NDSA:Community and Hyperlocal News

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At Risk Content: Born Digital Community and Hyperlocal News

Establish Value: More local news moving from print to digital, hyper-local news sites appearing and feeding local communities as local print papers reduce in size or disappear, blah blah .

This case study will cover born digital websites . There is a separate case study for pre-prints, so e-editions of print newspapers are not covered in this case study. Also this case study does not cover digitized content.

reference PEW REPORT (?): http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/mobile-devices-and-news-consumption-some-good-signs-for-journalism/how-community-news-is-faring/?src=prc-section

Recognize Opportunities:

Target Audiences: These audiences share multiple levels of local, state, national, and international interest:

• Local communities: public libraries and historical societies; local newspaper publishers; genealogical societies; county and local governments; K-12 educators
• State-wide communities: Academic researchers; lay historians; university students and professors; archives
• National and International communities: Trending researchers; political scholars; economic analysts

Educating Stakeholders: The NDSA seeks to communicate the role that citizen journalism and community or hyperlocal news plays in community history to stakeholders through multiple venues:

• Content creators: Online campaign to bring awareness to importance of preservation; targeted messages .
• Funders: J-lab and Knight Foundation (fund community news –see pew report)
• Journalism schools – set up community news sites
• K-12 educators: ?
• Public libraries and historical societies: Educate and partner with public libraries on local news preservation (local organications select, NDSA members or regional centers collect; workshop presentations at district library association meetings; conference calls with public library directors. (some of this language is from newspaper one)
• Historical researchers, professors, and students: Connect at historical association meetings and conferences; panel presentations at archivist society conferences; vendor booths, brochures, and flyers about digital preservation at relevant conferences.
• Standards: Follow digital preservation standards and provide education to stakeholders about the standards.

Obstacles and Risk Factors: Possible risk factors and obstacles in citizen journalism and community news preservation.

• Identification and selection of content in local communities is a challenge.
• Obtaining permissions to preserve and provide researcher access can be a challenge.
• Public libraries may not see the value in collecting
• Public libraries and historical societies in local communities likely don’t have the resources or skills to preserve born-digital content.
• Community news sites just trying to “stay alive” – preservation is likely not on their minds
• Funding for digital preservation may not be readily available.
• Most newspaper preservation programs across the U.S. right now do not include born-digital community news content.

Actionable Items