Community Correspondents Corps
This project trained citizens from central Appalachia in radio news production and story gathering for broadcast on radio and the Web. Appalshop, in Whitesburg, KY, developed the project with a basic curriculum and workshop model that covered production technology and techniques and provide instruction in basic community journalism. The project is now inactive.
Ethnic News Service
This was a project of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism (CIIJ) at San Francisco State University that started a student-run Ethnic News Service to help provide better coverage of public affairs for the state’s 700 ethnic media outlets. CIIJ sought to “embed” SFSU students within community organizations to develop a series of multimedia stories on the impact of policy decisions on ethnic communities. The project is now inactive.
Chicago Talks
This robust news site, a project of Columbia College Chicago, used students and neighborhood journalists to cover five ZIP codes in central Chicago with a focus local police district, school council, neighborhood groups, church events and businesses. A sibling site, AustinTalks.org, has since been launched.
MURL Building Blocks (PhiladelphaNeighborhoods.com)
Philadelphia Neighborhoods.com is now a full-blown publication of Temple University’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab created by students covering more than 75 of the city’s neighborhoods. It began as an effort to cover hyperlocal news in the city’s largely Hispanic 5th Street Corridor between Lehigh and Hunting Park Avenues. The site is now a cornerstone of Temple’s Department of Journalism. It actively partners with AlDia, neastphilly.com, technicallyphilly.com, WHYY and planphilly.com.
Learning to Finish: Solution that Leads to Graduation
This project of the Pew Partnership for Civic Change launched a wiki dedicated to sharing information and ideas for countering the nationwide high school drop-out crisis. At its launch, one-third of U.S. high school seniors, or about 500,000 students, didn’t graduate on time. Initial content came from the Pew Partnership then from civic and religious groups, parents, teachers, citizens and policy makers solicited to join a dialogue about reversing the drop-out rate.
Route 7 Report
Bill Reader, a professor at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. recruited and trained citizens in three rural villages in Southeastern Ohio to create a monthly print newsletter on local government, schools, business and organizations. The project is now inactive.
Monroe County Radio Project
The project created a news operation at WHFI-FM, a radio station licensed to the Monroe County, W.V., School Board. Journalism students and faculty worked to train student and adult volunteer reporters to report and produce local news stories for a 15-minute daily newscast, regular monthly public affairs programming and a website with news and streaming audio. It was an initiative of the P.I. Reed School of Journalism, West Virginia University.
Great Lakes Wiki
This project of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, Michigan State University morphed from a collaborative wiki that described the problems, cleanup strategies, contaminants, industries, people, health impacts and other issues related to the 43 toxic hot spots in the Great Lakes region into a robust site covering Great Lakes environmental issues.
Rural News Network
The Rural News Network was set up by the University of Montana School of Journalism to recruit and train residents of rural Montana towns to report on news and information for rural websites. It resulted in the creation of two websites. The Dutton County Courier, which was later taken over by the local newspaper, the Choteau Acantha, and CrowNewsNet.org, created to cover the Crowe tribe of 8,000 people living in southern Montana. That site is now inactive.
Trenton Policy Options
This project created a website, and a prototype for others websites, with information on Trenton and New Jersey policy news, research, and non-profit organization resources. The focus is to provide local policy and program information for residents and community leaders using university students engaged in service-based programs.
