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Community journalism is locally-oriented, professional news coverage that typically focuses on city neighborhoods, individual suburbs or small towns, rather than metropolitan, state, national or world news.
If it covers wider topics, community journalism concentrates on the effect they have on local readers. Community , often but not always publish weekly newspaper, and also tend to cover subjects larger news media do not. Some examples of topics are students on the honor roll at the local high school, school sports, crimes such as vandalism, zoning issues and other details of community life. However, such "hyperlocal" articles are sometimes dismissed as "chicken dinner" stories.
Leo Lerner, founder of Chicago's erstwhile Lerner Newspapers, used to say, "A fistfight on Clark Street is more important to our readers than a war in Europe."
An increasing number of community newspapers are now owned by large media organizations, although many rural papers are still "mom and pop" operations.
Most community journalists are professionally trained reporters and editors. Some specialized training programs in community journalism have recently emerged at established undergraduate and graduate journalism programs. Community journalism should not be confused with the work of citizen journalists, who are often unpaid amateurs, or with civic journalism, although many community newspapers practice that.
At the "Emerging Mind of Community Journalism" conference in Anniston, Ala., in 2006, participants created a list characterizing community journalism: community journalism is intimate, caring, and personal; it reflects the community and tells its stories; and it embraces a leadership role.Lowrey, Wilson, Amanda Brozana, and Jenn B. Mackay. "Toward a Measure of Community Journalism." Mass Communication & Society 11.3 (2008). Print.
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Some philosophers encourage professional journalists to remain independent, whereas others insist on committing to local and generalized communities as a prerequisite for true citizenship. Some say community involvement is fine for editors and publishers, but not for the reporters who have the ability to "shape" the news. Critics say this involvement is a risk for anyone involved in producing the news.Black, Jay. Mixed News: the Public/civic/communitarian Journalism Debate. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1997. Print.
Clifford Christians, co-author of Good News Social Ethics and the Press, urges journalists to realize that their publics may gravitate toward self-interest, and therefore the journalists should report stories that lessen the isolationism that comes from reading wider, world-based stories.Christians, Clifford G., John P. Ferre%u0301, and Mark Fackler. Good News Social Ethics and the Press. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Print. A fundamental flaw in community journalism is the stubborn resistance to change and a compulsion to shape the system to maintain community standards.
Loyalty to a community is the inevitable price of acceptance, and the fee is creating sharp conflicts with allegiance to the truth. Through community journalism, attitudes about necessary information change from the need for a broad range of information (pluralism) to a reliance on information necessary to maintain community values and fortify the status quo (reinforcement).
Sooner or later group importance could transcend the value of distributing accurate information both internally to members of the group, and externally about the community or group.Barney, Ralph. "Community Journalism: Good Intentions, Questionable Practice." Journal of Mass Media Ethics 11.3 (1996): 140-51. Print.
Others think the switch toward community journalism is a natural reaction to our out-of-touch mega media. J. Herbert Altschull, writer of "A Crisis of Conscience: Is Community Journalism the Answer?" sees community journalism as a natural outgrowth from concerns of the media's slippage in credibility and influence.Altschull, J. Herbert. "A Crisis of Conscience: Is Community Journalism the Answer?" Journal of Mass Media Ethics 11.3 (1996): 166-72. Print.
This newspaper, as with many community journalism publications, has sole control over editorial content. The content itself is very important and relevant to Maine communities and revolves around "core value" choices, as determined by the community. The community journalist reporters were required to give readers a background on each perspective and to "write an expository rather than conventional he-said/she-said style."
The publication ran more than 100 inches of factual reporting on education in Maine, as well as op-ed pieces promoting one of the four perspectives, and summary reports on the opposing viewpoint. The newspaper was received well, and, as a result, roughly 700 community members took part in the reader roundtables.
Known as the Public Life Team, they meet with panels of citizens regularly to "tap their thoughts and dreams for the regions' future." Additionally, they have changed the perception of criminal sentencing from a polarized issue to one that rehabilitation advocates were in favor of. Finally, they opened a line of communication between various community members for the Hall Place neighborhood. "The Pilot got black and white residents to talk freely about the plan." Without the assistance of the Pilot, the community would not have come to the conclusion that it "ought to be what was good for the city as a whole."
This publication in particular has paved way for other community journalists, mainly due to its experimental nature and eagerness to give reporters the opportunity to brainstorm ideas together. Overall, the Pilot wants to improve the tone of public discourse in the Virginian community.
Community blogs also provide a service to organizations that encourage civic engagement. It give them a birds-eye-view of the happenings of the communities they affect without interjecting themselves into any one community."Community blogging: The new wave of citizen journalism." National Civic Review; Winter2008, Vol. 97 Issue 4, p27, 6p
Mobile news is important because participants "feel they can have an impact on their communities, more likely to use a variety of media platforms, feel more plugged into the media environment than they did a few years ago, and are more likely to use social media."
Citizens can not only read news from their local community, with tablets and smart phones, they can also share and post links to stories, comment, or contribute themselves.
However, those polled stated that topics like crime, community events, schools and education, and politics and cultural events are a fraction of topics sought after. In other words, citizens have not reached the point where they use mobile devices as a primary source to acquire community journalism-related subjects.
At their best, community newspapers affirm a sense of community through their publications. It emphasizes connectedness and "us-ness." It's covering school plays across four columns with pictures of the students large enough to see their faces. It's showing the community members that they, as individuals, matter.
Community journalism would ideally reveal, or make individuals aware of, spaces, institutions, resources, events, and ideas that may be shared, and encourage such sharing. The practice should also facilitate the process of negotiating and making meaning about a community.
It is suggested that news media outlets do not choose to either practice community journalism exclusively or disregard it. Rather, media outlets generally engage in some degree of community journalism, as measured by the types of practices they follow and the intensity with which they follow them. A summated scale of multiple ordinal-level items would be an appropriate measure of community journalism. This is because community journalism is on a scale on which data is shown simply in order of magnitude since there is no standard of measurement of differences.
In addition, numerous studies in this analysis suggest that any scale measure of community journalism should accommodate the impact of the community's power structure on news decisions and should address the need for inclusion of less powerful voices.
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