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CitizenMedia:
Fad or the Future of News?
The rise and prospects of
hyperlocal journalism

By Jan Schaffer
J-Lab Executive Director
 kinds of finished stories you see in a newspa-
per. Because of that, we prefer the term “citi-
zen media,” although we use that term inter-
changeably with “citizen journalism” in this
report. Over 79% of the respondents to our
web survey considered the information on their
sites to be “journalism.”
This report focuses specifically on micro-
local community news sites that contain con-
tent generated by users. When we started this
research in the spring of 2006, we were able to
identify about 500 citizen media sites. As we
issue this report, we have been able to identify

Introduction several hundred more and will soon catalogue

them on a new web site, the Knight Citizen
News Network ([Link]), supported by
the Knight Foundation.
More impressive than the numbers,
J-Lab has been funding though, is the impact these sites are having on
citizen media start-ups with their communities. With limited readership and
micro-grants for two years very little revenue, 73% of those who responded
now. We’ve seen how pronounced their sites to be a “success.’’ Why?
quickly committed founders Because they have watchdogged local govern-
can build momentum and ment, provided news that couldn’t otherwise
gain traction in their com- be had, nudged local media to improve,
munities. The findings in helped their community solve problems, even,
this report were less of a surprise and more of to a degree, increased voter turnout and the
an affirmation of what we had started to see. number of candidates running for office.
We agree with 98% of the respondents in This study takes an early snapshot of a very
our web survey who said that the emergence of robust development. We interviewed 31 site
local news web sites with content built from operators in-depth, and we fielded a 60-ques-
community members is “a good thing”— tion online survey. Not all 191 respondents
although it may not all be “journalism,” the could, or did, answer every question, but they

2 Citizen Media
poured out their hearts in open-ended We think citizen media sites will become
responses. Their resolve to continue, often an enduring part of the emerging newscape.
on their own dimes, was palpable. While we think many individual sites will
collapse as their founders burn out, others
will arise to take their place.
Our key takeaways:
• Citizen media is emerging as a form of More impressive than the numbers is the
bridge media, linking traditional media impact these sites are having on their
with forms of civic participation.
communities. With limited readership and
• No one size fits all; there are many very little revenue, 73% of those who
models.
responded pronounced their sites to be a “success.’’
• Instead of being comprehensive sources
of news, sites are forming as fusions of With this study, we urge those who can
news and schmooze. help build capacity in this arena to pay atten-
• Most citizen sites don’t use traditional tion. Legacy media companies: Think about
metrics — unique visitors, page views partnering – and even supporting – successful
or revenues — to measure their success. sites, not competing with them. Journalism
schools: Pursue the possibilities of citizen media
• Success is often defined as impact on
their community. sites as learning laboratories. Community
foundations: Be alert to real possibilities for
• Half of our respondents said their building community capacity.
sites don’t need to make money to
Our deep thanks to the Ford Foundation
continue.
and to former program director Jon Funabiki,
• Yet there are new kinds of media whose curiosity launched this project. Please
companies starting to emerge. read on…
• There is a high degree of optimism that
citizen news sites are here to stay.
• Finding ways to attract more contribu-
tors and some operating support are
major challenges. Jan Schaffer
J-Lab Director
February, 2007

Citizen Media 3
 “I think you’re going to see four or five [hyperlocal] sites
per city in a few years and none will be permanent.
We’ll never be big operations. I think what will be long-term
is the phenomenon” of citizen journalism.
– Paul Bass
Founder, [Link]
 Chapter 1: The Big Picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Chapter 2: Mapping Citizen Media Models . . 13

Chapter 3: Creating Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Contents Chapter 4: Building Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Chapter 5: Making Money . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Chapter 6: Defining Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Appendix
Who Participated in the 31 In-depth Interviews?. . . . . 45
Who Participated in the Online Survey? . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
 citizens were prose-shy but would post images, site oper-
ators quickly observed. Some pioneers, such as former
CBS newsman Gordon Joseloff of [Link],
Most site
grafted citizen contributions and comments onto operators
a spine of original reporting. Others, such as believe they
[Link] in Bakersfield, assigned community are engaged
editors to create closely focused neighborhood in a new kind
content to blend with citizen voices.
of community
Bloggers and independent operators with no
legacy media attachments also began creating hun-
building,
dreds of local hubs built almost entirely on volunteer a kind of
Chapter 1: user-generated content. In Vermont, [Link],
the side project of two web designers who focus solely
antidote to the
“bowling alone”
on their community, embraced this model. So did phenomenon.
The Big Picture [Link], a start-up company that attracted $3
million from investors to try to roll out templated sites
from coast to coast.
The pioneers did not intend simply to experiment with new forms
of journalism or give-and-take between citizens and journalists. Most
site operators believe they are engaged in a new kind of community
If 2004 was the year of the blog, 2005 and 2006 were the years the building, a kind of antidote to the “bowling alone” phenomenon. The
hyperlocal citizen media movement exploded. sites that really cook, such as Morris Publishing’s [Link],
It’s been only three years since the first U.S. news organizations combine a style of in-town social networking among neighbors who
embarked on this experiment. In communities as divergent as might cross paths if they had the time, with news and information
Bakersfield, California (Merle Haggard country), and Westport, sharing among posters who are informed, passionate, curious, or simply
Connecticut (Paul Newman country), tech-savvy individuals at major paying attention.
media companies, and journalism mavericks operating outside of corpo- Many sites have grown out of towns such as Deerfield, New
rate media created some of the earliest models for intensely local “place Hampshire, where citizens get little or no attention from any press
sites” that would invite citizens to co-author online chronicles of life in organization short of one of their number being murdered. They’re also
their towns – particularly the things that happened beyond the notice rising from cities, including many aging Midwestern manufacturing
of the press. areas such as Toledo, Ohio, and Muncie, Indiana, where activists com-
These early sites solicited whatever users would contribute in the plain that local coverage is diminishing as news organizations cut costs.
way of neighborhood news, calendar announcements, eyewitness Sites in several places, including San Diego, New Haven,
accounts and audio and video of breaking events and public meetings, Connecticut, and Olympia, Washington, were born of founders’ efforts
musings, testimonials, discussion threads and especially photos. Many to prod local media to compete. Now, they say, papers are responding

6 Citizen Media
 Chapter 1: The Big Picture
by competing more vigorously on stories they might otherwise have attachments to their communities, citizen journalists are occupying civic
missed or underplayed and by reporting real-time news on their web spaces where professional journalists would only squirm, withering
sites. under such naked caring about community.
Citizen journalism ranks low on revenues and readers. It ranks high
About the Study on perceived value and impact. While it aspires to report on community,
The rule in hyperlocal citizen journalism is that no one size or it aspires even more to build community.
shape fits all. This study, funded by the Ford Foundation, sought to When invited to define “success” for their sites, survey respondents
take a snapshot in time of a robust phenomenon – specifically, the more often cited “civic participation” or “community building” than
development of hyperlocal community news sites – that is changing generating more revenue. Although, to be sure, many would like to
and growing week by week. be able to pay their citizen
J-Lab created a questionnaire intended to capture as much data contributors, even if only
as possible through in-depth interviews in the summer of 2006 with token amounts.
founders, owners or operators of a diverse group of 31 citizen media Consider that of 111 respondents
sites. We supplemented that data with an online survey in the fall of able to gauge their site’s success,
2006. We specifically targeted readers, contributors and operators of 73% declared them already to be
the nearly 500 citizen media sites we could identify at the time; 191 0 20% 40% 60% 80% “successful,” even if they were not
participants responded to most or all of our 60 questions. profitable. More than half (51%) said
This report presents our analysis of that data as well as commentary that continued operation of their site did not require it to earn revenue. Asked how long
from the 31 front-line innovators. It offers a baseline of motivations, they would stick with their efforts, more than 81% of the 141 respondents bypassed “1,” “2”
methods of generating content, and measures of or “3 to 4” years and instead asserted that they were in the game “indefinitely.”
success.
Citizen In funding this research, the Ford Foundation Hyperlocal Diversity
journalism wanted to determine whether these initiatives were Hyperlocal citizen sites are diverse in every way. Some sites edit all
is emerging a fad or a sustainable part of the community news- the content that goes up, at least on the front page; some don’t touch
as a form cape. While it is early to draw firm conclusions about content, except to remove offending posts. Some break news; others
the sustainability of these sites and their ultimate reprint news releases. Some struggle to get enough volunteer contribu-
of “bridge” place in the delivery of local news, we can discern tors, others are awash in content and struggling to manage it. Some are
media, linking clear patterns of organization, common motivations, finding innovative ways to generate income to support their operations,
traditional common challenges, and a measure of self-reported while others are not sure where they’ll get their next dime.
forms of optimism that hyperlocal citizen journalism will At many sites, founders are riding a wave of start-up energy, but,
journalism with become a permanent feature of a new journalism particularly at sites run entirely by volunteers, they face a critical chal-
mix. lenge of sustaining their labor or finding sufficient fresh replacement
classic civic
Citizen journalism is emerging as a form of troops. Founders such as Christopher Grotke and Lise LePage take a very
participation. “bridge” media, linking traditional forms of journal- long view; they’re operating on a ten-years-to-profitability plan, hoping
ism with classic civic participation. At ease with their eventually to drop their web design business to run ibrattleboro full time.

Citizen Media 7
 Chapter 1: The Big Picture
Almost no sites are setting Other sites go fallow for days without new posts, or depend on P.R.
themselves up to be comprehensive professionals or local groups such as the library story-time hosts to post
substitutes for a full-blown local news releases. But citizens are quick to claim ownership of sites that
newspaper. Few have the resources. connect, noted Mary Lou Fulton, The Bakersfield
To date, the companies that seem to Californian newspaper executive behind the launch
have created replicable profit-making of Northwest Voice. In the summer of 2006, she
models are mostly legacy newspapers. described what happened when an ad with a pic-
Nevertheless, some promising alterna- ture of a woman in a low-cut blouse ran in the back
tive revenue models are emerging. of the print weekly that is built around citizen con-
In place of being comprehensive tributions reverse-published from the Northwest
[Link]
news sources, sites are forming as Voice web site.
fusions of news and schmooze, where the most dedicated posters can Mary Lou Fulton “You wouldn’t believe the outraged phone
steer intense focus to one or two issues at a time, and where people calls. Northwest Voice was a community newspaper,
with common interests connect. family-oriented, they were shocked and dismayed at our judgment,” said
“The more I focus on the news aspect, the more I think news items Fulton, vice president of audience development. “Wow. This publication
are really just an excuse to have a conversation,” said Lisa Williams, a is not even two years old and you’ve got people who take it so seriously
new media consultant who launched the Watertown, Massachusetts, that they are offended by one advertisement on page 24. They did not
community site [Link] and more recently [Link]. want it to get off track. It was a watershed moment
One surprising development, Williams and others said, is that peo- for the Northwest Voice way.”
ple who run in separate circles in their everyday “We in newspapers and media have been great “We’re
lives and might seem natural antagonists – political at telling people, ‘No, we’re not going to put your really
and ideological opposites, gentrifiers and veteran stuff in the paper.’ We’ve trained generations of
embarking
homeowners – talk to each other on hyperlocal people to be consumers of news,” said Kevin
sites. The great majority of site operators say that Kaufman, managing editor of The Daily Camera and
on a shift
nasty conversational behavior, even among these [Link] in Boulder, Colorado. “All on what is
opposites, is rare. of a sudden we want people to be participants in news, what’s
But first, citizens must show up. Building traffic news. Some people are enthusiastic but a lot of important to
continues to be a struggle, particularly at sites where people are skeptical or nervous or unsure. We’re
Lisa Williams people and
there are few or no paid staffers to do shoe-leather really embarking on a shift on what is news, what’s
marketing, or where site operators have yet to hit on successful traffic- important to people and what’s their role in the
what’s their
generating strategies. Many sites are bursting with the passion and ener- process.” role in the
gy of their contributors, but the circle of conversation is exceedingly Hyperlocal citizen sites rest on this shifting process.”
small compared to the population of their towns. Lisa Williams, who has ground. The question is whether they are fads, short- – Kevin Kaufman
analyzed the penetration of hyperlocal sites, said the successful sites lived efforts that may bloom and fade like some blogs,
claim one out of ten residents as registered or frequent users. or fundamental realignments of local news delivery.

8 Citizen Media
 Chapter 1: The Big Picture
We believe that citizen media Many sites emphasize, and others create space for, the kinds of
sites will be a sustainable part of micro-news that daily papers lack the staff or pages to cover: 35th
the local news universe, but not all wedding anniversaries, galleries of prom pictures, Rotary Club news.
individual sites may be sustainable. These may be of interest to just one subdivision or even one family, but
Rather, ongoing efforts will likely the effect is one of inclusiveness and intimacy many users find lacking
emerge in serial fashion, with in their local press.
fresh sites coming online to replace While some hyperlocal ventures are built around web sites, many
those that collapse as their others are essentially blogs. They are less individual soapboxes, however,
founders burn out. than easy-to-use software systems for managing community content.
“I think you’re going to see Sites are set up as businesses, as non-profits or as ad hoc citizen
[Link] four or five [hyperlocal] sites per ventures. In our survey, 139 respondents split evenly: Half described
city in a few years and none will be permanent. We’ll never be big their sites as for-profit operations, and half non-profit. Among the
operations,” predicted Paul Bass, a journalist who profit-seekers are entrepreneurs inventing new kinds of media compa-
founded [Link] in Connecticut. nies to tap user-generated news and information and to build revenue
“I think what will be long-term is the phenomenon” models based on local shopping, local search and online advertising.
of citizen journalism. Also on the for-profit side are legacy media companies who see
news holes and ad revenues declining and reader dissatisfaction ascend-
Defining Citizen Media ing. They’re launching hyperlocal sites to preserve or extend their reach
What exactly is a hyperlocal citizen media site? into their local markets, to capture online advertising and, not least, to
It is a multi-media digital unspooling that reflects repair bonds with their communities and deepen citizens’ attachments
life in a particular place, typically with a rolling Paul Bass to each other. Only those who know and care about where they live will
front page where posts go up in blog-like chrono- pay for coverage, the thinking goes.
logical order. Many display professionally produced local coverage Many of these newspaper-owned sites are thick with user-generated
(whether originated by a small paid staff, imported from an owner “chicken dinner” content that is reverse-published
newspaper, or linked to by volunteer staffs). Citizen postings take center into ad-rich, free home-delivered weeklies. Several of
stage on some sites or are relegated mostly to comments and photo these sites – hybrids of citizens and professional staff
... the effect
galleries on others. Sites also typically feature event calendars, mission who solicit and produce content – show great promise is one of
statements, tutorials on how to contribute text and images, local blog in both profitability and sustainability. Bakersfield’s inclusiveness
feeds, and government and business directories. Many include poetry Northwest Voice site became profitable in about a and intimacy
or creative writing, columns on gardening or sports or other topics year. Unlike many non-profit sites, they’re not as many users
and vast photo galleries, with featured photos on the front page. dependent on the free labor of a committed corps
Site operators frequently cited local daily (45%) or weekly (44%) who hope replacements will step up before they burn
find lacking
newspapers as their competition, but others say the competition is out. in their
every other web offering – from neighborhood listservs (21%) to social In another category are the for-profit solo site local press.
networking favorites that define community as the world. operators who don’t seem terribly concerned with

Citizen Media 9
Chapter 1: The Big Picture
making money, at least not immediately. Like [Link] co-owners about the price of real estate.
Debbie Galant and Liz George, many site operators say they’re rewarded Another commonality is emerging: Citizens Citizens for
by inventing as they go and watching citizens propel the enterprise with for the most part do not desire to contribute fully
the surprising contributions they make. reported articles with leads, middles, and ends,
the most part
Some of these small-scale site operators are able to claim profitability or to communicate their experiences in polished do not desire
only because they count their server bills as practically their only expenses, essay form (though some do; many sites boast to contribute
and discount their thousands of hours of unpaid labor. Two questions volunteer columnists). In a few cities, such as fully reported
bedevil some within this group: How big a town or collection of towns Madison, Wisconsin, professionals are trying to articles with
does one need to sell enough local or national ads to support a busi- train citizens to become journalists. But there is
ness? Should ad revenues be shared with the most-read or most-active little evidence that many civilians want to call
leads, middles,
contributors – and if so, how? around and conduct interviews (again, with
and ends ...
Then there’s the most diverse category: the non-profits. These exceptions; the blogger who created
include disaffected journalists turning to foundations to support local [Link] did start making calls after an editor at the
coverage and citizen training. Both New Haven Independent and Greensboro paper made that suggestion in a post to the site). In fact,
[Link] in Chicago are initiatives by veteran journalists sites such as New West and Village Soup struggle to generate user posts,
to create digital-age forms of alternative media. Other non-profit sites in part, their founders suspect, because citizens are intimidated at put-
were launched by groups or individuals attempting to build a place for ting their prose up next to professional copy.
the kinds of coverage and discussion they can’t find in the press, and by Citizens are, however, using community sites to bring attention to
collectives who are testing the proposition of whether citizens will pay critical issues or to have their say on growth, crime, jobs, schools and the
public radio-style memberships to support community sites. environment. They also stir up talk about lifestyle, noise, traffic, and
A few sites – such as the new media start-up [Link], which who sells decent produce. Their approach is more often impressionistic
covers 11 Rocky Mountain centers, and [Link] in Maine – put than systematic, or what journalists would consider “finished.”
more emphasis on “local” than on citizen content. The proprietors of They go to public meetings and post a paragraph of interpretation,
both sites believe professionally produced content is vital to creating or skip the reporting and go straight to analysis. Some will post tran-
interest and generating traffic. Much of their citizen content comes scripts or documents or raw video or audiotape. Or they’ll report from
through comment threads and photos. experience, adding their account of something happening on the block
or at their kids’ schools to the story mosaic taking shape on site. “Citizen
Common Characteristics journalists have an outsider stance to the news,” said H2otown’s Lisa
All these sites, even those with heavy doses of Big-J journalism, Williams. “They creep up on the news,” for example by blogging about
draw on the community brain. They depend for their vitality on citizens meetings they watch on local cable channels.
sharing their thoughts, observations and experiences. Subjectivity Many non-journalists who have launched sites, such as Barry Parr,
prevails. One reason sites are so different from one another is that founder of [Link], and Christopher Grotke and Lise LePage at
towns are so different, and sites reflect the citizens’ preoccupations. The ibrattleboro, have assigned themselves to cover specific issues, but
county fair will generate outpourings of photos and contributions in they do it on terms that don’t necessarily follow the rules of standard
rural New Hampshire, while in San Diego people can’t say enough journalism. Parr doesn’t have to give a blow-by-blow account of a

10 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 Chapter 1: The Big Picture
municipal meeting in cases where he’s set up his tripod and made the the sites supplement what local media can provide; 74% said the sites build connections to
full video available on the site. the community.
Though in this experimental phase each site is sui generis, sites When asked to describe the impact their sites have had in their communities, 82% said
commonly make room for whatever kind of user wants to join the party. they provided opportunities for dialogue; 61% said they watchdogged local government;
Certain types are showing up all over: The local official or politico who 39% said they helped the community solve problems; 27% said they increased voter turnout
blogs; the suffering commuters who want road improvements; the and 17% said they increased the number of candidates running for office.
development debaters; the gallery and club owners touting weekend
events; the guy who posts 20 photos of his sandy baby; and the high
school clubs washing cars on Saturday.
Sites often crackle with postings when towns experience big 61%

events: A hailstorm, a Nazi rally (as occurred in Olympia, Washington), 27%

a momentous issue that comes before the council or school board. 17%

People also use hyperlocal sites to explore: What’s that smell? Why 39%
was there another stabbing this weekend? Can someone baby-sit my
82%
parrot? And no one responds that the smell is too speculative, the stab-
74%
bing is worth just a couple of paragraphs, or that
interest in a parrot is too inside to be published. 77%

Citizen media 82%

sites are Having Impact 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%
In these and other ways, citizen media sites are
adding valuable adding valuable information to their communities,
information which may be an important indicator of their sustain- Lise LePage said, “I felt successful when we were at a meeting last
to their ability. There is little doubt that sites are having signif- night with 100 people in the room and someone said, ‘Where are we
communities, icant impact. Site operators say they know elected going to find out this information?’ And someone said, ‘ibrattleboro.’”
which may be officials and community leaders are following along – Among the wealth of evidence that sites are expanding coverage,
in part because officials often join in, in part because prompting change or influencing events in their towns, here are a few
an important
governments are using sites as a way to communicate examples:
indicator real-time information (reports on road blockages or In coastal San Mateo, California, the local weekly paper began to
of their temporary changes in garbage collection schedules), cover breaking news on its web site after Coastsider was launched.
sustainability. in part because community journalists are getting In San Diego, [Link] pursues a strategy of cherry-
their calls returned immediately. They know journal- picking an important undercovered issue and “throwing people at it.” It
ists are mining their sites for tips and sources, and in towns such as claims credit for influencing debate on the development of a new air-
Greensboro, joining in the conversation. port and for prompting The Union-Tribune to add reporters to the City
When asked what they found valuable about the citizen media sites they read, 82% of Hall beat.
our survey respondents said they provide local information not found elsewhere; 77% said In New Haven, a youth initiative partly directed at giving teens

C i t i z e n M e d i a 11
 Chapter 1: The Big Picture
something to do grew out of a New Haven Independent campaign. and detailed discussion about
In Madison, Wisconsin, 50 citizens have received journalism basic whether they should be ignored or
training and have begun to break stories on [Link], confronted, which went on for a
including one about tainted water. long time with strong positions on
In Deerfield, New Hampshire, coverage of upcoming elections at both sides,” said site owner Rick
The Forum [[Link]] led to a significant increase in candidates. McKinnon.
In Northfield, Minnesota, in In Toledo, workers concerned
the wake of a hailstorm that dam- about working conditions and
aged virtually every car parked other issues at a local Jeep plant
on the street, citizens flocked to held discussions at [Link] [Link]
[Link] to compile accounts and posted excerpts on a company
of crop damage, to exchange tips on bulletin board.
how to prove damage to insurers, In Greensboro, the city council refused to endorse a 10-year plan
and to share videos and 180 photos offered by the Coalition to Fight Homelessness. A coalition member
documenting damage. posted clarifying details on Greensboro101, a council member read it
In Rye, New Hampshire, which and re-introduced the plan, which was adopted.
[Link]
falls outside a major market, citi- In Maine, reporters at Village Soup exposed violations of open-
zens heavily covered problems in meeting rules. And a citizen contributor helped police find an elderly
the construction of a municipal man who went missing for two days after he recognized the man’s car
building and the debate over from a photo police posted to the site.
proposed construction of a 400- In Santa Fe, a local store put brown wrappers on a magazine that
person assisted living center for featured a breast-feeding woman on the cover. “Eight hundred
[Link]. comments later,” [Link] editor Stefan Dill said, “the
New West in the Rocky [company] president announced in our comments that due to public
Mountain region produced a six- pressure, they were going to take the wrappers off.” In celebration,
part series on sex crimes that “had women posted numerous photos of themselves breastfeeding, and the
a huge impact on the many people site became a hub of breastfeeding tips.
[Link]
involved and in the community,” In Denver, Travis Henry, the editor of [Link], says the greatest
according to site owner Jonathan Weber. impact of community sites is hard to quantify. “It’s allowed people to
In Olympia, Washington, citizens convened at [Link] to have voices who didn’t have voices before.”
discuss how to respond to an upcoming Nazi rally. “There was a long

12 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 companies are operating two kinds of sites: for-profit and non-profit.
Blog aggregator sites are one-stop community repositories where
citizens can scan multiple local blogs, and local bloggers can engage
each other. Syndicated multi-site models have as their goal the develop-
ment of a model that can be syndicated in and adapted to multiple
communities.
Legacy media sites were launched by newspapers or broadcast

Chapter 2: corporations as places for users to dominate the content, in contrast to

their news web sites dominated by the work of professional journalists.
Solo enterprise sites (both for-profit and non-profit) are the work

Mapping Citizen
of individuals and partners, few of whom have professional journalism
experience.

Community Cooperatives

Media Models The Forum serves Deerfield and three other small New Hampshire
towns that lie beyond the coverage area of any daily paper or broad-
cast. About a dozen people who came to know each other while
working on local elections con-
fronted the news vacuum by apply-
ing for a J-Lab grant to launch a cit-
J-Lab has previously divided hyperlocal citizen media sites into three izen web site. With no journalism
categories: All-volunteer sites, legacy media sites and hybrid sites joining experience, the voting members of
small paid staffs with citizen contributors. Sites are more diverse than The Forum – who agree to con-
that, however. tribute $25 and 100 hours of work
What follow are some narrower classifications and brief profiles of annually – got the site up
many of the sites examined in-depth for this study. The site classifica- and publishing in August 2005.
tions are necessarily imperfect; some sites fit more than one category, or Founding managing editor
have features that overlap category lines. Categorizations that apply in Maureen Mann said about half a
[Link]
the summer of 2006, at the time this research was being conducted, dozen remain regular posters, and
may be out of date by summer 2007. two have joined her in the editing cooperative, which screens or edits
For the moment, however, J-Lab defines community cooperatives as every post. It spends a large portion of its budget publishing site con-
sites where volunteers share labor and decision making, usually with tent in a print edition three times a year for the benefit of citizens
formal meetings. Trained citizen journalist sites embrace traditional who are not online, and to urge readers to post to the site. More than
journalism values and offer training to non-journalists. 70 people had contributed to the site by its one-year anniversary.
Professional journalists operating independently of legacy media The Forum, which takes a straightforward and earnest tone,

C i t i z e n M e d i a 13
 Chapter 2: Mapping Citizen Media Models
published the only detailed coverage of the March 2006 municipal elec- writing about the most impor-
tions. “We got enormous positive feedback on our candidate profiles tant issues and breaking new
and explanations of what the issues are,” Mann said. ground because the political
A group of citizens in Northfield, Minnesota, who had been run- leadership has operated without
ning a local issues discussion board ventured into citizen journalism in scrutiny for years.” That said, he
January 2006 when they launched [Link], which invites postings notes the site could use more
from anyone in the community. At the six-month mark Doug Bratland, contributors who want to tackle
chairman of the site’s volunteer board, said about a dozen posters dom- news and news analysis in addi-
inated the site. Members of the board of Northfield Citizens Online tion to recipes and travel pieces.
share the task of screening all posts that go to the site’s front page and The two-year-old non-profit
editing for grammar and code errors. The most popular content is the [Link] in Ann Arbor, [Link]
photo galleries. Michigan, is run by individuals
A part-time managing editor was hired to multiply citizen posts and who in the words of one collective member “have no structure and no
diversify voices and to increase the ratio of newsy items to P.R.-style accountability to one another,” but whose goal is to host an alternative
event announcements. To keep a part-time paid editor the site needs news site for original posts, commentary and links to other media
500 people in the town of about 17,000 to become members by paying coverage. The only cost is minimal site hosting fees, which one member
$20 a year. pays out of pocket. About ten people have posting privileges, but any
Rye Reflections was initiated by former Boston Globe editor Jack Ann Arbor citizen can e-mail and obtain guest-poster status.
Driscoll, now editor-in-residence at the MIT Media Lab. Once a month
the site publishes about 16 news and Trained Citizen Journalist Sites
feature articles written by, and of Madison Commons, which launched in March 2006, draws content
interest to, people living on the New from three sources: Local publications that “partner” by providing story
Hampshire seacoast around the town links, the work of students trained in the citizen journalism program at
of Rye. “Very few in Rye have any the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and citizens of Madison who have
kind of writing experience or comput- undergone reporting and writing workshops. Some 50 citizens, recruited
er experience but they have a loyalty from Neighborhood Planning Councils, were trained as of summer 2006.
to their community,” Driscoll said. About 10 became contributors, said journalism professor and project
Members of the Silver Stringers project in
Melrose, Mass., offer lessons from their citizen “This is a way they can express them- director Lew Friedland. Friedland’s intention is for citizens to provide
journalism experience to the staff of a newly selves and share the wisdom they grassroots coverage of Madison neighborhoods, meeting a threshold for
launched Rye Reflections in April 2005.
have built up about the area.” fairness and accuracy in everything they write. All citizen posts are edited.
Contributors (all volunteers) gather weekly for story meetings, and The site, however, is dominated not by citizen content but by
Driscoll runs tutorials on how to conduct interviews and other practical professional material drawn from the city’s two newspapers and other
skills. There’s a six-member editing cooperative, and three people edit publications. Friedland believes the site needs 30 to 50 “hard core”
every piece. community contributors to be considered truly citizen-driven. He
“We’re a community without a newspaper,” Driscoll said. “We are estimates it could take three to five years to train enough citizens to

14 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 Chapter 2: Mapping Citizen Media Models
achieve that balance. Beyond the support of the university, Friedland the local crime map one created. Bass’s goal is to
says, the site needs to raise about $25,000 a year to pay editors and break stories, bring undercovered issues to the fore-
“I don’t know
expand training workshops to include photography and videography as front and stimulate more and better reporting by
well as writing. Ten months after its launch, Madison Commons’ small all local media. Though the site is having an impact,
if we’re here
toehold leveraged a prestigious $100,000 Baldwin grant to expand the he said, he can’t continue indefinitely to do all his to stay yet. …
model into a Wisconsin Commons. jobs, which he described as “editing the site, raising Our real goal
Geoff Dougherty is an investigative reporter who launched the the money, maintaining the finances, administrative is to prove it
non-profit Chi-Town Daily News in December of 2005 after leaving the work, hiring people, writing my own stories, dealing can be done.”
Chicago Tribune. He calls it an with the public. It’s not sustainable,” he said, “I don’t
– Paul Bass
online newspaper by and for know if we’re here to stay yet. … Our real goal is to
Chicago residents, and his inten- prove it can be done.”
tion is to raise enough money to The two-year-old Voice of San Diego has an annual budget of a
hire and pay reporters (including half-million dollars mostly contributed by local foundations. The site
himself), to continue to run articles employs two co-editors and five other full-time staff members, and
produced by Medill School of draws on several paid and unpaid freelancers and consultants. Backed
Journalism students and to train by local foundation executive Buzz Wooley, the site was launched as an
citizen reporters to write for the alternative news source to the monopoly daily paper, The Union-Tribune,
site. Dougherty runs informal with an invitation for citizens to supplement the professional journalism.
night-at-the-pub training work- The editors selectively recruit citizens to write pieces in their areas
[Link]
shops for anyone who’s interested. of interest for free or small fees, then edit their work to meet profes-
“One of the unfortunate things sional standards. Citizens also post photos and take part in discussion
about Chicago is there are a lot of economically disadvantaged forums. Executive editors Scott Lewis and Andrew Donohue say readers
neighborhoods that are never covered at all,” he said. “Ultimately we also contribute to stories as they develop. On some breaking events,
want fairly consistent contributors covering neighborhood events and reporters post intermittently to the site as they report, and invite
hyperlocal stuff, because that’s the stuff that doesn’t get covered.” citizens to help fill in the gaps with tips, documents and other materials
to advance stories.
Professional Journalist Non-profit Sites Lewis and Donohue say it’s difficult to find citizens who are strong
On a budget of about $120,000 a year from grants and sponsor- writers and will contribute regularly for free, but a token payment
ships, journalist Paul Bass runs New Haven Independent, a site that of $25 is enough to encourage and build the confidence of some con-
breaks news with Bass and one other full-time reporter, two half-time tributors. One continued to write in exchange for business cards.
reporters, a public schoolteacher who blogs on retainer, a Hartford
correspondent on retainer, a consulting webmaster and half a dozen Professional Journalist For-profit Sites
freelancers who are paid by the piece. Former CBS producer and correspondent Gordon Joseloff launched
Citizens contribute by turning the article comments sections into WestportNow to be a source of professionally produced “real-time
debates and by sending tips, photos, audio, videos and features such as news” for an affluent Connecticut town of 26,000 that gets no consis-

C i t i z e n M e d i a 15
 Chapter 2: Mapping Citizen Media Models
tent coverage, he said, between the deadline dates of two local week- Blog Aggregator Sites
lies. Joseloff, a Westport native, defines WestportNow as “a web site Greensboro, North Carolina, has an extraordinarily active local
edited by professionals with the aid of non-professionals,” including a blogosphere. Web designer Roch Smith, Jr. launched Greensboro101 as a
volunteer photographer who shoots the old-home “Teardown of the community service to aggregate blogs in one place, but the site is more
Day” and has learned to report. “It’s run like a professional news than a digest. Smith quickly concluded that some blogs were more com-
organization with stringers” who are citizens, he said. He was the site’s pelling than others, so now he applies editorial judgment by creating a
original reporter/editor; he hired a staff reporter/editor after he was front page for highlighted blog posts. “We look for something that is
elected to an office equivalent to mayor of Westport. well-written, that conveys some minimal completeness in terms of news
The front page is filled mostly with staff-produced short, newsy and opinion and that has some grain of substance,” he said. “I found
posts and daily photos, which constitute the bulk of citizen contribu- myself applying some measure of what traditional journalism might
tions. More than a dozen contributors posted pictures from a Memorial apply” to the featured posts, which regularly highlight the blogs of
Day parade. News & Record reporters and editors.
Joseloff wants to “replicate WestportNow in other similarly demo- Before the city’s monthly blogger meet-ups, Smith runs an open
graphically impressive communities and find someone like me who will Greensboro101 meeting where editorial issues are discussed. The site is
edit it professionally and wants to make a business of it.” But first he now a for-profit corporation with a local advisory board. With an invest-
needs to move the site into the black; this year he hired its first ad ment of $20,000 from a local businessman/blogger, Smith is working to
salesperson on commission. develop an advertising model that would share revenue between the
Jonathan Weber, former editor of The Industry site and bloggers. “I see a lot of opportu-
Standard, launched New West as a regional publication nities for things we could do if we were
with local hub sites across the Rocky Mountain region. profitable,” Smith said, including lending
The web site was phase one of a new media company out camera and video equipment and
that has moved into custom publishing and indoor “allowing people to learn more about
advertising. Weber has plans for New West to publish how to do good citizen journalism.”
books and magazines and host conferences devoted to In his free time off from working as a
environmental and other issues in a region where, he software engineer for Knight Ridder in the
said, media are “underdeveloped.” late 1990s, Karl Martino founded the blog
Jonathan Weber With an investment of less than $1 million from aggregator [Link], which he shut
angel investors, New West has a staff of two regional edi- down in 2001. He re-launched it in 2004 as
[Link]
tors and part-time editors in 11 locales who solicit pieces from contract a hybrid site where blogs are not only
writers and do their own writing, which blends reporting with commen- aggregated, but non-bloggers also post
tary. Weber is disappointed that few citizens are contributing pieces to original work. He now calls it a regional online community “seeking to
New West’s “Unfiltered” section. He speculated that the professional coalesce what the entire region is discussing.” Six volunteers help him
quality of writing and reporting on the site “serves as a deterrent” to keep an eye on postings and promote stories to the front page. The site
amateurs. Photo contributions are “stronger than writing,” he said. is currently a for-profit LLC (limited liability company) with a trickle of
revenue from advertising. “We need a way of sharing revenue with

16 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 Chapter 2: Mapping Citizen Media Models
people who contribute to the site,” Martino said. “I do not know how also solicits community contributions. “You can call
to do that right now.” that person, e-mail her, she lives in and is a journal- “It’s a way
ist in the community,” Henry said. “Is it traditional
for people to
Syndicated Multi-site Models journalism? No, and we’re not pretending” it is.
Village Soup, founded by former textbook publisher Richard “It’s a way for people to talk to each other without
talk to each
Anderson in 1997, employs a dozen journalists who cover two areas of all the filters and spins.” other without
about 50,000 people each around the town of Belfast and the Camden- Co-founder Mark Potts objects to the character- all the filters
Rockland area of Maine. They contribute to what Anderson describes as ization he’s heard of [Link] as a “local site- and spins.”
a news and shopping site that allows citizens to search for local mer- in-a-box.” Backfence was conceived to be a network
– Travis Henry
chandise across personal classifieds and business inventories. Citizens of hyperlocal community sites built entirely on citi-
currently can browse for purchases through the site’s database of local zen-generated offerings and supported by advertis-
businesses, primarily Realtors. Businesses are charged for listings and ing revenue. The company, with $3 million in venture capital support,
given the tools to create pages that they can change daily to highlight launched sites in McLean and Reston, Virginia, in May 2005, then
sales, or perhaps a restaurant’s evening dinner special. About a quarter spread to other Washington-area suburbs and to affluent communities
of the ad revenue comes through the online product, the rest from the outside Chicago and the San Francisco area. The company’s goal was
print weekly. to re-create the site in more than a dozen metropolitan areas with
Anderson’s goal is to create a platform, Village Soup Common, to approximately 10 local sites in each area, but in January 2007 it
be used by locally owned community network sites around the world. announced a downsizing and restructuring.
Although the sites would solicit and run citizen-generated news and The site model had one editor handling the home pages for every
information and photography, Anderson believes professional journal- five sites in a regional market, along with full-time community relations
ism is key to attracting advertisers. specialists in each market and one ad salesperson for each two commu-
Your Hub was launched by the Rocky Mountain News throughout nities.
its circulation area in April 2005 and is now 44 local web sites, with The sites are dominated by blogs and local conversation. “It’s not
citizen-generated content fed from the sites into 15 weekly zoned print journalism. It’s content,” Potts said. “We’ve gone back and forth about
editions. The company now syndicates Your Hub in eight states and using the word ‘news’ because it freaks out people who aren’t journal-
expects more expansion. The sites, dominated by upbeat “chicken ists. … To people from the outside [what’s on the site] looks incredibly
dinner” news, link to local professionally produced articles, highlight fea- mundane, but if you’re in those communities it’s incredibly important.”
tured bloggers and offer comprehensive community announcements and Potts said, “We think the model looks like
listings of government, cultural, small business and other institutions. the newspaper business down the road –
“There are the Googles and Craigslists of the world – they can “It’s not [with] a handful of companies doing this
set up local sites in whatever city they want by flipping a couple of around the country, and we don’t bump into
journalism. each other at all.”
switches,” editor Travis Henry said. “The benefit we have over the
Googles and Craigslists is that we are still local because local newspa-
It’s content.” [Link] is the central portal to a
pers are running the sites.” – Mark Potts planned network of hyperlocal community
Each hub is hosted by a local editor who blogs and posts photos but web sites, the first launched in Plymouth,

C i t i z e n M e d i a 17
 Chapter 2: Mapping Citizen Media Models
Massachusetts, in March 2006. A project of GateHouse Media, which launch a free daily delivery paper for the area
owns six dailies and more than 100 weeklies in Massachusetts alone, the and a companion web site, [Link],
“In doing this
sites are intended to weave together professional and citizen journalism and make these indispensable venues through
and to promote community discussion. The citizen journalism section which residents would get to know each other
we weren’t
also includes blogs, photos and interactive discussion forums. and build a sense of place. trying to cut
The site has two online editors. The site, which launched in spring 2005, staff. We were
As the network expands, much of the blends local blogs with original citizen-generated trying to get
responsibility for the web sites is content. Some 5,000 people in the town of people to read
being pushed out to the “print” edi- 16,000 households became registered users in the
tors, who are increasingly becoming first year, an extremely high ratio by the standards
and participate
multimedia editors. On the citizen- of citizen sites. By the end of 2006, registered and be part of
journalism side, the online editors users had increased to more than 7,300; 1,618 the community.”
monitor forums, assist citizen journalists had posted comments, 1,289 had posted blog – Steve Yelvington
and reach out into the community entries. And 960 users had posted 26,700 photos
both to urge participation in the sites in the photo galleries.
[Link] and determine how the sites can be “The vision is that the web site is this huge participative environ-
made most useful to people in the communities. ment, and the home-delivered newspaper draws heavily on the site,”
The site is supported by several forms of advertising, perhaps most said Steve Yelvington, the site’s shepherd at Morris Digital Works. “In
innovative is Google-type advertising associated with a robust search doing this we weren’t trying to cut staff. We were trying to get people
tool for local markets. to read and participate and be part of the commu-
nity. It’s not about getting print out the door at a
Legacy Media Sites lower cost, but about building strong community
The Morris Publishing Group has launched one of the most radical where people have bonds of trust and are interested
old-media experiments in citizen journalism: It ended its Savannah in and care about local affairs – because that’s what
paper’s weekly zoned coverage of nearby coastal South Carolina, and we cover in the paper.”
launched in its place a community web site and a free home-delivered The first citizen journalism sites published by
publication, called Bluffton Today, in the one rapidly growing part of news organizations go back only three years but
the zone. they are multiplying quickly. First to launch, in 2004,
Steve Yelvington
The Savannah Morning News, about a 40-minute drive from the was Northwest Voice in Bakersfield, California. Its
town of Bluffton, was losing market share to closer McClatchy daily founder, Mary Lou Fulton, explained that Bakersfield’s family-owned
papers. Morris saw little value in trying to compete for penetration in newspaper, The Californian, recognized it could not cover news at the
the built-out towns of Beaufort and Hilton Head, but saw possibilities in neighborhood level in the rapidly growing area of about 300,000 peo-
Bluffton, a former fishing village that was becoming the hot spot for ple and considered that to be a barrier between the paper and readers.
new golf communities rising on the coast. Half the population was new An initial investment of $50,000 included the start-up of both a web site
to the community in the previous five years. Morris gambled it could filled with community-generated neighborhood news and announce-

18 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 Chapter 2: Mapping Citizen Media Models
ments, and a free weekly edition that draws content from the site and tive.” The site wants more video contributions, but few have emerged
is delivered to every home in the area. A second site, Southwest Voice from citizens who were trained in video newsgathering. Gilbert said,
([Link]) covers another part of the paper’s circulation region. “We think that’s because bloggers don’t have the equipment. … We’re
The citizen sites combine “organic community content” – whatever thinking of lending cameras for a week to trained bloggers.”
citizens choose to write about or announce – with regular contributions
from volunteer columnists and articles and discussion questions generated Solo Enterprise Non-profit Sites
by site editors. Fulton said editors visited 25 community leaders prior to Evergreen State College Professor Rick McKinnon launched OlyBlog,
the launch to encourage them to contribute material. “Then it was just a devoted to discussions of Olympia, Washington, politics and news, in
matter of our editor bugging the heck out of people, reminding them August 2005. The site was an answer to the unmoderated discussions
we’re around and we’re looking for articles and pictures,” she said. rife with “negative, hateful comments” on the web site of the local
“What we’ve done in newspapers is train people in communities daily, The Olympian, McKinnon said. “There was a space to have an
that events that matter to them,” such as wedding anniversaries other online conversation that was more carefully moderated.”
than silver and gold, “don’t matter McKinnon devotes hundreds of hours of unpaid labor to the site
to the newspaper,” she said. “Our each month and pays the $40 server bill. He’s designated half a dozen
policy is to say ‘yes’ to everything, volunteers as moderators who promote posts from registered users to
provided that it’s local and relevant the front page, delete comments from discussions and generally “keep
to the community. You have to do track of the site.”
that for a while before people The site gets enough posts to be
believe you.” self-sustaining, McKinnon said. The
Northwest Voice reached greater challenge is economic: How
break-even in about a year, in part to finance what he calls a nascent
by providing an affordable ad buy nonprofit civic network of linked sites
to small businesses that cannot devoted to such topics as Olympia
[Link] afford to advertise in the daily. arts and the environment. “We also
In Nashville, a TV station – ABC affili- want to think about how we might
ate WKRN – has launched a citizen blog get one integrated wireless system in
aggregate, [Link], hosted all of Olympia,” he said.
by an in-house blogger who highlights John Sawvel runs Toledo Talk, the [Link]
and comments on local postings. “They’re discussion site he founded in 2003 as
trying to engage a different type of audi- a non-profit community public service. In 2005 he began to learn about
ence who doesn’t watch local news,” said community journalism and decided to start attending and writing about
site operator Brittney Gilbert. “It’s sarcas- public meetings on the arts and municipal issues, as well as the monthly
tic, light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek. My sessions of a “new urbanism” group of citizens, developers and politi-
opinions and biases are out in the open cians who chew over downtown issues.
[Link] and there’s no intention of being objec- Sawvel is encouraged that other contributors now cover school

C i t i z e n M e d i a 19
Chapter 2: Mapping Citizen Media Models
board meetings and link from the site to video and audio coverage of have told her they can’t “write funny like you.”
events on their blogs. But as the site grew more popular in the last year Williams stands undecided on the brink of selling ads and building
he felt compelled for the first time to “put the brakes on” by reviewing the site into a business. She’s not sure she wants to be accountable to
items before they were posted to the front page and moderating discus- clients. “I have an entirely experimental attitude,” she says. “I could
sions. “It was getting wild,” he said. He’s looking into organizing the site stop at any time. Basically, I’ve been just not stopping.” But in the next
as an LLC, with its attendant liability protection. “I don’t want to say to breath she confesses to “itchy expansionist feelings about Waltham, the
my wife, ‘We’re going to lose our house because I started a web site.’“ town next door.”
Baristanet concerns itself with the obsessions of suburban parents
Solo Enterprise For-profit Sites and below-the-newspaper-radar events in the New Jersey towns of
Some citizen media sites have personalities that are so distinctive, a Montclair, Bloomfield and Glen Ridge. It was founded in May 2004 by
regular participant would know those voices anywhere. This is especially writer Debbie Galant and a business partner. Each invested $3,000 in site
true of sites that are run by individuals or partners who got a bug to stir design and T-shirts. The original partner has since withdrawn; Galant
up a conversation in their communities, then began to suspect they had now co-owns the site with writer Liz George. Galant and George do all
a business on their hands. Some of the most readable citizen media sites the posting on Baristanet (along with a paid part-time writer and occa-
are the projects of non-journalists who started out wanting to know sionally their part-time technology consultant). Many of their posts con-
their towns better, and ended up creating civic conversations. sist of tart commentary wrapped around links to New York Times or
Lisa Williams, a computer-literate blogger and media consultant, Newark Star-Ledger articles on local matters, but the Baristas (as they
founded H2otown in the Boston suburb of Watertown in February 2005 call themselves) regularly break hyperlocal stories and post real-time
because she despaired of Watertown ever receiving consistent day-to- coverage of breaking events. Contributors weigh in on real-time news
day coverage. She also felt like a stranger as a relative newcomer to with tips, observations and photos.
the town, and suspected others felt similarly disconnected. The site is Favorite discussion topics include mini-mansion
“about paying attention,” she said, “and that’s what we’re doing proliferation and critiques of local government and “I could stop
collectively at H2otown.” schools. The site “is about our voice,” Galant says, at any time.
Watertown has a weekly paper with frequent staff turnover, and describing it as “fun, interactive and timely, with a Basically, I’ve
the Boston Globe selectively covers stories from the suburb, “but our blogger’s view that there are no sacred cows.”
been just not
competition is not the newspaper,” Williams said. “We’re covering stuff The editors take a hands-off approach to forums
that is too small or silly or beneath the paper.” By “we” Williams essen- except to intervene when regulars complain about
stopping.”
tially means herself. She invites citizens to post news and information, trolls, those site invaders who post inflammatory or – Lisa Williams
and some do, but she’s the one who does most of the reporting. “I off-topic comments to provoke an angry response.
cover the Town Council by TiVo,” she says (meetings are broadcast Galant privately e-mails provocateurs a plea to post nicely, explaining that
on local cable). “I have little kids and can’t go to all those meetings.” they’re driving away her business. “They respect that,” she said. Now
On the site Williams refers to herself in the third person as their challenge is to build the business and expand geographically. Galant
“H2otown,” a wry, gadget-obsessed, slightly neurotic character. She says, “We have figured out a way to generate community. We think it’s
spoofs herself to downplay her authority and invite others to partici- replicable. Now, how do we muster the managerial and capital resources
pate, but the tone actually intimidates some citizens, Williams said, who to really be a player?”

20 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 Chapter 2: Mapping Citizen Media Models
Life and business partners estimate, and his wife is the site’s chief photographer.
Christopher Grotke and Lise LePage The town has a weekly, the Half Moon Bay Review, but no daily
run a web design business in consistently covers the community of about 30,000, Parr said. When he
Brattleboro, Vermont. In February launched he thought he would be just one of many citizens aggregating
2003 they founded ibrattleboro, their locally compelling items to Coastsider from other sites and posting origi-
privately owned site where anyone in nal bits of news and information. Instead, he said, “nobody posted.”
the community can write about any So Parr assigned himself the task of inquiring into development,
local issues that matter to them. traffic problems and other town issues. His posts are less fully reported
Grotke says the site predated the stories than very short chapters in an ongoing narrative on selected
[Link] citizen media terminology, or at least local issues, occasionally punctuated by his
their knowledge of it. “We didn’t carefully considered opinions and invita-
really know what we had started,” he said. For a long time, the tions to discuss (on such subjects as
founder/owners seeded the content with concise, opinion-flavored posts whether fire-fighting should be volun-
on municipal government and downtown development. Now a commu- teer). Parr edits all stories and moderates
nity of nearly 1,500 contributors has grown up around the site. all discussions. He also covers breaking
Grotke and LePage hope over the next decade to build the site into news. When a major road in town was
their primary business. They screen all content and do light editing. closed by a landslide in the spring of 2006,
“You wake up, who knows what’s coming in, and you publish it,” “I worked hard to cover it with photos
Grotke said. “We get tons of tips, people e-mailing and calling about and videos and text. It was a watershed
stuff all the time,” said LePage. But, adds Grotke, “We write back and moment,” he said. Site traffic increased [Link]

tell them we don’t post things for other people and get them to do it. four-fold.
It builds up the number of contributors.” Now Parr’s goal is “to run a very personal site. I don’t want to be
“I don’t think we need to become like trained newspaper or any really responsible to anyone else for what I write.” But he also says he
other media,” LePage says. “We’ve had news stories submitted in the can’t do it alone – generate the content and sell enough ads to quit his
form of poems covering events, and that is the beauty of it, this incredi- day job and pay himself and at least one business-side employee. The
ble diversity of styles.” They have developed a town wiki and plan to site, as is, “doesn’t scale well,” he said. “I’m going to have to identify
create an assignment desk where citizens can request that a story be more people I know and recruit them” to post, he said. “Figuring out
covered and others can volunteer to cover it. They hope to build rev- the advertising model is a big challenge – finding a way for ad sales to
enue through automated ad sales. “Businesses are starting to recognize make sense, convincing local merchants in a small town that online
it’s OK to advertise with us. For a while we were viewed as rebels,” advertising is going to work for them.”
LePage said. “If we focus on good content, the advertisers will come.” But Parr is optimistic that a sustainable form will emerge out of the
Coastsider, a news and informational site about the California universe of citizen media models. “I’m prouder of this than anything
coastal town of Half Moon Bay and environs, was founded in May 2004 I’ve ever done in my entire life. I’m making a real contribution to the
and is edited by Barry Parr, who has a day job as a media analyst for community. I want this to last.”
Jupiter Research. Parr contributes 90 to 95 percent of the content, by his

C i t i z e n M e d i a 21
 “Last week, a 19-year-old kid was shot and killed a
few blocks from my house right by Louis Kahn
The forms
Memorial Park on 11th and Pine Sts. The photo above
is a makeshift memorial of candles, scrawlings and
that citizen
stuffed animals for the deceased Jamil Burton,” the contributions
poster wrote. “The neighborhood I live in is having a take are easier
community meeting tonight at 7p in Louis Kahn to imagine if
Memorial Park to discuss what happened last week in you strip away
our neighborhood and what continues to happen all
over Philadelphia…I don’t have any earth-shattering
the term
answers, but maybe as we come out of our shells in “journalism.”
Chapter 3: our community, we can start to carve something out.”
These may not meet the definition of “news,”
but like the best forms of journalism, they shine light in dark places.

Creating Content Such as the day last winter when Bakersfield, California, radio host
Rachel Legan posted a masterfully written and poignant column on
Northwest Voice [[Link]
She disclosed that on her 21st birthday, her then-husband was convicted
of raping a real estate agent. In the column she discussed how she had
blinded herself to behavior she didn’t want to see. Legan – who more
The forms that citizen contributions take are easier to imagine if you typically muses on light subjects, such as who gets the friends in a
strip away the term “journalism.” People who are interested enough in divorce – wrote in that post, “I feel
local affairs to hang out at a community web site, but who are not pro- like I’m publishing my gut right now,
fessional journalists, rarely appoint themselves to go out and collect but it’s a story I have wanted to tell
research, conduct interviews and file fully reported pieces. for a long time.” The discussion
More commonly, citizens contribute pieces of information to narra- migrated from the site to her radio
tives that take form over a series of posts, or in tandem with other show and prompted the launch of a
posters. Or they post raw audio or video feeds from public hearings, or program to help young women in
original filings or documents that illuminate events. Citizens who are abusive relationships.
passionately interested in particular issues – development, green spaces, In June 2006, Clyde Bentley pub-
schools, crime, transportation – use sites to draw attention to actions by lished on the “Voices” page of
businesses or developers, or to legislative proposals or neighborhood [Link] what he called a [Link]
issues that the posters consider to be undercovered in local media. stunningly well-written essay that
Typical is a post to Philly Future from August 2006. It wasn’t came in unsolicited from an administrator in a CPA firm. The writer gave
journalism but an appeal for engagement. a detailed account of attending the funeral of a distant acquaintance, a

22 C i t i z e n M e d i a
local 19-year-old Marine killed in Iraq. She went on to ponder what was most frequently cited types of content appearing
“enough” of a response, suggesting in the end that readers “fight past on respondents’ sites. Other types included
shyness” and say a “thank you” to anyone they saw in uniform. columns (41%), press releases (37%), and videos
“Those pieces were always out there,” Bentley said, “and we some- (30%).
how missed them.” Overall there was little accountability built in
A fundamental fact of citizen media is that what citizens choose to for content contributors: 73% of all respondents
publish is unpredictable. Even on sites where the front page is dominated said their sites didn’t require users to register;
by staff-reported pieces, surprises arrive via 69% said a valid e-mail was not even required
forums, comments and other original posts. before posting. Only 40% of 141 respondents said
For example a citizen sends a poem or a short A fundamental their sites required contributors to use their real names; 60% said their sites allowed either
story, which causes the site runner to decide – fact of citizen anonymous posts or the use of “screen” names.
do we publish creative writing? At many sites media is that
the answer is yes (site operators note that
what citizens To Edit or Not
newspapers once regularly published poetry For many sites, whether or not to edit is not a question. At
and serialized novels). Indeed, 29% of the
choose to Greensboro101, a blog aggregator, it would be a violation of the
respondents in our survey said their sites posted publish is culture to screen, filter or edit the blogs that feed directly to the site.
creative writing. unpredictable. “Bloggers like the idea of not having a gatekeeper,” said site co-owner
Site owners or volunteer caretakers Roch Smith who concurs with that ethic. He believes any editing or
nonetheless exert great influence over con- screening would discourage participation. Smith will, however, remove
tent. They do this through their choices of platform and design stan- blogs that cross into seriously offensive territory.
dards (bright graphics induce light-hearted posts, posts with pictures The aversion to screening comments or editing posts is even
get more hits). They do it through the mission statements they craft, stronger at Philly Future. Co-owner Karl Martino said he is trying to
through the terms of service they enact, through the nature of the develop content guidelines together with the site’s volunteer team, but
posts they showcase and through the editorial controls they impose. “you want people to be creative and to speak out. At the same time
These include whether to screen posts and comments; whether and you want them to agree to a certain level of discourse. When we see
when to edit; how to define “local” content and whether to let every people attacking, we talk about what trolling is, but we don’t ban
new post automatically go to the top, or to let an invisible hand decide people from doing that kind of thing.”
story “play” or placement. Lisa Williams takes the opposite tack with H2otown. She requires
all posts, with the exception of event listings and comments, to go to a
Survey Highlights moderation queue. She screens them before posting, though she does
While citizen journalists don’t particularly aspire to be called “journalists,” 104 of 131 not edit. She’d rather communicate with a poster than alter a post.
survey respondents (79%) said they considered the content on their sites to be “journalism.” At sites where threads get personal or hostile, she said, “The first
In describing it, 46% said it was mainly news and information; 31% said it was mainly opinion people to leave are the women, then the people over 55. I don’t want
and commentary and 23% said content consisted of “other” things. to have a site exclusively of young men.” Williams asks posters to
Stories (67%), comments (65%), photos (64%) and calendar listings (55%) were the observe Three T’s: Truthfulness, tactfulness and transparency. Many of

C i t i z e n M e d i a 23
 Chapter 3: Creating Content
the tact violators “are the passionate people. I’ll and editing citizen posts on the
write and say, ‘I want you on the site, but could advice of lawyers. This is tricky terri-
‘I want you
you dial it back a tiny bit?’” tory for volunteers or solo entrepre-
on the site, Madison Commons, which is built on the neurs who do not operate under the
but could you model of training citizen journalists, edits citizen umbrella of a media company or
dial it back a contributions for fairness and accuracy. Project journalism school that is covered for
tiny bit?’ director Lew Friedland, who edits along with a liability. And very few have libel
– Lisa Williams graduate student, said, “We try to detach [editing insurance: Only 7% of 129 survey respon-
for accuracy] from voice and form. We want them dents said their sites were insured; 50% were
to write in their voices.” An early submission in the not; 43% didn’t know.
life of the young site came from a citizen journalist who was not well Philly Future’s Karl Martino said [Link]
educated, but whose piece was well reported. “We edited it in a way most citizen journalism sites don’t
that it was coherent enough and grammatical enough that she wouldn’t have the tools yet to empower people to really report on their own.
be embarrassed by it,” Friedland said. “What I’ve learned through the experience of getting legally threatened
Many commercially backed sites moderate but don’t screen forum is that you need an infrastructure to support acts of journalism. We have
discussions but they do keep an eye on comments and lightly edit posts the tools to write, but not to protect the people who actually do it.”
to topic sections or to the front page. At the same time editors are cog- Some site runners say they’ve been advised that under certain forms
nizant that the whole point of soliciting citizen news is to step out of of incorporation, they cannot be
the controlling role by giving contributors the greatest possible freedom held responsible for libel or use of
to say what it is they want to say – and to keep them coming back. copyrighted material if they don’t
At Wicked Local, to take one example, forum posts and photo screen or edit. Some organizations
uploads go live and unedited. But former online editor Courtney preserve their editing function
Hollands said she performed what she called “good samaritan” fixes on by establishing terms of service
citizen-submitted articles and event postings. She checked for potentially where contributors assume liability
embarrassing spelling and grammatical crimes, “and if I have a ques- for what they post.
tion” about the facts or the veracity of a post, “I will check in with the
writer.” She approved stories and all comments before they went on the Survey Highlights
web site, she said. Asked whether their sites edited con-
The professionally produced copy that appears on some hyperlocal tributions before they were posted, 40% of
sites is actually unedited. New West publisher Jonathan Weber said he 141 replies said content was edited; 48%
and managing editor Courtney Lowery have time to edit only those said it was not and 12% just didn’t know.
pieces that are sensitive. The writer/editors who run the local hubs in Half (50% of 133 replies) said offensive or
such places as Boise, Boulder and Missoula are not required to have a inappropriate content was filtered out
second reader on their posts. before posting. Most respondents (66% of
Some independent site operators say they hold back from screening 121 replies) said their sites removed offen-

24 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 Chapter 3: Creating Content
sive or inappropriate content after it was posted; but 17% of the respondents said such Mission Statements
content was not removed, and 17% just didn’t know. Citizens actually read the mission statements posted on citizen
Half the respondents reported that 26 or fewer people overall were contributing media sites, maybe because whatever your site is – a citizen enterprise,
content or skills to their enterprise, although site operators say many of those are just a professional site, a citizen-professional hybrid – it requires explaining.
occasional contributors. Site operators interviewed for this report frequently volunteered that
Does anyone get paid? Of the 78 who replied: 33% said their sites had no paid they rarely had to intervene to tamp down bad behavior. Many credited
workers; 33% said only one or two workers got paid. contributors for heeding the goals articulated in their terms of service

Mission Statement Excerpts And it depends on your contributions. Please send us photos
and news tips. Add your comments at the end of articles. (One
[Link] rule: Be civil.) Let us know what you like – and don’t like. Tell
“…New Haven. Its neighborhoods. Its government. Its people others about us (preferably by sending them e-mail messages
– from the knuckleheads to the dreamers and schemers, and with the link to the site). And sharpen that red pencil to inform
everyone in between. us of misspellings, typos and other errors. We’ll keep track of
That’s what this web site is about: A five-day-a-week report who catches the most mistakes and give out periodic Independent
on news about the City of New Haven, Connecticut, produced by coffee mugs to the winners. (Sites such as ours can’t afford
a veteran local journalist, and by you. proofreaders.) …”
[Link] is rooted in and devoted to the
city. We believe that democracy starts at home, with smart, thor- [Link]
ough, in-depth local news reporting and broad citizen debate “In a time of dramatic change, New West aims to serve as a
about local issues. Thanks to the Internet, journalists and news- nexus of dialogue and a smart guide to the news and issues that
deprived citizens need no longer be hostages to out-of-state are affecting one of the greatest places on Earth. We aim to foster
media conglomerates. We can reclaim our communities. Power of a bond among communities that may be distant in geography or
the press now belongs not to those who own one, but to those occupation, but share common interests and hopes for the region
who own a modem. as it wrestles with growth and change. We stand for forward
thinking about the big picture and believe that citizen engage-
We own a modem... ment will be instrumental in the development of the region. On
…[Link] features daily reports on news our web sites you will find commentary and original reportage on
about New Haven neighborhoods, government, politics, criminal the big issues, as well as a wealth of fun and useful information
justice, schools, business, arts and culture. It links readers to other on everyday matters ranging from gardening and animals to
web sites with information about New Haven. It also links readers books, film and travel. You will also find places where you, the
to the good work produced by surviving reporters at other New reader, can make your ideas and opinions heard through our
Haven newspapers and TV and radio stations. ‘Unfiltered’ sites.”

C i t i z e n M e d i a 25
 Chapter 3: Creating Content
(no threats, no personal attacks, no publishing copyrighted material, and upholding the freedom and openness of expression that web
etc.), and in the “About” statements that characterize sites as places for dwellers demand. Mark Dilley is a member of a collective that decides
citizens to disseminate news and chat constructively. policy for Arbor Update, a volunteer-run Ann Arbor, Michigan, news site
Steve Yelvington helped that declares in its mission statement, “The true value of the site is not
craft a mission statement for in the posts themselves but in the discussion.” Dilley said the site lost
Bluffton Today using the lan- half its traffic while organizers debated how to handle an inflammatory
guage developed by a working and frequent poster, given the site’s commitment to open discussion.
group at a Poynter Institute The group compromised by creating a 90-day probationary period for
Web+10 conference. The lan- new posters.
guage defines what he called “a
new social contract between old Getting Back What You Put Out
media and citizens around the Site operators report that citizens often mirror the content they
concept of participation.” find on sites by posting content that is similar in nature or tone. That is
The site statement reads, not to say posters don’t discuss substantive and newsy issues on lighter
in part: “With your help, we bulletin board sites, or that they don’t announce church fairs or joke
[Link] and Bluffton Today newspaper around on issue-driven sites. OlyBlog, which teems with the political
will provide a friendly, safe,
easy to use place on the Web back-and-forth enjoyed by the activists of Olympia, Washington, also
for everyone in Bluffton to post news items, create a unified commu- has a bizarre joke running through many posts about a lizard called a
nity calendar, and share photos, recipes, opinions. … In return, we ask caiman. Mentioning a caiman is an in-joke, a way to signify a poster’s
that you meet this character challenge: Be a good citizen and exhibit community membership.
community leadership qualities.” Tonal deviations aside, many
Yelvington said, “Much to our positive surprise, people read [the posters take their cues from what they
statement] and took it seriously. They bought into the social contract.” find on a site. Everyone was posting
When the contract is violated he tries to defuse the offender with a pretty pictures of scenery to the Daily
light touch. Yelvington recounted how an incident at a girls’ lacrosse Astorian’s [Link] until some-
championship game migrated into a flame war on the site, with the
high school girls posting under fake names. He quickly unpublished the I’m guessing this was this partic-
attacks, suspended the accounts of two combatants and told them they ular photographer’s very last
had to call a site administrator named Ryan to re-activate. He also sent
photo session ever. Now that the
a note to “the rest of you,” saying, “This is a small town, and it may
nutria appetizers have been pretty much consumed, the
look anonymous. But if you think people can’t figure out who you are,
caimans are once again ready for the main course. So be
you’re wrong. Don’t make Ryan have to call your Dad.” In the after-
careful out there as you walk around the water in the
math, he said, “A couple of the girls became real leaders on the web
shadow of the Legislative Building.
site with their real names.” — Stevenl’s blog
Site operators report inevitable tensions between maintaining civility

26 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 Chapter 3: Creating Content
one sent a family photo. Soon know about developing issues.
the site was filled with pictures Discussions emerge in forms
of sand-covered kids. Recipe as varied as the sites themselves.
submissions beget more recipes, Some site operators guide discus-
obituary tributes spur more of sions by posting daily questions or
the same. Site operators have by highlighting featured blogs
noticed similar trends when with comment threads each day.
they add video and audio capa- At sites such as Free New Mexican
bilities. Once attention is drawn practically all discussions key off
to the first audio or video posts links to stories from the paper. At
[Link] or links, the spigot opens. Nashville is Talking the site opera- [Link]: This Just In
An exception to the copycat rule is that, on sites built around tor often chooses a hot issue and
professionally produced posts, citizens tend not to respond with items creates a “blog round-up” to
that incorporate journalistic conventions such as third-party interviews. highlight what local bloggers are
As at other sites, they contribute brief items or commentary or take saying.
their thoughts to site discussion forums, comment threads or the blog Toledo Talk is more free-form;
column. posts appear in order of arrival
Village Soup founder Richard Anderson calls much of the citizen under each day’s date. A critique
discussion on his site “pretty low grade. … It’s a bit why we’re skeptical of a column in the day’s Toledo
of the long-range future of building something Blade may be followed by the
based on citizen journalism.” At Village Soup a full- announcement of a rib-eating
time staff of a dozen journalists covers two Maine contest at the fairgrounds, then
population centers, each with about 50,000 people. a complaint about someone’s DSL [Link]
The busy hyperlocal site is animated by online polls, bill, and then a question tossed
directories, a weather report and prominent classi- out by a poster who wonders if both minor league teams should share
fied and billboard ads. an owner.
Voice of San Diego, which also publishes pieces Elected officials dip in and out of discussions on many sites or post
produced for the site by professional staff, is experi- their own blogs on citizen sites. In Watertown, J.D. Donohue, one of the
Richard Anderson
menting with reportorial interactivity through its nine elected town councilors, posted a 10-question poll on H2otown
“This Just In” column, a breaking news blog fed asking citizens to comment on the quality of city services, whether to
through the day by staff members. Citizens are invited at times to be recycle and other issues. Several sent lengthy, serious replies.
“legs,” to send in tips and pieces of developing stories. “People get Sites reflect the interests of their towns. After “Town News,” the
engaged and feel they’re part of the process,” said editor Scott Lewis. second most popular section of ibrattleboro is “Politics,” followed by
At other sites, such as Baristanet, contributors don’t wait for an invita- “Activism,” “Opinion,” and “Questions & Answers.” WestportNow is
tion; they have developed the habit of posting or blogging what they laced with photographs of old homes about to be demolished.

C i t i z e n M e d i a 27
Chapter 3: Creating Content
Reverse Publishing: From Web to Print erage, free-delivered papers filled with ads. Once My Missourian
Many citizen media sites actually turn their web content into a print launched in October 2004, Bentley worked with the daily paper, The
publication, a process called reverse publishing. A popular form of Missourian, to convert a free Saturday shopper into a weekly community
reverse publishing for legacy media citizen sites involves the transforma- newspaper with citizen-generated content. Launched a year later, the
tion of what Clyde Bentley calls “driveway rot” – those total-market-cov- paper, in its first month, helped add 200 more citizen contributors to

Case Study: A Busy Day on Baristanet

On a hot July day in 2006 site co-owner Liz George was For hours people posted brief first-person accounts of
on the phone with someone in downtown Montclair when merchants evacuating their businesses while Galant and
the caller said there was a fire on the main drag of Church George posted interviews with the fire chief and town
Street. George headed out with a camera, shot a picture of officials. A salon owner apologized to clients who were evac-
the fire scene and sent it to site co-owner Debbie Galant, uated in the middle of their color jobs. Citizens posted their
who posted it at 2:26. take on news: Starbucks and Whole Foods had gone dark.
At 2:35 the first citizen responded. What happened next “People were using the site as a bulletin board to ask each
demonstrates how citizens and professionals blend their other questions,” Galant said.
contributions to a breaking story. Within Late in the day Galant heard from the mayor that the
minutes of Galant posting the fire news, library was opening as a cooling center for those without
a series of citizens posted to the thread, power. She called the library and heard the standard “library
reporting that streets were closed to is closed” recording. Galant drove to the library, discovered
traffic, emergency services had arrived it had opened and posted a bulletin to ignore the recording.
and plumes of smoke were rising over “We had more information than the town web site,” she said.
downtown. “PEOPLE RUNNING – REALLY,” “The site changes with what’s going on,” she said.
a poster wrote at 2:42. “People were “When you’re in the middle of a crisis you’re very into public
telling us what they were hearing in service. You’re not thinking about being a smart aleck, you’re
Liz George almost real time,” Galant said. thinking about how to get the news out fast. Then there are
The news was that an underground other days when it’s fun to do the Stephen Colbert-take on
fire had ignited and two manhole covers had blown open, your own small-town politics.”
releasing clouds of smoke. In the middle of a heat wave, Citizens don’t contribute reporting unless they develop
some 2,500 people lost power as firefighters and utility crews the habit of hanging out on the site, and seeing others do it.
worked into the night. “You can sit back and watch things happen,” Galant said.

28 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 Chapter 3: Creating Content
the 400 who signed up for the web site. is quite different. Few of the local residents have
“The impact of the print edition was high-speed Internet connections, and many have yet
enormous,” Bentley said. to become comfortable getting their news online –
These print versions have greater they still relate better to print. Site operators use the
appeal both to advertisers and readers. print edition to draw attention to the site and to
The challenge, Bentley said, is to get educate readers that they can produce as well as
readers to actually open them and see consume news. “The print edition is advertising that
the transformation, instead of conveying we’re here, and we’d love to have you write” on the
the papers directly from driveway to Maureen Mann site, managing editor Maureen Mann said.
trash can.
The Forum's spring 2007 election Some newspapers are also begin-
edition comes off the presses.
ning to integrate web contributions
from citizens into their paid-subscrip-
What Do Citizens Contribute?
tion daily papers. The Daily Camera, a • On New West, serialized novels and MP3 downloads
34,000-circulation paper in Boulder, of local bands.
Colorado, is trying to train citizens to • On The Forum in Deerfield, a crafts column and
go to [Link] “as a instructions on how to make a quilt and how to
way to get their news into the newspa- repair garden gnomes.
per.” Managing editor Kevin Kaufman • On ibrattleboro, local rumblings to the “Rumors”
said citizens who want to submit page.
obituaries, wedding and engagement • On Northwest Voice, recipes for
announcements or event listings are locally grown crops.
[Link] now directed to submit them online. • On Blount County Voice, a series
As the paper has reduced its editorial on local historical sites.
staff, Kaufman said, “We need to figure out ways to get our readers to • On Backfence, local business
help us get their news into the paper.” reviews.
He said, “A lot of news briefs and community briefs come in • On OlyBlog, comics and a book
through My Town. We have an outdoor recreation page every day of memories of Evergreen State
with a calendar and a daily half-page listing of things to do – they’re all College.
coming through My Town.” Once a month the paper produces a 20- to • On New Haven Independent,
30-page free supplement delivered to high-growth communities outside profiles of the “Cop of the
of Boulder. “All of that content comes from My Town.” Week.”
New Haven
The volunteers who launched The Forum, a web site for under- • At Arbor Update, tips on living in Independent‘s
covered Deerfield and nearby towns in New Hampshire, also republish Ann Arbor without a car. Cop of the Week
citizen content three times a year in a print edition. But their motivation

C i t i z e n M e d i a 29
 artists and musicians are eager to draw crowds. The content wrangler
(either a paid “editor,” a site operator or a volunteer) is on a dual mis-
sion: He or she must build a community of contributors and attract a
community of visitors.
Sites without content wranglers can struggle to maintain a vigorous
flow of citizen contributions. “It would be great to have the local busy-
body on board to tap into all the local stuff going on,” said Courtney
Hollands, who was editor of Wicked Local in Plymouth, Massachusetts
through January 2007, when she joined a competitor site in the Boston
area. Wicked Local was envisioned to be a 50/50 balance between posts
from the site’s host newspapers and posts from citizens. In the absence

Chapter 4: of a person who could regularly leave the keyboard and work events,
she said in mid-2006, the community side of the site was falling at the
lighter end of the seesaw.

Building Interest ... the most

At citizen sites the content-seeker reverses
the traditional reporter dance of avoidance.
Instead of ducking the gadfly who goes to
every town council meeting and calls the city
indispensable editor twice a day, the content wrangler tar-
member of gets people who want to be heard. At some
Citizen media sites, even those attached to big media compa- the site team sites that means the garden club president
nies, are not old enough to have grown fat. Regardless of whether is the content touting the club’s monthly speaker and the P.R.
they’re published by traditional media companies, solo entrepreneurs wrangler. pros at government agencies and community
or citizen volunteers, sites are characterized by lean editorial staffing, institutions (such as museums and colleges)
very little marketing, and limited readership. peddling good news stories.
Even the most popular citizen sites remain invisible to large portions But many site operators are just as interested in individuals:
of their towns or regions. For instance, the number of monthly unique Mothers who want to start a play group, political junkies who track
visitors to the hyperlocal sites reported by our respondents typically school board minutiae, the local restaurant maven who’s got an opinion
amounted to between 5% and 10% of their local population. This was on the new wings place. In some places a wrangler will come to your
the case whether the sites were in Hoboken, New Jersey, Fresno, house and show you how to go online, if that’s what it takes to get you
California, or Reidsville, North Carolina. to feed his site.
Whether trying to draw attention or contributors, though, the most Travis Henry, editor of Your Hub in Colorado, makes house calls.
indispensable member of the site team is the content wrangler. That’s Henry leads a staff of 25 who publish 44 hyperlocal web sites launched
the person who goes to Rotarian breakfast meetings, to high school by the Denver Newspaper Group – and weekly print editions that draw
journalism days, to block parties, to blogger meet-ups and to wherever content from the sites. “Anyone who wants help can call any of us and

30 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 we’ll help them,” Henry said. “We will go to their quantity, and to keep the site focused on news and
house and sit with them. I do it. I’ll go out to organi- submissions that have community-wide appeal, such
... building zations – the archdiocese, the youth sports league – as the pictures posted from the Memorial Day
content and but my whole staff does. One of my requirements parade.
marketing sites for my staff” is that they make calls on anyone Joseloff doesn’t want the garden club speaker
are intertwined “from a grandma who needs help to a big organiza- announcements or “chicken dinner” posts, at least
routes to the tion.” not on the front page. “We’re looking for more con-
Depending on how sites are organized, wran- tributors,” he said, “but I would rather see the site
same goal:
glers may be paid or they may be volunteers; they sit idle then be filled with less interesting items.” Gordon Joseloff
Making sites may be hired or be self-appointed instigators of
essential community conversations. They may have the titles Starting Out
gathering publisher or managing editor, community editor, site The founders of Northwest Voice in Bakersfield, California, consid-
places where owner or solo operator. The content wrangler may ered local demographics and determined that homeowners with chil-
be the same person who’s writing pitch letters to dren in kindergarten through high school dominated their geographic
communities
foundations, selling ads, moderating discussions and target area. They seeded their site, prior to its launch, by calling on
can debate, call filling up the site with his or her own reporting, people they termed “keepers of information” – individuals at the center
out government musings or links, at least for the first few months. of networks of families – and urged these youth sports organizers and
or local media, The important lesson, say site operators, is to mega-church pastors to post and participate. The site continues to
or find a understand that building content and marketing sites promote relentlessly by sending staff and volunteers, recruited from
neighbor who are intertwined routes to the same goal: Making sites high school and college marketing classes, to register users at markets
essential gathering places where communities can and street fairs.
also collects debate, call out government or local media, or find a “You need to do some aggressive outreach prior to launch,” said
Mustangs. neighbor who also collects Mustangs. Don Alexander, the newspaper executive who launched the Tennessee
At sites where editors have weekly gigs dis- web site Blount County Voice. “We
cussing local events on TV or radio (as in Brattleboro targeted groups where we knew
and San Diego), these on-air promotions prompt more postings. Citizens we wanted content from day one,
who become regular posters start promoting the site to friends and net- and that started the ball rolling.”
works. Backfence saw the effect when Little League parents began to Your Hub’s Travis Henry said,
post game pictures and circulate word throughout the league. “McLean “Once you get the ball rolling, it
is a huge sports town, so we’ve got a lot of Little League stories. Our just rolls, but the start-up is critical
most trafficked item on the site last week was a [photo of a] kid sliding … The worst thing is to do it
into home base,” Mark Potts said in the summer of 2006. badly” by opening the doors and
But while all site runners want more citizen involvement, not expecting posters to materialize.
everyone values all citizen posts indiscriminately. Gordon Joseloff of Your Hub launches sites by
WestportNow says his priority is to draw quality posts, rather than sending staff members with [Link]

C i t i z e n M e d i a 31
 Chapter 4: Building Interest
cameras to community events and passing out Expanding Coverage
cards with the address where citizens can see Some site leaders court discussion the journalist’s way: By covering
“Once you get
their pictures. They run on-site photo contests in issues or events people care about – particularly those occurring just
the ball rolling, acknowledgement of the fact that many non- beneath the notice of the nearest dailies or broadcast news operations.
it just rolls, but journalists feel more confident posting images Some also make it a point to create places to discuss issues of high
the start-up is than words. regional interest, such as the environment in the West or restaurants
critical… ” The site hosted an essay contest for people to and real estate in the Northeast. Numerous site operators reported that
– Travis Henry describe why they root for the Broncos, with play- hits spike after local news breaks. Arbor Update picked up new posters
off tickets as prizes. The responses were not always after it became the place to mock a proposed local ordinance banning
“quality posts,” Henry said, “but it got people to couches on porches.
the site.” He said, “You have to hit people over the head with what this A turning point came for Baristanet when a power line fell, a car
is. It’s brand stinking new.” caught fire, and a citizen posted a picture of the burning car. Later that
day another power line fell and set off another blaze, and several tip-
Offering Feedback sters e-mailed photos and one- or two-line accounts to the site. Citizens
For-profit and non-profit site operators agree that a good way to had developed a new way of interacting with the site, said co-owner
spark participation is to thank new posters. They also offer gentle cri- Debbie Galant, and they spawned copycat tipsters who now rush to
tiques to posters who want to get their blog posts promoted to the the site for every fire, storm, road closing or local
front page or who lack confidence in their writing. “The very first time government kerfuffle.
they write a story and we think it’s great, we’ll call them. Or we’ll make Many sites, particularly those supported by “... getting
suggestions,” Travis Henry said. “We bring people to our office, they media companies, employ editors who report news [posters] on
can hang out with us, we’ll give them lunch, we stories or features and follow up by creating related
show them how to put out” the print edition. opinion polls or posting discussion questions. Most of
the phone or
“These people are part of our community now.” the participation on the Free New Mexican site going out and
“I made a point of going to coffee or lunch” comes through comments from posters who respond talking to them
with regular contributors, said Barbara Bry, founding to news links. Online editor Stefan Dill regularly joins makes all the
editor of Voice of San Diego. in the comments to direct the discussion. He feeds difference in
Clyde Bentley of My Missourian advises site tips back to the newsroom, particularly when legisla-
the world.”
operators to come out from behind the e-mail. tors or public officials weigh in. Regulars “let me
– Clyde Bentley
“Talk to them,” he says of contributors. Journalism know about breaking news. They call me ‘WebEd.’”
Clyde Bentley students, who screen and sometimes lightly edit site But while all site operators want more citizen
posts, want to do everything by e-mail, he said. involvement, several have a distinct vision for the kind of content they
“But getting [posters] on the phone or going out and talking to them want. “I do think we’re looking for things that meet the definition of
makes all the difference in the world.” Students also want to over-edit, news, in that they’re kind of fresh and not previously reported and of
Bentley said. The lighter touch is better. interest to more than just the people who are writing them,” said
Geoff Dougherty of Chi-Town Daily News.

32 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 Chapter 4: Building Interest

How to (and How not to) Build Interest

• Bluffton Today has a combination reporter/editor who leads the angry and said, ‘This seems to commercialize the whole
online conversation and blogs heavily in search of responses thing,’” co-founder Mark Potts said. “We just knocked it
(which are counted). She regularly blogs about stories the off the site because people were violently opposed to it.”
newspaper staff is reporting, and asks for input. She also • Many sites post how-to-use tutorials. Lisa
recruits quasi-expert local bloggers who are paid small fees to Williams of H2otown goes a step further
converse and advise on subjects of passionate local interest, and keeps an eye on the server log. She
including gardening. e-mails instructions to people who are
• Wicked Local launched with a direct mail campaign, sending “wandering around in circles.”
postcards to instruct Plymouth residents on how to get involved • Madison Commons hosts “boot camp”
with the site. journalism training sessions that trained
• The Daily Camera in Boulder tried citizen assignments. Before 50 citizens of mostly minority neighbor-
a popular balloon festival, the paper ran an ad asking readers hoods its first year, but only a handful of
to submit pictures, journals and diaries from the event to grads have become regular posters.
[Link]. Not many sent journals, but Madison Commons
• Greensboro101’s Roch Smith, steers blog- boot camp
pictures arrived by the hundreds, said managing editor Kevin gers he knows to topics that might be
Kaufman. The call for pictures was successful enough to expand worthy of investigation and citizen reporting. At Smith’s sug-
to other events, including Mother’s Day. gestion one blogger found interesting fodder in the campaign
• The Forum in Deerfield, New Hampshire, hosted an open house reports of a Congressional candidate. Smith blogs selectively so
to court volunteer editors and encourage more citizens to post as not to big-foot the site and make it feel like his personal
what they see and hear in their neighborhoods. And one of its sounding board.
volunteers has started a creative writing class at the local • Your Hub partnered with professional sports teams, the
library. Broncos, the Avalanche and the Nuggets, setting up fan
• Chi-Town Daily News hosted a club showcase for local bands as forums on the site, giving away tickets in contests, publishing
both a fundraiser and a site promotion. special fan sections of the print edition and flashing the “Your
Hub” name around the stadiums. It also made friends with
• Baristanet created a float for the Montclair Fourth of July
Wal-Mart. “Wal-Mart wants to become community-oriented,”
parade.
Travis Henry points out. Your Hub calendar items are now
• Backfence advertised an incentive plan; a community member broadcast on Wal-Mart checkout aisle monitors. “Community
who posted five items got a free coffee card. “People got events show up on screen with our brand name next to them.”

C i t i z e n M e d i a 33
Chapter 4: Building Interest
Assigning the Job one-man operation; he’s the
It’s difficult to get volunteers to make the rounds of civic organiza- site’s editorial, business and
tions to solicit content. Doug Bratland, chairman of the nonprofit tech support staff, and cannot
Northfield Citizens Online, said the group could find volunteers who afford to hire help. He hands
would handle the technical side of the Northfield site, but “what we out business cards at events he
couldn’t get volunteers to step up to the plate to do was getting people attends and covers, but that
to contribute content.” He made the rounds of meetings in his time off has not been enough to build
from his full-time job, but after the site hired a part-time editor to a healthy content flow in the
bring in more posts, Bratland said, he began to recover from burnout, first year.
and the site began to hear from a larger circle of posters. Speaking in late spring
K. Paul Mallasch launched Muncie Free Press on July 4, 2005 as a 2006, he said the site floun-
[Link]

Case Study: The Power of the Wheel

When a site is new, says Mary Lou Fulton, “you have to much greater degree than the daily newspaper, telling people
promote relentlessly.” The web sites Northwest Voice and who we are, what we do and how they can participate.”
Southwest Voice in Bakersfield, California, are published by Nearly every weekend members of the staff fan out to
a family-owned newspaper company but have identities sep- music festivals, health fairs and other community gatherings
arate from the paper. Each of the participatory journalism to invite citizens to register and post items. Because the staff
sites feeds into a free neighborhood is small, a company marketing coordinator recruits high
weekly. school and college marketing students to fill out the roving
“The Northwest Voice serves an area teams.
where 65,000 people live, and we deliver Wherever they go, they bring their portable Wheel of
to 25,000 homes. There’s no way to do Fortune game.
personal outreach to every person in the “I can’t begin to tell you the power of the Wheel of
community,” said Fulton, vice president of Fortune,” Fulton said. People will stand in long lines and wait
audience development for The Bakersfield as long as it takes to spin the wheel and win a T-shirt or
Californian. “We are regulars at community mouse pad. “While they’re waiting in line, you can talk to
Mary Lou Fulton events. We are always out there to a them about who you are and what you do.”

34 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 Chapter 4: Building Interest
ders when he stops posting. “I learned in the last four direct subscribers to their citizen site. Don Alexander, who manages
weeks, while I ramped down to concentrate on web both a daily paper and its citizen web site, Blount County Voice, said the
“... the more
design, that the more you feed, the more people are site had “instant credibility” with readers because of the paper’s reputa-
you feed, the going to respond. It’s my job to make sure there is at tion. “Those who are working with well-respected, dominant
more people least one new thing on the site every day. It’s a newspapers need to use that in their marketing strategy and don’t try
are going to tedious, back-breaking process. Do we have a commu- to hide the fact that this community journalism publication is part of
respond. It’s nity yet? Realistically, I would say no.” the company,” he said.
my job to make Some site operators counsel patience in lieu of a Wicked Local chose the opposite strategy. “It
wrangler. The founders of ibrattleboro posted almost doesn’t have our newspaper brand plastered all “Consistent
sure there is at everything in the site’s first six months, they said, and over it. We want street credibility and for citizens effort by a
least one new then posts seemed to self-generate as people to have ownership,” said former editor Courtney small number
thing on the stretched out and brought their various interests and Hollands.
of people is
site every day. obsessions to the site. “For years now it’s been the cit- Professional journalists who strike out on their
what makes
It’s a tedious, izens who are doing the writing and the own with new sites say they wish they knew how
casual
‘journalism.‘” said Christopher Grotke. Lisa Williams to promote. “I stink at marketing,” said Paul Bass,
back-breaking contributions
of H2otown says it takes just a nucleus of posters to who runs New Haven Independent. “It’s true that
process.” keep a site vibrant: “Consistent effort by a small num- after nine months a lot of people don’t know we by a huge
– K. Paul Mallasch ber of people is what makes casual contributions by a exist.” number of
huge number of people possible.” Of the 31 sites interviewed in depth, only nine had conduct-
ed any kind of marketing to drive traffic or contributors to their
people
Building on Brands sites. While in the web survey, just over half (56%) of the 132 possible.”
Many old-media companies that have launched citizen sites pro- responding said their sites engaged in some marketing; 27% did – Lisa Williams
mote both kinds of media in advertising campaigns or use house ads to none, and the rest didn’t know.

C i t i z e n M e d i a 35
 group of citizens who share a passion to create conversations around
issues that are not covered or can’t be thoroughly covered by main-
stream media in its current configuration. In the great, shared environ-
ment of the Internet such sites are helping each other develop models
for at least modest sustainability.
But in the Rocky Mountain West, in the D.C. suburbs, in small towns
in Maine and across the country, new kinds of media companies are
being constructed around core businesses of local citizen journalism and
advertising. They’re experimenting with forms of search and with local
shopping models that they hope will compete favorably, within their
own towns and with such national behemoths as Google and Yahoo.

Chapter 5: The oldest of these, Village Soup, is 10 years old.

These new media companies
are emerging in a couple of forms:

Making Money As national syndication models,

and as territorial businesses that
are rooted in and reflect the prior-
ities of one city or region.
The purest local citizen media
sites, most prominently Backfence,
While hyperlocal citizen sites have energetically created new editorial have no professional reporters and
models, their business models remain deeply uncertain. It’s worth noting depend on citizens to submit local
that many site operators who have had their sites up for a year or two news or items of interest or to [Link]
say they have put almost all of their time and energy into developing blog – as well as to hang out and
the editorial model, giving little time to earning revenues, attracting chat on their sites, and to shop
investments or making sites attractive to advertisers. with and rate advertisers. The
Nevertheless, business models are emerging across the spectrum Backfence model began in the
from shoestring operations built on open-source software and volunteer D.C. suburbs, and had spread to
labor, to investor-funded national syndicates of urban and suburban 13 communities in Maryland,
news-and-conversation sites. The field is filled with optimists who California and the Chicago suburbs
believe that citizen place sites, in a myriad of forms, will continue to by January 2007, when it
spread across the country and the world. announced a major restructuring
For the near future, the shoestring model will likely account for as it charts a future course.
the greatest number of start-ups. These are the sites that run on the New West and Village Soup
energy and determination of a dogged entrepreneur or a cooperative are also building new kinds of [Link]

36 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 media companies around regional and hyperlocal journalism. Both pay citizen sites and reprint their content in free, home-
professional journalists to generate original coverage of local issues, but delivered, ad-rich print editions. The web/print
Many citizen
they’re also highly interactive with citizens, and that interactivity citizen journalism paradigm is profitable and grow-
extends to advertising. ing at papers in smaller cities such as Bakersfield,
journalists
Some of the sites that are household names in citizen media circles California, and Columbia, Missouri. In Columbia, ad believe they
– Baristanet, WestportNow, H2otown – are developing as small busi- revenues increased after the content in its drive- are involved in
nesses that may soon produce enough revenue to pay their owners way, drop-free paper was replaced with content a future where
full-time salaries. Several are investing by hiring part-time and full-time from the My Missourian citizen site. A product that local news
editorial and business staff members or by buying equipment for citizen was budgeted to produce 25 percent of the news
photographers and videographers. WestportNow employs a full-time operation’s revenues was producing 33 percent
will be citizen-
reporter/editor. Baristanet hired a part-time tech assistant and a local within a year of its launch. interactive –
reporter. It’s not a newsroom, but it’s growth from where the sites were In big cities, including Dallas and Denver, and where
two years ago. legacy newspapers are using citizen journalists to professional
Lisa Williams has received extend and enrich their suburban coverage. The journalists will
offers from potential buyers of local papers have hired and assigned staff editors
H2otown, but she’s refused to sell.
focus on the
to their citizen journalism sites, and communities
“I don’t want to work for them around Dallas and Denver now have citizen sites
things they do
because I think they wouldn’t let instead of the newspapers’ zoned editions. best.
me make jokes,” she told an Many citizen journalists believe they are
October 2006 Citizens Media involved in a kind of bridge media between the
Summit. “I think that a lot of peo- traditional forms of news and local news delivery and a future where
ple want the magic that they see local news will be citizen-interactive – and where professional journal-
in online sites, and then they ists will focus on the things they do best: Producing the kind of enter-
want to control it. They’re actually prise or investigative reporting that requires time, experience, travel
[Link]
kind of scared of it.” Williams said and the backing of media companies that shoulder expenses and cut
she will probably continue to run H2otown as a side enterprise to the paychecks.
business she is developing as a consultant for what she calls “place Time and again in conversation, citizen journalists assert they do a
blogs.” She launched [Link] in December 2006. better job of describing the lived experiences of their towns than do
In the nonprofit realm, Voice of San Diego and New Haven professional reporters, especially strangers who pass through on their
Independent offer high-quality local coverage produced by professional way to bigger and better journalism jobs. They say they know news at a
journalists, with assists from citizens. Voice of San Diego was launched block-by-block level that journalists can’t, and there are more of them
by philanthropic investors and is developing a public radio-style model available to report, reflect or respond to questions than any zoned
for member contributions. New Haven Independent secures grants from newspaper section can employ. Even as they shy away from the “journalist” label,
foundations. 79% of our survey respondents said they considered much of the content on their 104
Legacy media companies are also in the race to build out hyperlocal sites to be “journalism.”

C i t i z e n M e d i a 37
Chapter 5: Making Money
On the other hand, as Coastsider owner Barry Parr says he has found, no; 38% didn’t know. Almost 14% of those sites said they take in more than their operating
print still has a hold on advertisers. Coastsider does not reverse publish, costs only if volunteer contributions are not counted. Only 7% – 10 sites out of 141 replying –
but Parr believes the operation will need to spin off a print edition said that their operating costs were covered, even if volunteer contributions are counted as
before it can reach significant profitability in a town of just 30,000. a cost.

Survey Highlights What follows is a look at some of the interesting models in action.
The shoestring model of operations is borne out by our web survey. Respondents Bluffton Today
were pretty evenly split over whether the continued operations of their sites required them Morris Publishing launched Bluffton Today as both a home-deliv-
to earn revenue (yes, 49%; no, 51%). If that sounds odd, consider that 29% of the respon- ered free daily newspaper in the fast-growing golf community of
dents said it cost them less than $100 to Bluffton, South Carolina, and as a companion citizen journalism site. The
launch their site; and it cost less than print edition now has regular readership levels higher than 60% in the
$1,000 for another 14%. affluent coast town, where half the population is new in the last few
Indeed, start-up money for 43% of years, and penetration is as high as 90% when occasional readers are
the sites in our survey came right out of measured.
the founders’ own pockets. Existing news Within this community of 16,000 households, the web site has
organizations provided funding for 11% of steadily increased the number of registered users, counting 7,300 as of
the sites and private donors for 14%, while January 2007. There is a professional editorial staff of 18 but this site
venture capital funded fewer than 3% of defies a lot of citizen-journalism math, which holds that a few devoted
the respondents’ sites. posters trigger many casual contributors. More than 20% of its users
For those sites that are generating have posted something to the site.
some revenues, advertising is the primary All income is derived from ads, including sponsorships, tower and
source for 48% of the respondents; com- banner ads, and business ads with “presumptive upsell,” Yelvington
munity and corporate sponsors generate said. “Making income on the web site is not as important as the
revenue for 25%; individual donors for overall health of the enterprise. Papers have set up web sites almost in
16%; and grants for almost 11%. Fewer competition with the papers, so they want them to pay their own way.
than 5% rely on subscription income. “The relationship between this site and the newspaper is the
Some sites, such as OlyBlog, opposite. The web site delivers tremendous benefits back to the paper
state matter-of-factly: “We and doesn’t rely on print reporting. If it never made a profit it would
accept no advertising or institu- be fine. Our real goal is to do well in the market as a business unit.”
tional support. All costs are cov-
ered out of pocket. If you like Wicked Local
what we’re doing, throw a few This portal site draws on professionally produced content from
bucks in the tip jar.” GateHouse Media’s dailies and weeklies in Massachusetts and blends it
Do their sites take in more revenue with citizen content and a comprehensive local search engine. Although
than it costs to operate? About 42% said the full citizen journalism model has not yet been extended to all of

38 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 Chapter 5: Making Money
GateHouse’s Massachusetts web sites, “Wicked Local Search” is available you and come to you every morning, every after-
from all 100-plus sites. noon, every night before they go to bed,” said
The search site has traditional elements, including banner advertis- managing editor Courtney Lowery. “Those are the
ing, but has taken traditional classifieds – real estate, auto and jobs – people that you have to win over.”
and reframed them as searches, not classifieds. The searches aggregate
results based on keywords by combining news, classifieds, newspaper ad Village Soup
content and other content into one search results page. Said Anne Richard Anderson, the owner of this site
Eisenmenger, vice president of audience development for GateHouse that covers two towns in Maine, said, “Research
Media New England: “By aggregating not only our own content but Courtney Lowery shows that 50 percent of the market contains non-
also content from many other sources relevant to each community, newspaper readers, and 75 percent of the market
we’re aiming to produce sites that can serve as a one-stop online contains non-newspaper advertisers. So there’s a huge opportunity out
resource for living in any one of our communities.” there to solve the problems or the needs of those people who are not
For Wicked Local, the challenge is to convince local advertisers that looking to the newspapers.” Anderson has invested more than $5 mil-
consumers want local search, and that the model will lead users to lion in developing the site, which had about 9,300 unique daily visitors
advertisers’ products. in June 2006 and 1.2 million page views. He said recently, “We’re not
cash-flow positive yet, but we’re gaining dramatically, and the printed
New West paper has done a tremendous amount to help us get there.”
This regional news operation, launched for less than $1 million Among the steps Village Soup has taken to build online revenue are:
from angel investors, has a web site at its center, but it’s also pursuing • On-demand advertising. Online posts feature last-minute sales or
related businesses. New West has launched a conference series, a cus- promotions that would be outdated in the weekly print edition.
tom publishing business, an indoor advertising business, and has plans
• Enhanced directory listings. Advertisers can pay for featured
to expand into book publishing. It sponsors wireless computer connec-
listings in the business directories posted at [Link].
tions in coffee shops to help market its operations. “We conceived this
all along as about building a media brand, about growth and change, • Online auctions. Local businesses can sell products through the
leading with online,” said founder web site’s continuous online auction, with proceeds going to
and CEO Jonathan Weber. the news site as an advertising credit.
The New West staff has The site has had its greatest success so far with a local database of
learned that the basic rules of the real estate listings, which includes a link to town maps. Realtors are
news business apply to their ven- charged a fee to list in the local database. Anderson said, “The real
ture. Good stories and frequent long-range need is for businesses such as restaurateurs to decide it is
postings drive the readership traf- worth the extra 15 minutes a day to put their daily special online, and
fic that advertisers want. “What to get more businesses to participate in the sharing of inventories in
you really want, and what’s really community databases.” The ultimate goal is to build a platform, which
going to sustain you, are the peo- Anderson calls Village Soup Common, which can be adapted to commu-
[Link] ple who are going to bookmark nities of about 30,000 internationally.

C i t i z e n M e d i a 39
 Chapter 5: Making Money
Backfence Advertisers have taken notice. Along
Backfence is a venture capital-backed commercial network of hyper- with the site’s new interactive teardown
local sites with all content written by the community itself and with a map, which chronicles the address of
target audience of suburban “soccer Moms and soccer Dads,” according every home in the community being
to co-founder Mark Potts. It launched in 2005 with two local portals in replaced with something newer or big-
Virginia since grown to six, plus one in Maryland, three in San Francisco ger (a feature that originated on
and three in the Chicago suburbs by fall of 2006. WestportNow), Baristanet features a
The site allows readers to promote events, rate and review local standing billboard advertisement, rotat-
businesses and post free classified ads, which can be upsold. The sites ing side pages and paid classifieds ($20 a
sell display ads, enhanced local yellow page listings and self-serve month for 30 words; $40 to include a
business classifieds for $25 a month. photo). WestportNow’s teardown map
Backfence aims to capture local advertisers who can’t afford to buy The site sells for $1,000 a month a rotating ad at the top of its main
into print. Businesses pay $120 per year for a one-page web site that page, and for $300 a month side ads that also rotate. The revenue helps
can include photos, their hours and contact pay $500 a month for technical support and $1,000 a month for a regu-
information. Increasingly, though, lar contributor, a citizen journalist trained by the site’s two professional
Backfence finds itself in competition with editors.
independent local start-ups.
Voice of San Diego
Baristanet This is among the most ambitious of the nonprofit sites, with heavy
Baristanet delivers an edgy blend of backing from local foundations and a paid staff of journalists. Readers
local comings and goings, community are responding; page views grew from about 250,000 a month in the
musings and all things related to food and summer of 2005 to 700,000 a month in January 2007.
real estate in three affluent New Jersey Revenues include large charitable gifts from founders, and corpo-
communities, Montclair, Glen Ridge and rate donors who are recognized onsite as sponsors of the weather,
Bloomfield. It also has delivered readers, traffic and surf reports. The site runs membership drives and now
recording 140,000 page views in September counts 595 individual members who have donated from $35 to $5,000.
2006, up from 70,000 a year earlier.
Baristanet’s interactive teardown map

40 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 How do you measure success?
While a handful said success would mean a million monthly
readers, and the founders would get syndicated columns or
mainstream media writing gigs, most respondents voiced
quite humble goals.
“To have 5% of the population as unique readers. The town
has 58,000 people, so 2,900 unique readers per month who
visit the site at least once a week,” said one.

Chapter 6: For others, success markers include:

“… Helping our members make more informed
decisions as citizens.

Defining Success “… Having a public impact on issues.

“… Challenging traditional media to improve.
“… Motivating citizens to pay attention.
“… Making a difference.
“… When we’re no longer referred to as a ‘blog.’
“If people read/comment and talk about us, we’re
There are as many definitions of “success” in the succeeding,” said one respondent. Said another: “There is
Seldom world of citizen media as there are types of hyper-
no success, there is no failure – there is only the process. If
do the local news sites. Benchmarks will become more
people find something they did not realize before – great.
hyperlocal sharply defined as time goes on.
If not, it happens.”
sites launched Seldom, though, do the hyperlocal sites launched
by individuals by individuals define or measure success in the same
define or ways that traditional media organizations do. They questions about sustainability. While patting themselves on the back for
measure pay scant attention to numbers of unique visitors, their contributions and impact, citizen journalists are wrestling with the
success in page views or return on investment. And while more challenges of expanding their corps of contributors, growing their reader-
the same revenue would be nice – especially if the sites could ship, and bringing in more revenues. They all have wish lists of things that
ways that make even token payments to their contributors – it would help them hang around.
traditional is not essential. Many volunteer sites are hoping to mature to the point that a
media Based on their own definitions of “success,” 73% broader coalition of volunteers will keep them going once first-genera-
organizations of our survey respondents pronounced their sites to tion enthusiasts step away. Volunteer co-ops face the challenges of
do. be successful. establishing institutions of shared governance and operational responsi-
Achieving even psychic success, however, invites bility. When they can finally afford to pay someone, who will it be?

C i t i z e n M e d i a 41
 Chapter 6: Defining Success
Community Sites the talk of the town. It’s taken on a life of its own
Many solo entrepreneurs say they are well on their way to achiev- where people are very protective about it…[Success
“It’s really
ing their goals of creating forums for community conversations and new was] when people out of the blue responded to an
forms of information sharing among people who don’t normally cross event that was only publicized on WestportNow.
hard to
paths. They take credit for disseminating unfiltered news and informa- Ninety or 100 people showed up and the sponsor envision
tion and prodding local media to improve. was amazed,” remarked founder Gordon Joseloff. profitability
Success can be a two-edged sword, observed Doug Bratland, chair- A big part of this perceived success, however, is of any
man of the board of Northfield Citizens Online. “Some people think not only getting citizens to pay attention to them, significance
we’re a business like a newspaper, and we’re getting complaints about but getting local media outlets to pay attention as
things we didn’t cover.” Still, he said, “People are finding out about well.
without
things going on in town from people who they normally don’t interact “The weekly here was not posting breaking opening up
with.” news to its web site two years ago,” said Coastsider additional
H2otown’s Lisa Williams admits to targeting residents who were editor Barry Parr. “They’re doing it now.” markets.”
not born in Watertown, people who had “no on-ramp” in the commu- “We have bloggers doing their own investiga- – Roch Smith
nity. “That’s who I was going after, but immediately I got a ton of old- tions, stuff that later gets picked up by mainstream
timers and civics nerds. What’s been gratifying is the media,” said Greensboro101’s Roch Smith. “Maybe
interplay between people who have been here for- doing what we do will eventually be considered mainstream.”
ever and the newcomers. They’re showing each Still, citizen media sites are thinking about a business model, acting
“What’s been other the works, working out class issues. And on a business model, or developing systems for philanthropic, subscrip-
gratifying is sometimes there’s a lot of resentment.” tion or advertising revenue.
the interplay Citizen sites have made significant inroads in Solo operators including Coastsider’s Barry Parr and H2otown’s Lisa
between supplementing local news or supplying news cover- Williams say they have achieved profitability primarily because they’re
people who age where none existed. Before The Forum not paying themselves real salaries and because other costs of running
have been launched in Deerfield, New Hampshire, for instance, the sites are low. They are pondering how and whether to turn these
here forever no one else covered local elections or announced fil- sites into businesses that can pay salaries to advertising and editorial
and the ing dates to run for local offices. “There was a very staffs.
newcomers. large increase in the number of people who signed For many, that means expanding to other communities to get a crit-
They’re up to run,” said Forum managing editor Maureen ical mass of advertisers and possibly launching a print edition. “It’s really
showing Mann. In the spring 2005 elections, eight of 22 hard to envision profitability of any significance without opening up
each other municipal offices had no candidates; the following additional markets,” said Greensboro101’s Roch Smith. “That opens up
the works, year – seven months after The Forum launched – all other opportunities [to sell to] regional or national advertisers.”
working out but two offices had a contest and turnout rose to As important is getting more readers to click through from their
class issues .” 33% of eligible voters from 20% the previous year. sites’ front pages to longer stories inside. “Because that’s where the ad
– Lisa Williams Increasingly citizen sites are becoming known space is,” declared WestportNow’s Joseloff. “We’re going to run out of
and trusted community venues. WestportNow “is ad space on the front page.” Indeed, there is finite space for tile ads or

42 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 Chapter 6: Defining Success
even rotating ads on a home page – no matter how fast you rotate them. cated and not eager to try out new things that are even slightly
complicated. “They’re not going to go in there and figure it out.”
New Media Companies
Meanwhile the entrepreneurs behind more ambitious efforts, Old Media Companies
including Backfence, New West and Village Soup, are recalibrating The stakes hardly need to be stated for old media companies that
old-media company models. For them, success will mean harnessing citi- have launched citizen ventures as facets of their online and print or
zen and advertising contributions to profitable online revenue models. broadcast ventures. Old media companies have their own definitions
And syndicators, such as Backfence, are in a race to conquer territory of success. Some are looking to citizen contributions to offset losses
ahead of their competitors. More than anything, marketing is critical in editorial staff; still others are trying to build community as a way
not only to secure advertisers, but also contributors. of keeping interest alive in local coverage; still others are primarily
“It’s very grassroots. … There are not a lot of places for us to concerned about preserving or expanding market share among both
advertise ourselves. We’ve got to be out at community events, setting consumers and advertisers. All are trying to establish interactive relation-
up tables, [speaking to] Little League teams. It doesn’t take a lot of ships with the people once referred to as readers or audiences, and to
people to do it, but you’ve got to do it,” said Backfence’s Mark Potts. find formulas for online advertising profitability.
In the world of citizen journalism, there is no build-it-they-will- “Success for us was replacing a product that was losing money
come paradigm. Getting people to write actual stories in New West’s and had no value to our readers or advertisers (a weekly, total-market
citizen content section “has been more difficult than driveway-drop) with something that had value and was going to make
we anticipated, and that reflects the fact that it’s a profit (a weekly with content drawn from the paper’s citizen site),”
work,” said founder Jonathan Weber. “There are no said Don Alexander, general manager, The Daily Times of Maryville,
“The real
magic tricks there. There’s a lot of legwork involved, Tennessee, which publishes Blount County Voice.
long-term you have to talk to people, they have to know you.” “There’s a skepticism in the business community – that you really
need is for As challenging is getting advertisers to embrace can submit your press release and we’re not going to make you buy an
businesses new online models. “The real long-term need is for ad,” acknowledged Laura Sellers, online director, East Oregonian
such as businesses such as restaurateurs to decide it is worth Publishing Co., which owns The Daily Astorian’s [Link].
restaurateurs the extra 15 minutes a day to put that daily special Northwest Voice’s Mary Lou Fulton says citizens, too, are skeptical
online, and to get more businesses to participate in when the local newspaper approaches them and now wants the
to decide it is the sharing of inventories in community databases” anniversary announcements and the block parties and other items that
worth the extra so site users can comparison shop on the site, said have long been rejected as not newsworthy. “Our policy is to say ‘yes’ to
15 minutes a Village Soup founder Richard Anderson. It’s that everything provided that it’s local and relevant to the community. You
day to put that shopping component that Village Soup is trying to have to do that for a while before people believe you,” she said.
daily special monetize. “Either we’re geniuses and ahead of the “Everyone in the world of journalism, we’re just starting to learn
world or really stupid,” Anderson said. what [citizen media] is. ... But the public – they don’t care. They’re not
online.”
Adds New West’s Weber, “A lot of people are all debating this, they’re not thinking about this. If you don’t tell them
– Richard Anderson
jazzed up about self-serve advertising models,” but about it they’ll never know about it unless you hit them over the head,”
he cautions that advertisers are relatively unsophisti- said Your Hub editor Travis Henry.

C i t i z e n M e d i a 43
 Chapter 6: Defining Success
Bluffton Today architect Steve attract additional readers and contributors. More
Yelvington, however, cautions old money to pay editors or reporters and improve the
“If I stay
media companies not to enter the cit- quality and credibility of the content. More hours
izen journalism arena just for business in the day. Those were the things they cited most
in the
reasons. “The most important thing is often. neighborhood,
to keep your eye on the ball – the Said one, “$40,000 of ad revenue per year it will be
community process and building a would be great, and we plan to get there by 2013, sustainable ...”
strong community. If you do this for our 10-year plan.” – Survey
the wrong reasons (to build site traf- “Funding and a full-time staff” to build a more Respondent
fic or raise circulation), you’ll have the comprehensive site, said another. “Quality authors
[Link] wrong impact … If [people] spend all who can earn the readers’ trust,” and “a continued stream of quality
their time watching TV, if they don’t contributions,” said two more.“A way to reward the contributors of the
talk to their neighbors, if they don’t really live there, they don’t care site in some way.”
about the things that are likely to be in the newspaper, and they’re Or just simply: “Advertising and another me.”
never going to read it.” How long founding site operators can labor on their journalistic
hobby of love will determine the long-term sustainability of most
Wish Lists independent sites built with citizen-generated content. “If I stay in
Citizen site operators are stepping up to the plate, accepting the neighborhood, it will be sustainable,” said one respondent.
responsibility, aspiring to higher quality, and understanding that they “A really long-term challenge will be what to do when we’re too
may need to make some investments if they want to stick around. old and gray to do it. We understand there’s a certain uniqueness, and
“It took a year or so for us to realize we have a printing press and that our personalities contribute to some of [the site’s] success,” said
readers. Another part of this is realizing the rights and responsibilities ibrattleboro co-owners Christopher Grotke and Lise LePage.
of owning a major media site in our town,” ibrattleboro’s Christopher We asked our survey respondents how long they would continue participating in their
Grotke said. site: 81% skipped over 1, 2 and 3 to 4 years, and even bypassed “until resources run out.”
Northfield hired a managing editor, not only to wrangle content, They said they would stick with their sites “indefinitely.”
but also “to meet our goals of being the place where the community “There was a point a couple months after we launched that I real-
talks to each other. We needed to get content from people who weren’t ized we had built the site we set out to build,” said New West’s
all in the mainstream. We needed someone to be responsible for that,” Jonathan Weber. “Is it going to work in the grand scheme of things? I
said Doug Bratland, chair of Northfield Citizens Online. have daily anxiety about that question. On the one hand, I very much
We asked our survey respondents: What would help them be sus- believe it’s going to work … But the way I think about it, it hasn’t
tainable? More marketing and promotion to ramp up visibility and worked until we can really show the level of business and level of traffic
we expected. I’m not relaxing.”

44 C i t i z e n M e d i a
Appendix

Who Participated in the 31 In-depth Interviews?

Name City State Web site
Arbor Update Ann Arbor MI [Link]
Backfence multiple [Link]
Baristanet North Jersey NJ [Link]
Bluffton Today Bluffton SC [Link]
Chi-Town Daily News Chicago IL [Link]
Coastsider Half Moon Bay CA [Link]
The Forum Deerfield NH [Link]
Free New Mexican Santa Fe NM [Link]
Greensboro101 Greensboro NC [Link]
H2otown Watertown MA [Link]
ibrattleboro Brattleboro VT [Link]
Madison Commons Madison WI [Link]
Muncie Free Press Muncie IN [Link]
My Missourian Columbia MO [Link]
Nashville is Talking Nashville TN [Link]
New Haven Independent New Haven CT [Link]
New West Rocky Mtns. MT [Link]
Northfield Citizens Online Northfield MN [Link]
Northwest Voice Bakersfield CA [Link]
OlyBlog Olympia WA [Link]
Philly Future Philadelphia PA [Link]
Rye Reflections Rye NH [Link]
Seaside-Sun Seaside OR [Link]
The Blount County Voice Blount County TN [Link]
My Town/The Daily Camera Boulder CO [Link]
Toledo Talk Toledo OH [Link]
Village Soup Camden ME [Link]
Voice of San Diego San Diego CA [Link]
WestportNow Westport CT [Link]
Wicked Local Plymouth MA [Link]
Your Hub Denver CO [Link]

C i t i z e n M e d i a 45
Appendix

Who Participated in the Online Survey?

We sought information from people who were Citizen journalists wear many hats and juggle
familiar with citizen journalism sites, either as overlapping responsibilities. When asked what
readers or contributors, and that’s what we got: roles they play in their site: 68% contribute con-
92% of our 191 survey respondents said they had tent; 34% edit other contributions; 23% assign
read a “web site created by community members topics for others to contribute; 43% shape the
to share very local information that might not be organization of the site; 27% manage site
readily available”; 85% of 176 respondents said finances; 38% own or operate the site.
they had actually contributed to such a web site. As a group, the survey respondents reported
What kinds of things did they contribute? Of a high degree of formal education: 157 of our
our 191 participants: respondents (82%) either had earned a college
• 65% had posted a comment. degree, completed some graduate or professional
• 65% had posted a story. education, or held a graduate or professional
• 56% had posted a photo. degree.
• 27% had posted a video or audio file. Finally, 115 of our participants (60%) had
• 45% had helped to create a new site. never worked as a professional journalist.
• 25% helped manage a site that already existed.
• 12% had donated money or merchandise to a
site.

46 C i t i z e n M e d i a
 Appendix

Methodology
This study took a snapshot of a robust phe- We specifically targeted readers, contributors
nomenon – specifically, the development of hyper- and operators of the nearly 500 citizen media
local community news sites – that is changing and sites we could identify at the time. We asked
growing week by week. them to suggest other possible participants and
J-Lab created a questionnaire intended to e-mailed the survey to them as well. In addition,
capture as much data as possible through in- we asked the 18,000 recipients of our J-Flash
depth interviews in the summer of 2006 with e-mail newsletter to forward it to citizen
founders, owners or operators of a diverse group journalists they knew.
of 31 citizen media sites. We supplemented that Overall, 191 people responded to most or all
data with an online, 60-question survey in the fall of our 60 questions; 149 of those respondents said
of 2006. This was not a random-sample survey; we they had contributed to a citizen media site in
wanted data from people who were readers of or some way; others had read sites with citizen-gen-
contributors to hyperlocal news sites with citizen- erated content.
generated content.

C i t i z e n M e d i a 47
Acknowledgements

Special thanks to The Ford Foundation for its support of this research.

J-Lab also thanks several people who contributed to this report. Susan Brenna brought fresh eyes, dispassionate
reporting and cogent analysis to the 31 in-depth interviews. Jeff Olson of [Link] lent valuable expertise to
designing and fielding the online survey. J-Lab’s Craig Stone and Katie Aulwes helped to spearhead the copyediting, web
production and publishing of these findings.

This report is available online at: [Link]/research/citizen_media_report

© 2007
J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism
Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park
J-Lab: The Institute for NON-PROFIT
ORGANIZATION
Interactive Journalism
U.S. POSTAGE
7100 Baltimore Ave
Suite 101 PAID
PERMIT NO. 356
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301-985-4020
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