Organ zed C t zen Journal sts

By Claire Perez

My idea: add citizen journalists to cover specific sectors and issues in the county. The goal is to expand the community’s knowledge base of what is happening in the area, with the potential to expand citizen participation in government. The benefits of more information about more issues include empowered citizens, enhanced local media, and a greater collective voice in local politics.

A news outlet (electronic papers to begin, as they are more cost-effective than print) could apply for grants to train citizen journalists: volunteer positions and/or partner with Ithaca College’s Park School of Communications. Hired editors would pull the work together in weekly online sections. The citizen journalists could be assigned specific county sectors and update readers regularly on what issues, meeting outcomes, and policies are discussed and implemented. The same citizen journalist would follow the same space for a given amount of time: for example, meetings in a specific town, village, city, or hamlet. This project could start small or large; perhaps the journalists cover school board meetings instead of municipalities. The difference from making meeting minutes available is that the citizen journalist would, under a paid editor’s guidance, be more issue or topic-specific in their reporting.

For example, a citizen journalist assigned to Dryden town meetings would take notes and report back in an issue or topic-focused manner: environmental issues, diversity issues, economic issues, free speech issues, and/or whatever the news outlet and grant-funded editors agreed upon. These are samples, but the idea would be to track a municipality’s