Daily News wins $340,000 grant
BY GEOFF DOUGHERTY
May 23, 2007 | 2:39 PM
The Daily News on Wednesday was awarded a $340,000 grant by the Knight Foundation, a major journalism funder.
The money will be used to create one of the country's largest citizen journalism networks. As part of the two-year program, the Daily News will recruit volunteer journalists in each of Chicago's more than 70 neighborhoods and train them in basic reporting techniques.
The site will hire editors to help citizen journalists produce a comprehensive, in-depth daily news report on Chicago events and issues.
For more information on the grant and the Knight Foundation, visit knightfdn.org
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Comments
DON SAMUELSON, 11-10-2007
There are 16 LISC New Communities Programs in Chicago which have content management and other functionalities on websites that were created for them by Webitects and funded by LISC. A Google search will get you to the NCP website and to the websites of all of the communities. Each of these sites has the potential for being upgraded to more of a community portal or digest if there were citizen journalists who could report on events, issues, and initiatives from the local schools, churches, chambers of commerce, non-profits and small businesses - essentially the traditional news sources of the old neighborhood newspaper. The websites at QCDC in Bronzeville and Auburn Gresham are particularly advanced.
DON SAMUELSON, 11-10-2007
Craig, do you have any experiences from Rogers Park that could be shared with the folks at Skokie Talk?
DON SAMUELSON, 11-10-2007
Geoff, how is this program coming. Is it possible to extend the reach of your program to include the folks at Skokie Talk in Skokie?
GEOFF DOUGHERTY, 06-03-2007
Jennifer,
This project is by no means an effort to replace professional journalists, or to suggest that there's not an enormous need for and value to their work.
The truth is that Chicago has more than 70 distinct neighborhoods. Hiring a professional journalist to cover each of them would cost upwards of a million dollars. So far, no news organization in Chicago has stepped up to the plate to spend that kind of money.
Meanwhile, there are critical issues and events going uncovered in those neighborhoods. Our project seeks to use citizen journalists to fill that void. In addition to improving local coverage, we believe this approach will foster more understanding between our news organization, our citizen journalists, and the neighborhoods they serve.
Given that local coverage in most newspapers is undergoing significant cutbacks, and that there seems to be a serious disconnect between news organizations and their readers, I would imagine that most journalists would support what we’re doing wholeheartedly.
As to the libel issue you mentioned, a significant chunk of the grant funds we received will go toward training journalists, and toward hiring editors to ensure that copy from our citizen journalists is accurate and objective. So I don’t see much basis for concern there.
JENNIFER, 06-01-2007
Ridiculous. Let people who are not professional journalists write 'news' stories and don't pay them. What a great way to avoid having to hire professional journalists who actually contribute something worthwhile to the news media (and understand what a little thing called 'libel' is). This is a dark day for journalism.
GEOFF DOUGHERTY, 05-29-2007
I posted some more info on the grant program here
GEOFF DOUGHERTY, 05-28-2007
Craig, thanks for the article. It's posted here.
To address your earlier comments: The Daily News is an 18-month-old website that is very much a work in progress. We don't currently have as much copy from citizen journalists as we'd like. But we have more every day. I'm confident that with the support of the Knight Foundation, we'll soon have one of the country's largest networks of citizen journalists.
We're not trying to pass the Medill stories off as citizen journalism. Our goal has always been to cover Chicago using a mix of professional and volunteer journalists. Using Medill copy is a reflection of that. As we grow, I hope we're able to hire staff writers to cover citywide issues, rather than relying on Medill to the extent that we do now.
I apologize that I haven't reached out to you, and please don't view that as criticism or lack of interest in your efforts to cover Rogers Park.
As the Daily News' editor, I'm responsible for fundraising, technical issues, website design, editing copy, writing some of my own stories, recruiting members for our board of directors and finding ways to sell ads. To date I haven't been paid at all for this, so I've been working part time. I hope you'll understand that under these circumstances it's impossible for me to talk to everyone I'd like to connect with.
Please realize that the grant was announced five days ago, and that we haven't actually received a grant check yet. So it's a bit early to take us to task for failing to mount a publicity drive or recruit citizen journalists.
We're planning a massive outreach and recruitment effort that will hit every neighborhood in Chicago. Rest assured that in the next few months, we'll be reaching out to bloggers, non-bloggers and everyone else we can think of across the city to get them involved in writing for us. I hope you'll help us in that effort.
CRAIG GERNHARDT, 05-28-2007
I couldn't find a e-mail link to send this breaking Rogers Park News Story to you so I'll post it here for your readers. I have photos on my blog. A fire broke out in the 'Broken Heart' of Rogers Park around 4AM this morning at the Bar None Bar (formerly DJ's Ranch) at 6962 North Glenwood. Smoke from the fire could be seen and smelled from two blocks away. Around a dozen fire vehicles and two dozen responders quickly attacked the blaze from the front, back and top of the building. As precaution, the DCI Furniture Store at 6956-60 North Glenwood was checked to see if the fire had spread to the south part of the building. Damage is extensive to the Bar None, as seen from the above photograph. The DCI Furniture Store has five broken windows in the front and smoke covered furniture as damage. Joseph Ukonga, co-owner of DCI said, "I don't know why so many windows had to be broken?" The CTA RedLine - Morse Avenue stop was not effected by the fire and service continued through-out the fires extinguishing period, which lasted about 45 minutes. Morse Avenue and Lunt were blocked off from Glenwood to Greenview. Glenwood was blocked off from Greenleaf to Morse. No cause for the early morning fire has been determined at this moment. No one is said to be injured. A investigation into the cause of the fire is underway. Citizen Journaist Craig Gernhardt The 'Broken Heart' of Rogers Park
CRAIG GERNHARDT, 05-26-2007
Geoff, First, receiving news-wire stories from Medill doesn't qualify as citizen jounalism. Neither are press releases or a flickr links to photos. While I enjoyed the site when Julie Segraves expanded on stories I covered, Rogers Park has had a major void on this site. My main point is, for three years I've been covering Rogers Park, with original content, breaking stories the major media outlets have missed or arrived late on the scene - and you've never once reached out to see if I may be interested in writing for you. Now that you've received a grant to do such, again, to fullfill the obligations of the agreement, the only notice of this is on your website. No press release was sent out. I'm sure you have a stat counter on the site, how many people you reach. Had you sent it to me, I could've added over a 1000 readers to the press release, just yesterday alone. If you want to link my stories up, that's fine with me. Outside.in does and they're doing pretty good these days. Now, I really hope to see this vision come for you, it's a lofty one with all the neighborhood blogs that are sprouting up like weeds. But hey, I forgot, with $340,000 dollars, I'd be happy too. I gotta look at what the 'Broken Heart' is doing wrong. I'm not making a penny covering Rogers Park, I do it for the love. Peace, Craig
GEOFF DOUGHERTY, 05-26-2007
Craig, we always welcome constructive criticism. But calling us 'lame' doesn't do much to let us know what your concerns about the site are, or how we might make the site better. Also, please remember that if you see things we're not covering, or could be covering better, you're free to cover those things yourself and file the stories. We'd be happy to print them.
CRAIG GERNHARDT, 05-25-2007
Just goes to show you, any lame website has a chance at scoring free money and do nothing.
RICK SMITH, 05-25-2007
Amen and amen... nicely done.
GEOFF DOUGHERTY, 05-24-2007
Yes, sometimes even the editor needs editing. I was posting on a laptop with a weird screen and sketchy connectivity, and this grammatical glitch slipped through. I've gone ahead and fixed it for posterity.
RICK SMITH, 05-24-2007
"The site will hire editors to help WITH citizen journalists produce a comprehensive, in-depth daily news report on Chicago events and issues." Well, good thing you're hiring editors, eh? The word "with" in the passage from the award story certainly doesn't fit. Good luck.
TOM SHERMAN (OF WINDYBITS.COM), 05-23-2007
Congratulations on the win!
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