Travis Holland

    22 Dec 2010

    Community News

    In my last post, I raised the concept of local news being produced and delivered by local people for local people in an organisational form I like to refer to as Community News. Community News organisations are the antithesis of control media. For the uninitiated, control media is media where the content is controlled and managed by the elaborate gatekeeping process undertaken by editors and journalists within newsrooms.

    Here is how I see true community news organisations operating:

  • An elected board/committee that oversees the day-to-day operation of the organisation;
  • A co-operative democratic structure, where each member buys into the organisation with an annual membership fee and has one vote on all matters;
  • Advertising that has no bearing on content whatsoever. Instead, each ad must be approved by a 50%+1 online vote of all members;
  • All articles must be approved by at least a quarter of active all members via an online approval system;
  • Content can be submitted by members only;
  • Content must be relevant to the local community;
  • Writers can be paid fees that are decided by the community by way of vote.

    There may be some problems with this model and it probably needs adjustments in accordance with the nature of a given organisation, but I see it as a fair way for local communities to create content relevant to their community - true community news. The other advantages of such a model are that all ‘profits’ as such remain within the local community, rather than being siphoned into the coffers of a large control media organisation.

    What do you think?