In my previous blog posts, I’ve covered the definition to international community journalism to community journalism right here in the Tampa Bay area. But talking about the various publications and what they’re covering is vague. So I’m going to go straight into looking at two examples, both local and non-local. I want to go into the specifics and how they’re examples of community journalism. I’ll first start with one of my favorite news outlets: the BBC.
Community Journalism in Small-Town England
(As a quick reminder, the BBC headquarters are located in London. But across the UK they have local subsidiaries that cover local news as well.)
The title of the piece that I immediately chose right from a main page, once you click through to regions of the UK, is as follows:
Grantham girl, 4, gets cycling-on-path police warning
This is from an area in the UK known as the East Midlands. In short, a four-year-old girl was riding her bike on the sidewalk with her dad and was given a warning from a police officer. In the UK, it is illegal to ride a bike on the sidewalk. But with kids, officers should use discretion as kids under 10 are too young to break that law. As the story states, they are “below the criminal age of responsibility.”
Just from the headline, this wouldn’t be a main page/front page of a newspaper type story. It’s not breaking news and would most likely appeal to those living in the area.
What’s interesting about this story is that it could have the potential to grow to national coverage. This is dealing with a very young child and an officer being wrong in threatening to confiscate her bike and give her a warning.
People from surrounding areas may have experienced something like that, or maybe they find the story to be enough of an outrage to try to have a call to action to change the way the police handle children riding bikes on the sidewalks.
Moving on to a second story.
Community Journalism right here in Tampa Bay
I’m choosing a story from the Tampa Bay Times as I am currently located here, and I also have a subscription to it so finding a story is just easier.
The title of the story I’ve selected is as follows and also involves kids:
Children, ages 4 to 14, accused of breaking into St. Petersburg church
Right from the start this is a localized story as the name of the city that the break-in occurred in is in the headline. However, my expectations were not met in the content of the story. The story is more of a paragraph or just a brief update on this occurrence than anything else.
In summary, four kids broke into a church and the oldest of the three are facing burglary and obstruction charges. That’s all the information that the Times was able to receive, and the story reflects that.
Unlike the previous story, this is something that only those in the area would potentially be interested in. This is unlikely to receive any more attention than what it already has. I expect some sort of update to be included, but as minors are involved the details would be spare.
Conclusion
Both of these stories on local happenings involving kids are the types of stories that only those from that town or city or even county would be interested in. However, the first story does have the potential to have greater coverage due to the nature of the subject. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because that would give a bigger focus on the localized nature of community journalism.
It’s also stories like these that enables local residents to know what’s going on right there where they live. Stories like that can also get lost in or may not even appear in larger news outlets.
It’s always good to see stories like those above, even though they may not always be positive.Hopefully all news outlets will continue to allow time and space for those local stories.