Mobile local youth journalism training program
Total cost of project including all sources of funding:
$250,000Expected amount of time to complete project:
Program launch by 4th quarter 2008Our experiment aims to expand readership for youth news by attaching news stories to places where people congregate, like laundromats, bus stops, grocery stores, using geotags and smartphones. Patrons and pedestrians can sample and view unique local news in context. Instead of "push" technologies to update news on mobile phones, each story will be tightly bound to its location, and accessible primarily in its physical "locative" context.
It isn't innovative to recognize that mainstream media often overlooks inner city "information ghettos", creating pockets of disenfranchisement. Nor is it innovative to help disadvantaged youth living in Chicago to produce relevant, professional mixed-media stories about their neighborhood, though participants will get training from local community-based journalism organizations and major universities.
It is innovative to empower these young people with cutting edge tools such as mobile smartphones to be able to produce their own articles, photographs, and audiovisual content for a wider readership. Their families may not have computers or Internet, but the cellphone is a familiar device in these communities.
We think that producing site specific news stories is a novel idea. To write about a robbery at its scene, for example, adds new challenges for the reporter and a new kind of experience for the reader. To review a local band, in front of the place they perform and include a soundclip; to address issues about a zoning changes at the site, include photos or interviews with the story are other examples of what might be done in this new kind of news.
See our illustration in the attachments for a view of our "virtual newsstand" idea.
3 commentsHow will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?
Info is tagged to spaces and everyone has a cellphone these days.
Youth and in disadvantaged neighborhoods may not have computers and Internet, but they have cellphones. Focusing on the how cellphones can be used for more than talking one on one to friends, or listening to music, provides a vision for the kids that connects their present to their future potential.
Urban youth may express themselves by tagging buildings and storefronts with grafitti. Young people in our program will express themselves by writing and talking about music, arts, sports, social issues, or what the alderman is, or isn't doing, where they live. Then they will tag the streets with their work. But our tags, are geo-tags. This youth-produced neighborhood news will be uploaded to the web as a citizen news e-zine, but more interesting, will be the corners, intersections, and buildings where we create "virtual newsstands" for commuters and passerbys.
We can define and mark out small areas, in terms of their geographic coordinates. Inside these "live" areas, any GPS enabled device (mobile phone, PDA)can read text and multimedia files that are geo-tagged with the right coordinates. The kids will post their news in areas where people congregate in the neighborhood -- the grocery line, bus stops, laundromats.
Writing stories for cellphones means focusing on descriptive headlines, writing short, detailed stories, as well as learning to do short audio mini-casts. The young reporters will work with journalism students and faculty from local colleges on their literacy and writing skills. Combining mentoring and hands-on workshops, the youth will develop a useful skills that benefit them, whether or not they go on to work as reporters.
0 commentsHow is your idea innovative? (New or different from what already exists.)
Practical Mobile
Our experiment aims to expand readership for the youth news by attaching news stories to places where people congregate, like laundromats, bus stops, grocery stores, using geotags and smartphones. Patrons and pedestrians, be can sample and view unique local news in context.
We think that producing news for specific locations is a new idea. To write about a robbery from the scene, for example adds new challenges for the reporter and a new kind of experience for the reader. To review a local band, in front of the place they perform and include a soundclip; to address issues about a zoning changes at the site, include photos or interviews with the story are other examples of what might be done in this new kind of news.
You may think you've seen this idea before. After all, there are a LOT of mobile citizen journalism startups and projects out there. Do these programs help young people utilize the embedded tools in modern cell phones to produce engaging and informative content on a par with less disenfranchised peers?
A common issue with technology adoption has been lack of access to state of the art hardware, or given the hardware, a lack of access to broadband connectivity.
A way out of this snafu now exists. It is called the smartphone. Combined with the availability of high-speed (3G) data networks which require no special wiring, LAN jacks, modems, or routers to be installed onsite, it is the perfect platform for disenfranchised communities to connect to online lifelines which more affluent groups take for granted.
Putting new but ubiquitious technology to use in exploring a novel kind of space-embedded news should involve the community beyond the young reporters because it means news must be up-close, concrete, and personal. Mobile news is the next big thing, but just shoveling news from Internet to mobile, is not innovative. Our idea empowers our target clients and takes this technology and news to a new place.
0 commentsWhat experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project?
Experience Matters
The team members behind this project bring significant experience to bear on this project. As a journalism faculty member at a college in Chicago, we can recruit journalism students to act as mentors and teachers to the disadvantaged students in the program. She created chicagotalks.org, a community news website where journalism students and community people report on local news, and brings that experience to bear on the new project.
Our other main team member has previously worked directly with the youth population in an afterschool tutor-mentor program, one of the oldest, largest and most respected programs in the Chicago metro area. He also has extensive knowledge of mobile telephony and integration with cutting edge web2.0 tools and practices.
Thus the main elements are in place: a population of pre-qualified youth who could be chosen for such a program, with a built-in support mechanism (tutors/mentors); a journalism curriculum supported by a prestigious university; and a team well-versed in the tools needed to create youth citizen journalism.
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