I really enjoyed Sally Duros‘s talk on finding funds for new media and about L3Cs. The criteria for a L3c made me think about journalism as more of a public service industry.
Sally showcased the importance of reporting relevant news and how to create a working business model for the industry.
With Sally’s talk in mind, I kept brainstorming on how hyperlocal reporting can be pushed to more of a community service. Sally mentioned a small town in Maine buying the local paper (Village Soup) to keep it going, so it’s evident that most people want news from and about their neck of the woods.
I think a great idea is to find low-income communities that are suffering from the lack of local news coverage and create a program through the high schools in that area. A program run through a local high school could be run after school and teach valuable skills to students. Students would be engaged by running a website for their community. They could learn how to research their community, report and reach out to community leaders. A great addition to a program like this would be to have the Alderman of that ward come in once a month and talk about what is going on in the community. This will allow students to learn transparency, even with government and politics.
Using high school students in low-income areas to report will allow media to recognize what’s missing and how information can be communicated effectively. This could even lead to more of a demand in mobile journalism. Computers might not be a necessity, but phones are.
Tags: sally duros
Good post. Not sure about the high school students and the reporting but you never know. — MR
Hi Alaina — I think it’s neat that my talk made you think about the public service aspects of journalism
I am also happy that my talk made you think a but about news relevance and how that fits in with the working business model. Your idea of creating a high school program is an interesting one, but that program itself would need funding. Over time and with a lot of brainstorming like you and others are doing, I am sure we’ll come up with some ideas that will bring the community back into the news back into the community.
Thanks for your great thoughts!