Doug Fisher | Columbia, SC | (803) 777-3315 | E-mail | Inactive
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.
Project Updates
- After a Server Crash, Hartsville Today Plans a Rebound (October, 2009) - This blog post by Doug Fisher, a professor at the University of South Carolina who started Hartsville Today, details why and how the lights went out for the hyperlocal site and what their plans are for the future.
- User-generated Posts Give Hartsville Today a Hometown Feel (October, 2007) - “When we first started telling people about the site at Rotary Clubs, they worried, ‘what’s to keep folks from posting naked pictures?’” says Graham Osteen, Publisher of the twice-weekly Hartsville Messenger. “But nothing lewd has happened. It’s served its purpose until now, as a way for the community to communicate and share.” And share they […]
- Hartsville Today’s “Cook Book” Available for Download (August, 2006) - Hartsville Today has released its "cook book," a guide for citizen media sites based on the experiences and lessons learned in the first year of the small-town South Carolina site.
- Hartsville Today Begins to Take Hold in Community (May, 2006) - At a recent Kiwanis Club meeting to hear about the town’s new Hartsville Today citizen media venture, one man approached project leader Doug Fisher with a small complaint: “I’ve made Hartsville Today my home page, and it’s loading a little slow,” he said. “We’ll get it fixed,” Fisher promised, with no small delight. It was […]
- Hartsville Today: Focal Point for Community Conversations (February, 2006) - When the local Byerly Foundation wanted to convene Hartsville, S.C., residents earlier this year to discuss community needs, it reached out to Hartsville Today to promote the talks and collect the ideas that surfaced. Residents identified several concerns when they first met on Jan. 31, including better housing and public safety, a revitalized downtown area […]
- Breaking News, Blogs and Wikis to Come (November, 2005) - HartsvilleToday.com went live on Thursday, Oct. 27, and the next night it delivered a first for the community: Same-night coverage of the local high school football game. The big news was that the local Red Foxes had defeated their archrival Sumter. In the past, this South Carolina community of 10,000 had to get that news […]
- Nine Citizen Journalists Will Help Launch Hartsville Project (August, 2005) - Hartsville Today has launched at www.hvtd.com! The site is The Hartsville Messenger’s community news site, and is a collaboration with the University of South Carolina’s Ifra Newsplex. Worthy of note is the Messenger’s decision to avoid the term “citizen journalism,” in favor of “community storytelling.” The Messenger in Hartsville, S.C., is calling all citizens “involved […]
