Neighbours' Untidy Yard Shock!

July 22, 2004 10:42 AM

Open Source Local Journalism. "A small California newspaper [The Northwest Voice] has undertaken a first-of-its-kind experiment in participatory journalism in which nearly all the content published in a regularly updated online edition and a weekly print edition is submitted by community members." Is the editor of your local newspaper aware of this?
posted by Blue Stone (7 comments total)

[this is awesome]
posted by bshort at 11:06 AM on July 22, 2004

first-of-its-kind

First-of-its-kind for a small California newspaper, anyway. What about OhmyNews?
posted by raygirvan at 11:11 AM on July 22, 2004

"Fulton explained that any submission that meets the Voice's standards -- which effectively require that work be original, non-libelous, accurate and suitable for a family publication -- goes up immediately on its website."

Damn, there goes my original, non-libelous, and accurate story about cuddle parties
posted by Outlawyr at 11:58 AM on July 22, 2004

require that work be original, non-libelous, accurate

Hey, that's an improvement on IndyMedia right there.
posted by falconred at 12:47 PM on July 22, 2004

Not sure that I'd really call the online version a "newspaper" in any meaningful sense of the word. More of a community bulletin.
More power to them, anywho.
posted by signal at 4:10 PM on July 22, 2004

I'm not convinced that this is a sustainable method of creating a quality journalistic publication. That said, I think that this would be a great model to be partially replicated by weeklies. Instead of seeking wholly-written articles, I think a better model would be to use a group blog to determine what's going on in the community, what people are talking about, what people should be talking about, and locate potential people to talk to for quotes or even gather quotes from the blogs themselves. In short, the paper wouldn't rely on it, but it could help to keep the publication grounded in its community and supplement the work of their reporters.
posted by waldo at 4:56 PM on July 22, 2004

I want my MoJo!
posted by soyjoy at 1:06 PM on July 26, 2004