The CU-Boulder School of Journalism and Mass Communication has received an $110,000 grant from the McCormick Foundation of Chicago to explore interactive, multimedia "citizen journalism."
The Web-based "Resolving Door" project will invite reader-participants to describe local problems, which other reader-participants will be encouraged to research and help solve.
The educational goal, Dean Paul Voakes explained, is to help students develop skills in civic leadership, interactive technologies and public service journalism. The broader journalistic goal, he added, is to explore journalism's role in helping a local community confront common problems.
Beginning with the spring semester, a course focusing on the "Resolving Door" project will be offered in the school. The two-year grant will allow the school to hire a project manager, who will help students design, operate and promote the site as part of the course.
"We hope to develop a learning environment that trains a new kind of journalist/editor, one who works primarily with 'untrained' journalists," Voakes said. "The platform will serve as a laboratory for the editing skills that will be essential in community journalism of the future."
Student journalists working on the project will create a series of online tutorials by which novice citizen-journalists can learn how to upload information using a number of different media.
SJMC student and faculty researchers will also measure the effects of various experimental styles and various ways of motivating citizen participation.
CU was among the 22 new grants recently approved by the McCormick Foundation board of directors.
"The $4 million investment in these 22 organizations supports our focus on innovation, integration and invigoration of the news media," said Clark Bell, the foundation's Journalism Program director.