If you’re looking for a grassroots journalism site with a high degree of activity you should check http://www.paulding.com. More specifically check the links to the recent topics page … they are next to the banners on every page and this is the most viewed single page on the site. (My quasi-journalistic front page is viewed some 5000 times a day but the forum – where folks do ‘not the news’ but the conversation that includes the news) The link:
http://www.paulding.com/forum/index.php?act=search&CODE=getnew&active=1 )

This page is the conversation of this community. The lead topic changes with every new post and the list I last viewed involved offers of jobs and goods as well as an obit, a discussion of an upcoming Mayoral race and an odd bent and vent by a ‘wiccan’ who claimed his dog was killed and ‘freak’ scratched into his car because the closemindedness of the community. (Fascinating read with 284 posts and 5600+ views).

Then there is the ‘watch out for brown recluse spiders – they charge when wounded – topic that another member pulled a link from an entomology professor’s site that is doing research on their location in Georgia. That topic, posted by nobabymamadrama has had 32 replies and 485 views in the 14 hours it has existed.

There is also pre-notice of our Monday Night ‘call-in’ Front Porch Show – streaming radio – where next week the candidates for Mayor of Hiram will be interviewed and questioned both with online questions and questions posed by telephone.

All in all, about 175 topics were commented on the past 24 hours. The site itsself is coming up on a half-million topics with about half the 5868 registered members having posted. You’ll find free goods, homes for sale and lost dogs there every so often as well.

Do even a reasonable portion of the topics follow the ‘inverted pyramid’ form of journalist writing style? No … but they are the height of conversation.

But what this format does do is provide the serendipity one normally finds breezing through the newspaper. Some will catch your interest, some won’t but, because 95% of the posters and topics are hyperlocal, geographic proximity is the enduring news hook.

It is working. Paulding.com ranks second only to the Alanta Journal Constitution (ajc.com) in the alexa reach rating among media in Georgia (Pcom is tops in counties and #14 in the state behind national sites like UPS.com, Coca Cola, Equifax, etc.).

Pardon me for being a bit self-serving in this but there is something special going on in the burbs northwest of Atlanta.

G Patton Hughes
publisher@paulding.com

PS: The commission chairman, the highest elected official in the county, has a blog on the site where he answers questions and has since Nov. 2003. (It was also a pretty interesting summer 2004 primary season — you should have seen the video.)

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/online_media/hyperlocal_site_wins_3m_in_funding_27067.asp

In addition, Urban Vancouver, UniversalHub, OhMyNews, and the granddaddy, IndyMedia.

Thanks for putting this great list of efforts together Tom. If no one would mind, I feel Philly Future (http://www.phillyfuture.org), a site I founded December of 1999 and re-launched early 2004 should be among those mentioned here.

Philly Future takes a hybrid approach – combining the the contributions of those posting original works, like Bluffton Today, with a regional blog aggregator, like Greensboro101, that features 260 bloggers from across our tri-state area. It could handle far more if we had the resources to do it.

Speaking of that – Philly Future is ran by a dedicated group of volunteers – who are doing this as a labor of love – with no financial recooperation for their efforts (as of yet – who knows what the future holds?). They are focused on trying to widen the conversation in our regional web. Gathering news from various sources, pulling it togther, providing clarity whenever possible. Highlighting those that need to be heard. Encourging discussion and reaching out.

Recent highlights include:

1. A community interview with the City of Philadelphia’s CIO Dianah Neff that focused on the Philadelphia Wi-Fi initative: link

2. Coverage of Live 8 that featured a press credentialed volunteer on site, and news driven via RSS from Technorati, Flickr, and the best bloggers in our region: link

3. The Save Ardmore Coalition – an organization working against the practice of eminent domain, which posts to Philly Future, was recently featured in the Economist.

4. Philly Future was part of a major effort to bring notice to the media to the plight of Latoyia Figueroa and confront the media on it’s biased extensive coverage of Natalie Holloway.

5. Starting and organizing an advertising network of local blogs: link.

This is truely a grassroots effort: there are no marketers, no larger media concern behind it, or group of folks earning a living from it (yet – again you never know). But it’s precisely because it is grassroots that I feel we should be included and considered. We’ve done far more than most – with passion and a belief in our mission. The community is very special and what we are empowering folks to do I believe has merit.

I held back a bit to see where this discussion was going. But I think it is time to clear up a few misconceptions that may be leading to false impressions of MyMissourian and citizen journalism.

One of my continuing disappointments with our discussions (as I

“Village green” has a nice ring to it, but we think of it more like we’ve invited everyone over to our house to share news and information. In a true village green, there are no problems with people saying or doing just about anything. When one is a guest, certain rules will apply.

People often ask what makes iBrattleboro successful, as if there were a set of materials one could purchase or actions one could take to get similar results elsewhere. I’m not sure if we know yet, but a few things seem to be true:

- Manageable Size: Brattleboro is a small community with a single local newspaper

- Town Inclination: The people here like to discuss and debate local issues on Main Street, in letters to the editor, etc. There is an active citizenry.

- Money Second: We focus on content rather than ad revenue, assuming ad revenue will come later when it is real and deserved. Thinking of the site as a community resource rather than a business opportunity is a big factor.

- Truly Local: Lise and I live in town, shop in town, and interact in town. People can reach us. We’re real.

We do think this can happen in other communities, and that each approach must be developed for the community it serves.

We couldn’t run a site for a neighboring town… we’d miss the subtle interaction that comes from living in the community. It’s one of the reasons, I think, that readers of chain papers are left cold. Community isn’t just a buzzword, and people are smart enough to know if it is genuine or manufactured.

What works for us in Brattleboro is different than what would work in Greensboro, or at least I would hope so. If not, we’ve lost all uniqueness in the country. It’s fun to see what others are trying.

We certainly haven’t reached the limits of this, and find ourselves still spending a fair amount of time reminding people that they can write their own news when they complain that the local paper got it wrong, or didn’t cover their event.

We learn new things as the site evolves. One is that the concern about “anonymous” stories has not been a problem for us. We read each story before it goes up, but this type of news and information site uses time as a factor in reporting. Over time, a fuller picture emerges. The initial story might be sketchy, but as details emerge, the truth comes out.

People using pen names has also not been a problem. Being a small town, most people know each other and often share their identities. We also have regulars whom nobody really knows. In both cases, comments are signed and judged based on their content, and over time, reputation.

We have a pretty good relationship with regional media. Many reporters use the site to get story ideas, for a news story done in proper journalistic fashion. We’ll share tips if we run into one another at meetings

And yes, the average Brattleboro news consumer has the time to read all 50 comments… especially when they wrote some of them themselves.