March 2011
3 posts
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GAAH Press Club on a roll!
by Denise
You may have caught eyefuls throughout our entries about our belief that there must be physical bureaus to accompany this community news projects. It’s about meeting people where they are, bringing the tools to where people live, we believe. One of our grant commitments was to seed four bureaus in various parts of the city to diversify voices on The Rapidian. Our first to launch...
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First bilingual piece on The Rapidian
by Denise
What an exciting day for us today! Thanks to Lindsay McHolme, Rapidian reporter extraordinaire, we have our first Spanish language contribution.
The story is about the conception and ambitions of the only Spanish language community choir in Grand Rapids. In the past, Marjorie Kuipers, director of Grandville Avenue Arts & Humanities (parent org of Cook Arts Center), has mentioned...
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News presentation - Pushing that envelope
by Denise
Something I get really excited about when it comes to The Rapidian is how we can think outside of the box. Our contribution base is a mishmash of backgrounds, talents, passions and publishing experience. Every once in a while, we get calls from timid but enthusiastic newbies asking if we think they’d meet our quality standards (answer: we work with everyone). But honestly,...
January 2011
1 post
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GVSU class analyzes The Rapidian
by Denise
Fascinating! We’ve partnered with a professor at nearby Grand Valley State University who is having his professional writing students try their hand at dynamic web publishing.
Leading up to the assignment, students are blogging their ruminations on assigned reading and actually applying it to The Rapidian. Demographics, social and cultural reading environments, audience’s...
October 2010
1 post
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September 2010
4 posts
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GRPress' first "Citizen Journalists Chronicle"
by Denise
We’re not certain whether this is the beginning of a new tradition in Grand Rapids’ daily paper, but three of our contributors’ pieces were reprinted in Wednesday’s edition of The Grand Rapids Press.
ArtPrize: Social networking that bleeds – ArtPrize voting relies heavily on Internet technology, and phone apps and texting make it easy for viewers to record...
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Observations from Block by Block, a community news...
by Denise Crossposted from The Rapidian
Last Thursday, I pinwheeled through the freeways separating our city from that tall bold slugger known as Chicago. It was the first Block by Block summit (BxB), a conference organized by Michele McClellan of the Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellows Program. Michele had gathered about 100 participants, mostly locally focused, digital journalism projects...
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Working with volunteer contributors
by Denise Crossposted from the Block by Block 2010 blog
Truth: I’m an impassioned participant on this subject. Andrew Huff and Mary Turck presented on working with volunteer contributors, and it’s the bread and butter of The Rapidian, a civic media site that relies entirely on user-generated content. You might as well have called me Hermione. “Oh, oh!” “Yes, Ms. Granger?” I’ll keep it to a...
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July 2010
4 posts
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Recap: Rapidian ice cream social
by Denise
Photo by George Wietor @mixedfeelings on Twitter: “Big group here @ Grand Central Market for the #Rapidian ice cream social. Not a lot of ice cream, though.”
Today, we had our first open gathering of the summer at the Grand Central Market. We called it an ice cream social, taking it at face value that if you’re sitting in GCM where munchies abound, you’ll...
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SUPERLATIVES: An appreciation party
by Denise
Last night was our first appreciation party, *cleverly* named SUPER-lative! We’re pretty zeroed in on Grand Rapids, but from what staff has heard, it seems like The Rapidian is some sort of experimental journalism darling right now. Flattered, of course, but none of it is even remotely possible without the obvious: Our reporters.
We’re two months shy of our first birthday,...
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Variation on the NPO training session
by Denise
Yesterday, we had our first nonprofit training session this summer. The typical NPO training session runs 60-90 minutes and covers how The Rapidian works and tips for content submission. The last part of the training is devoted to a rundown of how to distribute content through social media.
So why was this training session different? I recently joined the board of the Midtown...
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First in Rapidian history!
by Denise
Forgive the theatre in our title, but it’s true! On B3 of yesterday’s edition of The Grand Rapids Press was the first Rapidian article to make it to print. Midtown Neighborhood Association authored the piece about the Fulton Street Farmers Market. You can read the story here.
April 2010
1 post
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Catalyst Radio
by Denise
Catalyst Radio has been airing on 88.1 WYCE for five years. Last week was the first show since it made its new production home with The Rapidian.
Traditionally, the format for Catalyst Radio has been a laundry list of the latest media-related news, an interview segment with a nonprofit and an events calendar. Linda Gellasch and Tom Schwallie wore multiple hats as the producers,...
March 2010
2 posts
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Matching capacity and execution
by Denise
A couple of weeks ago, a student working with Chicago Now to implement outposts in the Gold Coast and Old Town contacted us. She wanted to conduct an interview via email. Her questions were heavy ones, and it took me two days to answer all eight. The last one, however, is a lesson I’ve been learning since we launched. It’s been hammered in with all the unforeseen hurdles...
30 tags
by Denise
We know, we know. Crickets. That’s how quiet, we’ve been. Since November, a lot of things have happened. We’ll try harder at posting regular dev updates. In the meantime, here’s a laundry list of most of what we’ve done (click on the links to skip ahead):
Content Facilitator
BETA II
Press pits
Instructors’ manual
SW bureau
SE bureau
February...
November 2009
2 posts
24 tags
Surfing the Wave
by Denise
In late May, Google announced its newest application, Google Wave. This application is supposed to revolutionize the Internet. Google developers described it as what email would look like if it were invented now.
A combination of live email threading, instant messaging and wiki editing, Google Wave dazzled web developers and professionals across all disciplines. To boot? It’s...
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Playing in the "everybody sandbox"
by Denise
Having come from a journalism background, I care very much about the industry’s future. But as the citizen journalism coordinator for The Rapidian, I’ve heard more than one professional journalist say, “I get paid for my content.” Sometimes, it’s said with a degree of smugness and other times, with desperation.
Traditionally, citizen journalism has been...
October 2009
5 posts
Happy Halloween, everyone!
Veer | Ideas: Pumpkin orange by Joe Buckland
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“I am a husband, father of two and journalist who would rather be a proponent of...”
– Drew Storey, The Rapidian’s first content facilitator
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Goodbye to our dear friend
by Denise
Drew Storey, The Rapidian’s content facilitator, passed away unexpectedly yesterday.
Drew has been involved with The Rapidian since before it was named The Rapidian, when “Log Jam,” “Red Button,” “16th Bridge” and others were part of the naming smorgasbord. He spearheaded our editorial committee as a volunteer chair and hammered out a...
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The Rapidian: A Powerpoint
by Denise George and I recently presented at the Alliance for Community Media’s central states conference. Many people asked for our slides, so here they are:
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Batter's up!
by Denise
As a part of our Knight Foundation Community Information Challenge grant, we’re not only establishing an online presence but also four neighborhood news bureaus hosted at community centers in each quadrant of Grand Rapids.
Dun dun dun! And the first news bureau to step up to the plate: Cook Library! Our neighbors over at the Grandville Avenue Academy for the Arts have generously...
September 2009
7 posts
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Observations 1.5 weeks after beta launch
by Denise
Here at The Rapidian, we’ve tried to create a framework for honest and relevant content. A week and a half after launch is still too early to assess the outlet’s strengths and weaknesses, but here’s what we’ve learned:
Content type
Since the beta launch, we’ve discovered our site structure is not sufficient. Currently, we have three main categories:...
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Meet Drew!
Drew Storey, the content facilitator for The Rapidian, is an ex-homecoming king who simply assumed he’d become famous one day. Surprisingly, none of the jobs he’s had since age 15—bus boy, pool boy, pizza boy, janitor, postal carrier, cab driver, park ranger, truck driver, warehouse worker, reporter—led to stardom.
While cutting his reporter chops at a local weekly community newspaper, Drew honed...
11 tags
#Rapidian
by Denise
A couple of days ago, in preparation for our beta launch, we tweeted that we were claiming #Rapidian for our own. If you saw breaking news going down in front of you, tweet with the hashtag #Rapidian to make it to our front page Twitter widget. We were expecting to see tweets like @TommyGSync’s:
Since then, we’ve had some surprising results. While most people use...
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HTML makes me feel so alive
by Denise
I was only partially kidding when I tweeted about HTML the other night. It’s been a while since we posted, but it’s because we’ve been in crunch mode. The site unveiling is just around the corner! So much to do!
Ron, George and I have been hacking away steadily on the Drupal site. Of course, Ron’s got the heaviest load with all that’s left to develop....
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Promotional video for The Rapidian!
Check out the awesome Rapidian promo by Jen Proctor, super volunteer on The Rapidian steering committee! If you like it, consider embedding it!
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WZZM13!
Check it out! Laurie and George were interviewed by WZZM13
by George
Not to make this blog a total...
August 2009
11 posts
9 tags
Local citizen journalism... Establishing values
Crossposted from Laurie’s blog. Read the original here
My blog has been quiet of late, much due to the fact that I have been immersed in work related to the pending launch of The Rapidian, a new citizen journalism project in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A project of the Grand Rapids Community Media Center (with support from the GR Community Foundation and the Knight Foundation), it is an...
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Meet Laurie!
Laurie may be lots of things (depending on your POV), but at heart, she is a mom. As the executive director of the Community Media Center, her Rapidian role is very mom-like: Nurture the project, provide sustenance and guidance where needed, but don’t stand in the way of growth and maturity. When not running around being a general busybody, Laurie enjoys being a homebody. Watching old...
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The cultural factor
by Denise
Following our steering committee meeting on Wednesday, Drew, Laurie and I raced off to a mushroomish building downtown that the Grand Rapids Press calls home.
There, we met with Editor-in-Chief Paul Keep and a number of the GRPress bigwigs to demystify The Rapidian, In the course of our meeting, we talked about editorial standards, Web site functionality and whether local press could...
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The outreach spoke-o-rama
by Denise
Last Wednesday, we more or less finalized brainstorming on how to get the word out about The Rapidian. Among the more interesting suggestions for passive adverts were orange chalk stencils on sidewalks, coasters for local bars, and coaxing Rapid drivers to stock the Rapidian version of Sochi cards.
It’s clear that the best way to catch people’s eyes is to make sure how...
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The daily grind
by Denise
I’m currently working out of CMC’s third office, Sparrows. Relatively speaking, today has been a slow(er) day. Much of my job is about keeping everything on track, so once the copy is written and links linked, what’s left is the people side of things, which relies on a convergence of schedules.
A pleasant surprise is although it’s normally a very full...
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Guns blazing: The journalism saga continues...
by Denise
Today we were visited by now TV’s senior vice president, Cheung Chi Kong. As a guest of the U.S. Department of State, he’s touring different parts of the U.S. to observe the execution of social media with traditional media for information delivery.
It’s a bit intimidating to have an executive who manages Hong Kong’s equivalent of Turner Broadcasting System (but...
11 tags
Potato Head
by Denise
To the untrained eye, Community Media Center on Bridge Street is a maze of wood slabs, classic TV sets and oases of deep armchairs. In the heart of CMC-Bridge sits the IT staff where Web Developer Ron Woldyk, near right, is coding the ticker tape of 1s and 0s that will be the structure for TheRapidian.org. Early in the project, we decided TheRapidian.org would operate from a content...
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In the beginning...
by Denise
The first couple of days are always the slowest. Time is spent setting up, making the office your own and chatting up seasoned coworkers who are probably laughing on the inside that the new girl doesn’t know what she’s gotten into. Although I’ve been involved with The Rapidian since before it was named, I haven’t had a great sense of urgency, being two time zones...
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Meet George!
George is the New Media Planner for the Community Media Center (CMC), and is acting as “project manager” for The Rapidian. As a nearly life-long Grand Rapidian, George is incredibly excited for the chance to help create a new local outlet for participatory culture. George gets really excited about: multidisciplinary art projects, bicycle commuting, cassette culture, the shift from DIY...
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Meet Denise!
Denise hails from California’s Silicon Valley but has lived in Ohio, Chicago, Lesotho and Portland. She has always been passionate about the power of media and media empowerment and is currently the citizen journalism coordinator for The Rapidian. In the summer time, Denise really enjoys rasp/blackberries and doesn’t get the hype around soy milk. Her topics are journalism (of course),...
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About this Blog
Hi folks!
Welcome to the the development blog for The Rapidian. Here George and Denise (and hopefully a few others) will document what’s going on behind the scenes as we put together Grand Rapids’ new platform for citizen journalism.