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 ambitious endeavor and we are just 20 days from launch. It combines a web based journalism structure with neighborhood news bureaus. Ultimately, we hope it can help stem the tide of decreasing local news reporting that is happening all over the country, much to the detriment of our communities.

We also recognize that for a project like this to gain wide support and use, it must balance openness and accessibility with expectations of civility and trusted content. Today I have been working on the statement of values for The Rapidian and I thought I would share. These are not “the rules,” but rather a stated basis for decision-making and the establishment of some common agreements. Here is the work in progress, so far. I would would be interested in feedback.

The Rapidian Statement of Values (a draft)

The Rapidian is a citizen journalism project created to increase the flow of local news and information in the Grand Rapids community and its neighborhoods.

Through tools, training, platforms and support, The Rapidian seeks to create meaningful dialogue and promote greater civic engagement. The following values are central to these goals and it is in the spirit of these principles that we encourage wide and robust use of The Rapidian by the community.

1. Inclusiveness: It is a core belief of The Rapidian that including many diverse voices will ultimately strengthen the community. We understand that within our community there are many points of view and and differing news priorities. We value and encourage such diversity over style of reporting, issues of seniority or story subject.

2. Civility: We believe in robust debate and spirited conversation. We also believe that meaningful conversation is best enabled through civil debate and respectful exchange of ideas. Content submitted to The Rapidian (including comments) is expected to reflect this value. Personal attacks, slanderous material, hate speech or unsubstantiated accusations will be flagged and removed.

3. Ethical Reporting: We value basic tenets of journalistic ethics and will continually strive to establish, support and encourage ethical reporting. Standards for The Rapidian reporters include: Seek truth; be honest and fair; minimize harm; do not misrepresent; seek alternate sources and points of view; do not use reporting for personal gain.

4. Original Works/Proper Attribution: We value and honor those who create and distribute meaningful content and set attribution standards accordingly. Plagiarism, failure to provide proper credit or unauthorized derivative works are not acceptable.

5. Open Identity (no anonymous posting): In pursuit of meaningful exchange and dissemination of valuable information, we believe we must each take responsibility for our words. Anonymous stories and comments do not support this value and will not be accepted.

6. Cooperative Distribution: All content posted on The Rapidian will be licensed under one of two possible Creative Commons licenses. This means that complete works may be redistributed and posted to other places, subject to the rules of these licenses. At the reporter’s option, some content may be restricted from commercial re-distribution. We use the Creative Commons licenses in the spirit of wide distribution and sharing of local information, a key value of this project.

The Rapidian is an experiment intended to demonstrate that as community, we can use the concepts and structures of citizen journalism to share information, empower new voices and increase meaningful interaction between all of us who call ourselves “Rapidian”.

Twitter @lcirivello

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 movies with the old man; “up-cycling” things with paint, paper, glue and found objects; and making snarky comments at reality competition show judges on the tube are some of her favorite hobbies.

Laurie is also a huge fan of urban exploring and hopes to contribute a series of hometown photo stories for The Rapidian. Mostly, she’s thrilled that Grand Rapids has been given the chance to experiment with and create a unique framework for citizen journalism. Laurie is proud that the Community Media Center is the fortunate shepherd for this project. She’s looking forward to hearing new voices and points of view through The Rapidian!

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 use pieces published in The Rapidian. Since we’ve had comments on this in the last blog entry, as an update, The Rapidian is looking into different levels of Creative Commons because sharing with local press would be ideal. However, there are more interesting issues to explore with the last point.

As an experimental project partially funded by the Knight Foundation, The Rapidian is in the midst of the journalism-blogosphere hoopla. We’re here to stress that The Rapidian is not an end-all, be-all alternative to traditional media. Titans in the journalism industry have fallen, legacies are marred and journalism strives to find a new business model. The idea of journalism has never really been lost, but the business model has not evolved to support it. In these adventurous times, almost all eyes are on journalism start-ups. This creates the opportunity for more robust news.

I’ve always been a strong believer in media literacy, and unfortunately, the United States does not emphasize this in its educational system. There are little hints of the need to triangulate issues in grade schools. After that, the emphasis is made only to journalists in training. Societally, we often believe so much in cultural literacy that we neglect the need for media literacy.

I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho (lə-sü-tü), a country that is midway between an agrarian and industrial society. It is practically a given that the international stereotype of Americans is promiscuous, white and rich. And if you were a Mosotho (a person from Lesotho) who ocasionally skipped school to catch Days of our Lives (practically every one has at some point), you’d probably also think Americans are never-aging backstabbers. A handful of Basotho (people from Lesotho) also treasured dilapidated, years-old magazines that a passing Westerner had bought as entertainment nosh for the plane ride over. To the Basotho, couture ads were not a suggestion but an American reality. I remember at the beginning of my service, trying to battle these artificially flavored perceptions by whipping out my subscription to Mother Jones, The Sun or Adbusters (does a more depressing magazine exist?). I’d try to explain post-traumatic stress, labor, racism, the prison system, corruption, suicide and other darker topics to unveil the stresses of industrial life not sealed in most glossies.

After much time, I came to understand that this inability to reconcile the few contrasting media portrayals that managed their way to the Mountain Kingdom also came from a lack of Western cultural literacy. A sprinkling of Basotho had traveled outside of southern Africa. Some had studied abroad and returned to change their countries. However, the vast majority would never go farther than South Africa.

This breakdown really highlighted that literacy comes in two parts: cultural and media literacies. As Americans, we rely too much on cultural literacy, and in some ways, it justifies the idea of objectivity and a singular source of news. We’re a population that doesn’t usually verify one news source against another and yet we feel justified in blaming the press when they don’t have absolute coverage. In Italy, a professor stressed to me that the best way to understand a culture is to read their news. Where there is no cultural fluency, strong media literacy practices are the key to understanding a different culture.

If we view all press as a collective where each publication complemented another publication’s ability to report accurately, then we are working toward robust news. As an opportunity to feature community voices, The Rapidian will be one more news source balanced out by the existence of the GRPress, Rapid Growth, WZZM, WOOD TV, FOX17, WGVU and many others. And because creating for The Rapidian familiarizes individuals with media tools and effective communication, we hope to contribute by turning out savvier news consumers.

The Gruen Transfer is a popular Australian show that examines the logic and tricks in advertising and marketing by dissecting recent commercials on air.

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 you’re advertising is relevant to their lives. As a regular bike commuter, I’m keen on bringing in the biking community. After much thought, I figured spoke cards would be the cheapest, most effective and mobile way to publicize The Rapidian. Spoke cards are about the size of baseball cards and hang out in the spokes of bike wheels. The crossing spokes pinch them in place.

One thing about spoke cards though, they were originally enmeshed in a countercultural grit. Bike messengers used to be the predominant participants in alleycat races, and the cards were badges of pride in the fixie community. However, my feel has been that in the last several years, the rigidity has slowly crumbled and many now use spoke cards the same way drivers use bumper stickers. But I wasn’t really sure. At least not for Grand Rapids.

When trying to navigate GR bike culture, who better to consult than Dan Koert? Dan is the owner of local bike shop Commute GR and leads at least a hundred participants on a weekly evening ride. For reasons unknown, Dan explained, since last year, spoke cards are no longer in vogue. Since he’s so friendly, I think it was his way of cautioning me. George was more blunt: It’s a horrible idea! We’d be co-opting their culture. Thanks for finally putting in your two cents, George. Message heard: We may be a nonprofit, but we’d be getting off on the wrong foot.

All of this brings up a much bigger issue for me. I appreciate that The Rapidian has a lot of support from the professional, nonprofit and media community, but where are our everyday people? We’re getting a lot of conceptual feedback, but we need reporters, too.

Leading up to the launch, The Rapidian will be visible at festivals, collecting digital story content on what it means to be a Grand Rapidian and doing a lot more community outreach. I can’t help but feel, though, that the best advertising we’ve done is just mingling with people at events after hours, but this too can be hard. There are many people contributing to this project, but as the general staff, George and I make up only 1.5 FTEs for The Rapidian.

So ideas, please. How do we meet potential citizen journalists where they are?

Photo by anabananasplit, used under a Creative Commons license

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 ten-to-six, I spend so much of my personal time networking for this project in a way that tells me I love my job enough thus far not to cage it in an eight-hour pen. To me, it isn’t just a job. It’s something I moved 2,000 miles for. It’s something I believe in. It’s ideals and principles. In my free time, I’ve been attending GR events and getting to know the city, but it never fails that at least a couple times per night, I’m handing out my business card or mingling with people who already create remarkable content. We’re currently in the process of trying to network for coverage on ArtPrize and ArtPeers (ideas on how to cover both? Let us know!).

In this relative “down time,” I’ve been getting back into the Twitter swing and keeping up on web 2.0, the shaping of 3.0 and journalism industry leads. The most mind boggling but brilliant work advice I ever got was from an associate editor at In These Times. We’re in journalism, she told me. Feel free to spend the first two or three hours of the day getting up to speed on the news. A day passed while you were sleeping.

Of course, my editor meant politics and current events. But since then, I’ve realized that hefty digest is where ideas are born, where the leads are. It’s the key to thinking innovatively. Hopefully in a matter of months, we’ll be one of those sites, too—the kind you have with your morning cup o’ joe.

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 bigger) waltz into your office. We’ve only just gotten letterpress blocks to make a hub sign and are still waiting on our iMacs and dispatch units. Power cords just got added to the shopping list. Needless to say, it is a very humble hub right now.

It was a refreshing visit. Laurie explained how citizen journalism doesn’t replace or even necessarily competes against corporate journalism; it supplements. We discussed how learning to create quality media makes savvier news consumers. It was a pleasant reminder in the chaos of our start up of just all the reasons we really believe in citizen journalism.  Warm fuzzies all around.

But, as Chi Kong was from the corporate world, it was also a reminder of how important it is for us to make sure citizen journalism in Grand Rapids is sustainable. Since Chi Kong holds a lot of responsibility and accountability for his organization, a major concern for him (and all big media outlets right now) is the survival of his medium: cable television. As younger generations consume increasingly less on television and far more on computer and phone screens—free and on demand—how does for-profit media need to change to continue turning a buck? It is a crucial question that ties into all we value about big media, from The New York Times to CNN to your local news station.

The Rapidian cannot escape this dilemma either. For the next three years, we will be funded by the Grand Rapids Community Foundation and the Knight Foundation. In addition to a site launch, The Rapidian must also quickly figure out donation strategies for life post-Foundations. Having an Internet-based distribution, we need to navigate around the problems that plague many successful Internet startups (i.e.: Facebook, Twitter): We need to set up a “social contract” with our users to establish from the get-go that donor support is directly linked to the existence of hyperlocal journalism in Grand Rapids. Or else, like Facebook and Twitter, we will only barely cover costs each year.

Great lecture by Ellen Weiss, National Public Radio’s senior vice president for news. In discussing the success and future of NPR, she credited the age-long fund drive: As a noncommercial entity, NPR has forever asked its tuners to donate for what they can get for free.

Clay Shirky tackles thinking the unthinkable. Journalism as an ideal is not at risk of going under, but the funding model that supports it is. In describing the scramble at hand, Shirky says,

And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.
There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.

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 management system called Drupal. In a nutshell, CMS’ organize the look and function of a web site while also processing input from text fields and uploads. Drupal is all the rage with media nonprofits due to its social networking versatility and strong open source community.

“I think Drupal is a good choice for this situation now that I’ve gotten more into it,” Ron said. With little Drupal experience on CMC’s IT staff, Ron stepped up and has been wrestling with the CMS ever since. This is no small feat. Drupal has often been criticized for its high learning curve and inaccessibility.

“If you were to download Drupal as a general user and get it installed, you would not be able to just go with it. You could do a blog, an article that goes to the home page, but anything else…” Ron shook his head. “[But Drupal] gives you the opportunity to set specifically what you want.”

Imagine Drupal as Mr. Potato Head, where the spud is the core of the web site and the add-ons—eyes, glasses, beards, mustaches, arms and shoes—are modules that pull from the @TheRapidian Twitter feed or from a Flickr photo bank to display photos on the front page. They add some flavor to the plain spud—what color eyes, which way are they looking—but if accessories are mismatched or limbs are missing, it’s glaring. And there can be countless modules for whatever function you’re looking to create.

Ron often finds himself having to make little changes to the code to make things work.

“Some of the issues I have with Drupal is that I can’t just code it. If I make that little box module, I’m having to do multiple steps within the administration of Drupal and setting some of the PHP code, and having to find my way around that is difficult sometimes.”

Despite this, a good third of the web site is already set. The framework is in place and nearly 30 modules are waiting for the trigger. What’s left? Two very big thirds: setting permissions for user roles, from anonymous visitors to site editors; and setting up two essential Drupal modules: CCK and views. Who else thinks Ron deserves a cupcake?

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 away. After today’s 9 a.m. steering meeting, I’m starting to understand just how much needs to be done before the launch. Video tutorials, resource pages, structure and polish… and, of course, preferably all interactive. With various committees already in place and several meetings a week, we’re very lucky to have a group that doesn’t merely generate tasks but actually delegates and completes!

I’ve now been in Grand Rapids, MI for four days. As a West Coast girl, I’m battling home sickness for Portland while also becoming reacquainted with Midwest friendliness and generosity. This is a different big city with a small town feel. Ultimately, what prompted my 2,000 mile move comes down to the power of the workplace.

In 2008, I came up with a work guideline for myself.

I want to work at a place where personal development is just as important as professional development. Where part of my take-home is satisfaction because let’s face it: No matter what people say, when you devote that much time to one thing, work becomes an integral part of your identity.

There are still another 361 days for things to unfold, so we’ll see how it all goes. Having only recently escaped a “who do you think you are” workplace, it can be a bit harrowing to walk into GRCMC’s easygoing approach: Do what you want, but we expect a lot of you. Well, bottoms up! Rapidian Year One, here we come!

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 to Do It Together, fake powerpoint presentations, and really depressing reggae jams.

George lives in the Heritage Hill neighborhood with a couple of roommates and some cats. He recently received considerable grief after listing a quinoa as a desert island food item. This summer he built his own weather ball. Like Denise, George will probably also end up a cat lady one day.

He is generally weirded out to be writing in the third person, but has come to accept that this is, apparently, how things like this work.

Photo by Ryan P.

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), water, permaculture, alternative transportation and sustainability. She was traumatized by mosquitoes during a backpacking trip in Oregon and is afraid of dead butterflies. She also makes really bad jokes.

This is Denise’s second time around in the Midwest. Thus far, she enjoys all the things they say about Midwest charm but is strongly disconcerted by the unfriendly, motorcentric laws in Michigan. More likely than not, Denise will eventually become a cat lady.

Photo by Ryan F.