the head and vice-head to the winter meeting can consume up to $500. This winter’s meeting is in Albuquerque.

Fisher said it would be appropriate to raise dues, especially since the new Sports Division is starting at $10, and in light of programming costs. Hansen moved that dues be set at $10 for faculty and $5 for graduate students. The motion was seconded by Andrea Bonner Frantz of Robert Morris and was approved without dissent.

Fisher said the bylaws call for a nominating committee of two, one to be named by the head and one named by the membership, and asked for a volunteer. Hansen volunteered. Fisher moved to appoint her, and after several seconds the appointment was approved without dissent.

Under new business, Fisher reported on candidate cities for the 2014 conference: Atlanta (with a guaranteed room rate of $149-179), Jacksonville ($109 plus a $32,500 donation), Miami ($242 with an escalator clause), Tampa ($163 w/escalator), Montreal ($169-189 Canadian, plus C$30,600 in incentives). Fisher moved that the group recommend Montreal, and Jock Lauterer, North Carolina, seconded. The motion was approved without dissent. The conference will be held St, Louis next year, then in Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Fisher reported on the idea of a joint paper call and research session with CCJIG, noting that the groups have areas with ties and areas with friction. He said Cahill and he agreed to spend a half-chip apiece for a dedicated session, and asked for motion to give the Executive Committee authority to move ahead. Lauterer so moved, and after two seconds the motion was approved without dissent.

On proper motion and second, the group adjourned at 9:21 p.m.

SIGNUP SHEET
    Joe Marren        marrenjj@buffalostate.edu
    Jock Lauterer        jock@email.unc.edu
    Andris Straumanis    andris.straumanis@uwrf.edu
    Andrea Frantz        frantz@rmu.edu
    Tommy Thomason    t.thomason@tcu.edu
    Brian Steffens        steffensb@missouri.edu
    Eileen Gilligan        eileengilligan@oswego.edu
    Pam Fine        pamfine@ku.edu
    Liz Hansen        liz.hansen@eku.edu
    Gary Hansen        ghansen@uky.edu
    Chip Stewart        d.stewart@tcu.edu
    Al Cross            al.cross@uky.edu
    Doug Fisher        fisherdj@mailbox.sc.edu

Submitted by Al Cross, Secretary/Membership

COMJIG panel gets lengthy story in AEJMC news

2010-08-10T14:31:00.001-04:00

Our panel on "Community Newspapers: Healthy for Now, but for How Long?" got a nice story in the AEJMC News, the student-run newspaper from last week's convention in Denver.

A shorter earlier story also covered our "Media Ethics in My Little Town" panel.

For a full rundown of convention stories, especially those who could not be there, see AEJMCnews.net.

Is TBD.com community journalism for Washington, D.C.?

2010-08-09T12:02:00.003-04:00

All the D.C. journalists and bloggers are hot today about the launch of TBD.com, a TV station and website that puts out local news and community information about the D.C. Metro area. Is this urban community news?

Mashable has an interesting article about TBD that looks how the site is bringing in content from a network of 127 local bloggers.

This fits in well with a blog post by Mark Briggs that I read this morning that suggests that the job situation for journalism grads isn't as dismal as some folks think - it's just that the jobs are in managing online communities, not working at newspapers.

AEJMC - Top paper winners, new officers and other developments

2010-08-06T02:43:00.001-04:00

Well, two days of the AEJMC convention are under our belts (three days if you count Tuesday's preliminary sessions), and it's been a good round of COMJIG sessions so far.

Reports are that the "Media Ethics in My Little Town" panel was a big success Wednesday (I had a conflict and could not go). Today's (Thursday's) research session was excellent, showing the range of "community" goes far beyond small-town or rural. That's a message we continue to try to get across; COMJIG is a good home for many scholars' research, but too often gets tagged as that "small-town paper group."

Our top paper winners are Tracy Loope of Florida for "Heart Disease in the Rural South: A Content Analysis of the Community Newspaper Coverage" and Steve Smethers of Kansas State for "After the Storm: Greensburg Residents Discuss an Open Source Project as a Source of Community News."

Not only did our research session draw a good crowd (I counted 20 at one point), so did our three scholar-to-scholar papers by Arthur Santana of Oregon, Mark Poepsel of Missouri and George Daniels of Alabama. The cluster drew some of the most people I saw at any of the presentations.

Between Loope and Smethers in that photo is Joe Marren of Buffalo State, our research chair, who at Thursday night's business meeting advanced to become vice head/programming. Andris Straumanis moves up to be COMJIG head, and John Hatcher of Minnesota-Duluth, becomes research chair. Ralph Hanson of Nebraska-Kearney remains as PF&R (professional freedom and responsibility) chair, Eileen Gilligan of SUNY-Oswego is staying on as teaching chair, and Al Cross of Kentucky remains secretary/membership.

In some other news from Denver:

We have decided to raise membership dues to $10 for regular members, but keep them at $5 for students. We have just over $1,000 now, and once programming costs are deducted, we will have less than $1,000. With the need to cover some costs for Andris' and Joe's attendance at the winter meeting in Albuquerque in December and possible costs for panelists at next year's convention in St. Louis, along with funding our $100 awards for best faculty and student papers, things will be a little slim.
We voted to support Montreal as the site of the 2014 convention. The room rates are guaranteed to be less than $160 CAN, with as much as $30,000 in economic incentives to AEJMC if we fill the rooms. The other candidates: Atlanta, Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville.
We met briefly with Civic and Citizen Journalism. CCJIG's head, Mary Beth Callie, has found that out of about 100 members in each group, 24 are common members. This is a lot less overlap than we thought. We also don't really gain programming slots by combining into a division.
However, based on two recent books that I am reviewing, one about civic and citizen journalism in a digital age and the other about community journalism research, it becomes clear there are many commonalities but also some clear areas where there is friction and it is hard to define the relationship. So I recommended, and the membership approved, that we consider a special research call next year for papers exploring the continued unclear - and sometimes uneasy - relationship between community and civic/citizen journalism in a digital age. We are not on a chip reduction next year, so if CCJIG goes along, we each are committing to spend a half-chip to create a second research session dealing specifically with this.

Al will post a more complete - and official - set of minutes later.

The COMJIG renewal petition went into AEJMC officials on Wedesday. I hand-delivered it into officialdom's hands. The AEJMC board of directors meets at 1 p.m. Saturday, so we can hope we will know soon after.

It is likely that next year we will undergo a "review," where Andris would have to sit with one representative of AEJMC's PF&R committee, one of its research committee and two from the council of divisions to assess where the IG is at, etc. It's a bit different than the renewal.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone involved with COMJIG this past year. We expanded and refined out paper call, and as a result, we got a bumper crop of papers that showed well how broad the idea of community journalism is.

On to St. Louis.

- Doug

"Community journalism is permanent"

2010-08-05T10:52:00.002-04:00

Reporter Marques Hunter of the Gig Harbor, Washington, paper The Peninsula Gateway talks about moving from a newspaper to online news site. But he says he is sticking with community journalism. He writes:

"Community journalism is important. It serves a purpose, and it needs to be taken seriously. It’s part of the public record, whether it be a political announcement, an important meeting or game coverage from the Fish Bowl. I’ve tried to do my part in giving you, the reader, a sense of what’s happening in your backyard.

Unlike national news agencies that attract a wide audience, community journalism serves a narrow population. And it’s those people who depend on it."

Agenda for annual meeting

2010-08-03T15:06:00.000-04:00

COMJIG annual meeting 2010
Denver, Colo., Thursday, Aug. 5, 8:30 p.m.

The first part of the meeting will convene jointly with Community and Citizen Journalism IG to discuss mutual concerns and joint projects.

We then will adjourn to a separate COMJIG members' meeting

1.    Welcome and introduction by those present for the record (if the number is large, a record of who attended will instead by kept by passing around a sheet of paper for people to sign in).

2.    Approval of minutes from Boston meeting, 2009 (previously posted on blog)

3.    Report from the IG head – Doug Fisher
a.    Accomplishments and challenges from the past year
b.    Financial status

4.    Any remarks from other members of the executive committee.

5.    Election of officers for 2010-11
a.    Nominations of officers
b.    Any statements from nominees
c.    Vote on nominations
i.    As a slate for those with no opposition, voice vote
ii.    For any office contested, vote by office, show of hands

6.    Remarks from incoming IG head and other incoming members of the IG executive committee (after this point, the incoming head will preside, although the current secretary shall be responsible for continuing to take and file minutes of the meeting on the COMJIG blog).

7.    Old business
a.    Standing Item – setting of dues for 2011
b.    Standing item - Election of member of nominating committee for 2011-2012. (Our bylaws say the membership is to elect one member of this committee and the head (incoming) will appoint the other. The committee, not the head, is charged with coming up with a slate of officers.)
c.    CCJIG merger (because this is an ongoing item, I would recommend it be deferred until after any new business and any advisory items).

8.    New business
a.    If all executive committee positions have not been filled, this is the appropriate place to perhaps offer a motion that the head be given authority by the membership to appoint people to fill those positions without further vote.

9.    Any advisory items/comments from the membership not included in above items

10.    Adjournment

Respectfully submitted,
Doug Fisher, Head 2009-2010

Nominations sought for rural journalism award

2010-07-28T13:34:00.001-04:00

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues recognizes exemplary rural journalists, providing examples for others to follow.

As part of that effort, the Institute presents an award in honor of Tom and Pat Gish who published The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., for more than 51 years. Tom died in 2008; Pat has health issues but remains publisher, and their son Ben is editor. The Gishes have withstood advertiser boycotts, declining population, personal attacks and even the burning of their office to provide the citizens of Letcher County the kind of journalism often lacking in rural areas. They exemplify the courage, tenacity and integrity that is often necessary to render public service in journalism, especially in rural communities. That’s why the award is named for them, and they were the first recipients of it, in 2005.

Nominators for the Tom and Pat Gish Award should send detailed letters to Director Al Cross at the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, explaining how their nominees show the kind of exemplary courage, tenacity and integrity that the Gishes demonstrated in their rigorous pursuit of rural journalism. Documentation does not have to accompany the nomination, but is helpful in choosing finalists, and additional documentation may be requested or required.

Letters should be postmarked by Sept. 1 and mailed to: Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, 122 Grehan Journalism Building, University of Kentucky, Lexington KY 40506-0042. For more information, contact the Cross at 859-257-3744 or Al.Cross@uky.edu.

AEJMC - Editing profs' breakfast

2010-07-26T19:23:00.000-04:00

Folks, I'm passing this along at the request of Deb Gump. It's a great session. If you teach editing - heck, if you happen to have an editing text on your bookshelf somewhere - I recommend stopping by -- Doug

The Breakfast of Editing Champions returns to the AEJMC national convention
in Denver next month.

The breakfast, sponsored by the Dow Jones News Fund and co-hosted by Deborah
Gump of Middle Tennessee State University and Andy Bechtel of UNC-Chapel
Hill, is free and open to anyone who teaches editing, appreciates editing or
simply likes to hang around editing professors — and that should be pretty
much everyone.

Coffee, tea, bagels and pastries will be provided. To attend, RSVP by e-mail
to Deborah at gumpdl@gmail.com ASAP.

Our agenda is simple, yet fundamental to journalism that matters: the future
of editing and editing education. Since the beginning of the breakfasts,
we’ve invited journalists to help guide our discussion. This year, we are
fortunate to have two journalists who can provide both a newsroom
perspective and an industry-wide perspective. Joining us will be:

• *Damon Cain*, managing editor for presentation and design at The Denver
Post. Damon oversees the news copy desk, and he is active in the Society for
News Design, which will hold its conference in Denver in September. Cain was
previously director of news design at The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C.
He has also worked as an editor and reporter at community newspapers in
Iowa. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa.

• *Teresa Schmedding*, the new president of the American Copy Editors
Society. Schmedding, a frequent presenter on managing creative people and
other newsroom issues, is news editor at the Daily Herald in Chicago, the
third largest paper in Illinois. Schmedding has an undergraduate degree in
journalism and a master’s in media management from the University of
Missouri.

***

*
Jim Bates, The Post’s night editor and college chum of Deborah’s, has
offered to lead a tour of the newsroom immediately after the breakfast. When
you RSVP, let us know whether you’d like to visit The Post.*

***

A highlight of the breakfasts has been the Teaching Idea Exchange, which
shares your best teaching ideas and strategies. Andy once again will handle
the exchange, so send your best teaching idea to him at
andy.bechtel@gmail.com ASAP. Keep it brief and be ready to
discuss it briefly at the breakfast.

We’ll also be compiling a list of resources. If you’ve discovered a website,
book, magazine article, video, YouTube clip or another resource that helps
you be a more effective teacher, send the details to Deborah. As always,
we’ll make all breakfast material easily accessible.

If you know someone who also would be interested in attending, please pass
along this invitation and point out the *requirement* to RSVP.

To sum up:

*TIME:* 8:15 - 9:45 a.m.
*DAY:* Friday, Aug. 6
*PLACE:* The conference hotel
*RSVP* (required): Send an e-mail to Deborah at gumpdl@gmail.com ASAP.
*TEACHING IDEA EXCHANGE*: Send your idea to Andy at
abechtel@email.unc.eduby ASAP.

See you in Denver!

Community Journalism Job in Iowa

2010-07-12T09:26:00.002-04:00

The Mt. Pleasant News has a full-time job for full-service community journalism person.

http://www.journalismjobs.com/job_listing.cfm?jobid=1182638

2010 COMJIG annual report

2010-06-16T10:42:00.003-04:00

This is the IG's annual report that went to AEJMC headquarters this morning. Please let Doug Fisher know if there are any major errors.

(Updated July 28 with new number of shared members.)

Community Journalism Interest Group
Annual Report 2009-2010

1. Officers 2009-2010
Head: Doug Fisher, South Carolina
Vice Head/Programming Chair: Andris Straumanis, Wisconsin-River Falls
Research Chair: Joseph Marren, Buffalo State
PF&R Chair: Ralph Hanson, Nebraska-Kearney
Teaching Standards: Eileen Gilligan, SUNY-Oswego
Secretary/membership: Al Cross, Kentucky
Webmaster: Doug Fisher, South Carolina
Past Head: Elizabeth Hansen, Eastern Kentucky
Report prepared by Doug Fisher with the assistance of all COMJIG officers and CCJIG head Mary Beth Callie

2. Demographics – See accompanying form (this is a PDF form provided to AEJMC; it is not attached to this post).

3. Overall statement of activities: The Community Journalism Interest Group (COMJIG) had 103 members as of June 2010, within the range of 99 to 110 we have seen since 2008. Of concern, however, is the turnover in membership. This could indicate one of several things – that longtime members’ research interests are shifting or they are retiring, or that we are not meeting the needs of some members. One of our priorities will be continuing to reach out to current and former members to find out what we can do better. We also continued our commitment to diversity this past year as the primary sponsor (with Minorities and Communication) of a panel on Boston’s richly complex ethnic media and its recent struggles. Our leadership was mostly white and male, however, as several women we approached about leadership positions elected to serve with larger groups. COMJIG typically has had a more diverse leadership, and we will continue to seek to diversify our leadership again this year.

Research overview: We continue to balance our activities among teaching, research, and PF&R. In Denver, we will have a panel specifically looking at “Citizen Journalism Research” (co-sponsored with Civic and Citizen Journalism). Last year in Boston we also spotlighted research with a special panel (co-sponsored with Newspaper) on “Research Opportunities in Community Journalism.” This is especially timely given the volume “Public Journalism 2.0” (Routledge 2010), edited by Jack Rosenberry and Burton St. John III, that explores the inevitable ties but also some of the differences between civic and community journalism, and the upcoming “The Foundations of Community Journalism: A Primer for Research” (Sage-under contract) by Bill Reader and John Hatcher.

Our focus on research this past year included rewording our paper call to make clear that community journalism can broadly embrace online communities of interest as well as those more geographically focused. We received 12 papers, but had to disqualify one for identifying information. We accepted six of the remaining, a 54% acceptance rate. While the number of papers was up more than 50% from seven the year before (with five accepted), we continue to see papers being submitted elsewhere that might have a better home with COMJIG. We continue trying to get the word out that “community” does not mean just geographical, small or rural. We have also added a cash prize for top faculty paper (in addition to top student paper) to encourage more submissions. Outside the convention, COMJIG members are presenting and publishing community journalism research in a variety of quality venues.

Teaching overview: Our focus in Denver for 2010 will be on teaching with three co-sponsored panels after just one each in 2008 and 2009. The 2009 Boston convention panel looked at how to push students of the sheltered generation outside their comfort zones (co-sponsored with Newspaper). This year we have scheduled sessions looking at how student-staffed, lab newspapers are going out “into the mean streets” to produce newspapers in tough neighborhoods (co-sponsored with Civic and Citizen Journalism), at the ethical challenges faced by community journalists (co-sponsored with Media Ethics), and the lessons learned about local government coverage through an NSF-funded study (co-sponsored with Newspaper). Many of our members couple their teaching with PF&R activities, and coupling teaching with innovation in helping underserved communities is one of the hallmarks of our interest group that sets us apart from others.

PF&R overview: COMJIG is a professionally oriented IG, so we always maintain a high level of PF&R activity, both in our programming and through the activities of our members. This provides a bridge between the academy and the professional world that has become more valuable during these tumultuous times when the profession is reaching out to the academy for help. We are addressing that this year with “Community newspapers: Healthiest in the trade, but for how long?” co-sponsored with Newspaper Division. Throughout the year, COMJIG members engage in many ways with the profession and are leaders or active members and presenters in organizations such as the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Newspaper Association, and the American Copy Editors Society.

Summary: COMJIG’s orientation tends to be toward PF&R because of the nature of our academic and professional affiliations; however, we make a conscious effort to embrace all aspects and maintain a good balance of research and teaching as well. We continue to look for ways to encourage more research submissions; our membership certainly produces research showcased in other national forums. As the academy and profession realize that (a) “community” means much more than “small” or “rural” and (b) that some of the most exciting developments and research opportunities are happening with online communities of interest and, physically, in smaller communities where newsrooms have suffered less economically, we expect to see researchers realize COMJIG is a good home for their work.

We also continue to meet jointly with Civic and Citizen Journalism as part of our annual meeting. There are ongoing discussions about possibly combining the IGs. Currently, we share about a fifth of our members (24 shared out of 116 members for CCJIG and 103 for COMJIG). There are commonalities but also some significant differences. For instance, “civic journalism” has largely been practiced by larger newsrooms, while smaller community newsrooms have tended to maintain the very nature of their jobs and markets requires them to be civically engaged. COMJIG members have also noted that its bylaws tend to be more media focused than CCJIG’s and have expressed concern their research agendas might get lost in a larger organization; it was partly that concern that prompted some members of the Newspaper Division to initially suggest forming COMJIG.

4. Goals: Next year, last year: These are our most important goals for 2010-2011:

1.    To achieve a 50 percent increase in research paper submissions. A consistent issue seems to be the need for COMJIG to get the word out about its existence, especially for young scholars looking for a venue for their work. We have seen papers entered in other divisions and interest groups that could easily have fit in COMJIG’s research session. The interest group chair would work closely with the program chair and research chair to encourage scholars to consider COMJIG when the time comes to submit papers to AEJMC. The COMJIG call for papers goes out to our members and to the broader AEJMC membership. This coming year, we will try “target marketing” to specific academic programs and individual scholars with an interest in community journalism in an effort to increase the number of submissions. This could be combined with a focused call for papers devoted to a specific topic determined during the annual membership meeting.

2.    To revive a discussion started several years ago about having COMJIG develop a closer and ongoing relationship with professionals in community journalism. This year’s convention program is exciting in part because a number of community journalists will be involved with our panels. During last year’s annual convention, COMJIG also had important PF&R presentations. A number of our members have existing (and, in some cases, long-term) relationships with professionals in their communities. However, COMJIG would do well to take the lead and promote itself to the profession as an organization of scholars interested in community journalism. A first step would be to survey state press and broadcasters’ associations, as well as leading ethnic news organizations, about their relationships with the academy in an effort to learn what service COMJIG could offer.

3.    To create a syllabus and assignment exchange for the teaching of community journalism. The idea was put forward several years ago during a COMJIG membership meeting, but never realized. As teachers of community journalism, we are constantly in search of innovative pedagogy, especially given the swift changes being experienced by the industry. Having a collection of syllabi and specific assignments available online would be of great benefit. COMJIG, through its teaching standards chair, would endeavor to post one new syllabus or assignment each month to its blog, comjig.blogspot.com.

In Boston, COMJIG set these goals for this past year:

1.    Get out the word that the “community” in community journalism refers to more than geographic communities. We are emphasizing that communities of interest, ethnicity, culture, religion, occupation, etc., provide valuable research, teaching and PF&R opportunities and that the medium is not solely “print” or even print repurposed for online. We are still struggling to broaden the perception of COMJIG, but we think the increased number of papers this year begin to show that the word is getting out. Continuing to work on this will be a goal for the coming year (see above).

2.    Increase paper submissions by issuing a special paper call. We are emphasizing "quality over quantity" but know we need to encourage more research about all aspects of community journalism. We decided during the year we did not yet have the resources for a special paper call, but we made special efforts to refashion and broaden our paper call to encompass the idea that community goes beyond geography. The division head also reached out to scholars through his work at the Newsplex Summer Seminars and the annual Convergence Conference to emphasize that COMJIG would be a good home for some of their work.

3.    Focus on how teaching community journalism is changing as journalism is changing and as more students come to realize their job in community media might no longer be merely a stepping stone to a career with larger media. We have used our blog to provide solid, consistent, multimedia information to help educators this area.

*How may any or all of the Standing Committees help you to achieve your goals in the coming year

The Standing Committee on Research could perhaps help us make other division and IG members aware of the scope of COMJIG’s research interests.

RESEARCH:
Research was a focus of our Boston programming in 2009, highlighted by a panel on community journalism research opportunities, and will be again this year in Denver with a specific panel on “Citizen Journalism Research” and the presentation of research findings from an NSF-funded project to study coverage of local government. (That panel is listed as a teaching session but is a good example of how much of what we do bridges research, teaching, and PF&R.) COMJIG continues working to attract more scholars to participate in our research competition. At the 2009 annual meeting, the membership reaffirmed its desire to have $100 awards each for the best faculty and student papers. To gain more submissions and judges, we reached out to past paper presenters at the Newspapers and Community Building Symposium co-sponsored by the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media and the National Newspaper Association Foundation.

Papers submitted to COMJIG use diverse methodologies, approaches, and subject matter. They also come from a diverse group of researchers. For 2010, 12 papers were submitted, but one was disqualified for identifying information, and we accepted 6 of the remaining 11. (In 2009, we had 7 submissions and accepted 5; in 2008 we had 9 submissions and accepted 5.) The qualified papers encompassed 6 faculty members and 10 graduate students; 12 were from male researchers and 4 from females. Because of our concern for diversity (we had never gotten a good handle on this), after the papers were judged we also requested voluntary information on ethnicity or racial identification from the authors. Of the 12 males, 6 are white, two are international, and one each self-identified as Asian, African-American, Hispanic, or multi-racial. Of the four females, three were white and one was Hispanic. (We feel this will be important information as we try to make the case to fellow researchers that community journalism has a broad focus; too often we get the impression that some researchers see it as “rural” or “white.”)

The following data are for the 2010 paper competition and program.

5. Number of faculty research paper submissions 4 , including one faculty-student collaboration; number of acceptances __2___; __50__%. The acceptance rate meets the Research Committee guideline of 50 percent. (A fifth faculty submission had to be disqualified because of identifying data.)

6. Number of student research paper submissions _7_; number of acceptances __4_; __66_%. This is higher than the Research Committee guideline of 50 percent, but the overall acceptance rate, at 54%, is close to the guideline.

7. COMJIG used the standard evaluation form available online through All Academic. The form required feedback on a 1-5 scale across seven criteria: Clarity of purpose, Clarity of research method, Evidence relates to purpose of paper, Evidence is presented clearly, Evidence supports conclusions, Writing and organization, and Relevance of focus to COMJIG. Reviewers also were asked if they would recommend acceptance or rejection of a paper.

8. Total # of judges for 2009: 11; all judges had 3 papers to review. This was within the Research Committee guideline of no more than 4 papers per judge. In addition, three reviewers (though not counted in the total because they were not utilized) were available in case any judge was unable to read his or her assigned papers.

9. Did your group conduct any other type of refereed competition? No.

10. Please list your in-convention activities related to research.
COMJIG is partnering with Civic and Citizen Journalism on a research panel for the Denver convention titled "Doing Citizen Journalism Research: Issues and Prospects." In Boston last year we accepted five papers, three in a paper session and two in a scholar-to-scholar session. This year we accepted six papers, three in a paper session and three for scholar-to-scholar, each by a single scholar.

11. This is a partial list of out-of-convention research activities by some members. It was not feasible to compile a comprehensive list:

•    Jeremy Littau was named winner of the 2010 Nafziger-White-Salwen Dissertation Award. His dissertation, “The Virtual Social Capital Of Online Communities: Media Use And Motivations As Predictors Of Online And Offline Engagement Via Six Measures Of Community Strength," applied a traditional model for understanding real-world community strength to online settings by creating online-only measures of the social capital concept. The new concept, "Web-network social capital," measures the strength of online communities and also serves as a strong predictor to certain types of distance engagement that often can only happen because of online communication.

•    COMJIG member and former research chair Jack Rosenberry of St. John Fisher College and Burton St. John III of Old Dominion University published the edited volume "Public Journalism 2.0: The Promise and Reality of a Citizen-Engaged Press" (2010, Routledge). The book examines both the roots and contemporary dynamics of civic and citizen journalism and posits how public journalism can inform future journalistic endeavors with original research, case studies and essays by scholars such as Joyce Nip, David Ryfe, Serena Carpenter, Donica Mensing, Sue Robinson, and Aaron Barlow. Rosenberry also has forthcoming in JMCQ the article "Virtual Community Support for Offline Communities Through Online Newspaper Message Forums." It has been selected to be highlighted in the AEJMC "Research You Can Use" project, which selects new research from AEJMC refereed journals to promote to journalists and others in the industry for stories or for continuing education.

•    COMJIG member and former head Bill Reader, Ohio, and COMJIG member John Hatcher, Minnesota Duluth, completed the manuscript for "The Foundations of Community Journalism: A Primer for Research," under contract with Sage. The text features chapters by Reader, Hatcher, Rosenberry, and fellow COMJIG members Wilson Lowery, Alabama; Eileen Gilligan, SUNY-Oswego; Janice Hume, Georgia; and George Daniels, Alabama, as well as community-journalism supporters Cary Roberts Frith, Ohio, and Diana Knott Martinelli, West Virginia. A chapter collects short essays from senior scholars who include Carolyn Kitch, Temple; Nicholas Jankowski, Virtual Knowledge Study in the Netherlands; G. Michael Killenberg, South Florida; COMJIG member Gloria Freeland, Kansas State; Guy Berger, Rhodes in South Africa; COMJIG member Chad Stebbins, Missouri Southern State; Stephen Lacy, Michigan State; Lewis Friedland, Wisconsin-Madison; and Sigurd Høst, Norwegian Institute of Journalism.

•    Reader is also guest editor of a special issue of Newspaper Research Journal titled "The Future of Community Newspapers," which is on schedule to be published in 2011.

•    Gilligan, COMJIG’s teaching head, began researching, with two colleagues, how three regional dailies cover domestic violence on their websites. She presented preliminary results at the Eastern Communication Association annual conference in Baltimore in April.

•    COMJIG vice head Andris Straumanis, Wisconsin-River Falls, presented a research paper, “‘Let Not Our Flag Go Down’: The Latvian Anarchist Press Abroad, 1908-1916,” during the 22nd Conference on Baltic Studies, Seattle, Wash., April 2010.

•    COMJIG member and former head Elizabeth K. Hansen of Eastern Kentucky (with co-author Angela Cooke-Jackson) published “Hillbilly Stereotypes and Humor: Entertaining Ourselves at the Expense of the Other” in Howard Good and Sandra L. Borden (Eds.) Ethics and Entertainment: Essays on Media Culture and Media Morality. (McFarland & Company, Inc.). A case study of a weekly newspaper Hansen wrote, titled “Publishing Drunk Drivers’ Photos,” has been accepted for publication in the fourth edition of the Society of Professional Journalists ethics book in October 2010. As a member of the SPJ Ethics Committee, she also served as a copy editor/fact checker for the book. Hansen and Gary L. Hansen have had a research in brief article titled “Community Connection and Reader Response to a Community Newspaper” accepted for publication in a forthcoming special issue of Newspaper Research Journal devoted to community journalism. Another paper they co-authored, “Community Information along the Rural/Urban Continuum: Looking for News in All the Wrong Places,” has been accepted for presentation at the Rural Sociological Society convention in Atlanta, Georgia, Aug. 12-15, 2010.

•    COMJIG member Steve Smethers, associate director for graduate studies at Kansas State, and Gloria Freeland, assistant professor and director of the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media at Kansas State, co-authored “Innovation, Technology and the Future of Community Journalism: Greensburg (Kan.) Residents Discuss an Open-Source Portal as a Foundation of Community News,” which will be presented at AEJMC in Denver. Graduate student Jeffrey Rake also helped with the paper. The Huck Boyd Center, under Freeland’s direction, and the National Newspaper Association Foundation sponsored the 15th annual “Newspapers and Community-Building Symposium” at the NNA’s annual convention in Mobile, Ala., in September 2009 and will sponsor its 16th annual symposium in late September/early October 2010 in Omaha, Neb. The Huck Boyd Center and the A. Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Kansas State will also sponsor the fifth annual Great Plains Radio History Symposium on Oct. 22, 2010. This year’s symposium will include a special session featuring the development of rural Midwestern radio — the radio homemaker.

•    Research head Joe Marren published “The Prescription for Communication: A Chinese Communist View of the U.S. Press,” in the International Journal of Communication, January-June 2009; : “The Business of Segregation in Baseball,” in Outside the Lines, a publication of the Business of Baseball Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research (www.businessofbaseball.com) Winter 2010; “Citizen Journalism in the Newsroom & Ad Office,” in The Convergence Newsletter from the Newsplex at the University of South Carolina. Vol. VII, No. 4 (May 2010); and “One Monk’s Message: Establishing an Enlightened Ethic for the Media,” (with Kimberly Blessing, Ph.D.) in Media Ethics Magazine, Vol. 21, No. 2, Spring 2010.
12. Our research goal for 2009-10 continued to be to actively recruit more participation in our research competition. While we initially considered a special paper call focusing on the differences between community and metro models for doing journalism, we decided we did not have the resources to pursue that at the moment and worked instead on broadening our paper call and reaching out to individuals and organizations with similar research interests. Though last year we did not make a top faculty paper award, this year we will award $100 for both the top faculty and top student papers. We again have a strong research focus at the convention, with panels on research in citizen journalism and the presentation of NSF-funded research on coverage of local government.

TEACHING:
13. Because of our limited convention programming slots, we rotate our focus through research, teaching and PF&R. The focus at the 2009 meeting in Boston was research with one co-sponsored teaching panel (with Newspaper) titled "Pushing Students Outside Their Comfort Zones: The Challenge of Teaching the Sheltered Student Generation." This year, when we have a chip reduction, we are emphasizing teaching, with three convention sessions in Denver. “Into the mean streets: Lab community newspapers take on tough neighborhoods” (co-sponsored with Civic and Citizen Journalism) looks at four journalism programs that have separately launched lab newspapers and websites devoted to inner-city or at-risk neighborhoods. Part of the focus will be on teaching methods, especially innovative methods needed to make classes like this work. The second panel, “Media ethics in my little town” (co-sponsored with Media Ethics Division), explores the ethical dilemmas facing journalists working in small communities and the implications for ethics educators. We expect this panel to generate numerous ideas for course content. The third panel, “News Coverage and Commentary About Local Government,” as noted earlier, is co-sponsored with Newspaper Division and builds on federally funded research that should provide new ideas for faculty involved in helping students learn how to navigate a bread-and-butter subject for most journalists. Current COMJIG teaching head Eileen Gilligan already is working with two current editors interested in assembling a 2011 teaching session on community journalism organizations and how they are using social media and their websites more productively.

14. This is a partial list of teaching activities beyond the convention by some members. It was not feasible to compile a comprehensive list:

•    This past spring, former COMJIG head Elizabeth Hansen’s Community Journalism students at Eastern Kentucky conducted mail surveys of residents of two counties to determine where they obtained their local news, their assessments of their community newspapers, and Internet use. The study was funded in part by a grant from the McCormick Foundation to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. Hansen and Al Cross, director of the Institute, will report the findings from the study in a paper titled “Discerning a train coming down the track: Three weekly newspapers and the Internet” at the Newspapers and Community-Building Symposium XVI at the National Newspaper Association’s 124th Annual Convention in Omaha, Nebraska, Sept. 30-Oct. 3, 2010. Community Journalism is the capstone course for journalism majors and is used in assessment of the program.

•    Students in COMJIG head Doug Fisher’s public affairs reporting class at South Carolina covered the Legislature in the spring and broke several stories, including one about an overlooked bill that would require judges to take breastfeeding into account in custody disputes. The stories were published on Dateline Carolina, the school’s news site, and picked up by S.C. News Exchange, the news-sharing service run by the state press association. Fisher also continued teaching editing and multimedia in the school’s capstone course, “The Carolina Reporter,” that immerses students in the equivalent of a mid-sized community newsroom. He also spent much of the year enmeshed in efforts to completely rework the school’s curriculum. He continues to teach in the Newsplex Summer Seminars and was guest lecturer on the topic of using multimedia and community building online to increase the reach of community media for a group of Azerbaijani journalists visiting the U.S. He also was part of a panel examining what changes are needed in the way we teach editing as part of the American Copy Editors Society annual convention in Philadelphia this past spring.

•    Students in Gilligan’s Investigative Journalism class this spring produced 18 stories about the local rental housing situation, several of which were published in the campus student newspaper. Last fall students in this course contacted state legislators in an examination of how money to local nonprofit organizations was assigned and spent. She also placed about a dozen students in internships with community media organizations

•    Member Huntly Collins has worked with her community journalism students at La Salle University in Philadelphia to start GermantownBeat, a news site covering the city’s Germantown neighborhood – a largely working-class black community with roots that date to colonial times. The new site is: http://germantownbeat.lasalle.edu. In fall 2010, the site will partner with WHYY, Philadelphia's public broadcasting company, in a national experiment providing hyperlocal news coverage on the Web of seven neighborhoods in Northwest Philadelphia. Currently, GermantownBeat partners with two neighborhood weekly newspapers and a neighborhood-based, 24-hour Internet radio station.

•    Founding COMJIG head Jock Lauterer launched an online and print community lab newspaper, the Northeast Central Durham VOICE, for the inner-city neighborhood in the neighboring city of Durham. durhamvoice.org is a partnership with the local HBCU, North Carolina Central University, and local urban teens. Lauterer, director of the Carolina Community Media Project, also was honored this spring by the University for his work with the VOICE, receiving the Office of Provost Engaged Scholarship Award. Additionally, the Scholastic Journalism Division of AEJMC honored Lauterer as a runner-up in the 2010 Innovative Outreach competition.

•    COMJIG member and former head Bill Reader, Ohio, will be one of several faculty members providing teaching and mentoring for journalists from around the world who are attending a monthlong visit to Ohio University via the U.S. Media Study Institute. Reader will conduct sessions and mentoring in the area of community journalism. The session is coordinated by Mary Rogus, Ohio, who is most active in the RTV Division but is a COMJIG supporter.

•    Member Jeremy Littau helped pilot the launch of multimedia journalism offerings at Lehigh University, a smaller program traditionally focused on print journalism. As a new professor, he offered Multimedia Reporting that broke new ground for the program by teaching multimedia skills to the students while also turning the news focus from the campus community toward the city of Bethlehem, where the university is located. Using social media as a bridge between the student reporters and people in the community, the students worked on four team-reporting projects focused on an issue of interest to the community by using those media tools to connect with the audience and learn from their expertise. The packages were then published online and promoted via social media both by the students and residents who were part of this local conversation. Response from both students and the community was enthusiastic, and the course will be a regular curricular offering beginning this fall.

•    Last year, COMJIG member and current secretary Al Cross established Midway Messenger, a student-written news site for Midway, Ky., pop. 1,620, a prosperous town that once had a newspaper and generates considerable news, some of which is not fully reported by the county-seat weekly. This year, the Messenger made some law in getting the attorney general to say for the first time when a proposed city budget becomes public (when the mayor gives it to the council). Cross also started another student reporting project, Foothills in Focus, to help weekly newspapers in Appalachian Kentucky adopt multimedia, with a grant from the McCormick Foundation through West Virginia University.

15. Because many of our faculty members also have strong professional ties and are involved in experiential learning, many of the things listed here under teaching also have strong PF&R aspects. COMJIG’s teaching mission has always been to use communities as places where journalism students can broaden and polish the skills they learn in the classroom while deepening their knowledge. This also provides areas in need of strong community media with quality journalism products. Our members then bring this experience to the annual conferences where they share course content, curricular innovations, and new teaching strategies through our consistently strong teaching panels. Our members consistently receive teaching awards.

PF&R (professional freedom and responsibility):
16. As noted earlier, COMJIG’s orientation as a bridge between the academic and professional worlds means that much of what we do has PF&R aspects, even though it may also fall into other areas. Our panel on ethics challenges for community journalists includes not only implications for those teaching ethics but clearly involves PF&R, as does the look at how journalism programs are creating community media for underserved areas using student journalists. Last year, in Boston, we had three PF&R panels; this year in Denver we specifically have one, co-sponsored with Newspaper Division: “Community Newspapers: Healthiest in the Trade, But for How Long?” The issues of whether and for how long current media can survive, especially in communities where there are few other outlets, are central to free expression and public service.
We also are co-sponsoring with Civic and Citizen Journalism the annual J-Lab luncheon “Networked Journalism: How Old and New Media are Collaborating.” Again we note that there are strong public service, ethics, and inclusiveness aspects to our panels not designated as PF&R that still clearly apply to PF&R concerns.
The following non-AEJMC members are scheduled to participate on COMJIG PF&R panels at the 2010 convention, reflecting the group's ties to the profession:
•    Benjy Hamm, executive editor, Landmark Community Newspapers, Shelbyville, Ky.
•    Dean Lehman, president/editor, Lehman Communications Corp., Longmont, Colo.
•    M.E. Sprengelmeyer, editor/publisher, Guadalupe County (N.M.) Communicator
•    Faith and John Wylie, Oologah Lake Leader, Oologah, Okla.
In addition, the following will be part of the J-Lab luncheon:
•    Bob Payne, director of communities, SeattleTimes.com
•    Steve Gunn, editor, innovations and news products, Charlotte Observer
•    Rick Hirsch, senior editor-multimedia, The Miami Herald

17. This is a partial list of PF&R activities beyond the convention by some members:

•    COMJIG head Doug Fisher, South Carolina, is on the steering committee of the Institute for Rural Journalists and Community Issues, headquartered at the University of Kentucky. He is executive editor of The Convergence Newsletter from the Newsplex at The University of South Carolina and is working with Media General to revive the Hartsville Today community website after a computer crash wiped out the files in October 2009. He writes the monthly “Common Sense Journalism” column published by press associations around the country (now surpassing 100 columns) and this past January wrote “Twitter’s ability to make news mobile catches on at smaller papers” for Publishers’ Auxiliary. His Common Sense Journalism blog entry “J-lab/New Voices: Peering into the future” also was republished as an AEJMC Hot Topic. He spent the summer of 2009 in the newsroom of The Sumter (S.C.) Item, where he served as a new-media consultant, conducted training sessions, and pulled some editing shifts. He presented the session “Missing in Plain Sight” at this year’s American Copy Editors Society conference in Philadelphia and was a member of a panel examining whether and how the teaching of editing needs to change. He is a judge of the Society of Professional Journalists’ regional and national Mark of Excellence contests and was a reviewer of papers for an upcoming special community journalism issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

•    Former COMJIG head Elizabeth Hansen and fellow Eastern Kentucky faculty member Deborah Givens organized a session titled “The Future of Newspapers in Appalachia” for the Appalachian Studies Association conference held at North Georgia College & State University in Dahlonega, Ga., March 19-21, 2010. Hansen was one of the organizers for the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors annual conference in June on the campus of Eastern Kentucky and co-sponsored by the Department of Communication at Eastern and the University of Kentucky. She and Givens also judged the 2010 Golden Quill contest for ISWNE. Hansen was the moderator for “Where to Stand on Standards,” an ethics session at the Society of Professional Journalists national convention in Indianapolis, Aug. 29, 2009. She is also the Region 5 Director for SPJ and serves on its national board. She is also a member of the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation board.

•    Teaching head Eileen Gilligan, SUNY-Oswego, writes a monthly column for Family Times, the monthly free magazine published by the Syracuse New Times. She also attended the N.Y. State Press Association annual conference in Saratoga Springs where the talk centered on social media and community journalists’ blogs and Web pages and the Journalism That Matters conference in the Pacific Northwest where discussion was about micro-local community journalism blogs and how students would learn traditional skills while working in the new era of same-time publication technology.

•    PF&R head Ralph Hanson, Nebraska-Kearney, was a prolific contributor to the COMJIG blog, which we use in place of a newsletter to keep in touch with members. His postings included what employers are looking for in community journalists, the use of social media in community journalism, and reactions of community journalists to their work.

•    Secretary Al Cross, Kentucky, was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. He planned the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors conference along with Hansen. He is a consultant and a major source for "Coal In Kentucky," an hourlong, state-financed documentary being released June 22. He also spoke to the (Texas) Panhandle Press Association and the Alaska Press Club on "The Conundrum of Community Journalism: Personal and Professional” and arranged and moderated "Community Journalism: The Bright Spot in Traditional Journalism," at the SPJ Convention and National Journalism Conference. He was one of three judges in the Community Journalism competition of the National Journalism Awards, sponsored by the Scripps Howard Foundation (the winner later won the Pulitzer for public service.). He published "In the Internet age, your newspaper can still compete" in the April 2010 issue of Publishers’ Auxiliary. He helped to pass a state law to create tax credits for gifts to community foundations and has signed up to give testimony to the Postal Rate Commission against the proposal to end Saturday mail delivery, because of what it would do to rural newspapers and their readers. Testimony will be filed in late July.

•    Member Chad Stebbins, Missouri Southern State, continues to serve as executive director of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors and editor of Grassroots Editor, ISWNE's quarterly journal.

•    In January 2010, NHK, a Japanese public broadcasting company, interviewed COMJIG members Steve Smethers and Gloria Freeland, both of Kansas State, about their 2005 study, “No Union in Humboldt: Readers’ Perceptions of Loss When a Community Loses Its Paper.” The paper was presented at the 2006 AEJMC convention in San Francisco. The Japanese crew interviewed Smethers and people in Humboldt, Kan., for a two-part documentary that aired in Japan in March. The documentary was part of NHK’s annual review of the state of the media.

•    Freeland is also the coordinator for the centennial celebration of the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications. She has done historical research and is in charge of all events, which will be Sept. 2-4, 2010. Both houses of the Kansas legislature honored the Miller School with resolutions congratulating its faculty, staff and students for 100 years of service to the state, nation and world. Freeland also received a second-place award from Kansas Professional Communicators and a third-place award from the Kansas Press Association for column writing. Freeland wrote a weekly column in the Riley (Kan.) Countian for more than eight years and is now writing “Kansas Snapshots,” a weekly online column (www.kansassnapshots.com).

•    Member and former COMJIG head Bill Reader, Ohio, in June conducted a workshop on the ethical implications of interactivity at the annual convention of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, held at Eastern Kentucky in Richmond.

•    Research head Joe Marren is an advisory committee member for The Journalism History Hub, an integrated, research-based interdisciplinary social network and content repository for researchers working in the field of journalism history. He also was a paper reviewer for the Communicating Science, Health, Environment and Risk interest group and has been a reviewer for Newspaper Research Journal since 2004. He also has been a judge since 2004 for history papers were presented at joint meetings of the American Journalism Historians Association and AEJMC, 2004-present.

•    Brian Steffens remains executive director of the National Newspaper Association and publisher of Publishers’ Auxiliary. He has written several articles on community newspaper readership research by the NNA with the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri, and with Pulse Research of Portland, Ore. He also did a presentation on new trends in media for Arab News reporters and editors and for women journalists at the College of Business Administration (women’s campus) in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

18. We have written in previous reports that COMJIG “seeks to ensure that community media are included in the national conversation about journalism's future.” But as the gap between the economic health of big-city newspapers and their community brethren has widened, plus with the emergence of new media models, most of which are more like traditional community models than major metros, COMJIG is at the forefront of championing research and cooperation into the wide range of issues this shift is producing. Our members spend many hours at workshops and seminars providing free or low-cost advice based on both years of experience and familiarity with current research. We want to continue expanding to serve not only geographic communities, but other types (ethnic, occupational, communities of interest, etc.) and forms (radio, television, digital, magazines, etc.). Still up for consideration is a collaborative project with CCJIG to show journalists how to more effectively use both community and civic journalism in their news operations. Some of that will depend on the ability to find funding.
General Information:

19. Please attach copies of the newsletters sent by your group this year, and any other
material you wish us to note.
We do not publish a newsletter. Instead, we maintain a blog (http://comjig.blogspot.com/) that serves as a newsletter and a forum for discussion of key issues. We also maintain an interest group on Yahoo groups, which provides a timely and efficient way to communicate with our members and make relevant documents available. IG head Doug Fisher also serves as webmaster overseeing both.

COMJIG draft meeting minutes from Boston 2009

2010-06-14T13:41:00.001-04:00

In preparation for our upcoming meeting in Denver, here is a copy of last year's meeting minutes. Please e-mail me with any corrections or comments.
Doug

Community Journalism Interest Group
Annual Meeting, Boston, Mass., Aug. 6, 2009
6:45 p.m.

These meeting minutes should be considered a draft until they are approved or amended and approved at the 2010 annual meeting in Denver.

Joint meeting – COMJIG/CCJIG

We again began with a joint meeting with the Civic and Citizen Journalism IG. Liz Hansen, COMJIG head, and Nikhil Moro, CCJIG head, presided with 24 people attending.

Discussion items:

Possible combination of the IGs
Discussion about possibly combining CCJIG and COMJIG to form a division. Moro says it is a good time to discuss given the expanding research in both areas.

A lengthy discussion ensued. Among the points:
•   What are the advantages? More papers – CCJIG papers up sharply from 18 last year. About double and more from students. COMJIG had about 10 papers but is renewing efforts to get more.
•   Membership – Overlap may not be as strong as first appears. CCJIG has 118, COMJIG has 101.
•   Question raised about subject matter overlap. Hansen says COMJIG focuses more on smaller operations while CCJIG includes more non-journalist actors.
•   Disadvantages include loss of identity and leadership opportunities.
•   Among our guests was Ben Ilfeld, operations manager of the online site sacramentopress.com. He says "we exist at the intersection" of community and civic journalism. Says if he knew that was to be the version of the future, combine. But he's not sure of that, so might be best to be separate for now.
•   There were suggestions from Len Witt and others that the IGs might commission a paper to look at the changing times and how they might be converging or perhaps issue a special call for research into the intersection of CCJIG/COMJIG with a focus on theory and practice and a monetary award for best paper. (Doug Fisher noted the paper(s) could be published in the Convergence Newsletter.)

No decision was reached. The incoming COMJIG and CCJIG heads agreed to continue discussions. Fisher, incoming COMJIG head, agreed to get the membership lists analyzed as to overlap.

Industry workshops and other help to industry
Al Cross said he wants the NNA Foundation to promote research on how smaller news operations can adapt in a 24/7 world. Possible industry workshops that will take budget and organization. Possible hook-up also with SNPA. No action was taken.

COMJIG meeting
Both IGs then adjourned to their separate meetings; seven people attended the COMJIG session.

Minutes: The 2008 annual meeting minutes were adopted unanimously without change upon motion and second from the floor.

Research report: Nine papers, seven accepted. Discussion on increasing submissions included several options including special call and expanding cash awards of $100 or both student and faculty best papers. Doug said if named head he would work with expected incoming research head Joe Marren on possible special call or other wording that would emphasize community not only as geographic but also as community of interests, which is becoming more important digitally. Motion made from floor and seconded to expand cash awards to both student and faculty. Approved on voice vote.

Discussion of goals next year. It was concluded we should focus research, increase international participation, and emphasize the role of community journalism in the online and suburban newspaper areas.

Discussion continued on possible combination with CCJIG. Several people expressed misgivings. Andris Straumanis noted one of the reasons separate IGs were created was to differentiate the issues. Cross said it couldn't ~~help~~ hurt to give it further consideration and research. Hansen noted that COMJIG's bylaws, compared with CCJIG's, were very media centric.

Officers: The following slate was nominated and seconded
•   Doug Fisher, head (from vice head). Also will remain webmaster.
•   Andris Straumanis, vice head (from research)
•   Joe Marren, research
•   Eileen Gilligan, teaching (remains in position)
•   Ralph Hanson, PF&R

The secretary/membership position was open. Cross volunteered to do it and was added to the slate, which was approved by acclamation.

The new officers then assumed their positions, and Fisher accepted the golden pica pole as new IG head.

Hansen filled in the new officers that DIG news will change format and require one longer-form article a year from the IG head.

Hansen moved that dues be kept at $5 yearly. Seconded. Passed unanimously on a show of hands.

Discussion about COMJIG logos that Doug put together for use on Yahoo site and blog. Motion from floor to accept either. Seconded and approved unanimously by voice vote. Doug has chosen to use the one below:

[see blog header for image]

Motion to adjourn from the floor, duly seconded and approved. Meeting adjourned 8:23 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Doug Fisher

Balancing Community News, Citizen Participation

2010-06-14T11:22:00.000-04:00

Worth reading might be the Suburban Newspapers Association recent report (PDF) on citizen participation in community news.

From a recent summary in the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association newsletter:

76 percent of respondents believe the public should be allowed to interact through newspaper websites. They want to be able to comment on stories, post their opinions, participate in forum discussions and provide reviews.
26 percent of the users of newspaper websites said they think stories on those sites should be written only by professional journalists. Fifty-five percent of the respondents believe content submitted by citizens who are qualified because they are an expert on a specific topic or witnessed a news report should be allowed to post news.
Eighty-six percent feel it's important that newspapers label the content source and 77 percent say contributors should register. Sixty percent believe they should be required to use their real name. But the survey found that registering does not seem to deter participation and using real names also does not appear to be a significant deterrent.
Forty-eight percent of newspaper executives said user-generated content has no impact on credibility, 27 percent believe it can increase credibility and 25 percent think it decreases credibility.

COMJIG annual report - need your info

2010-05-27T12:24:00.000-04:00

Community Journalism Interest Group Members:
(Cross-posted to Yahoo mail group)

Annual report time is upon us again, and once again we are soliciting your input.

To make the report representative of what our members are doing, please e-mail IG Head Doug Fisher (dfisher@sc.edu) a summary of any research, presentations/publications, innovative teaching, service or other work done in advancing the cause of community journalism this past year.

It would be helpful if you could segment your note by those topics. Here are a couple of sample entries from last year's report under research:

COMJIG member Rex A. Martin, Bowie State, contributed a dozen entries to the new six-volume "Encyclopedia of Journalism" that Sage is releasing in September. His entries ranged from "Controlled Circulation" to "Obituaries" to "Self-Regulation" to the "Stars & Stripes." Where appropriate, he inserted references to community journalism, and some entries - such as that for "Weeklies" - have obvious relevance.

COMJIG member Michael Ray Smith, Campbell, published two articles in Grassroots Editor: 1) Smith, M. R. & Lilley, M. (2008, Winter). The seven questions and The Daily Record. Grassroots Editor, 49(4), 19-20, and 2) Smith, M. R. (2008, Fall). Hyperlocalism and The Daily Record. Grassroots Editor, 49(3), 12-17. Smith is also working on a book about the handwritten newspapers of John McLean Harrington.

A few from teaching:

•    Member Al Cross established Midway Messenger, a student-written news site for Midway, Ky., pop. 1,620, a prosperous town that once had a newspaper and generates considerable news, some of which is not fully reported by the county-seat weekly. See www.MidwayMessenger.org, http://midwayky.blogspot.com.

•    Member Patricia Thomas, Georgia, taught a graduate course in Health and Medical Journalism, spring 2009. Students in this reporting/writing seminar were each assigned to cover health beat in one Northeast Georgia county. They partnered with undergraduates in documentary photography to produce multimedia packages about each county. Their aggregated blogs are available at http://deepsouthhealth.blogspot.com. Go to www.grady.uga.edu/knighthealth to see the “Rural Health” package that the graduate and undergraduate students produced together. On that same page, click on “student portfolios” to see additional stories they wrote.

•    Member Andrea Frantz, Wilkes, received a Faculty Achievement Award for her teaching and research.

And a few from PF&R:

•    Don Corrigan, Webster, who is editor of two community weeklies, won 2nd place in Column Writing at the 2008 Independent Free Papers Association Convention (IFPA) in Seattle, and his newspaper group won numerous other awards, including General Excellence. Corrigan won 3rd place for Best Outdoor Story for weeklies at the 2008 Missouri Press Association Convention in Columbia, Mo.

•    Member Al Cross, Kentucky, conducted two seminars titled “Sorting Through the Smoke” on covering local tobacco and health issues in Danville and Madisonville, Ky., May 15 and 29, 2009. The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which Cross directs, received the 2009 Media Award presented by the East Kentucky Leadership Foundation.

•    Member Deborah Givens and Head Elizabeth Hansen, Eastern Kentucky, and member Al Cross, Kentucky, are planning the 2010 conference of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, which EKU and UK will co-host at Eastern Kentucky University in June 2010.

•    Member Chad Stebbins, Missouri Southern State, continues to serve as executive director of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors and editor of Grassroots Editor, ISWNE's quarterly journal.

I appreciate your help on this. The IG is up for review next year, and we want to give incoming head Andris Straumanis a strong report.

Doug Fisher

Top papers announced

2010-05-24T15:41:00.003-04:00

Congratulations to Steve Smethers of Kansas State University and Tracy Loope of the University of Florida. Each authored the top COMJIG paper in their various categories for this summer's AEJMC conference in Denver.

Smethers wrote the top faculty paper, "After the Storm: Greensburg Residents Discuss An Open Source Project As A Source of Community News."

Loope's paper was "Heart Disease In The Rural South: A Content Analysis Of The Community Newspaper Coverage."

Their papers will be two of the three presented at the COMJIG refereed research session from 11:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 5, at the AEJMC conference in Denver.

Knight Chair Starts Community Journalism Blog

2010-05-22T20:24:00.003-04:00

Knight Chair Pam Fine at University of Kansas has started a blog called JLocal to look at how to teach students to cover communities. One thing I like about it is that she looks at community journalism extending from a Philadelphia-area public affairs news audit to a hyperlocal food news site being created by a group of students at CUNY.

Community Journalism and Engagement

2010-03-23T09:22:00.004-04:00

Steve Buttry, director of community engagement for Allbritton Communications says the key for the news business in the 21st century is figuring out ways to get members of the community directly involved in their news. He writes:

I’m not looking for someone who can cover sports, though Editor Erik Wemple will be hiring a few people to do that. I am looking for someone who can recruit fans to liveblog high school games.

I am not looking for someone who can cover entertainment (though again, Erik will be hiring people to do that). I’ll be looking for someone who can promote use of a Twitter hashtag by people attending a concert and pull together a crowd review from tweets.

I have some ideas and I will be looking for people who can help me execute those. But mostly I’m looking for people who have better ideas than I do about how to engage our community.

Steve's blog is worth a look if you want to see some innovative thinking about combining traditional community journalism with social media.

AP veteran picks up where old paper left off

2010-03-18T16:50:00.003-04:00

Dan Robrish left his AP job in Philly to start a newspaper in the small south-central-Pennsylvania college town of Elizabethtown, and, from his interview in Philly Mag, picks up a chorus that many of us COMJIG members have been singing for decades:

“It’s often said that newspapers are dying, but that’s a gross oversimplification,” stresses Robrish. “The papers with the big problems are the metropolitan dailies. You can get that information from so many sources. But here, if you want to read a professionally written news story about what the Board of Township Supervisors did on Thursday, you really don’t have much choice but to pick up the Elizabethtown Advocate, because I was the only journalist at that meeting. I am the only game in town.”

Good luck, Dan.

Here's the story.

Mutter finds outllok for community papers mixed

2010-03-16T01:41:00.003-04:00

Alan Mutter, the "Newsosaur," digs into the outlook for community newspapers and finds that while things are better than their big-city brethren, there are some serious caution areas on the horizon.

Among them:

A readership that is aging faster than metro areas
Over-dependence on fewer advertisers
Need to invest in more compelling content and innovative ad platforms

Daniel Gilbert of Bristol paper wins first community journalism prize in National Journalism Awards

2010-03-15T13:49:00.005-04:00

The first award for community journalism in the National Journalism Awards went to Daniel Gilbert, left, of the Bristol Herald Courier "for lifting the lid on a 20-year-old state law that allowed the energy industry to profit without compensating property owners" in Southwest Virginia, says the Scripps Howard Foundation, which sponsors the awards. Each award carries a cash prize of $10,000. The Rural Blog said the 28-year-old Gilbert's series exposed "the mess Virginia and its natural-gas companies have made of a law and program to develop the state's coalbed methane and pay royalties to those who have a claim on it." (Read more) The editor of the 33,000-circulation Media General paper, J. Todd Foster, wrote that it exposed "malfeasance, corruption and outrage."

Scripps Howard established the award because "Community journalism is vitally important, not just to journalism today, but to the future of journalism, and we wanted to recognize the outstanding work that's being done," Vice President Sue Porter said. Recognition is more likely with the new category; Gilbert's entry impressed judges in the public-service competition, but was not a finalist. But one community journalist was a finalist in another category. Jim Kenyon, a staff writer for The Valley News in Lebanon, N.H., and White River Junction, Vt., circulation 16,000, was a finalist in the NJA's commentary competition, along with Gerald Seib of The Wall Street Journal. The winner was Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. For examples of Kenyon's work, taking Dartmouth College administrators and faculty to task for not sharing in the pain of budget cuts, and uncovering preferential treatment for a movie star who got caught speeding on a rural highway, click here.

A book featuring the winners and their work, and videos about the winners' work and acceptance speeches, will be available at www.scripps.com/foundation after the April 23 awards presentation. A printed copy may also be requested. The community-journalism category was judged by Kerry Duke, managing editor of KyPost.com; Rusty Coats, vice president of content and marketing for E.W. Scripps Co.; and the undersigned, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.

Auburn Job Opening

2010-03-05T18:50:00.001-05:00

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Journalism

Position Number: 116210

Position: The Department of Communication and Journalism at Auburn University invites applications for a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor of Journalism beginning Fall Semester, August 16, 2010.

Responsibilities:

The candidate’s primary teaching assignments will include print and broadcast news reporting and writing. The successful candidate also should be able to contribute to one or more of the following teaching areas: advanced reporting, editing, newspaper design, media law, audio-visual production, photojournalism and advanced feature writing. The ideal candidate will have the ability to teach the application of digital technology in reporting in print, broadcast and online media.

Tenure-track faculty members are expected to engage in scholarly research or appropriate creative work. In addition to teaching five courses per year, responsibilities include service to the department, college and the professional journalism community; advising students; teaching graduate-level courses and directing theses in the graduate program.

Qualifications: The ideal candidate will have a Ph.D., and at least three years of full-time professional newsroom experience as a journalist or a master’s degree and at least eight years of full-time professional newsroom experience as a journalist. Applicants should have successful college teaching experience and a solid record of scholarly productivity or substantive evidence of research potential. Salary is competitive, dependent on qualifications, and contingent on funding.

Application: Send letter of application, vita, official transcripts of graduate work (copies are not acceptable), statement of research and teaching interests, proof of teaching effectiveness and three letters of recommendation as well as the recommenders’ daytime telephone numbers to:

Dr. Jennifer Wood Adams, Chair

Journalism Search Committee

Department of Communication and Journalism

232 Tichenor Hall

Auburn University, AL 36849

334-844-2727

No e-mailed applications will be accepted.

Review of applications will begin March 19, 2010, and continue until a candidate is selected.

The candidate selected for this position must be able to meet eligibility requirements to work in the United States at the time the appointment is scheduled to begin and continue working legally for the proposed term of employment; excellent communication skills required.

Auburn University is a comprehensive research institution with an enrollment of nearly 25,000 students. The Department of Communication and Journalism has four undergraduate majors and a Master’s program.

Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

Auburn University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer

Leader in community journalism in New York dies

2010-03-04T10:23:00.000-05:00

Below is the obituary of Vicki Simons, who was instrumental in the creation of the Center for Community Journalism at SUNY Oswego. I worked with her at the center for three years. An indicator of the kind of newswoman she was is that she wrote her own obituary.

Victoria A. Simons
Newspaper Editor/Owner

Victoria Alda Simons died of lung cancer on March 1 at her home in Ghent surrounded by family.

For 15 years she was editor of the twice-weekly Independent Newspaper, published out of Hillsdale and serving as official newspaper-of-record for virtually every government entity in Columbia and southern Rensselaer counties.

Following sale of the paper in 2001, she became a participating founder and first executive director of Columbia County Bounty, a non-profit that connects local farmers to local chefs and consumers to promote local agriculture. She played an integral role in expanding the Bounty model to other Hudson Valley counties, and last year coordinated Bounty’s signature “Taste of….” event.

In 1996 she was elected as the first woman to serve on the board of the Columbia County Agricultural Society, which puts on the annual Columbia County Fair. Among other responsibilities, she handled marketing, corporate sponsorships, and efforts to expand use of the fairgrounds for other events. She held the title of vice-president until she was named a board member emerita in 2009.

In 2005 she volunteered with Unite for Sight, providing simple eye care to Burmese refugees in Northern Thailand. Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, she spent a month as shelter director with the American Red Cross in Louisiana.

During her career as editor of The Independent, which she co-owned with her husband Tony Jones, the paper compiled an impressive record of growth, including acquiring an arts and entertainment publication, The Paper, and two antiquing guides. The newspaper was honored as the inaugural recipient of the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce’s Crystal Apple Award.

During her newspaper career, Vicki served as President of the New York Press Association during 1996-97, and also helped create the Center for Community Journalism at SUNY Oswego. In 1998 she received the National Newspaper Association’s Emma C. McKinney Award for outstanding leadership and service in the field of community journalism.

Outside her work, she was involved in a wide array of community service activities, including serving with Tony for 6 years as Columbia County Coordinators of the Fresh Air Fund. Lamark Murray spent seven summers with them and continues in touch 22 years later.

Additionally, she was a founder and first coordinator of Roe Jan Hospice. She served several years on the boards of United Way of Columbia & Greene Counties and Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood. She was a volunteer with International Friendship Exchange, a coach for the Ghent Junior Girls Softball League, and a long-time participant in the Leadership Columbia County media trainings.

A graduate of the Skip Barber Driving School, she was an avid golfer who served on the Board of the Columbia Golf & Country Club.

A journalist to the end, she catalogued her battle with lung cancer at http://vickicancer.blogspot.com

Born August 9, 1944 in St Louis, MO, she was the daughter of the late Henry N. and Harriette A. Simons, of Manhattan, who survives.

She graduated from Mary A. Burnham School before attending Cornell University and earning a B.A. in English Literature from Queens College.

She worked as a counselor in one of the country’s first licensed abortion clinics, Eastern Women’s Center in Manhattan, where she eventually became vice-president for operations, including affiliate clinics in Boston and Kansas City. She earned an M.P.A. in Health Care Administration from New York University, and was active in the founding of the National Abortion Federation.

She and her husband, who met in Marrakesh, Morocco in 1971, moved to Columbia County from Manhattan in 1977, settling first in Copake and moving to Ghent in 1992.

In Copake she worked as director of distribution for independent New York video producer Martha Stuart. She and her husband later founded MessageDesk in Hillsdale before purchasing the Roe Jan Independent newspaper in 1986.

In addition to her mother, Vicki is survived by her husband Tony Jones of Ghent; two daughters, Eleanor Jones Rossi (Robert) of Brooklyn, and Mara Simons-Jones of Austin, TX; sons Christopher K. Jones (Gwenda Marchione) of Ghent; Jayson H. Simons-Jones of Crested Butte, CO; D. Hamilton Simons-Jones (Annette) of New Orleans, LA; two grandsons, Casey and Christopher Jones of Ghent; two granddaughters, Charlotte and Arabelle Rossi of Brooklyn; brother F. Adam Simons of Los Angeles; and the family golden retriever Maxwell, a loyal companion during her illness.

A celebration of her life will be held at the Columbia County Fairhouse in Chatham at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 14. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Central Asia Institute, P.O. Box 7209, Bozeman, MT 59771 (www.ikat.org); or the Community Hospice of Columbia & Greene Counties, 47 Liberty Street, Catskill, NY 12414.

Community Journalism and Social Media

2010-03-02T12:41:00.003-05:00

The following is a slightly edited version of a post from my blog Living in a Media World:

One of the biggest stories in the media world right now is the growth of social media as a major source of breaking news.

We saw this in January with the rapid spread of the news about the Haitian earthquake spreading by Facebook and Twitter, not only among individuals, but also through news organizations.

Before that it was news from the election protests out of Iran and from the 2008 terror attacks from Mumbai. These are all stories where the news itself was flowing via social media, not just links to the legacy (MSM) media.

But this weekend the story of social media as a source of news became personal for me. A source of community journalism.

The news of the earthquake in Chile on Saturday hit my family with a shock. Benny, one of my eldest's best friends, is on a Rotary student exchange to Chile right now, and his host city is about 60 miles or so from the epicenter of the quake. To make matters worse, his mother was visiting him. All of Benny's friend's started posting "Tell us you are alive" messages to his Facebook page. All of his dad's friends (myself included) started posting "Tell us Benny and Roz are ok" messages to his Facebook page.

Benny's dad quickly got the word out that he had heard nothing, but was assuming that meant everyone was ok. He also told us to keep watching Facebook for updates. Later in the day, he announced that Benny and his mom were safe, traveling about 500 miles from where the quake had happened. It was an enormous relief to us all.

I've been writing for a couple of years about how important social media are as a source of breaking news. I've joked about how all the news I need I can get from Facebook. But this time I mean it - Social media are great sources of news when you want it to be about your own community, your own group of people you care about. And this is something all news media, including community media, really need to understand.

call for papers

2010-03-01T10:35:00.001-05:00

The Community Journalism Interest Group (COMJIG) is interested in research focused on any and all aspects of community journalism. We emphasize that community need not just be defined as within traditional geographical or social boundaries, but that given technological advances it may also be applied to journalism and its relationship to communities of interest online.
Our goal is to identify and present original, meaningful research that advances the understanding of the role of journalists and news organizations as members of communities, geographic or digital. We have particular interest in issues unique to those situations where as a function of geography or technology the community and news organization tend to be or have the potential to become highly engaged. Quantitative and qualitative methods are equally welcomed, as are attempts at mixed methodology. Theoretical groundings are appreciated. Only serious and complete research-based studies will be considered. Do not submit opinion essays, incomplete pilot studies, literature reviews, or other incomplete or unscholarly works.
Papers should be a maximum of 7,500 words long (about 25 pages, double-spaced) and adhere to APA or Chicago citation style. Please provide a running title on each page and include an abstract of no more than 75 words.
In evaluating papers for research presentations, COMJIG makes no distinction between faculty and graduate student work.
COMJIG encourages graduate student submissions in its Top Student Paper competition. To be considered for the competition, papers must be wholly the work of students. The author(s) of the top student paper will receive a $100 award and a certificate.
Likewise, COMJIG encourages faculty submissions in its Top Faculty Paper competition. To be considered for the competition, papers must be wholly the work of faculty. The author(s) of the top faculty paper also receives a $100 award and a certificate.
Information concerning submissions: Contact COMJIG Research Chair Joe Marren by e-mail (marrenjj@buffalostate.edu) or telephone (716-878-3794).

Two great resources for community journalism research at Illinois

2010-02-27T10:04:00.001-05:00

Last year I was doing some searching for research produced by Phillip Tichenor when I stumbled across something called the Phillip Tichenor Collection. I was surprised to find the collection was not at the University of Minnesota, where Tichenor is an emeritus professor, but instead is housed at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana.
This discovery led me to two wonderful resources. The first is the Agricultural Communications Document Center; the second is Dr. James Evans, the man who overseas this vast collection of resources.
The collection has more than 30,000 documents, with its main focus, on agricultural communications, but the overlap to things useful and relevant to community journalism are natural and strong, with a vast collection of both work on journalism in the United States and on media globally, with a lot of very important research on media in rural communities and developing nations. Look through the database and you'll find much of the work produced by Al Cross and company at the University of Kentucky as well as many of the conference papers presented at COMJIG's research sessions at AEJMC.
In my two day visit, Dr. Evans proved to be an amazing resource. He spends his days souring the Web looking for research relevant to the center he has created and is very interested in sharing this resource with the world. He set me up with two research assistants and I left with more ideas than I know what to do with.

VPA To Host Community Journalism Workshop

2010-02-15T09:29:00.002-05:00

The Virginia Press Association will be hosting a two-day community journalism workshop aimed at beginning journalists, interns, copy editors, and anyone else wanting to improve their skills. The workshop will be held June 24-25, 2010, in Glen Allen, VA.

Among the topics for the workshop include interviewing techniques, beat maintenance, FOIA, new media, and storytelling techniques.

Portland Sentinel Closing

2010-02-10T09:58:00.002-05:00

For the last five years the Portland Sentinel has been operating as an online and print hyperlocal paper serving the North Portland area. But according to Oregonian columnist Anna Griffin, that run is coming to an end because of lack of advertising revenue.

The paper was being run by Cornelius Swart, who decided he would rather close the news outlet down rather than try to operate with a skeleton staff or become a boosterish publication that blurs the line between advertising and editorial.

The community will continue to be served by the much smaller scale twice-a-month St. Johns Review.

Special call: Social Justice in the Clasroom

2010-02-04T21:37:00.002-05:00

As a service to the Small Programs Interest Group, we are sharing this research call:

We teach techniques and technology, law and theory, but how should we handle questions of social justice?

Advocacy for the poor and powerless is nothing new to journalism. Muckrakers and crusaders through the decades have lived by the motto: “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” Many of us teach students about America's strong tradition of the alternative press that still thrives today. Additionally, many colleges and universities have social justice as part of their mission.

But what should this mean to journalism educators? How does a commitment to social justice square with journalists’ ideals of fairness, accuracy, impartiality and truth? Here’s a chance to explore. SPIG invites critical essays, qualitative papers, and quantitative research on the issues and questions involved in pursuing justice through the journalism classroom.

We already have a slot reserved for this research panel during the Denver convention – 5 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 5. This is in addition to our regular research showcase at the scholar-to-scholar session.

Submit your papers through the standard All Academic on-line process by April 1. (Details available at: http://aejmc.org/_10call.php) Make sure you use the phrase “social justice” somewhere in the title.

If you have any questions, please contact either of us:

Research Co-Chairs
John Jenks (jjenks@dom.edu)
Teresa Housel (housel@hope.edu)

Paying for Online Stories

2010-01-27T09:42:00.003-05:00

As newspapers scramble for ways to make money, the New York Times has turned to a fee-for-service model for online readers--to begin in about a year.
New online columnist Robert Wright writes Jan. 26 about the possibilities of this fee system working and encourages the use of a "micropayments" fee system that would essentially charge article for article and directly bill to one of our already established accounts like iTunes.
Would this work for community newspapers?
The Times plans to allow readers to read for free if they come to an article via a blog or other referral. That seems too risky for community newspapers; one or two local bloggers could subscribe to the paper and then refer their readers to most of the articles.
A key to the Times' new fee system is that readers would get a number of "free" reads each month before they have to start paying or subscribing for the online service. I wonder if that would work well for community papers. Let readers get a taste of the paper each month and then, when they want more, they may be more likely to just pony up the subscription fee.

Stories on Community Journalism

2010-01-26T22:12:00.004-05:00

I always enjoy hearing what people have to say about working in community journalism. Here are a few samples:

Lil Mirando - Honored to Practice Community Journalism (Hammond Star) - "My first day on the job I learned that the police reporter before me had screwed up his notes about a crime report and erroneously listed a store manager as a shoplifter. As a result, we had a huge trust issue with the police. It was eventually resolved over time as we got to know each other." This is the thing about community journalism - a lot of the ethical issues are self enforcing when you have to live and work with the people you are covering.
David Knopf - Returning to Community Journalism After Working in the City (Sun Tribune) - "It was a fast start, indeed, for 2010. For me, it began on Dec. 14, 2009, the day I returned to doing what I like best — working for a community newspaper. If happiness could be backdated or made retroactive, I might say it was the best Thanksgiving I’ve had, with so much to be thankful for." We know the metro papers are facing serious economic problems these days, but it seems as though there is still life at the community papers.
Jock Lauterer's students at UNC launched the Durham Voice, a community newspaper looking at the Northeast Central Durham community. Here's a video about what the students got out of working on the project. This video was posted by Lisa Marie Albert.

AEJMC convention 2010 - hotels

2010-01-24T23:28:00.003-05:00

The August convention seems like a long way off, I know, but with budget constraints what they are, it's probably not too early to look at prices and alternatives (and, yes, I try to stay in the convention hotel, too, because of the meeting rooms arrangements with AEJMC, but sometimes the budget just doesn't allow it).

Two blocks from the convention hotel there is a Comfort Inn (17 floors and decent, not some fleabag). Using my AAA, I was able to snag three nights of rooms there for $411 ($132 each for Wednesday and Thursday and $94 for Friday + tax). The best-available online rate was not much higher.

Breakfast -- and Internet -- are included. And this is a fully cancelable reservation, not one of these prepaid, no-refund wonders.

I remember it from the last time I was in Denver. It's a quick walk and right near the 16th Street Mall for shopping.

So if you must, as I must, look for alternatives this year, this is one, especially if you book early. (And if AEJMC comes up with a better deal at the Sheraton, then you can cancel and shift.)

Doug

2010-01-20T16:00:00.002-05:00

About 200 journalists, community members, professors and students gathered to study questions related to the theme of "Journalism That Matters" earlier this month at the University of Washington in Seattle.
The energy, inspiration and dedication to getting journalism done right in this new era was palpable as conference participants decided on sessions to hold each day based on questions about issues in how to best reach the public through journalism today. A key point was that the communication model was not to be Sender/Journalist to Receiver/Audience. The audience was to be front and center and involved.
But since most folks I encountered began their careers or at least were trained in old-fashioned journalism (where the reporters and editors decide what's news each day), the discussions centered on transitions to today's world and audience and today's journalism, often not provided by a mainstream company.
Many reps from online journalism sites promoted their endeavors during the conference's first day, Jan. 7. Other journalists, several who were laid off when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer closed 10 months ago, talked about how they were becoming "entrepreneurial journalists," ones who find their own ways to make a living doing reporting for the common good.
One University of Washington prof said their school would be offering a course in entrepreneurial journalism this year. Should we all add that to our curricula? A course dealing with that would be interesting, but I think our students first need to be trained to be fast-working, productive journalists. After some education, the best training would still be found at a regular media organization. Then they could venture out on their own. What do you think?
The next Journalism That Matters meeting will be in Detroit from June 3-6. Check it out.