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):
Matthew Russell joined our core staff in December as the content facilitator. Matt also works as a news/web editor for The Advance. He’s well-known in these here parts for his delicious vegan cookies, experiments with kombucha and rounds out our staff as a bike commuter.
Our site took a day off on Dec. 14, 2009 and returned the next day decked out in beta II features. To find out about changes, improvements and additions, take a look at New Media Planner George Wietor’s staff editorial.
We held our first press pit in November and have continued at a rate of one per month. An active reporter presents at each press pit about his or her process and tips. Afterward, we break out into smaller groups. Originally, press pits were intended to bring contributors and interested participants together to ask questions, brainstorm, share and mingle. Talking with our reporters, we realized that while there were many audience members who would love to contribute, they were intimidated by the idea of long, in-depth pieces and weren’t sure whether their story ideas would even garner an audience.
We had a great turnout in November, and that number started to dwindle to a core group with each subsequent gathering. We decided to try something different for March: A targeted press pit. It seemed that the more press pits we held, the less people needed a great deal of time to brainstorm, so for March, we asked two of our active reporters to present on their collaboration about development in the Heartside neighborhood. It was still the core group, but with much more participation and something for everyone, from registered users to seasoned contributors.
Based on instructor feedback from the first half of the 2009-2010 academic year, we’ve created an instructors manual to answer common questions and help walk our instructor-editors through the editorial and publishing process. We have yet to create a section on the site for instructor resources and are planning on brainstorming with instructors at the end of the school year so we can ramp up for the 2010-2011 academic year.
SW had its first “friendraiser” on March 10 at the Cook Library Center to increase The Rapidian’s exposure in SW and the Hispanic community. We’re still working at community building and awareness about The Rapidian.
We are partnering with Lighthouse Communities for the SE quadrant. With this quadrant, we feel it’s important to establish a SE presence on The Rapidian before heavily recruiting volunteer contributors. We will be meeting with various nonprofits, neighborhood associations and community-based organizations to encourage them to utilize The Rapidian to the fullest. Once we have formed strong neighborhood partnerships, we’ll begin identifying potential reporters together.
We held a low-key competition in February to increase and diversify contributions to our Flickr photo bank. Winners will receive a Rapidian t-shirt with a QR code that, when scanned, will take smart phone users straight to The Rapidian’s front page.
Catalyst Radio is a long-running program on WYCE Radio (one of the Community Media Center’s other branches). It has traditionally showcased nonprofits and community goings-on, starting with an overview of media developments, interview segment and closed out with an events calendar. The Rapidian will now play a part in the production. The first leg of the show will still be about media development and literacy but in dialogue form. The middle section will alternate between interviews, reporter showcases and audio stories. The events calendar will remain the same. First show to air in a couple of weeks.
After several tweeters asked us to set up a twitter feed for our content, we took the plunge and created @VeryLocal. You can read more about it in George’s staff editorial.
GRPRESS COLLABORATION ON A TOWN HALL
We facilitate a good many meetings: The local Drupal meetup, nonprofit Rapidian sessions and most recently, an indie PR session. They’ve all been sort of similar, but we’re partnering with The Grand Rapids Press to put on our first town hall. In journalism, town halls really sprouted out of the public journalism movement of the 1980s, early ’90s. The point was to translate awareness into meaning by physically bringing an audience together to discuss what a hyperlocal issue meant to them and whether there was any action that should come out of it.
We’re currently working on the details and are aiming for late April, early May, but both The Rapidian and The Grand Rapids Press are very excited about this.
There are a lot of other additions we’ve made, such as a weekly digest and weekly updates to all users and a weekly email of story pitches and goings-on (complete with potential questions) to reporters and editors on The Rapidian (we crosspost them on Facebook notes). We’re gearing up for spring and summer to increase our audience base and number of active contributors. We’ve created a user bar for the site since beta two launched. Most of all, we’re trying to hammer out routines so we can increase our capacity to tackle all the inspiring ideas we’ve received via feedback.
