It's no news that local news is in trouble -- at least the sort of local news produced by daily newspapers. Hardly a week goes by without word that another newspaper is cutting back on staff, usually at the expense of local news coverage.
But in Oakland, Calif., a town woefully underserved by the mainstream media, bloggers -- increasingly known as "citizen journalists"-- are trying to fill the gap for local news. Oakland resident Echa Schneider writes "A Better Oakland," a feisty local news and politics blog that covers some of the issues that local newspapers are missing--with a bit of populist anger you rarely see in major media.
Schneider, who writes under the name VSmoothe, launched her blog during Oakland's mayoral race two years ago, an election that was won by former Congressman Ron Dellums. Since then, Dellums's popularity has plummeted as the city's murder and violent crime rate has spiked, and a wave of populist anger has swelled in Oakland -- a perfect environment for civic blogs like Schneider's.
Even the searches on Schneider's blog are revealing: after Dellums's recent "state of the city" speech, 9 out of 10 searches on the site were some variation of "recall Dellums."Â
Way on the other side of the country, our public media colleagues at New Hampshire Public Radio launched an ambitious citizen journalism effort, called Primary Place, a web site for citizen reporting on the primary elections.
Among other things, the effort allowed citizen reporters to record comments and observations from the campaign trail. Search the site under Hillary Clinton and "campaign finance" and you'll be led to citizen "Brian's" no-holds-barred observations of the candidates based on up-close-and-personal encounters.
If you spend too much time with mainstream media, you may have no idea how widespread this citizen journalism movement is, from independent blogs like Edna Schneider's to media-sponsored efforts like Primary Place to entire online mini-newspapers edited by non-journalist community members. To learn more about this phenomenon, visit the Knight Citizen News Network, which has information about many similar efforts around the country.
Who knows? You may be inspired to become a citizen journalist yourself.
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Citizen Journalism
There is a strong citizen journalism movement here in the Twin Cities. One online publication, for which I write, called Twin Cities Daily Planet (http://www.tcdailyplanet.net) has become more popular since its inception two years ago. As more and more MSM outlets get swallowed up by large conglomerates and in the process lose their independent voice, citizen journalism will continue to grow.
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