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!

Online Mapping and Community Journalism

Jeff Ueland teaches GIS (Geographic Information Science) for the Department of Geography at Bemidji State University. He led a session called Mapping For Interactive Media for Bemidji area journalists involved with Northern Community Radio’s community website project at the Bemidji public library on July 8th.

Jeff said most people organize their lives around spatial concepts and relationships. It’s easy for us to relate to maps, because they represent the types of relationships our brains are used to. Since community journalism is about getting more information from online sources, maps can provide a solid background for illustrating a story.

Some resources for creating online maps or mashups are Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, Google Earth, Google Documents and Flickr or Picasa (for photos). There is a Google Maps wiki with information and tutorials at http://mapki.com/. Another useful website is http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/.

The journalism club will meet again in about two weeks at a Bemidji State University computer lab, where participants will actually be able to create maps. Everyone is welcome Listen to KAXE for more information or email Maggie at KAXE dot org. And let us know if you’d like to create a community journalism club in your town!