Community Connections
| Local coverage Site promotes neighborhood news, while helping students gain skills, clips |
| By Morgan Mack Two professors from Columbia College Chicago’s journalism department shared a vision – a vision of students using a medium of the future to cover and publish neglected news in Chicago. Full-time faculty members Barb Iverson and Suzanne McBride set out on the daunting task of obtaining a $12,000 J-Lab grant in spring 2006 to create a web site dedicated to community coverage. “For news, the web will be the preferred method in the future,” says Iverson, who was inspired to help create the site while on a visit to Seoul, South Korea to the first Citizen Journalism Forum, sponsored by Ohmy News. But between inspiration and execution stood an enormous amount of work. “We had to write a grant proposal, which had to be convincing, short, detailed, [and show] why we needed the money, how we envisioned our proposal and who we would work with,” says McBride, “It was very comprehensive.” J-Lab chose Creating Community Connections as one of ten proposals from 200 applicants to receive $12,000. Creating Community Connections’ content does not necessarily have to be hard news, explains McBride. It’s about the issues that matter to the citizens. Iverson says the site is meant to draw from all of the Chicago neighborhoods and about everything – trends, profiles. or even aa mother upset about an unjust parking ticket. “News in Chicago is happening on the streets,” says Iverson. The site provides a tremendous opportunity to gain reporting experience, as well as valuable clips. Creating Community Connections articles frequently are written by undergraduate and graduate journalism students at Columbia College. Iverson and McBride’s current goal is to publish one newstory per day, five days a week. Additionally, they would also like to sell advertising space on the website and pay modest stipends to site contributors. Check their website at www.creatingcommunityconnections.org |