Blogs > Tell the Editor

A conversation between readers and the editor of The Morning Journal in Lorain, Ohio

Monday, March 29, 2010

We'll help you become a community blogger

The Internet is rapidly dissolving the walls between newsrooms and our living rooms.

At The Morning Journal, we want to improve upon our traditional print and online news coverage by helping community members to become community journalists, that is, bloggers.

We will help these individuals to create their own blogs on subjects they care about deeply and can write about regularly. By doing so, we can widen the world of information for everyone here far beyond what fits on a printed page; far beyond what any traditional newspaper staff could manage to cover.

Community blogs could be about all kinds of things: Neighborhood news from South Lorain or South Amherst, for example. Or sandlot baseball, or quality of life issues in any community. Perhaps Elyria politics is your passion. Or you are bursting with ideas to give Lorain an extreme makeover. Clubs, organizations, churches, schools, hobbies ... the field is wide open.

The community blog you write would be based online at www.MorningJournal.com. It would be your blog, not The Morning Journal's. We just provide a platform for your words and set some standards.

This is community news, not commercials, so no promoting one's business, please. Blogs that espouse the bogger's opinions will be labeled as opinion, in contrast to blogs that report news about a town, group or school.

You'll need your own computer, and you will blog from home; but for starters we'll teach you the fundamentals of reporting right here in our newsroom's Community Media Lab.

You will talk with, learn from, and no doubt teach a thing or two, to the reporters and editors you will meet on our staff.


Together, we'll shape the future of local news.

Want to give it a try? Send me an e-mail at tskoch@morningjournal.com telling me a little about yourself, the topic of your blog and maybe providing a little sample.

Or, if you just have a comment on all of this, click on the "comment" link below and Tell the Editor.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Ex-Lorainite said...

Apathy Tom, apathy.

And people wonder what's wrong with Low-rain!

March 30, 2010 at 9:22 PM 
Blogger Tom Skoch, Editor said...

Some people have expressed an interest in e-mails they have sent to me. I have great hope for this experiment. It'd like to see a South Lorainblog or two. Sandlots baseball. Local clubs. School blogs. Hobbies. Endless possibilities. There's no reason to be afraid you'll do it "wrong" because we'll all be inventing this new path for local news. That's why we have acommunity media "lab" so we can all experiment in new ways to fill local news and information needs.

March 30, 2010 at 10:30 PM 
Blogger Tom Skoch, Editor said...

Pardon my typos above. Typed on a cell phone.

March 30, 2010 at 10:44 PM 

Post a Comment

The following comments represent views of the individuals making the comments. Comments are screened only to keep out spam and uncivil behavior. All opinions are welcome.

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home