Thinking Allowed
medical / technology / education / art / flub
What a 2004 experiment in hyperlocal news can tell us about community voices today
Can a community news platform serve as “technology that protects our minds and replenishes society”?
"In 2004, a team of Medill School of Journalism grad students tried to save democracy, newspapers, and local communities. The threat? The internet. Our response? A website called GoSkokie for the people of Skokie, Illinois.
Yes, we thought we could use the internet to fix what was wrong with it. But with increasing social isolation, rising partisanship, and newspapers’ ongoing woes, it seems that the problems we hoped to solve with our shuttered project have gotten worse, not better."
People don't see themselves as journalists
Offer multiple ways of participation
Specific topics already on the radar are best
Generating content can be seen as artificial
Local stories can be taken up elsewhere
Commercial messages are often the earliest
Government may see local communities as an annoyance
Content moderation is an important consideration
Source: www.niemanlab.org
newspapers communities internet local community see aexperiment artificiallocal
RSS feed