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April 2008 / page 2 Citizen Journalism By Suzanne Hanney, IWPA President |
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A cab driver gave me a lesson in “citizen journalism” recently. When I mentioned the name of the paper I edit, he told me that on the advice of our former horoscope writer, he had bought a lottery ticket 10 years ago and won $10,000. He still had the prize receipt, which he showed me to prove it.
Oh, no, I thought, the “horoscope,” in the words of one of my former copyeditor bosses.
And yet, this was news that potentially helped change this cabdriver’s life, because $10,000 could be seed money for many wonderful things.
I recalled also how my mother and the group of powerful women she lunched with at work at a major downtown bank always slipped the year’s forecast horoscope for people born on that day into each other’s birthday cards. Accurate or not, this was news that was truly about THEM. When you don’t get a byline, looking for your zodiac sign can be the next best thing. The recollection also took me back to my first job out of college as a “society editor” on a county seat daily newspaper in Downstate Illinois. Early on, I decided that I had to listen to the consumers of my newspaper. In the words of the first Marshall Field’s, I “gave the ladies what they wanted.” University of Illinois extension units, for example, had the same lesson each month and they filled scrapbooks that they submitted for statewide judging; they told me they counted on me for clippings. There was good information here, so I started rotating coverage of the lesson around the county. This way, every unit had one photo feature over the course of the year. |
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I also listed every group’s upcoming meetings in a standardized calendar. Because handwritten, odd-size sheets of paper were hard to keep track of, I had fill-in-the-blank forms printed so that the women could provide me the proper information as to date, place and time of meetings and some tidbit that made them interesting. I did similar forms for birth and wedding announcements. Making readers feel connected across the county was our paper’s role and we must have succeeded, because we had 107 percent market penetration (some people took the paper both at home and at their business).
In a recent Chicago Reader column about the acquisition of three Lerner neighborhood papers, Michael Miner put it in perspective. He quoted the publisher, who learned that one reporter at each of the three neighborhood papers was key to the acquisition because local people counted on them to cover their events. “Local stories, local ads. Local calendars. Just more of that uberlocal coverage.
That’s where print journalism is going to thrive and survive – that local focus.” Today at my street newspaper in Chicago, what I have taken from the Downstate experience and from the cab driver is that news is sometimes simply what people are interested in. My paper encourages volunteer writers, whom I see as akin to bloggers.
I could be proprietary about my editor’s role, but often that would be counterproductive. A better approach for me is to act as a teacher to these volunteer writers, or “citizen journalists.” Before giving them wings, I coax from them why a larger audience should care about their story ideas. I tie trends together and I ponder ethical issues if it seems they are too close to a subject. |
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Keeping myself open to the possibilities has produced some real gems. A new columnist has experienced mental health issues and has the expertise to write about them. A neighborhood movie theater is being preserved with proceeds from events ranging from the Three Stooges to La Leche League. A woman wrote about how she took charge of her life after a childhood of neglect.
I can’t be everywhere, so if I am going to obtain grassroots news, I have to tap into people’s passions.
I also listed every group’s upcoming meetings in a standardized calendar. Because handwritten, odd-size sheets of paper were hard to keep track of, I had fill-in-the-blank forms printed so that the women could provide me the proper information as to date, place and time of meetings and some tidbit that made them interesting. I did similar forms for birth and wedding announcements. Making readers feel connected across the county was our paper’s role and we must have succeeded, because we had 107 percent market penetration (some people took the paper both at home and at their business).
In a recent Chicago Reader column about the acquisition of three Lerner neighborhood papers, Michael Miner put it in perspective. He quoted the publisher, who learned that one reporter at each of the three neighborhood papers was key to the acquisition because local people counted on them to cover their events. “Local stories, local ads. Local calendars. Just more of that uberlocal coverage.
That’s where print journalism is going to thrive and survive – that local focus.” Today at my street newspaper in Chicago, what I have taken from the Downstate experience and from the cab driver is that news is sometimes simply what people are interested in. My paper encourages volunteer writers, whom I see as akin to bloggers.
I could be proprietary about my editor’s role, but often that would be counterproductive. A better approach for me is to act as a teacher to these volunteer writers, or “citizen journalists.” Before giving them wings, I coax from them why a larger audience should care about their story ideas. I tie trends together and I ponder ethical issues if it seems they are too close to a subject.
Keeping myself open to the possibilities has produced some real gems. A new columnist has experienced mental health issues and has the expertise to write about them. A neighborhood movie theater is being preserved with proceeds from events ranging from the Three Stooges to La Leche League. A woman wrote about how she took charge of her life after a childhood of neglect.
I can’t be everywhere, so if I am going to obtain grassroots news, I have to tap into people’s passions. |
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