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October, 2007
, 2007 |
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PLANNING A COMMUNITY NEWS PROGRAM WITH STUDENT REPORTERS By John Kotarski
“In the future, we may well rely more on citizens to be sentinels for one another. No doubt that will expand the public forum and enrich the range of voices. Already people are experimenting with new ways to empower fellow citizens to gather and understand the news — whether it is soldiers blogging from Baghdad, a radio program on the war produced by students at Swarthmore College carrying eyewitness interviews with Iraqi citizens, or a similar effort by young radio reporters in Minnesota to cover local towns.”
The 2006 State of the News Media reported by Project for Excellence in Journalism
The key part of any plan is a vision. You will need to envision your students as community storytellers who assemble narratives that are diverse, creative, and fun to watch. Your student’s natural enthusiasm and playful energy will make viewers come back for more. Viewers will tune in to watch your students be local reporters and students will watch themselves become celebrities and community advocates. Both students and viewers will develop a deeper understanding of your community in the process.
As you create a strategic plan for your school program, it is important to keep in mind the enormous changes occurring within the world of journalism. You could not find a more opportune time to be building a community news program. Your community administrators will be facing increased challenges to communicate to residents, visitors, and potential investors in your community. The media sources that these administrators have traditionally relied upon to do this are changing and soon may be unavailable. Your student-based community news program will teach students technology and storytelling skills. It will also create community narratives that administrators can use. Frankly, your student narratives will be more powerful than any news story that a traditional news reporter could deliver. You will be empowering your students to be community change agents.
I want to spend a little time reviewing the changes happening to traditional local news before I outline the key steps to planning a student-based community news program.
Challenges Facing Local News News organizations are going through massive changes as they compete globally for revenue and customers. News organizations like newspapers and radio and television stations are a part of global media companies that depend on advertising as their primary source of income. Although advertisers are expected to spend over $750 billion on advertising in 2007, competition for that money is ferocious. The Myers Media Business Report for 2007 is forecasting a trend away from traditional TV and radio to nontraditional ways to reach buyers, like videogames, product placements, and movies. Video game ads are expected to increase 90%, product placement ads 35% and cinema advertising 15%, while the 30-second television commercial that local affiliates depend on is projected to decrease 5%. Some media organizations that own multiple stations in different communities are broadcasting news from a single newsroom, an effort that saves money but raises questions about localism and stretches news reporters thin. Newspapers are also consolidating. In 2006 several well respected newspapers cut their newsroom staff. The New York Times cut its staff by 60, the Los Angeles Times cut 85 people and Time Inc cut 205 jobs from its news division. Tom Goldstein, the former dean at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, said at the time, “Unless they urgently respond to the changing environment, newspapers risk early extinction." Local news makers need to reinvent how they communicate with their communities, and your program can fill a real need.
How to Take Advantage of the Opportunity The contraction of the news industry will create anxiety among community leaders left in the lurch to connect with residents. But it could spell opportunity for you. Your student-based news program can fill the void left by inattentive or nonexistent media outlets. You will be teaching students storytelling skills and helping your community at the same time. You will need to identify individuals in your community who need to communicate with residents or visitors. Consider administrators at the city and the schools and members of civic organizations like Chambers of Commerce and Tourist Boards as well as service clubs like Rotary and Kiwanis.
Make Your Stories Different Traditional newscasts lead with crime and accidents. If it bleeds it leads is a standard news axiom. Unfortunately, this attention-grabbing, breaking-news cycle drives most news organizations. Human interest stories often take a back seat to stories about corruption or plane crashes. Make your stories different. Breaking news stories are important but human interest stories tell more about a community than do accidents or crimes. Community narratives may not be as dramatic as a plane crash but these stories, like no others, tell of the resourcefulness of residents and the hope and heroics that bind your community together. Your students’ stories will be short narratives, 2-5 minutes long. They will be self-contained, each with a student reporter placing the story in the context of your community and giving a final summary at the end. Your stories will be able to be viewed individually at public meetings or during half-time at school sporting events. But they can also be placed end to end with segues or humorous skits between them and made into a cable television show. The flexibility of this short story format will allow maximum and repeated coverage for your students’ work.
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Creating Community Voices—Part Two |
