The Forum
The Forum (formally The Philbrick-James Forum) is an all-volunteer organization, based in Deerfield, N.H., that provides news and information and serves as an outlet for sharing of events, opinion, and creative expression. It has grown from covering Deerfield to also providing coverage of nearby Candia, Northwood and Nottingham. It also publishes periodic print issues.
Radio Free Moscow’s KRFP News
To train citizen journalists to produce a daily half-hour news program for low-power KRFP-FM station. A companion website allowed listeners to tune in to the latest broadcast in streaming audio, download podcasts of previous shows, and hear unaired, expanded reports.
Hartsville Today
University of South Carolina students and Newsplex advisors teamed with the twice-weekly Hartsville Messenger to expand community coverage by recruiting and training citizen journalists to contribute reports, video and audio to the now-defunct www.hvtd.com website. The efforts resulted in a how-to guide for smaller news organizations seeking to embrace citizen journalism. You can download it at Doug Fisher’s blog, Common Sense Journalism.
Noticias Tuyas
Noticias Tuyas, which in English means “Your News,” set out to launch a weekly half-hour, prime-time, bilingual news program, broadcast on low-power FM radio station, Radio Tierra 95.1 FM KZAS. It targeted Latino residents who comprise more than 25 percent of its Hood River, OR, community. Broadcasts featured local news, opinions written and read by community members, and educational forums with a Latino perspective on the news. The project is no longer active.
Loisaida Speaks
This podcasting project of the Lower Eastside Girls Club trained young women, aged 15-21, to produce weekly podcasts on community news and issues as a first step in building a network of teen podcast correspondents to cover local issues and events. The Lower East Side Girls Club serves predominantly black and Latina girls from low-income neighborhoods.The podcast project did not continue after the club moved into new quarters.
kaPow! Hip-Hop Site
This project tried to create a “virtual home” on the web for hip-hop culture in Philadelphia and the mid-Atlantic region. A website, hiphopspeaks.org, sought to provide news, audio broadcasts, bulletin boards, events listings and directories of artists and services.
Twin Cities Daily Planet
This robust website was launched during the 2005 municipal elections for community media outlets and citizen journalists to post and share print, audio and video news stories focused on the racially and ethnically diverse population of the Twin Cities. It has since grown its partnership network, its menu of community media workshops, and expanded its coverage topics.
The Madison Commons
This website, created by a U-Wisconsin-Madison professor, started out creating “boot camps” to train citizen reporters and university students in micro-reporting for minority neighborhoods and to establish a model “community information commons.” The site now uses students to cover city life, the environment, food and education. The Capital Times newspaper initially featured news reports produced by the project. MadisonCommons.org now partners with WISC-TV.
Loudoun Forward
This project sought to create a hyperlocal civic “tool set” for the fast-growing Loudoun County, VA, suburbs of D.C. It aimed to include a printed publication, a website and Weblog, an e-newsletter and public forums to help residents in the nation’s fastest-growing county identify the forces that are shaping their lives and make better public decisions. The project is now inactive.
North Lawndale Weblog
In the early days of blogs, this project sought to launch a community news blog to encourage citizen journalism from the mostly African-American residents of Lawndale, one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. It was an effort of Strategic Human Services, Inc. and was linked to the biweekly North Lawndale Community News.
