In its second year, following on the heels of its success with the Dutton Country Courier, the Rural News Network launched another website in November 2007: CrowNews.net, serving the Crow tribe. The Crow Reservation covers two million acres of land in southern Montana and is home to 8,000 people.
University of Montana journalism professor Keith Graham said his staff of seven students got deeply involved in the Crow community and have finally gotten some citizens to contribute. “I think the greatest growth for this site has been in the students’ learning process this semester. They realized how important it is to make time to be in the community — to learn about another culture and to see how and what is important for the Apsalooke Nation, the tribe that the government calls the Crow tribe.”
The Crow site invites locals to share everything from church bulletins to birth notices, opinion pieces to stories profiling their neighbors. As of September 2008, 111 stories have been posted to the site, including 20 by Crow residents. A dozen community members have contributed content and three are especially active.
Rural News Network co-founder Courtney Lowery, managing editor of NewWest.net, said the photo submissions and comments are the crowning achievement of the Crow site. “Some of the photographs are quite spectacular and I like that we’re helping Indian people to document their own history. I think just having faces and names and stories told in this way sends a message to the community that ‘we matter’ and I like that.”
The Crow site is also having a civic impact. Candidates running for tribal office have been posting their platforms on the site.
Meanwhile, in Dutton, the community news site is alive and well with one student working as the team coordinator. “So many of the Dutton residents have taken ownership of their site,” said Graham. “I think this community’s site, with a little care and feeing every once in while, will continue.”
From January 2006 to September 2008, 171 stories have been posted to the Dutton Country Courier. Dutton residents contributed 147 of those, with the rest coming from students and faculty at the U-Montana J-school. Lowery said 30 residents have posted items, 10 on a regular basis.
Lowery, who grew up in Dutton, is especially proud that the mayor has been posting the full town council minutes every month. “It’s nothing fancy, but it’s really important information for people they would get nowhere else unless they walked down to town hall. I feel like we’re doing a real service to the community by posting these minutes in their entirety.” Lowery said even the mayor acknowledges that it brought a new sense of government accountability.
Graham credits the New Voices grant for making these sites possible. “I want to say a thank you for selecting us. It is hard to tell you how much this has meant to us. We may live in the fourth largest state but we trail in per capita income (47th) — so we try and squeeze out every last cent you have been gracious to supply.”
According to Graham, most of the funding from J-Lab supported the cost of students to travel and stay overnight in these rural communities. Dutton is a six-hour round trip from campus, while Crow Agency is a six-hour trek one way. Some students made these trips two or three times each semester, in order to interview community members, recruit contributors or conduct workshops on citizen journalism and the basics of photography. Other costs covered by the grant included domain names, digital cameras, software, and a launch party.
The Rural News Network is seeking other sources of funding and hopes to launch another site in yet another overlooked and under-covered rural community. Lowery said her vision is to create a competitive application process in order to choose the next town in the Rural News Network.
Keith Graham’s 10 Lessons Learned on how to Engage Community Members
1. The mission of the project must be clear and face-to-face interaction in the community has to be the first step in the conversation. Create an advisory board, or group of volunteers who would be willing to help shape the new venture.
2. In those initial conversations, it’s crucial to create the site based on what the community members want. Do they want to do their own reporting? Do they want to write features, list events, submit photos and list announcements? What do they want to read and what do they want to contribute?
3. Follow up on the wishes of the community. If you ask what the community wants and portray the project as something community members will dictate, you’ll lose credibility quickly if you don’t follow through on those promises. It’s a challenge to relinquish even a little control, (although easier if you create a separately branded project), but it’s imperative that the community feels like it has ownership over the project, with you as its guide.
4. Ask immediately for commitments from community members to contribute, to help spread the word and overall, to support the project.
5. Once you have those commitments, immediately make a game plan with contributors. When someone says, “Yes, I’d like to help,” follow up immediately saying “How often could you contribute? What kinds of stories or photographs would you most like to contribute? What are the skills you’d like to use? What would you like to learn?”
6. Now work with your contributors to find reasonable goals for what they can contribute and how often. When contributors feel responsible for their “beat” and have a clear understanding of what you – and their readers – expect from them, they are more likely to follow through.
7. When you have people contributing, give as much feedback as you can and stay in regular contact. It’s incredibly scary to be published for the first time, so pay careful attention to editing. Edit with a soft hand and explain edits thoroughly. Most people will welcome, crave even some professional guidance. Give them confidence that you won’t “let them sound dumb,” which is a common concern for novice contributors. Most contributors really appreciate a hand to hold. If they feel they’re all alone, they’re less likely to continue contributing.
8. Start simple. Ask for announcements, wedding photos, baby photos, event photos, event announcements, items people are comfortable with sharing. Then, once your relationship is established and you’re both comfortable with tone, style and reliability, help the contributor branch out, suggest new stories, styles and approaches.
9. Make it very easy for people to contribute and take into account the community’s “habits” in submitting news. If for years, the Senior Citizen Center has been submitting its lunch schedule to the school newsletter, find a way to incorporate your publication into that process. And, one size will not fit all. Some may like to e-mail, others might still want to submit hard copy. Whatever the habit is, try to work with it instead of against it.
10. Reward the contributors and keep them in the loop. Treat them as staff members whenever you can. These relationships have to be cultivated and that takes valuable staff time. In the end, the quality and quantity you’ll get will be worth it. Also, these contributors are often participating for free, so find creative ways to compensate them. Have a special event honoring your volunteers, let them be part of the newsroom when you can and remind them often that what they’re doing is helping keep their community in touch and in tact and that their contributions are important for their hometown paper as well as their hometown. Essentially, share the reasons you continue to do the work you do and impart that passion often to your volunteers.
Keith Graham’s final bit of advice to hyperlocal citizen news site leaders: “Above all remember to listen to them. It is, after all, why you did this, right?”
