Convener: Jane Stevens
Participants
- Dan Gillmor
- Stacy Lynch
- Silja Talvi
- Karen Toering
- Lew Friedland
- Lisa Cohen
- Jarah Euston
- Ralph Gage
Discussion
Home page has its own url, with Oakland Tribune branding. For West Oakland, it is the absolute portal to the Oakland Tribune and other resources in Oakland. A link to the site also appears on the Tribune Web site. It provides a rich, vivid picture of the community. Its content is solution-oriented. It contains issue “shells” that follow an issue to its logical conclusion. The voices of the community are as prominent as the professional journalists’ stories. It is a place for conversation, for stories, for information.
Site contains:
- an interactive, layered map that can be annotated by community members
- data, such as property sales, new business licenses, health updates
- oral histories that are streamed and podcast
- entertainment listings
- restaurant listings
- local sports
- resources, such as directory of services by nonprofits, local community groups
- school updates
- calendar
- automatic advertising taker/builder and classified advertising intake system
- community celebrations
- local bloggers
- blogs by mayor, congressional representative, city council representative
- search by zipcode
- ability to create sub-neighborhood sites
Types of stories that professional journalists do:
- Ask the community, which has four or five different ethnic groups.
- Report on community celebrations.
- Cover stories ignored or left out, such as tensions between ethnic groups.
Considerations for implementation:
- Free archives, with keyword links to stories.
- Software to screen forums and bloggers in which first ten posts of contributor are vetted by editor; ban abusers so that their post does not appear on site, but looks like it does on their computer.
- Forums require registration with a valid email address.
How to engage community:
- Create a community advisory committee.
- Create a “third place” in the community, a place where the Tribune reporter interacts with members of the community. Could be a coffee house; could be a storefront with computer terminals and a coffee bar. Comes equipped with scanners, etc., so that community members can do stories; also a meeting place for people to meet with newspaper or other experts (local records, health & wellness).
Spin-offs
- High school Web sites that link to West Oakland site – partner with Center for Digital Storytelling to train students to tell own stories that appear on high school and West Oakland Web site.
- Partner, broker a deal for each high school to cover an issue, print broadsheet for each and insert into print paper, assign news staff and designers to help.
- Daily pdf of neighborhood news that can be posted in neighborhood businesses.
- Youth site
- Parents site
Timetable
- Two years to establish, at least two academic cycles
How to start:
- Make a list we can do ASAP
- Make it appealing – how? Ask the community!
- Launch before you’re ready
- Remember that the constituents not covered are the most important.
- What do you say when they ask why ANG is finally doing this…”We’re investing in the community, want to work with you.”
Resources:
- Berkeley Parents Network (clone this, says Dan)
- Real Change (Seattle newspaper by and for homeless)
- 826 San Francisco (writing workshops for community)
- Youth Media Council (Oakland)