Douglas Fisher recently had a great post about the Hartsville Today citizen journalism project. They've put together a pretty informative PDF of what they've learned in the first year. Heh. Maybe I need to get off my duff and do the same thing in a more organized manner. ;)

Fisher wrote:

When we started it with funding from J-lab, we promised a "cook book" that would give other smaller papers considering such projects a road map of what to expect and how to handle some of the challenges.

The report is done and now available. Feel free to download it. It's a 1 Mb PDF that covers everything from the multitude of early decisions about design and content to the rigors of getting people involved, sales and the technical aspect.

In addition to covering all the aspects, we think it is the first major extended study of such a site, the postings and their contributors. There is an extensive section that tracks five months of postings and proposes a codebook that may be of use to future researchers.

Haven't read it all yet, but it's on my list of things to do.

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