Community journalism is locally oriented, professional news coverage that typically focuses on city neighborhoods, individual suburbs or small towns, rather than metropolitan, state, national or world news.
If it covers wider topics, community journalism concentrates on the effect they have on local readers. Community newspapers, often but not always publish weekly, and also tend to cover subjects larger news media do not. Some examples of topics are students on the honor roll at the local high school, school sports, crimes such as vandalism, zoning issues and other details of community life. Sometimes dismissed as "chicken dinner" stories, such "hyperlocal" coverage often plays a vital role in building and maintaining neighborhoods.
Leo Lerner, founder of Chicago's erstwhile Lerner Newspapers, used to say, "A fistfight on Clark Street is more important to our readers than a war in Europe."
An increasing number of community newspapers are now owned by large media organizations, although many rural papers are still "mom and pop" operations.
Community journalists are typically trained professional reporters and editors. Some specialized training programs have recently emerged at established undergraduate and graduate journalism programs. Community journalism should not be confused with the work of citizen journalists, who are often unpaid amateurs, or with civic journalism, although many community newspapers practice that.
At the Emerging Mind of Community Journalism conference, participants created a list characterizing community journalism: community journalism is intimate, caring, and personal; it reflects the community and tells its stories; and it embraces a leadership role.
| “ | If you want more of a definition, I’m afraid it’s like when someone asked Louie Armstrong for a definition of jazz. The great Satchmo is reputed to have replied something like this: ‘Man, if you have to ask, it won’t do me any good to try to explain.’ You know community journalism when you see it; it is the heartbeat of American journalism, journalism in its natural state.” –Jock Lauterer | ” |
Read more about Community Journalism: Figures, History, The Journalism Debate, Organizations, Examples of Community Journalism, Community Blogging, Emergence of Mobile News, Purpose, Measurement, Criteria For Community Journalism
Famous quotes containing the words community and/or journalism:
“I do not mean to imply that the good old days were perfect. But the institutions and structure—the web—of society needed reform, not demolition. To have cut the institutional and community strands without replacing them with new ones proved to be a form of abuse to one generation and to the next. For so many Americans, the tragedy was not in dreaming that life could be better; the tragedy was that the dreaming ended.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out. It is more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat.”
—Harold Evans (b. 1928)