by Mike Gallagher for the CMF NewsWire
Posted: 1/29/2009

Damien Jameson wants to tell the story of his community in northeast Grand Rapids.

The 56-year-old father of four says he wants to highlight and share the positive volunteer efforts of his neighbors to keep children safe and the generosity of local shopkeepers who always donate money, food and clothes to help those in need.

“There are so many good people around where I live and they all make Grand Rapids a great place to raise a family, but you never hear or read about them,” says Jameson.

Thanks to the Grand Rapids Community Foundation (GRCF) and a $128,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, he may just get his chance to realize his dream of being a writer.

All Grand Rapidians will get a similar opportunity as Jameson as the recently awarded grant will be used to establish four neighborhood news bureaus throughout the city with plans to staff them with “citizen reporters.”

Matching grants from GRCF and other philanthropic sources will help launch the program later this year, according to Roberta F. King, GRCF’s vice president, public relations and marketing.

The program will be run in partnership with Grand Rapids’ Community Media Center (CMC), a state-of-the-art, fully equipped production facility serving nonprofits throughout West Michigan.

Once established, the four news bureaus – to be created within neighborhood gathering places – will give citizen reporters the tools to gather, write and report on local news and events, according to King.

“We learned of the Knight Foundation grant opportunity and knew the Grand Rapids Community Foundation had a perfect partner to launch this concept,” she says. “Without the CMC, I am certain we could not have dreamed of a project of this scale.

Also excited about the “tremendous possibilities” the new citizen journalism project presents for the city is Laurie Cirivello, CMC’s executive director.

“This project will allow us to bring media and technology services into urban neighborhoods,” says Cirivello.

“At a time when traditional local news sources are facing challenges, we believe this project will help increase the flow of local information,” she notes. “We are delighted to work with the (GRCF) and others to make this happen.”

Describing how the news bureaus would be developed, Cirivello says the equipment will be made available on site and at the CMC. Stories can then be directly filed to the Web, radio or TV outlets once the articles or broadcasts are vetted, edited and approved.

To get the citizen reporters and bureaus “up to speed,” and to ensure high quality and fairness in the program and media reports, regular training will be provided to participants and technical training will be augmented with workshops on specialized topics in journalism.

Those topics will include business reporting, ethics, children’s issues, environmental reporting and law.

CMC will soon be creating a task force of citizens, neighborhood leaders, journalists, educators and communicators who will be exploring structure and operational issues and existing citizen journalism models to help set policy and procedures for the news bureaus, says Cirivello.

Asked about the media outlets the “citizen journalist” stories may appear on, Cirivello says CMC operates 88.1 WYCE-FM and Livewire cable access television, along with the historic Wealthy Theatre.

“We also provide a variety of nonprofit IT and Web design, media production and media education services to the public and nonprofit agencies throughout West Michigan,” she says.

For more information about the Knight Foundation grant and the new citizen journalism project, visit the GRCF’s web site.