NeighborWebSJ ends 2011 hopeful that connections made in the past six months will prove to pay off in collaborations to generate more traffic, revenue and content in the coming year.
Featured Content in 2011
Stories and photos posted during the last two quarters of 2011 embodied NWSJ’s mission of providing unique content focused on community issues and projects. San Jose’s budget woes continued to generate stories that drilled down to impacts to neighborhoods and city services; NWSJ was the only media to cover San Jose’s remapping of its council districts through the lens of neighborhoods, as well as San Jose’s new ordinance to regulate marijuana collectives from viewpoints of the collective operator and medicinal marijuana clients. Stories also told the victory of a neighborhood trying to limit the number of unregulated bail bonds businesses that had replaced cafes, grocery stores and coffee shops, and the residents’ campaign to keep a small city golf course as open land instead of housing that would boost city revenues.
On a grassroots level, the growth of graffiti in San Jose made NWSJ headlines, especially when a huge panel of a community mural was covered up by a vandal but quickly restored by the artist and a host of volunteers. The church where Cesar Chavez founded the farm workers labor movement was also featured on NWSJ, but not in mainstream media.
NeighborWebSJ Team is Growing
NWSJ is in the process of contracting with three San Jose State University journalism students to be interns for the upcoming semester. They are photojournalism majors who also write and are tech-savvy. Two other talented freelancers, former Mercury News employees, are also contributing photos, stories and videos. Golden Wheel Communications, NWSJ’s marketing consultant, has teamed up with the Arnone Group, another media outreach consultant, to provide a more organized and effective marketing plan. Our frequent E-blasts are attracting readers and building our numbers, and a news release on NWSJ’s second round of funding generated an item in the San Jose Mercury News. More of those attention-getting strategies are in the works.
Partnerships, Collaborations and Connections
Summer and fall training opportunities not only advanced my skill level and generated strategy ideas, but provided connections that are promising to develop into partnerships on story projects as well as funding support. Connections were forged at Poynter Institute’s weeklong Digital Entrepreneurship training in Florida; Block by Block Community News Summit in Chicago; Journalism and Women Symposium in Asheville, North Carolina; and Community Leadership Institute in Kansas City, Missouri.
CLI, sponsored by the nonprofit NeighborWorks America, brought 1,000 neighborhood leaders from across the country together for training from facilitators and learning from each other. Many participants, including NWA staff, were interested in NeighborWebSJ as a tool to unite communities. The organization is likely to be a future funding source for NWSJ.
NWSJ continues to benefit by its partnership with KQED, which regularly posts stories on its Web site through the Networked Journalism project. The public radio station also offered a training session on capturing audio from smart phones. NWSJ’s partnership with the Bay Citizen has not been as fruitful, partly because of its reorganization. I believe 2012 will be more promising after I meet with the community editor.
NeighborWebSJ provided training for the third annual Santa Clara County Neighborhood Development Training Conference at San Jose State University. Two sessions on “Using the Internet as a Tool to Unite Neighborhoods” were overflowing with neighborhood leaders eager to learn about NWSJ and how they can use it as a resource. The sessions produced good evaluations and new readers.
Silicon Valley Get Connected Roundtable in Mountain View, CA, brought together non-profits and agencies dedicated to bridging the Digital Divide. NWSJ plans to work with a group that brings computer and the Internet to low-income families and another that helps struggling families maintain their computers. Another new partnership is also forming from that event in November. Gateway California, a Stanford Knight Fellow Phuong Ly’s project to connect journalists with immigrant communities, and NWSJ are planning to work together on projects and funding sources.
NWSJ will strengthen its role as a resource for San Jose neighborhoods beyond news coverage. Neighborhood leaders have been engaged to write about ideas, strategies and tools that work for them in improving their communities. San Jose University Urban Planning Department students are providing NWSJ with results on their research to determine the feasibility of students working with neighborhoods near the campus. And the Neighborhoods Commission, a 30-member board elected by their neighborhoods to advise the city council on the neighborhood issues, has selected NWSJ to be its official site for information and community outreach.
All of these connections are pointing toward 2012 as the breakthrough year for NeighborWebSJ. Stay tuned!
