RICHMOND, Va. — Think of it as a new model for spreading the news — a”pro-am” partnership, says Jeff South, an associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. South won a J-Lab grant that partners his students (“fledgling” professionals) with the committed “amateurs” to create and nourish The Greater Fulton News neighborhood blog.
South and other professors in mass communications are working to recruit more everyday people to contribute. In addition, their students work on stories about the neighborhood called Fulton Hill. These stories are then posted on the neighborhood site. The students often have multimedia skills as well, allowing them to create slideshows and videos. They must do extensive interviews for their stories, practicing their craft every day as part of their course requirements, which, in turn, fosters a richer content for the Web site.
In exchange, they are rewarded with published clips — articles and video — but equally important, to them, is that they learn about a community they would not likely discover on their own.
The student perspective
Fateema Blackwell is a 21-year-old senior broadcasting major who has had an internship at the local CBS affiliate in Richmond. The Washington, D.C., native worked on two video stories for the Fulton Hill neighborhood through her advanced newsgathering class. One was on the well-known sculptor Paul diPasquale, who has been living for years in Fulton Hill, one of Richmond’s oldest neighborhoods. She and other students produced a story, photo slideshow and video.
When the project was completed, she was among the students who presented their stories at the Neighborhood Resource Center, a gathering place for all ages in a neighborhood on the path of renewal following years of being better known for crime statistics.
“It was a publication that in a way benefited the neighborhood,” Blackwell said, although some students were hesitant to go to the area because they viewed the East End as a dangerous. Some 5,000 people live in the neighborhood; two-thirds make less than $40,000 annually, and more than one-third don’t have their high school diplomas, higher numbers in both categories than the city at large. But Blackwell says she never felt uncomfortable and grew professionally in being able to reach out to new people and introduce herself.
She enjoys interviewing people. “I like to learn about people. I like meeting people,” she says. “You can connect through journalism.”
“I think in today’s world that definition of journalism is really expanding. … News is more of a conversation.” — Jeff South, Greater Fulton News
One of her colleagues, Phillip A. Ranallo, wears multiple hats: He’s a broadcast student, movie extra and part-time model. He, too, worked as a reporter on the DiPasquale story. He also worked on the Neighborhood Resource Center’s young writer’s recording studio, a project that encourages young songwriters.
Because he was taking a course called VCU Insight – the campus news show that is fed to PBS twice a week – their piece on diPasquale ended up airing on television, too. He had never heard of the Fulton Hill neighborhood before they were assigned to cover it, even though it’s but a 15-minute drive from their bustling urban campus. But like Blackwell, Ranallo says he finds interviewing beneficial to his own personal and professional growth.
Their professor agrees. “I think in today’s world that definition of journalism is really expanding,” says South. “What we’re seeing here (in Fulton Hill), is news is more of a conversation. And we might have a story that was done by perhaps a student … but that’s not the end of that story. That story is the start of, we hope, a discussion … It’s news and information and discussion and contributions from the public. It’s just a broader definition of the news.”
How to interview and other training
The neighborhood center and VCU also plan to resume their citizen journalist training academy, where South and others with professional experience have offered classes to interested citizens on how to interview people, what constitutes a story, and how to go about writing a story. “How do you weave in quotes and facts?” South asks. “How do you write something where you do want to include your opinion … what’s the appropriate way to do that?” He also in the past has offered a class in photography, including how to upload pictures. South plans to resurrect these and other courses over the coming months.
The task of talking to new people and then writing what you learn can be overwhelming, even to middle-school history teacher John Murden, who created the template for the Web site for Fulton Hill. Murden’s successes with his own blog about his house remodeling and then one for his Church Hill neighborhood, close to Fulton Hill, make him something of a fixture at community meetings. He contributes regularly to the many blogs in Richmond, picking up on conversations and city plans that may be of interest to others.
He likes to listen to and meet new people, and occasionally asks someone for an interview. But it still is a new skill set. “Online, I’m an extrovert,” Murden says. “In real life, not so much.”