Top Bar - All sites

Helping Community News Startups

Twin Cities Daily Planet: Sustaining Citizen Journalists

Of all the New Voices grantees, TC Daily Planet has raised the most money ($760,000) and has shown the greatest resilience in adapting to community needs and building a corps of contributors.

“There’s no single solution to recruiting citizen journalists… Recruiting, training and mentoring them is a constant challenge.” — Mary Turck, Editor

The site aggregates news from more than 100 community partners; citizen journalists now make up about 40 percent of its content. The site is a model for recruiting, mentoring and sustaining a corps of contributors. One of the chief ways it does that is with a multiple entry points.

“We need to have multiple roads in,” said site editor Mary Turck. “There’s no single solution to recruiting citizen journalists… Recruiting, training and mentoring them is a constant challenge.”

Let’s count the ways:

The Assignment Desk lists the lineup of articles the site is seeking and invites people to volunteer for the reporting. It’s how the site got a certified arborist to write a story on the emerald ash borer.

Email solicitations are sent every week to Turck’s list of 100 writers, highlighting the stories she’s looking for and inviting them to one of two Writers’ Workshops she holds every week to help people report and get feedback on their stories. “This is a more personal way in,” she said.

Topical training workshops provide new training opportunities. TCDP used to train prospective citizen journalists with a four-session curriculum of night classes. But it found people willing to give up one night for training, but not four.  Now, it focuses single sessions on different aspects, such as how to create a WordPress site.

Monthly lunches with journalists let prospective contributors hear from a professional journalist. Here they are invited to write for the Planet.

Planet Café invites people to bring in stories or contribute to stories the news site is working on.

Forum Monitoring offers the sharp-eyed Turck opportunities to develop news from many of the Twin Cities’ online community forums. When she comes across an interesting post, she’ll reach out and invite the author to redo or expand on the piece for TCDP.

Free Speech Zone is where TCDP publishes opinions, rants and non-reported articles.  “This offers a place for people who don’t want to be reporters,” Turck said.

Bloggers have a reserved spot on the site. If a blogger writes a really good post, it may end up being one of the five featured blogs on the site.

Writer pages give TCDP writers personal pages that can house their portfolio with options to enter their own bios, write their own blogs, and list all the stories they have written.

Small rewards work, too. Handing out reporter notebooks, TCDP business cards or press credentials to cover particular news events carry a lot of weight.

The site pays small amounts for some assigned articles and is very transparent about its payment policies with guidelines posted on the site.

Its latest plans are to recruit correspondents for the nearly 100 neighborhoods in Minneapolis. Founder Jeremy Iggers envisions new ways to connect and share information, including member profiles, maps of attractions and businesses and readers comments.

The Free Speech Zone on TCDP is not edited so  users can say whatever they want.

The Free Speech Zone on TCDP is not edited so
users can say whatever they want.

Anyone can be a blogger at TCDP.

Anyone can be a blogger at TCDP.

Next Section

Powered by WordPress. Designed by Woo Themes