Photojournalism From A Student’s Eye

While the Mercury News has been pulling photos from SVCN and the other local weeklies that were purchased while still owned by Knight Ridder, I wasn’t aware that they were now pulling from Flickr as well.

The paper credits the photo to Flickr.com, but when you actually find the photo on Belk’s photostream, it, like all of his other photos, are listed as copyrighted with all rights reserved. The photos are also able to be viewed at all sizes and downloaded. Is the Merc allowed to use this photo?

Little did I know, when I posted my last update on what fellow former St. Cloud intern Breanna Roy was up to, that the site she is working on, CrowNews.net, has been involved in a bit of controversy with the other local media outlet. In a nutshell, the publisher of a local newspaper was upset at the establishment of CrowNews.net because he felt that it was going to compete with a community that he already served. You can read Ryan Sholin’s take on it or read the article with the publisher’s complaint in the Missoula Independent.

Breanna was nice enough to let me ask her a few questions and share her thoughts on the whole situation.

How did the Rural News Network choose the Apsaalooke nation for a community news project?

Last year (the first year of the class) the RNN went to Dutton (duttoncc.org). It’s the hometown of Courtney Lowery, one of the class professors. The whole RNN concept was her idea.This year, one of the students–Mary Hudetz–suggested we go to Crow. It’s her hometown and she saw the community’s need for the service. We also have three Crows in the class who are familiar with it.

What was the response like from the local citizens when the project was announced?

Those I talked to thought it would be a good idea. Not everyone in Crow uses the Internet, but some that do said they’d visit the site and would be interested in posting. It was hard to describe the project until we launched the website.

How will CrowNews.net remain sustainable as a news source? Training future generations? Maintaining interest?

This is the challenge. As the RNN, we act as teachers, training the citizens to, eventually control the content by themselves. The next semesters of the class will continue to work with Crow as they have with Dutton. We’ve set up contacts who we hope will be faithful contributors to the site. I think the interest will be there. It’s the first place of its kind for the community to share their events and thoughts.

How does CrowNews.net fit into the overall landscape of the local media scene in the area?

It’s completely different from any other media in the community. The local media scene is the newspapers of outlying towns and the new tribal newspaper. CrowNews.Net provides the community with a place to discus local issues and post stories and news. It gives the community a voice.

In particular, is CrowNews.net in direct competition with Big Horn County News, and, if so, is that a bad thing?

I don’t believe we’re in direct competition with Big Horn County News. I don’t believe we’re in direct competition with anyone. We’re a separate entity, providing a very different service.

What role do you think community journalism sites will play in the future of journalism in small rural areas such as the Apsaalooke nation? In small urban areas such as St. Cloud? In large metropolitan areas such as LA or NY?

I can see community journalism playing a key role in rural, urban and metropolitan areas. I think it’s especially important in places like the Apsaalooke nation who have limited resources for social networking. I think there’s a large desire in our society for community journalism, despite the size of the city. People want to be heard. People want to talk about the news.

What sort of training is involved when working with the community? Do ethical guidelines play a role in this training?

We hope to train community members how to post, in addition to upload photos or even videos. We want to be able to show them how to do anything they want with the site. As journalists, of course ethics play a role. However, we must understand ethics are more forgiving in the case of community journalism. These are opinions and views.

In catching up with the latest goings on of my fellow former St. Cloud intern Breanna Roy, I was directed to CrowNews.net, a site that she and her classmates at the University of Montana have helped to establish. According to the site:

CrowNews.Net, is a community online newspaper serving the town of Crow Agency, Mont., and the Apsaalooke nation.

It is produced by tribal members, people involved with communities on the Crow Reservation and the Rural News Network at the University of Montana’s School of Journalism.

CrowNews.net is part of a bigger project, the Rural News Network, which helps communities create their own citizen journalism web sites and has already successfully launched the Dutton Country Courier.

Breanna is also a part of another U of M project, Reznet, which “hires about 30 Native American college students nationwide as reporters, editors, photographers, copy editors and multimedia journalists to cover their tribal communities or colleges during the academic year.”

I’m still not exactly sure how, but somehow I ended up with a job. Starting January 7th I will be starting as a Community Publications Photographer at the Des Moines Register in Des Moines, Iowa. Specifically, I will be covering the communities of Ankeny, Johnston and Urbandale.

Growing up in California, I don’t really have a firm grasp on this concept of winter. I am told it is cold and not just in the weekend snowboarding excursion to Tahoe or Mammoth kind of way.

Does anyone have any suggestions on preparing for said weather? Clothing? How to drive in the snow? Good gloves to use when shooting outdoors?