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Citizens in Deerfield, N.H., tired of the lack of local news in surrounding area newspapers, decided to take the “voice of the masses,” generally considered an online, “web 2.0″ phenomena, to offline media, by launching its own paper, written by its citizens.
Frustrated by their inability to even discover who is running for office in their town of 4,000, Maureen Mann and her neighbors started The Forum in August, 2005, writes Media Life. Nobody takes a salary, and most of the stories come from its website, which is updated weekly with 30 to 40 stories.
The paper itself is published only three to four times a year, on an as-needed basis, mailing to about 7,200 homes in four tiny rural communities. The managing editor is a retired high school teacher, and contributors - numbering in the seventies - file reports of goings-on in their towns and communities.
While it would be nice to think that The Forum hints at a coming trend of citizens uprising after years of spotty or downright non-existent coverage of their communities, this is unlikely to happen, according to the article. Still, local papers in the surrounding areas have begun giving Deerfield and other small towns more coverage, which does point to a different, and perhaps just as useful, trend: newspapers are beginning to listen to readers more than ever before, encouraging them to contribute to their communities’ coverage and soliciting user-generated content, particularly to make sure that they are covering segments of the market where reader needs aren’t being met.
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