How we're going to spend all that cash

By Geoff Dougherty | May 29, 12:35 PM

So... $340,000. Lots of dough for a formerly destitute non-profit news organization.

When I posted the article about our Knight Foundation grant, I was in Miami for the announcement, racing from event to event and struggling with limited Internet access. So I didn't have much opportunity to give our readers and contributors the details on exactly what we're going to do with the money, and how it's going to impact the Daily News and everyone involved with the site.

Here goes:

We will use the grant funding to recruit, train and deploy a highly structured network of volunteer journalists to produce a comprehensive and professional daily local news report.

By creating a network that includes at least one citizen journalists in each of Chicago's 70+ neighborhoods, we believe we can offer local news coverage that is more comprehensive, nuanced and diverse than the report found in Chicago's large daily newspapers. We expect our approach will substantially increase the volume of news coverage in Chicago's most disadvantaged neighborhoods, and create a large number of trained journalists in those communities.

This project is especially cool because it pushes the boundaries for citizen journalism. While some news organizations (the BBC, OhMyNews) have launched ambitious citizen journalism efforts, nobody has attempted to create an organized, cohesive system that enables coverage of a large city. We'll be the first.

Relying on citizen journalists to write articles on whatever topic interests them -- the approach taken by most sites -- yields a patchwork of coverage that, while interesting, contains large gaps. We plan to address that issue by structuring our network along the lines of a traditional newsroom. Editors will consult with writers on each neighborhood beat to ensure that key events and issues are covered, and edit the resulting stories to meet rigorous accuracy and objectivity standards.

We're also in the process of working with some prominent journalism educators to create a Journalism 101 program that will quickly bring our citizen journalists up to speed on basic reporting, writing and photography techniques.

Obviously this program is going to be great for the Daily News, and for Chicago residents. It's also likely to serve as a model for other citizen journalism outlets, and conventional news organizations looking to improve their local coverage.

Now, on to the nuts and bolts. As soon as we receive the grant funds, we'll be hiring at least one community outreach specialist, and we'll be adding more as time goes by. These folks will be showing up at block committee meetings, neighborhood Chamber of Commerce events, churches and festivals to talk with residents about writing for the Daily News.

Again, the objective is to sign up at least one person from each city neighborhood. We'll be starting with a pilot group of neighborhoods this year -- probably two or three dozen of them along the lakefront, evenly split between North Side and South Side. Once we get the kinks worked out, we'll move into other neighborhoods during the second year of the grant.

Once we have residents signed up, we'll begin rolling out the training program, and hiring editors to work with our new citizen journalists.

At the same time, we'll debut a new feature on the website: A neighborhood-by-neighborhood calendar of upcoming events and issues that our citizen journalists and editors can use to plan coverage.

Obviously we've got a lot of work ahead of us. It's going to be an exciting and challenging two years for the Daily News.

There's a few things you can do to help us make this effort a success. If you're interested in writing for us, drop me a line at geoff (at) chitowndailynews (dot) org.

If you're an experienced editor or have some expertise in community organizing and are interested in working for us on this project, I'd like to talk with you.

And if you know of other foundations or individuals who might be interested in sponsoring the program, please let me know. The Knight Foundation is funding about 60 percent of the program in our first year, so we need to rev up our fundraising efforts to pay for the remaining 40 percent.