KAXE's new online project - Northern Community Internet

Katie Carter is KAXE's Managing Editor of KAXE's Internet project. As you can see, She's working so hard on getting the community journalism part of Northern Community Internet up and running, she's been forced to wear safety goggles and a hard hat. Tomorrow morning she'll talk with Scott Hall on The Morning Show at 7:50 about the first topic for the community journalism stories - the economy.

If you'd like to be involved call Katie 218-326-1234 or email her!

New Managing Editor for KAXE Community Journalism Project

Starting this Friday, and for the next 9 months, there will be a new face around KAXE. Katie Carter will lead KAXE’s Community Supported Journalism project as Managing Editor of Northern Community Internet. She will work with Scott Hall, Heidi Holtan, many freelance and community journalists, and community journalism clubs from around our region, to produce four, eight-week series for community websites and radio.

The first series will start in January, in conjunction with the rollout of the community websites. In the next few weeks Katie will solicit input about issues important to our area. She will work with journalists to identify stories. They will decide how to present the stories on the community websites and on the radio. The community websites will allow a fresh and different presentation for the stories, extra resources for users, photos, video, and lots of interaction. I hope you check it out!

Journalism is undergoing a transition in our country and in the world. Newspapers are giving way to online news sources. So at the core of KAXE’s Community Supported Journalism project is a question: Will people pay directly for news that is important to them?

If the stories are important to you, we hope you will support the project financially. If that happens, the project may be able to continue after this first 9 months.

Back to Katie: Katie Carter recently completed her MA in English at Bemidji State University. In her school career she majored in English, Psychology and Education. She has worked as a freelance journalist, writer and English teacher. She also served as managing editor and assistant editor for several publications. She brings high energy and enthusiasm to the community journalism project! Please make her welcome!

KAXE received a Corporation for Public Broadcasting grant to help start the Community Supported Journalism project. That project is part of a larger project to develop community websites in northern Minnesota. That larger project receives funding from the Blandin Foundation.

Community Supported Journalism

by Maggie Montgomery

I have a question for you: Are you willing to pay for in-depth coverage of a public affairs or news story on the Internet and on 91.7 KAXE?

Are you willing to donate some money to support this coverage in addition to your current KAXE membership pledge?

How much would you be willing to pay for, say, a multi-week series of stories about the challenges of heating a home in northern Minnesota this winter? Or for a series about how we might fund public education in the future?

The way we consume, participate in, and pay for media is changing. News organizations across the country are looking for financial models that will keep journalism strong in an era of declining newspaper readership and declining use of traditional media, especially among young people.

KAXE, with help from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s (CPB) Public Media Innovation project, will be testing a new model for news and information programming on public radio stations and their websites in the coming year. Our idea is called Community Supported Journalism.

We’re trying to learn whether people and businesses will support specific, community-based newsgathering and pubic affairs efforts.

KAXE will be working with citizens, community journalists and citizen journalists in communities across our region to determine what stories really matter to us. Then we’ll use Northern Community Radio’s new website, http://www.northerncommunityinternet.org/, and 91.7 KAXE to bring these stories to you.

And then we’ll ask you to help us pay for them.

Your donations will pay journalists for their work and help pay an editor to work with KAXE’s staff to pull it all together.

Back in 1976, when KAXE first started, nobody knew for sure whether people would support a community radio station in rural northern Minnesota. We’re not sure if Community Supported Journalism will work either, but we’re going to try.

If you’d like to help, or if you’d like to donate to this effort, let us know!

You Have a Voice in Your Community

Sometimes in small communities it seems like the same people tend do almost everything. They are tapped for committees. They run for office. They speak for the community. They hold the power. It’s hard for anyone outside of “the usual suspects” to break in, even though everyone knows broader input and representation would help solve problems and make people feel part of things.

This isn’t necessarily anyone’s fault. Across the country, people are noting a decrease in public participation in civic events. Lives are busy. Time is scarce.

Luckily, as public participation decreases, there is a rising ability of the Internet to facilitate participation. As Steven Clift from e-Democracy says, it’s still a smoke-filled back room but everyone can be invited and it can be in your living room.

KAXE just co-hosted two meetings to help bring e-Democracy forums to northern Minnesota communities. E-Democracy has funding to start 3 local issues forums in rural Minnesota.

E-Democracy local issues forums are email discussions where people talk about their communities. Everyone is limited to two posts per day (so the discussion can’t be dominated by any one person). Participants must also use their real names and be responsible for what they say. The discussion stays local—these aren’t the place for speaking up about national-level politics, for example. The forums stick to community issues and don’t allow personal attacks. They give voice to people who aren’t necessarily included otherwise.

A handful of people in Bemidji and Cass Lake have volunteered to be on steering committees to start forums in those communities. They will help suggest topics and monitor the discussion to make sure it stays useful and civil. More steering committee members are needed and, before a community can start a forum, 100 people have to agree to participate.

KAXE is helping and encouraging this process. Northern Community Radio is supporting many ideas that will help people use the Internet to build community, as part of the Northern Community Internet project. If you would like more information about e-Democracy in northern Minnesota, and if you’d like to sign up for forums in Bemidji or Cass Lake, call Ross Williams, Scott Hall, Heidi Holtan or Maggie Montgomery 218/326-1234.