Greater Fulton News: Community Sustainability

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GreaterFultonNews.org was birthed in 2007 by professors at Virginia Commonwealth University in partnership with Fulton’s Neighborhood Resource Center (NRC). Now, it has been entirely handed off to the community, and it’s a model for having the community sustain a site. 

The news blog focuses on micro-local activities and events for the heavily African-American neighborhoods of Fulton, Fulton Hill, and Montrose Heights in Richmond, Va., and on larger events with direct impact on the community. 

The volunteer effort has no staff reporters and one web maestro who rewards those who post content or comments with things like pizza coupons or movie tickets. VCU students provide some content for the site and it still operates under the auspices of the NRC. 

Those incentives are funded by advertising on the site, which is now part of the Richmond Ad Network.

The site has “kind of taken off,” said Jeff South, the VCU professor who helped to launch it. “I’ve pretty much passed it on,” he said. “I sit on the Advisory Board and am willing to do training. But I point people to resources on J-Learning.org.”

He said the site has about 140 contributors. About 75 percent of the posts are stories that people have written, bulletin board postings or news about neighborhood association meetings. Another quarter might be excerpts from the local daily. Anyone can post and the site defines news very broadly.

“Content is king. You’ve got to get good content,” he said. “Not good in the sense of AP style, but good in the sense of what interests people.”

For instance, South said, the site originally planned to downplay crime because the local TV stations over reported it.  But they discovered the community wanted crime coverage, just a different kind - more focused on how to be safe or protect your home or property.  So, for instance, if there was a burglary in the neighborhood, the site might advise you to let your neighbors know if you plan to be away, he said.

The site also pays a tribute to a new kind of civic catalyst, one who clones a matrix of community blogs. The site’s programming and format is based on work by John Murden, who operates the award-winning Church Hill People’s News, which has been honored again and again as Richmond’s best community blog.  He has since fathered several other local blog sites.

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