About a year ago, Tom Grubisich took a critical look at 10 community journalism Web sites (see the first article). This week in a new Online Journalism Review article (“’Potemkin Village’ Redux”) Grubisich took a look back at the same Web sites and asked, “Was grassroots journalism finally living up to its golden-keyboarded billing?” Featured sites include iBrattleboro, Greensboro 101 and others.
Only one of the ten Web sites has folded since this time last year. The Web site, which was at www.GoSkokie.com, was a project that came from graduate students at Medill School of Journalism. (For more info on GoSkokie, scroll down to New Media Capstone Project on this Medill press release.)
Grubisich notes that some of the Web sites are close to being profitable. But with the exception of YourHub (backed by Scripps) and BackFence, most of the citizen journalism projects do not pay their main players much – if anything.
Grubisich also notes that several of the Web sites feature a large number of uploaded press releases and “handouts”, which is turning some of the grassroots journalism into “astro-turf.”
Read the entire feature article at OJR.org.