Solving their own problems

Did you know that some news isn’t even being reported? Did you know that no matter how hard journalists try to diversify, some faces aren’t reflected in the pages of a newspaper? Did you know there are people out there who have stories to tell but that they can’t get anyone to listen?

That’s a true crime. Journalists, editors and publishers are scrambling to make money and to find out the future of the news product. Is this product in tangible format or is it on the Internet? How do we market it either way? they ask. But as all of these news officials are jumping off into the abyss of a technologically driven world, they appear to be forgetting about those they have neglected.

There are entire communities that newspapers, television stations and radio stations typically ignore. Some of these communities are rural with small populations of people, often with low or average academic status. Some are communities simply too small to have a typical news presence of their own or too far removed geographically to find themselves on the radar of a larger paper. These communities and towns then suffer because they have plenty of news, but perhaps just not news that a paper 20 miles away believes the majority of its readers would like to see.

Citizens in Deerfield, N.H., believed the news of their small community was being neglected by the larger papers in the area and so they created their own online public forum. The forum allows volunteers to submit their own stories and gives the community valuable information that was not available before the Web site.

In a Q & A section in the American Journalism Review, forumhome.org’s cofounder Deb Boisvert said before the launch of the Web site, it was rare for a larger paper to report on the community. But now the Web site creates a filter and becomes a bulletin board for the papers, which can then report on news they might not have known about otherwise.

It’s become a place for Deerfield residents to find news that pertains to their everyday lives and even a showcase for their community. Occasionally, when the need arises such as for local elections, the group publishes a print edition allowing all citizens to have candidate information constantly at their fingertips.

Another case in point would be the news Web site for the town of Stoutland, Mo., population 186. Stoutland finds itself occasionally in the pages of the nearby Lebanon Daily Record for a sports conquest or perhaps a particularly scintillating school board meeting. It will also occasionally have an article in the Richland Mirror, but mostly of the same type of content as in the paper from Lebanon.

Bob Wright, a former managing editor at small daily at the Lake of the Ozarks, and his wife, Shirley, both longtime citizens of Stoutland, became the creators of the Stoutland News Web site, stoutlandnews.com . Now retired, the site has become an act of volunteerism for the couple.

The site is grassroots, community driven journalism at its best. Nearly everyone in Stoutland has, at one time or another, literally found his or her face on the site, or is at least closely related to someone who has been featured in a photo on the site. A well-covered event, the annual Stoutland Picnic, has its own news tab on the top of the site. There was once a story on a unique wedding held at one of the churches. For school news, a student correspondent is able to learn from an early age what it’s like to be a true journalist and report on events that no other news outlet presents.

The Web site is updated weekly and there is no thought of a print product. The site is built with the thought in mind that most of the viewers still have dial-up Internet access and are not eligible for high-speed access yet. The photos are small and the graphic content is nil. No, the content is not Pulitzer-worthy and it might come with split infinitives or dangling modifiers. But the stories of the community are finally told. “Good journalism does not often topple a president, but it frequently changes the lives of citizens, both grand and ordinary” (Downie, 3).

Some papers are beginning to realize that they don’t quite serve the public like they could or should. More than anything, folks want to see themselves within a news product – they want to feel as if they are a part of the world going on around them. Larger metro papers largely fail to do this. Smaller papers have a better shot at serving their public.

The Columbia Missourian has done a fair job of reporting the news of the city, but sometimes doesn’t do a good enough job reporting the news of the community. However, average faces seem to shine on its sister Web site, mymissourian.com. The site is entirely community supported with student editors filling a small role of sifting through the submissions. But whether a community site produced for an area with a larger population can really do good work has yet to be measured.

But perhaps more than anything, people from all communities just want to be made to feel important, needed and even made to feel an expert at something. Community sites and blogs can allow people to post their thoughts indiscriminately, giving them the satisfaction of actually being a part of something. Niche publications, predominately found within the magazine medium, are picking up circulation in a hurry (Downie, 24). These niche publications are finely focused and can provide any reader with enough news on his or her favorite topic to become a mini-expert.

Before journalists put all of their focus on where the future of journalism is going, they should at least consider where it is at in the present. While the Internet appears to the most accessible form of communication and information, newspapers need to take a step back and determine what is working and for whom. The Internet is obviously at work for smaller communities who are making their own futures. The next step would be to find out why. There are stories waiting to be found no matter where they are told.

American Journalism Review, December 2006/January 2007, p. 18 & 19
The News About the News, By Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser