Bakersfield, CA Newspaper Goes “Open-Source” — Most Content Reader-Contributed
In what may be a growing movement for small local news outlets, The Bakersfield Californian has recently launched a new “open-source” weekly paper for the Northwest Bakersfield area. Almost all of the content for the regularly-updated web site of The Northwest Voice is contributed by its readers, with the best articles picked by editors for publication in the free weekly print edition. Revenue for the paper comes from the sale of classified ads in the printed paper, plus some online advertisements on the web edition.
The publisher of the Voice, Mary Lou Fulton, is documenting this experiment at a web site she calls Open Source Journalism, where she provides links to similar efforts elsewhere on the web and gives advice on how to make such an endeavor work. The meta-newslog CyberJournalism.net (a better site than its cheesy moniker implies) has published an article on Fulton’s participatory journalism effort and an interview with the publisher. An article at Wired News, which was the impetus for this entry, provides further details and some comments from Fulton and others.
As someone who’s considered getting into the group/participatory newslog arena but hasn’t yet had time to pull it off, this has all provided some fascinating food for thought. If my plans in that direction ever pan out, I’ll definitely be integrating some of the ideas these articles present.
Sounds like a great idea. You get news that people care about. The “alternative” weeklies in my city (Cleveland, OH) only partially report on things that are of pertinence to a large segment of the population and the local news and mainstream papers put out next to nothing in that vein. This is exactly what I had hoped to see when the Internet made it’s way into America’s homes and offices from academia. Good post!
-D
Comment by Derek — July 22, 2004 @ 2:07 pm