Representative Journalism pilot project in US

Representative Journalism, another experiment in community funded journalism, is being tested in the US.

As with other community supported media business models, this project allows communities, individuals and groups to assign journalists to deliver Web-based local and topical news. The project, called Locally Grown, is geared around an online community in Northfield, Minnesota.

As explained in the documentary above, the pilot project is trying to find out whether there is a financial market for the idea in the community, how a journalist would have to behave to get that support from individuals or advertisers, etc etc.

The journalist assigned to the project says she is trying to bring professional standards and ethics into the blogosphere. "She (the journalist) doesn`t work for us, we`re just the place where she publishes her stuff, the place where she hangs her professional hat," a CO-Host/Blogger from Locally Grown says in the documentary.

The idea comes from Mr. Leonard Witt of Kennesaw State University, a former journalist concerned about the struggling print media: “We are living in an era when old journalism models are failing, newspapers are faltering and experienced journalists are losing their jobs,” Mr. Witt said in a press release from PJnet.

I`ve blogged about community funded journalism before. People are increasingly interested in local news on expense of foreign news. There certainly is a market for very local news stories. Community funded journalism is a very exciting idea, but my problem is still with the funding. (The project in Minnesota is funded through a grant awarded to Kennesaw University and not by the community.)

I don`t like the idea that people could pay for having produced the news they want. Especially in small communities in the blindspots of the public eye. Who`s going to write the important stories nobody want to pay for? Who`s going to write the stories nobody has thought of yet? Who`s going to write the stories the community don`t want to be written?

I`m not protesting about communities paying for the production of cosy feature articles, but news stories. Media can`t function as a watchdog if it`s paid for by the local community.