West Virginia U. got $85,000 today towards their project that’s helping local papers put news online. Students and professors are teaching journalists how to collect audio and video and write for the web.
The site features the staples of local journalism — a story on the importance of a local shelter is accompanied by a photo gallery and videos; there’s a text-and-video story about a couple that got married in camouflage.
In some ways this is a step up the food chain, a more sustainable option. Instead of funding local journalism, the foundation that handed over the money is funding lessons to make local journalism better. It’s a positive approach, but I suspect of questionable effectiveness. When I worked for Torstar, the company sent everyone to what they called Web U to learn how to make videos, post breaking news etc. There are two problems with this approach: first of all, it’s still unclear where the money to do this journalism will come from — the question we’re trying to answer in this blog/book project. Secondly, teaching someone isn’t sufficient — the new tasks need to be incorporated into their jobs. So while it was forward-thinking of Torstar to educate everyone on online news, sending us back to our traditionally oriented newsrooms meant little of what we learned had echoes in the quality of our content.
But this is a neat project — we’ll be watching it as it progresses.
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WVU receives grant to help rural newspapers, Associated Press, April 6