Community Journalism and Me

My last few blog posts got into what community journalism is, examples of it both locally and internationally, how it can differ internationally and a review of some recent pieces of community journalism. Now that graduation is soon upon me and the start of my professional career shortly thereafter, I have to make some decisions.

I have an internship with a non-profit organization called Bridging Freedom. Over the past few months, I have a newfound respect for the work that goes into running a non-profit. I’m still undecided on whether or not non-profits are my future, but I’m not ruling that out just yet.

Non-profit work I’m sure can be translated into community journalism because there always seems to be numerous non-profits in a local community, whether they are national or not.

It seems as though non-profits only get coverage when there is a significant event or happening within the organization. Bridging Freedom has had some coverage on the news recently, and has even had some mentions in a newspaper such as this one.

It’s not like what they’re doing isn’t for a good cause; it’s just that this non-profit is small in comparison to national non-profits. The notoriety just isn’t there. I want that to change.

Look at any newspaper and the most important events of the day or previous day will be there. Flip a few pages in and you still won’t see anything about a non-profit. Go to essentially the back or end of this paper to the Local section. There you might find on a good day a story or two on a non-profit.

It’s not that people don’t know what a non-profit organization is and would probably be able to name at least one in their community. People may not care or even be aware that they should care.

Community journalism is all about telling the local goings on. From the small to the relatively big, they all need to be included. They all in some way affect the community around them, whether people are aware of that or not.

I hope to see more prominence of non-profit stories in all sorts of publications, not just print. There are so, so many different types of publications out there. Online publications are the obvious choice when it comes to diversity and choice because it is so easy to create something.

But there are also print publications that aren’t mainstream. Some are very localized and cater to a very specific audience and some are alternative, which tell the news that they believe isn’t being told.

That’s a good place to start, and if I were to write about non-profits I would certainly start with the alternative publications and work my way up from there.

Community journalism is something that I’ve become more passionate about these last few months. I hope to take what I’ve learned both from my classes and internship and turn it into something great.

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