Equipping the community media newsroom

This presentation will report on work related to a recently funded Office of the Vice Chancellor for Public Engagement project, "Equipping Citizen Journalists," which is bringing together key ongoing and recent projects by CII and the Department of Journalism to address the disparity in effective use of technologies for information gathering, reporting, and information and news presentation that currently exists in north Champaign and East St. Louis. Four public computing centers have been identified as pilot sites to serve as community media newsrooms in these communities. The presentation will report on ways faculty, staff, and students from LIS and Journalism are coming together to work with professionals and pilot sites to adapt community media and citizen journalism programming to the current needs of residents in the marginalized communities of north Champaign and East St. Louis. Issues of controlled vocabularies, wayfinding, preservation and archiving will also be considered to assure information is not only produced but also accessible in a way that is sustainable and impactful