Sweet Smell of Success at YourHub?

Submitted by kpaul.mallasch on Mon, 03/13/2006 - 9:41am.

Tom Grubisich at OJR: The sweet (and sour) smell of success at YourHub - Well written piece about YourHub and the tendency for people to use it as a PR service moreso than a community news or citizen journalism site. While there are a couple cases of transparency used by YourHub users pointed out, there's a lot of other people using the website for their own gain without revealing all the relevant details.

This is why we're going to need professionally trained journalists.

Grubisich wrote:

Henry proudly noted that the Rocky Mountain News hired 26 "trained journalists" as community editors to help contributors report and write stories for YourHub. But here are the priorities of the editor assigned to the communities of Golden, Evergreen and Conifer, as he listed them on his YourHub blog:

Dogs

Kids

Everyone else from Golden, Evergreen and Conifer

Photos by people from Golden, Evergreen and Conifer.

These priorities may explain why hot civic controversies and threats to historic local sites don't register on YourHub/Golden -- or other YourHub sub-sites. Such issues tend to be complicated, which means they demand detailed reporting -- a rare occurrence on YourHub.

Ouch.

He's right, though.

Also:

Rocky Mountain News owner E.W. Scripps Co. has recently expanded YourHub to metro areas in five other states where it has print properties -- California, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. If Scripps can get away with presenting a steady diet of press releases as "community news," what impact will that have on grassroots journalism, which is still in its infancy?

In his column in the News, John Temple frequently talks about what journalism should mean. On Feb. 25, he wrote: "In my experience, a newsroom that produces great journalism is a newsroom that talks about values and standards."

I agree with this too. I'm still waiting for my community to get that magic spark that gives it (consistent) life, but as the community evolves, I'm trying to make sure they're part of the conversation about the news site we're building together.

Lots of other talk about this as well.