The Washington Times' new citizen journalism effort

Posted by Marion Geiger on April 14, 2009 at 12:01 PM

The Washington Times promotes more clout for citizens of the Washington area with a full daily print page of news stories written by citizens of the surrounding communities.

Executive editor of the Times, John Solomon said, "we know there are many issues and communities we have not been able to fully cover within the confines of a newsroom budget, and we are excited to empower citizens within those communities to provide us news that will interest all our readers."

The section is organized into themes that reach out to six communities within the larger Washington area of the United States. Mondays are dedicated to academia, Tuesdays to Maryland and Virginia Suburbs, Wednesdays to the District of Columbia, Thursdays to the local military bases, Fridays to faith communities and Sundays to public service.

Al Tomkins, a media analyst with the Poynter Institute said, "rural and county newspapers, community weeklies - they always had space devoted to the community news, written by someone local. That kind of coverage was and still is incredibly popular...it's an effective way to give a voice to the voiceless."

Recently The Patriot News launched a similar effort called Central PA NewsVote where locals are invited to pitch stories to the paper. Spot.Us is also famous for welcoming citizen story ideas, however is not the same as the Times in that the articles are not actually written by the citizens.

The Times affirms that although citizens write the stories, they will also follow the same criteria as journalists. "While we are expanding our reach through this project, we will not be diminishing our editorial quality. Citizen stories must meet the same rigorous standards for accuracy, precision, fairness, balance and ethics as those written by our newsroom staff," Solomon said.

Source: The Washington Times