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Oakland Press Citizen Journalism Institute: 'Our exclusive franchise is diminished. We need citizens to become our eyes and ears'

To tackle the changes in the journalism industry, a Michigan-based newspaper, the Oakland Press, has formed its own citizen journalism institute.

As part of the scheme community members can join two-hour news reporting classes run by the newspaper. Executive editor of the Oakland Press, Glenn Gilbert, told Journalism.co.uk more:

What was the impetus for starting the institute?
[GG] The thinking is that with the migration of readers to the internet, our exclusive franchise is diminished, both in print and online.

We need to enhance our role as a provider of local news. We need to dig deeper into the grassroots level of our communities.

We need citizens to become our eyes and ears for a new and broader scope of what is happening locally. We believe there is a good market for that and that is what we are best suited to provide.

How will it work?
In some ways it will be a step back to what readers still want: extensive calendars of events, police and fire calls and local government and school information.

A lot of this information has been historically provided by the print media, both daily and weekly. But there is also a desire for social networking outlets locally and information pertaining to status (e.g. senior citizen, Baby Boomer, youth, parent, pet owner, shopper, investor and worker).

We are looking for citizen journalists to provide blogs, expertise in particular subject areas, videos of sports and other events, government meeting coverage, human interest stories and even police blotter coverage in a more extensive way than we now provide it.

We will teach the basics of news writing, including elements of a news story and approaches to writing - from the inverted pyramid to the narrative storytelling approach - as well as basic grammar. We will also teach basics of sports reporting and videography. We hope to offer two-hour classes as interest dictates.

Was there a financial incentive in setting up the initiative?
Certainly economics is a factor. It is no longer feasible to have professional staff focusing on secondary news.

What are the benefits of promoting and supporting citizen media in the community?
Ordinary citizens are often better positioned to tell us what is actually happening in their community, how people feel about things and what is important to them.

We are hoping they are increasingly interested in telling those stories. There is a fascination with the newsgathering process that we are hoping to tap into.

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citizen journalism | newspapers | online journalism | glenn gilbert | oakland press institute |

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