Category Archives: Citizen Journalism

Community blogging class in Wabasha

Citizen Journalism, Client updates

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Jessica Peterson and I teamed up for another Horizons community blogging class last night, this time in Wabasha, MN (“home of The National Eagle Center and Grumpy Old Men“).  We also had participants from Hokah. Click the photos to enlarge. Also joining us, like he did last week in Floodwood, was Martin Wera (upper left in the left photo, waving). Martin’s a new staffer with the Horizons Project at the U of MN Extension.

A tip-of-the-blogger-hat to the folks at the Wabasha Kellogg Elementary School for the use of the computer lab.

Community blogging in St. James

Citizen Journalism, Client updates

community blogging classjessica petersonI was the trainer last night for a Horizons community blogging class in St. James, MN – with participants also from Mountain Lake and Elmore. Click the photo to enlarge. (We also had three high school students in the class but they had to depart early.)

I teamed up with fellow Northfielder Jessica Peterson (right) who’s the Horizons coach in southern Minnesota.

A tip-of-the-blogger-hat to the folks at St. James High School for the use of the computer lab.

Community blogging class in Floodwood

Citizen Journalism, Client updates

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Lori Rothstein and I teamed up for another Horizons community blogging class last night, this time in Floodwood, MN at the Floodwood School, courtesy of Floodwood Schools Superintendent Palmer Anderson.

This time, however, class participants were from surrounding communities, too, including Chisolm, Eveleth and Mountain Iron. Those Eveleth bloggers (center photo, center two women) were tough to handle, as they’ve been blogging since June on the Eveleth Horizons blog. Good thing we had three teens in the class to keep the adults in check. Click photos to enlarge.

New York Mills community blogging class

Citizen Journalism, Client updates, Travel

New York Mills blogging class

Lori Rothstein I was the trainer last night for a Horizons community blogging class in New York Mills, MN, home of the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center and the Great American Think-Off.

Lori Rothstein (right) is the Horizons coach in northern Minnesota and we teamed up to whip the gang of troublemakers (left, click to enlarge) into shape.

A tip-of-the-blogger-hat to Ben in the New York Mills High School Media Center for hosting the class.

Screencasts on community blogging

Citizen Journalism, Client updates, Technology

I’ve created eleven screencasts for the Northwest Area Foundation’s Horizons Community Blogging Project.

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The topics:

Why blog
What to blog
How to blog effectively
How to promote a blog
How to use WordPress basics
How to embed images
How to embed video
How to customize a blog
How to manage blog comments
How to set up new bloggers

Although these community blogging screencasts are specific to the Horizons project and to WordPress MU (Multi-User), those involved with community blogging projects might still find them helpful.

They vary from 6 to 20 min. in length. I used Camtasia Studio 4 to create the screencasts for the web, as well as to burn them to a DVD-ROM.

Citizen media in Northfield

Citizen Journalism, Media coverage

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Today’s Star Tribune South section has a piece on me and my Locally Grown colleagues.

They’re not citizen journalists so much as “three citizens shooting our mouths off,” Wigley said.

Swearing and faux news happen on Locally Grown, and the co-hosts rarely miss a chance to make fun of their own work, or each other.

Still, civility is a byword. Locally Grown and Northfield.org, for which Wigley was chief contributor for years, have reputations as debate venues free of the bile and bad feelings inevitable in most communities as politically active as Northfield.

Community radio becoming community media in northern Minnesota

Citizen Journalism

IMG_0555_1000.jpgAt the invitation of Bernadine Joselyn, Director of the Blandin Foundation’s Public Policy and Engagement Program, I spent the day at KAXE – Northern Community Radio‘s headquarters in Grand Rapids, brainstorming on how to best foster the development of citizen journalism / community media in their bio-region. (Click photos to enlarge.)

IMG_0563_1000.jpgIn the conference room, L to R: Jeremy Iggers, Executive Director, Twin Cities Media Alliance; Bernadine Joselyn; Scott Hall, KAXE Community Access Coordinator; Louise Mengelkoch, Chair of the Mass Communication Department at Bemidji State University; Ross Williams, community volunteer; Heidi Holtan, KAXE Outreach Producer; Maggie Montgomery, KAXE General Manager; Dan Houg, KAXE engineer.

Jeremy told the group about his experience with the Twin Cities Daily Planet and I talked about my experiences in Northfield with Northfield.org, Locally Grown, and leadership blogging in our local civic blogosphere.

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Later in the afternoon, I did a video interview of Scott and Maggie about their long history with KAXE for the Media Giraffe Project. (Click play to listen to the audio. 44 minutes.) However, I neglected to get the story on the community radio art work in the corner of the conference room (center) hiring a Fence Contractor to secure the area. Hopefully, I can entice one of them to attach an enlightening comment here. Right photo: You know you’re in northern Minnesota when the external doors of the hotels have this sign on them.

Scandinavia and Northfield’s culture of citizen journalism

Citizen Journalism, Colleagues

IMG_0335_1000.jpgYesterday, I spent an hour at the James Gang Hideaway visiting with Thor Henning Lerstad, News Director for the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK). He’s visiting Minnesota this week to “study best-practice examples of Consultative/Participatory/Public Journalism.”

(Last September, I spent an hour at the James Gang Hideaway visiting with a colleague of his, Jørgen Jensen, a journalist with Danmarks Radio (DR), Denmark’s national broadcasting corporation. He also wanted to learn about all the citizen journalism/community media/civic blogosphere stuff we’ve been doing here in Northfield for the past decade.)

Northfield.org’s Anne Bretts was kind enough to pick him up in the Twin Cities and bring him to Northfield for the day… and return him. How’s that for Minnesota hospitality? I brought him to lunch at Northfield Rotary (“Hey, everybody, a real live Norwegian named Thor!”).

I’ve included Thor’s email to me and Anne below in case others are interested in what he’s up to. Now we just need a similar visit from a journalist in Sweden to complete aScandinavia trifecta and maybe top it off with visits from journalists in the other Nordic countries of Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
Continue reading Scandinavia and Northfield’s culture of citizen journalism →

Video conference presentation on citizen journalism

Citizen Journalism, Presentations

 

I did a video tele-conference presentation on community/citizen journalism this morning for the Blandin Foundation’s Broadband Initiative program. Audience members were primarily coordinators in rural Minnesota whose communities had recently gotten broadband internet access with Blandin’s help.

A handful of people gathered at the Northern Dakota County Chambers of Commerce office in Eagan where I did the presentation. Another two dozen or so were scattered about the state in a half-dozen locations. Click photos above to enlarge. The photos were taken by Gregg Scott, CTO for InfraSupport, who handled the tech setup for the video conference.

My presentation focused on the history of Northfield Citizens Online (the nonprofit) and its website, Northfield.org.

See the PDF of my Powerpoint presentation (41 slides). Or view this slideshow.