Forums, blogs and citizen journalism
Several times in the last few months The Evening News has covered news stories that first were reported by citizens on the forums at monroenews.com
I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg.
In newspaper circles, much has been written in recent years about “citizen journalism.” The internet empowers folks of all sorts to report on the news. You don’t have to wait for the local newspaper - if you see something you think others would be interested in, you can post it on our forums.
Perhaps the best examples have come from London Township, where Areta Schils, Gary Taepke and others have been using the forums to keep their neighbors informed of goings-on at township hall - including the township secretary and treasurer losing their official positions because the board failed to swear them in. We’ve written a couple stories, including one in today’s paper, on the issues raised on the forums.
Of course, we realize, and most readers also understand, that they may not be getting the entire story on a forum. There are two or more sides to everything, and the other sides may not be represented on a forum. It’s a reader-beware environment. But as long as readers recognize that, it’s also a powerful tool for keeping informed.
Many forum topics, of course, don’t break fresh news but do include thoughtful comment on the news. They help inform the citizenry, exploring the nuances and helping folks shape their opinions.
At The Evening News and monroenews.com, we welcome all the help we can get. We encourage folks to call us with story ideas, and we’re delighted when news breaks on our forums.
That’s why, when we created the forums, we named one of them, “Eyes and Ears.” The intention was that readers would use it to inform their neighbors of breaking news like traffic jams, storm warnings or just tips on things to do.
In one of those interesting twists in life, Eyes and Ears became the place where everyone went on our forums. Readers ignored the categories set up for news, sports and opinion, and just posted on Eyes and Ears.
We’re planning a re-engineering of our forums this spring, and we’ll probably start all over with some new categories. Traffic has become so heavy - typically 25-50 posts a day and 800 to 1,000 visitors a day - that we need to make it easier for folks to find things.
Of course, many forum topics have nothing to do with news - but that’s okay, too. Whatever people want to talk about…
At about the same time we quit moderating the forums, we also added community blogs. There are now 28 individual blogs - something like on-line journals where readers can interact with the blogger - on monroenews.com. You can get to them from our home page or go directly to blogsmonroe.com.
They provide another opportunity for citizen journalism. We’ve loosely organized them into topics, ranging from food to NASCAR, although individual bloggers can address any issue they choose. Traffic to the blogs has grown remarkably, with even more visitors now than the forums.
I expect that our bloggers will break news stories at times, too. That’s part of their role. On the narrow topics they address, they’ll often provide information that’s big news to the people who follow their blog - whether it’s on gardening or fishing - but may never find it’s way into the daily newspaper, which is targeted at a general audience.
It doesn’t matter to us whether people get their news from our daily newspaper, any of our various niche products, online at monroenews.com or from our forums or blogs. We just want to be your source for news and information about our communities.