Community Journalism Interest Group 2010 Abstracts
Video Expectations for Non-Television Producers of Community News: Two Newspapers’ Online Video Strategies • George Daniels, University of Alabama • Since 2008, dozens of community newspapers have started producing their own videos for the Web. Many have re-designed their Web sites to make them more videocentric. This comparative case study found the online videos at The Alabaster Reporter and The Tuscaloosa News, both in central Alabama, were similar in their focus on community leaders yet different in their approach. The Alabaster Reporter implemented a YouTube strategy while The Tuscaloosa News used a franchise strategy.
Heart disease in the rural South: A content analysis of the community newspaper coverage • Tracy Loope, University of Florida • Because community newspapers are critical information sources among rural residents, their coverage of heart disease in the rural South was analyzed. Heart disease remains a severe health problem in the South where people are far more likely to die from heart disease than in other areas of the country. Using the Health Belief Model (HBM) to develop the newspaper analysis, this study illustrates the importance of community newspapers’ presentation of heart disease information. Results show that newspapers located in areas with high heart disease mortality rates were more likely to present heart disease as a severe threat to readers, showing these newspapers’ strong tie to their communities. Further research is required to better evaluate this relationship and find ways to use mass media, specifically community newspapers, to improve heart health among people living in rural areas.
The Public Sphere and Web-First Independent News Sites • Mark Poepsel, Missouri School of Journalism • Journalists with varying levels of experience have never-before-seen opportunities to create their own news sites. This ability presents some with an opportunity to create entrepreneurial ventures that could contribute to rational-critical discourse in the 21st Century. This study takes an in-depth, qualitative look at a several successful, locally-focused news sites through the eyes of the people publishing them in order to examine publishers’ goals and expectations, economic and journalistic.
Experiment and adapt: The mantra of survival for one startup Latino newspaper • Arthur Santana, University of Oregon • Eugene, Ore. has a history of failed Latino newspapers, but a new one is trying something new: adopting a bilingual format and embracing uplifting news. Motivated by a sense of civic duty, three immigrants launched the community newspaper in September 2009. But it has been a rocky start. This case study sheds lights on the deliberations and difficulty that go into the creation of a different kind of community newspaper.
After the Storm: Greensburg Residents Discuss an Open Source Project As a Source of Community News • Steve Smethers, Kansas State University • Greensburg was destroyed by an EF5 tornado in May 2007. The famed green sustainable rebuilding effort includes a multimedia telecommunications center, which will produce an open-source community information portal featuring audio, video and textual information round the clock. Prototypes of the portal were shown to focus groups to determine respondents’ propensity to use and contribute to the site. Subjects showed willingness to learn the technology, but worry about the site’s impact on the local newspaper.
Imagining Tibet Online: Discursive Constructions of Nation on Tibetan Website • Nangyal Tsering, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities • The paper studies www.phayul.com, the leading online portal of the Tibetan diasporic community, based in India. By looking at the news published on the site, the paper looks at how the website discursively constructs representations of nation online. Even though Tibet is not a nation-state, digital media’s critical role in the formation of an imagined community comes across very strongly, particularly in the case of displaced and geographically dispersed people such as the exiled Tibetans.
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