Narrative Journalism, CitJ and The Bakersfield Californian

If you remember, we were talking about narrative journalism and how CitJ could help allow news organizations to do more with it. Soon after, someone mentioned the Your Words feature at Bakersfield.com. Ray Hacke, Citizen Journalism Editor at The Bakersfield Californian, was kind enough to answer some questions about the CitJ experiment at their paper, which has been up and running for about two months.

Email transcript:

I like the fact you used the term 'contributing writer' - did you consciously stay away from the citizen journalist term? If so, why?

Actually, we did choose to stay away from the term "citizen journalism." The reason was that we wanted average readers - people who have little to no writing experience whatsoever - to feel like they could have a voice in our paper, too. The word "journalist" has some heavy connotations to it - we felt people might hear it and think they'd have to have some formal training or be thoroughly knowledgeable about grammar, spelling, style, etc., to write for us. We figured that might scare them off, and nothing could be further from the truth.

Our overriding mantra for citizen journalism is, "Journalism is a conversation," and we want people from all walks of life to sit down at the table and join in. So far, we've actually been pretty successful in that regard — we've gotten contributions from writers as young as 12 and as old as 90, from janitors as well as doctors.

How much editing do you typically spend on a reader submitted piece?

I try to be as hands-off as possible. I will edit for grammar, spelling, punctuation, factual errors and the like, and when necessary I will edit for length. We don't have specific length requirements because some stories just can't be told in 500 words or less, and some of the writers who've contributed have gone overboard because they're not familiar with the concept of "less is more."

Other than that, though, I try to keep the majority of their work intact because I want them to recognize their work as their own once it's in print and be proud of it. So far I've had nothing but positive feedback about the editing I've done on people's stories — my writers feel like I've done their work justice (even when I've had to cut things) and are actually grateful that I help improve their work in some cases.

Is the time worth it?

I would say so. While most of our CJ stories have run on inside pages, we've had a few run on the cover of the local section and one that even made A1 above the fold. We've had CJ articles appear in our sports and entertainment sections as well, and most of the stories we've run have generated a positive response. One regular CJ contributor who writes historical pieces about Bakersfield has generated a ton of readership for our newspaper, and another wrote a feature about a Mormon couple that generated a ton of hits on our Web site. Another writer gave us a story about a play involving developmentally disabled actors, and because we ran that story, the play not only drew well, but had people saying they wanted to see more plays like that.

What impresses me the most, however, is how seriously the people who contribute stories are taking writing for The Californian. So far we have not had a single factual error to correct on the front page of the paper, and most of the time I've got writers calling or e-mailing me to either correct errors in their stories or hold stories until they can check a few facts. I had no idea what to expect when I helped get our citizen journalism efforts off the ground, but so far the response from our readership has been nothing but positive.

How often are you getting submissions?

We're getting submissions practically daily. We've managed to generate enough submissions to get in at least one CJ story a day five days a week (we don't run them on Thursdays or Sundays, when our executive editor's "Sound Off" column runs), and we usually have a pretty good backlog.

What role does print play in promiting/gathering the stories?

My job has involved a great deal of outreach. I spent my first two months on the job driving all over Bakersfield visiting churches, schools and volunteer organizations, passing out copies of our primer (which gives readers an idea of the kinds of stories we're looking for and what guidelines to follow) and chatting people up to solicit submissions. Ironically, most of the contributions we've gotten have not been a direct result of those efforts — they've come from individuals whose organizations I haven't visited. I plan to make some follow-up calls to those places this week.

In the paper itself, we have a citizen journalism promo box that runs with every CJ story that invites readers to submit their own stories to us as well as house ads that run frequently. On our Web site we have a citizen journalism ad that runs in the top left-hand corner, a box titled "Your Words" that displays the three top citizen journalism stories of the day and a special section for "Your Words" stories that's on another part of the Web site. The Web site also allows people to contribute stories to us, but most of our writers haven't been going that route so far. I'd definitely like to see more done to tease CJ stories or perhaps even to promo them if they're good enough — and I know we've had some that are.

Thinking about it, I think once other newspapers get off their duff and start pursuing projects like this, they'll find them quickly successful. Why? Well, they have the print product already to help promote. As you can see by one of the answers above, even if you go out and talk to people, they still might not write. (Then, though, from another source they come... the print is helping in Bakersfield, though, which is good news for the current newspaper owners.

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