Finally -- Richmond Gets First Place (for Weblogging)

While I once worked as a journalist, I've never been bold enough to claim that any of my public sites -- the community/cultural hybrid Buttermilk and Molasses or the neighborhood weblog North Richmond News, in particular -- crossed any journalistic threshold. (Even as I've been hypercritical of the Times-Dispatch and other local media.)

Still, I've always felt that community-focused sites like the 270+ serving Richmond (see RVABlogs and RVANews for a complete rundown on them all) provide unique and important voices, and add something significant to Richmond's culture. Je ne sais pas recently pointed readers to a report on citizen journalism sites recently issued by the Project for Excellence in Journalism because Richmond ranks at the top of the 15 large, medium and small cities for the number of and quality of news and community focused weblogs.

Richmond, Virginia, was the most developed community of citizen journalism sites in the sample. Richmond has 16 citizen journalism sites, 10 of which were citizen neighborhood news sites, two were neighborhood blog sites, two were blog sites that addressed the Richmond area, one was a news aggregator for Richmond, and one was a blog aggregation site. Of particular interest are the neighborhood sites that have very similar “About Us” statements and that link to each other. According to a statement on the Greater Fulton News (http://greaterfultonnews.org/about-this-site/), the neighborhood sites can be traced to John Murden, who set up the Church Hill People’s News (http://chpn.net/news/) in August 2004. The Greater Fulton News, which was established with a grant from the New Voice Program at the J-Lab (http://www.j-lab.org/) with help from Richmond news media, wrote:

“The programming and format of this site is based on work by John Murden, who started Richmond’s first community news blog, Church Hill People’s News, and who has helped launch other community news blogs in the Richmond area.”

Most of the citizen news sites started during 2007. On the basis of statements on the sites or the earliest postings in the archives, two sites started in March 2007, one in May 2007, one in June, four in August and one site in October 2007.  In addition to the individual sites, RVANews (http://rvanews.com/) serves as a news aggregator by providing links to specific stories on the neighborhood sites and publishing some original material. RVABlogs (http://rvablogs.com/) serves as a blog aggregator for more than 200 blogs.

Although all of the neighborhood sites ask for volunteers, for news tips and for work from area residents, most indicate that the contributors should contact the site administrators with their story ideas.  Most of the news sites offer free classifieds, community calendars, business directory and crime maps about the neighborhood. Taken as a group, these news sites provide a network that provides an extraordinary volume of hyperlocal news from a medium-sized city.

Yay us. And yay John Murden at Church Hill People's News for getting almost all the rest of the neighborhood sites launched (and for helping to keep them running).

In the Project's State of the News Media 2008 report, they provide a pretty comprehensive snapshot of what's happening with online news, including the possible future of the blogosphere:

The majority of Americans expect blogs to play an increasingly prominent role in bringing them the news. According to the Zogby Poll, 55% believe blogging will be an important aspect of journalism in the future. An overwhelming number (74%) saw amateur citizen reporters, as opposed to established media outlets, playing a key role.¹⁵

If they are right, independent bloggers will have to figure out a way to finance their work.

Heading into 2008, there are mixed signs about an emerging financial model. Advertising — and therefore ad revenue — is becoming more common, but whether this trickles down to contributing bloggers is less certain. Let’s consider two of the more popular blogs in 2007, both of which showed signs of turning a profit.

The popular political commentary blog Huffington Post placed ads from CNN, the New York Times, Xerox, Audi and Discovery in 2007. Co-founder Ken Lerner expects the blog’s audience to double in the election year of 2008, suggesting more ad revenue to come.

But profit or no, Lerner has no intentions of ever paying volunteer bloggers, who numbered about 1,800 as of late 2007, many of them famous names who submit essays without expecting payment. “That’s not our financial model,” Lerner told USA Today in September 2007. “We offer them visibility, promotion and distribution with a great company.”

                                                                                                   

The financial model is something the Richmond Blog Collective -- that handful of neighborhood and community blogs featured at RVANews -- has been bandying about. Advertising is the most obvious path to explore, but anyone who has been involved in community news -- online or newsprint -- knows that advertising is an all-consuming monster.