A Hotbed of Citizen Journalism
Last week, in Part One of "A Hotbed of Citizen Journalism," we gave you the bare basics regarding what's being said about Richmond's growing blog scene and which names to become familiar with, if you aren't already.
However, our goal is not only to give kudos to the under-appreciated, over-looked service that these blogs provide to our city and, in truth, to Richmond.com and our competitors in the traditional journalism market. Our goal is to plow through the surface of gratitude and acknowledging head-nods and look as closely at our city as these "citizen journalists" do.
Community Sites: Carver & Jackson Ward News
Richmond.com's favorite blogs:
Bacon's Rebellion |
For starters, look at our history.
"Richmond is fertile ground for publishing," said Terry Rea , creator of SLANTblog and the Fan District Hub . "It's been a printing center for over 100 years…and has become an ad agency town. I would say VCU has worked into that mix quite a bit as well."
Look at our geography.
"It comes down, I think, to the fact that Richmond has these great, old neighborhoods," said John Murden , creator of one of Richmond's first community sites, the Church Hill People's News . "Church Hill is distinct from Jackson Ward and is distinct from the Fan and Oregon Hill, and so we have all these little areas that were well served by community newsletters in the past – it just goes back to the neighborhoods."
And look at our people.
"We're a good size [city], but we're small enough to where, I know who runs the community blogs," said Ross Catrow , creator of RVABlogs and RVANews . "We have a great confluence of the right people – it seems the most active people are also prolific bloggers."
Again, the idea, creation and use of the "blog" is not revolutionary to Richmond, nor to communicating news and issues going on in the area around us.
"All we're talking about here, ultimately," said Don Harrison , co-creator of SaveRichmond , "is a different way for people to get information and let it into their homes."
SaveRichmond first began in 2003 with the idea that it would be a community for artists and promote the discussion of downtown development. What it turned into was, arguably, the city's first-ever "citizen journalism" site.
Best known for uncovering the hidden financial details behind Richmond's publicly-funded Virginia Performing Arts Foundation's art center, SaveRichmond continually reports on a wide range of heavy local issues that, quite frankly, traditional media outlets either ignore or don't take the time to cover as in-depth as we'd like.
It's also the only blog in the region to have won the Laurence E. Richardson Freedom of Information Award in 2005 – reserved for those outlets who work diligently to ensure the public's right to the freedom of information.
But as Harrison also points out – there are almost as many types of blogs as there are blogs. And Richmond seems to have the best of the best. This brings us to the where our bloggers are today – individually helpful yet collectively newsworthy.
And it all began with a meeting at Baja Bean Co.
Catrow had kept his eye on the every-growing neighborhood blog scene and after spotting potential and strength in numbers, he decided to capitalize on it.
"He invited bloggers together to discuss what we could do to cooperate and act together," Rea said. "The potential of the community blogs is what emerged from that meeting, and the direction to go in."
Thus began what is quite honestly becoming new competition for mainstream media and an alternative, independent voice for the Richmond community. As aggregators, RVABlogs and RVANews bring together original and comprehensive content from the city's blog and community site resources.
But what is it about these sources that differ from traditional? And what makes them competition for mainstream media?
It goes back to the change in times. Richmond's citizens, consumers and readers want news and information when they want it and as quickly as possible. While in traditional news stories (such as this) readers have to sift through AP-styled background information to get to the heart of a story, bloggers are able to bypass the "fluff" and hit the ground running.
"The blog style is something that has already influenced the mainstream media, and I think it's going to even more," Rea said. "It's hard to believe that there ever won't be a daily newspaper, but it's easy to believe it won't look much like it used to, or does now.
"Writing style is one of the things that many of the mainstream guys trying to do blogs have not figured out how to do. But I would think more people are going to have to learn to write that way, and our poor editors are going to have to except that, that is what people want."
Catrow, Murden and Harrison agree and also pointed out individually that it's the tone bloggers take with the information they uncover and the documentation they are able to quickly link to that is helping to increase their credibility.
One thing is for certain, community blogs and news sites are here to stay, and Richmond itself may be looked at increasingly more as this new wave of citizen journalism continues to grow and additional sites emerge.
So what's next? At least for Catrow and RVANews, that direction is the same direction SaveRichmond has been traveling for a while. In summation: more original, investigative reporting.
"More investigative reporting, but at a slow pace – I don't want to push out crap," Catrow said. "I would like to grow RVANews' original content, more in terms of quality and maybe a little bit in quantity. And I would like to see all the community blogs start to do their own stories."
"The caveat," Harrison and the others admit, however, is that no one has found a way to make the "big bucks" off of blogging. Well, at least not yet. But that of course doesn't stop them from writing.
If anything, it only adds fuel to the fire.
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