The Morning Journal's new Community Media Lab is up and running as of today, and you can see the results online at http://www.morningjournal.com/medialab/

 More local bloggers will soon be joining Community Media Lab pioneers Chad Earl, Kevin Salisbury and Jim Brooks, so be sure to watch for them.

If you would like to participate in the Community Media Lab and become a local blogger, contact me at tskoch@morningjournal.com, and we can get you started. Reporters and editors at The Morning Journal will provide orientation and advice, outline the journalistic standards expected, and help set up your blog online.

You just need to bring your willingness to write at least a few times a week about your chosen topic. Writing short and writing often is the rule of thumb for blogging.

Blogs can be about most anything -- local government, events in your neighborhood, doings in your club or organization or school or church, even information about hobbies and recreation. Whatever interests you, and whatever you think will interest and inform other readers is potential blog material.

By working in collaboration with citizen journalists in the Community Media Lab, The Morning Journal is acting on its plans to "bring the outside in" in local news reporting. We want to work in conjunction with readers to write about the topics readers want to see, and to provide the most complete and comprehensive look at each subject by tapping into the community's knowledge.

I hope you enjoy the writers in our Community Media Lab, and consider joining them in blogging with The Morning Journal.

-- Tom Skoch