The following is an edited version of my email to the Citizen Journalism listserv from July 14.

It was great to see many of you at the Alliance for Community Media Conference in Pittsburgh last week. I know I still have a lot to process following last Wednesday’s full day Citizen Journalism Pre-Conference and the 5 Citizen Journalism and Social Media Track sessions.

I want to say a special thank you to Jackie Hai and Bill Densmore for their work helping to organize the pre-conference and for participating in the main conference sessions. And a big thank you to everyone else who participated as a speaker or “audience” member.

I’d like to direct your attention to Bill Densmore’s excellent wiki page from the Citizen Journalism Pre-Conference. It addresses a number of important issues & key themes that were raised during the day and throughout the conference that highlight the challenges & opportunities for community media/citizen journalism initiatives.

Let’s use this listserv to continue the conversation. Here are some of the outstanding questions, I know many of you have more to add:

• What challenges do you have setting up, operating, or sustaining your citizen journalism project?
• How can your project help inform other noncommercial or commercial hyperlocal journalism initiatives?
• What resources do you have to share with other community media centers?
• What resources do you need to help you manage your citizen journalism project?

One thing is clear: PEG Access/Community Media Centers have a tremendous role to play in helping to establish a strong future for hyperlocal citizen journalism projects to serve our communities’ information AND communication needs in the digital age.

Bill and I are writing up a post with our thoughts on this topic following the conference. We look forward to sharing it with you later in the week for your feedback and further discussion.

I look forward to seeing you again at next year’s ACM conference and looking back at our accomplishments over the coming year!

Onwards,
Colin

(Photo above of Ryan Hopkins, The Public Square Project by Colin Rhinesmith available on Flickr under a Creative Commons license)

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