Welcome

This is the blogging site for the Community Journalism Interest Group of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Most of the newspapers in the United States have less than 50,000 circulation, and COMJIG, as it's known, focuses on those smaller newsrooms, where the management problems -- and the opportunities to connect with the community -- can be far different from those of larger papers.

Our mission:

* To invigorate and inspire educators in community journalism by forming a national cohort of like-minded scholars sharing their ideas, findings and work on an annual basis.

* To open a national dialogue on community journalism by creating a networking system and an annual focal point for educators in this field.

* To foster, encourage and reward superior academic work in community journalism through an annual competition that would identify and showcase the best research papers and creative teaching ideas.

* To move the field forward by supporting and affirming great teaching, publications and research in the field.

* To stimulate new affiliations, research and publications by nurturing and mentoring young academics in the field.

* To make a positive difference in the profession of community journalism by forging new partnerships and building new bridges between the academy and the profession, and by producing significant and practical research immediately useful to the profession.

We are led by Jock Lauterer at North Carolina. (e-mail him here)