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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Citizen journalists, please step forward

This morning’s E&P report that Gannett is set to lay off another 1,000 employees could bode badly for Advocate readers. Local managers likely won’t/can’t announce who’s to get axed, if anyone, and what that will mean to its already-bare-bones but ever-more-costly printed product.

I sympathize with middle managers and staffers, and I get no pleasure from writing about how the Gannett machine has strangled a once-fat, family-owned, rock-solid community newspaper. Maybe the Spencer family couldn’t have dealt today’s economy either, but their money would have stayed here, not gone to feed demanding stockholders and expensive corporate machinery.

Will the Gannett/Advocate survive? Or will we see a replay of local shops cranking up small presses and peddling them on Main Street? Whatever the outcome, I believe the urge to report and read printed local information will never diminish.

Meantime, there has never been a better opening for citizen reporters with on-line journals. I am reminded of that by bloggers who already write informative - albeit biased - reports on public meetings. The information provided is often the only report available and almost invariably adds dimension, whether you like that particular dimension or not.

Though it may not be likely, it’s not impossible for a cadre of civic-minded writers to arise and fill the cracks where professional reporters can’t go. County Commissioners’ meetings, court proceedings, township trustees’ meetings, school board meetings, city council committee meetings, Heath council and its committee meetings, public hearings of all categories, and the list extends to the boundaries of public affairs.

Such a movement could be facilitated by adult-education-level courses designed to help would-be citizen journalists learn to sift fact from opinion while building confidence.

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