Library-banyan-haverhill

Banyan Project’s “Haverhill Matters” news co-operative

Notes of a presentation by Tom Stites on April 27, 2012 at a Mass. Library System one-day seminar in Marlboro, Mass.

Tom Stites’ proposed a new definition of journalism:

“Journalism is reliable information people need to make their best life and citizenship decisions.”

• Problem in Haverhill: A city of 60,000 people with no local paper; weekly the Haverhill Gazette, is closing; had only one reporter/editor. WHAV is being revived by another member of the Haverhill Matters coordinating committee. Goals include deeper community engagement; working on the right software to make that possible. Can’t be adequate without collaboration.

Carol Verny, Haverhill head librarian, explains project

• Carol Verny, Haverhill head librarian: She tells a personal story to explain why she is working on this. She moved in Jan. 2009 from Columbus, Ohio, to become the Haverhill public library director. Her board wanted her to learn the community. Where to start? Advice she was given was start with two local papers. But nether paper was covering what the library was doing. Should library be involved in “kidsfest”? Some question about that among staff.

• Key question: What do we have in common? Both library and Haverhill Matters want to encourage collaboration, education and interaction. Common mission is civic engagement, information transparency, revitalizing a community where a lot is happening but it is really difficult to find out who is doing what and why and where. Want to help form engaged communities that contribute to the betterment of our society.

• She believes in the concept of the library as a community place. Other things in common: Share a belief that we want information you can rely on and that’s it’s necessary for an empowered democracy. Critical thinking skills are fundamentally important. The shared mission: Helping people to find quality, reliable information that they need to make important life decisions. Librarians have done that in many media for a long time.

• It’s difficult to move beyond the idea of a center of information in the sense of passive response to inquiry. “Now we realize that the people who don’t use our physical buildings, our physical materials, perhaps are strong users of our electronic resources, are people we are interested in having conversations with.” She is asked: “In Massachusetts why can’t you deliver materials to us?”

• Libraries are becoming electronic advocates. People using Facebook, Pinterest or other social-network tools . . . she notices what people use their public-access computers – they are gaining critical skills. Important to recognize role of civic engagement and the case made for supporting libraries. State umbrella groups are great and providing resources to make the case. The resources and arguments are relevant to journalism too.

• What is the common goal set for responding to needs of 21st-century communities? Libraries and news-media organizations are important to the economic benefit of our communities. A lot is happening and growing in Haverhill, there is lots of energy and excitement. But she isn’t sure people have moved beyond the old image of Haverhill, or beyond the traditional image of what libraries were.

• Traditionally libraries have been information consumers. “But now I see a real interest in Haverhill, of people who are interested in being content creators.” They are working with high schools and are finding a group of kinds enormously interested in creating content. They may have in cases more skill than the libraries do in creating. They can contribute to Haverhill Matters, she believes.

Possible roles for library collaboration with Haverhill Matters

Creating a community-events calendar

• Difficult for anyone to do, to make sure everyone is represented. An ancillary benefit is promoting what the library is doing. (People don’t know what the library does – like learning games for teens).

Create an API widget for news

• A link from all public-access computers with news or snippets to stream all the time. They have 60 public-access computers. They could stream news or link a little link. Running survey right now, it’s the opening screen that people see: “What reliable news in Haverhill? We can help you, click this link.”
• “Just the facts” database. Things commonplace to a journalist.
• Training opportunities. Library doesn’t have full capacity for tech training but have goal in strategic plan to get community trainers. Hope HM cooperative will produce some of those trainers.

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Back to Tom Stites:

Haverhill Matters will potentially offer the events calendar and API news feed to the library. Other ideas: Links to e-book downloads. Online book chats? Planning concept of a “local resource bank” – every school in town having its own page, lost pets, time banks, tool exchanges, garage-sale map, API pulling things like real-estate transactions, building permits, gas prices, I-495 traffic community resilience tools. Do all that in addition to covering the news. Link to all (“responsible”?) bloggers.

COMMENTS FROM THE ROOM

• Canaries in the mine (newspapers) are dying. The vanishing resource is people trained in reporting. She’s seen this in other countries – information just gets shoveled out and nobody thinks about it.
• Community database is great idea – they are working on this. Pushback is we are seen as a trusted source, but what if you get too much involvement and there are the wrong people involved. How do you mediate?
• How do you teach citizens to do quality journalism? Is there an association of online newspapers.

BILL DENSMORE: Will post link to work of Lawrence Journal-World. There is no national association of local-online news communities yet. SEE:

• http://rjionline.org/news/indie-online-news-trade-association-forms-rjis-block-block-summit
• http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Jtm-dc-Cody_Howard
• http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Citizen_journalism_training_kansas
• http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Citizen_journalism_training

How do you prevent burnout?

• Tom Stites: Has to do with business model – it helps if you get paid. Some 7,000 LONCs have started around the country but a small percentage are still operating. No viable business model. Co-operators historically are awash in volunteers. Italy, Germany, Mexico and India. Listener-owned radio stations in Canada.