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 with any type of group, school, church, sports team, agency or civic organization.” The twice-weekly newspaper wants them to help expand community news coverage by participating in its new citizen journalism project.
“We are looking for citizens of all ages, races, creeds and colors to participate,” wrote Messenger Editor and Publisher Graham Osteen in his July 8, 2005, column. “These new ‘reporters’ are not limited to writing, they will also be able to take video or still pictures with cameras or camera phones, or do audio reports.”
So far, nine contributors have been recruited. They include a Hartsville city employee, the executive director of a local science and mathematics foundation, a volunteer firefighter, the CEO of a regional medical center, an elementary school teacher, a retired teacher, an employee of Sonoco Products Co., a funeral home director and an artist.
The Messenger is collaborating with the citizen journalists and the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications in a pilot project intended “to broaden the scope of journalism in that town by giving those who live, work, play and receive their education in Hartsville a digital community center,” Osteen said in a July 20 column.
Osteen and USC journalism professor Doug Fisher recruited the first contributors. They expect to recruit additional participants as the local colleges, Coker College and the Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics, start the fall term.
Fisher has done some research with the paper’s staff and conducted informal interviews in the community and found that The Messenger’s website is largely unknown and rarely visited, but there is interest — especially among young people — in an outlet that would let people tell their own stories, post reviews, and provide a calendar of what is happening.
Rather than housing the project’s content on the newspaper’s site, The Messenger has decided to create a new site for the project to present a more contemporary image and to avoid being restricted by the paper’s publishing schedule, Fisher said.
The newspaper has registered a site name that will be aliased as Hartsville Today, OurHartsville, or something similar. “We are . . . striving for a name that does not promise more than can be delivered in terms of frequency and content but that clearly fosters a sense of community and newsiness,” Fisher said.
The Messenger hopes to launch the site by September 20. Meanwhile, plans are afoot to design training for the citizen journalists and work out an advertising and revenue plan.
