MyMissourian was launched as a living laboratory for "open source journalism" by the journalism school of the University of Missouri - Columbia.
Sponsoring news organization: Columbia-Missourian, published by the University of Missouri-Columbia
Location: Columbia, MO
Owned by: University of Missouri-Columbia
Founded: 1908
Community engagement initiative launched: October, 2004
Software used: Mambo
The primary challenge in citizen journalism -- at least when the opportunity is being handed out by news organizations -- is getting citizens to, well, do some journalism.
The folks running MyMissourian, a citizen-journalism site run by faculty and students of the journalism school at the University of Missouri-Columbia, are facing that challenge head-on: students with laptops are literally knocking on doors asking people if they'll write for MyMissourian. Here's j-school student Eugene Phua proving why it's often easier to do something yourself than get someone else to do it:
The idea was very simple. Knock on their doors, ask em as politely as i can if i can speak to them about MyMissourian.com, tell them it'll only take 5 minutes of their time. I'd bring along my laptop, so that i can look like a snazzy salesmen with a snazzy presentation.
It must've been so strange for the people i visited. I remember some of them having that puzzled look, some of them amazed at my audacity, some of them clearly annoyed but too polite to express it. Thankfully, none of them declined me entry into their abode.
The reactions i got were basically the same as previous adventures. Some seemed enthuasistic, some listened just to be polite, some listened and forgot all about me the next day.
That's from Eugene's blog. The flipside of the "whitewashing the fence" issues brought up by sites that are banking on user-generated content is this: Tom Sawyer is one in a million. Very few people, and very few projects, have the charisma that makes attracting people to participate seem easy.
That's a lot of ifs -- if readership growth is great, if the readers are ready and able to join in. Maybe the lesson we should take is that every success is important, like the story that resulted from Eugene's door-to-door salesmanship -- a story on the end of Ramadan from the perspective of a Muslim woman living in Columbia.
Perhaps one of the major risk factors for citizen engagement online come from an erroneous perception that anything less than a site that's bubbling over with fresh, relevant content without any paid staff help at all is a failure. Sites like Wikipedia, Digg, and Slashdot, can draw on global pools of readers who may become contributors. Comparing sites aimed at a pool of readers that's circumscribed by geography, we may find that local sites aren't doing so bad after all when compared on the basis of participation percentages -- it's just that getting participation isn't easy for any site, anywhere.
Further Reading:
- Another J-School Tries 'Open Source Journalism', Rich Gordon, Poynter E-Media Tidbits, October 12, 2004
- Smudged Ink podcast -- Open Source Journalism with Brian Haman, graduate student and, at the time, one of MyMissourian's editors
- Online Journalism Review October, 2004, analysis of "hyper-local" citizen journalism
