I would like to announce the start of a new website called "One Key Press". I have set up this website to encourage people who live in the Region of Waterloo and surrounding areas to discover, inform and participate in their communities. It will feature news and views on local happenings from myself and other local authors.

If you're interested in helping out, let me know at michael@onekeypress.ca.

I will also chronicle my efforts on the Editor's Blog hosted on the One Key Press site, so check it out if you're interested in the trials and tribulations of setting up a site like this.

This past weekend there was a house fire a few streets away from our home. My first reaction after finding out that no people were harmed, was to wonder if the family needed anything? I've heard through the grape-vine that at least one business in town is accepting donations, and that's great (but also five days after the fact).

With all of my rambling blog posts on citizen journalism and "the new media", a lightbulb turned on and I realized that we are lacking a central way to spread information like this in our Region of Waterloo. The flow of information in our communities could be greatly improved. There is all kinds of information that we can share with each other. Just what is citizen journalism you might ask? The Wikipedia's entry on the topic starts off with this:

Citizen journalism, also known as "participatory journalism," is the act of citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information, by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis. They say, "The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires."

I'm seriously considering setting up, maintaining and editing a site that would allow anyone from the community to submit stories, new business announcements, photos, events (maybe even videos) and other newsworthy bits of information. Check out this list for examples of different sites and see what you like. I'd like to include all of the towns in our little area of Ontario such as Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, New Hamburg, Elmira, Wellesley, St. Jacobs, Breslau, Conestogo, Ayr and every place inbetween.

Here's what I need everyone to do. Brainstorm a bit, talk to your family, friends and co-workers. Point everyone you know to this posting. Leave your input as a comment and we'll get a conversation going. Here's a few questions/ideas to get us started:

What would you like to see? What information is important to you? What would you like to contribute? New to the area... what do you need to know? Got a beef with local government? Want to advertise a local event? Worried about big-box stores in your small community? Does land development or usage concern you? Environmental issues on your mind? Discover a great new cafe? Can't get that pothole on your street fixed? Concerned about daycare? Sports?

Google Video has an episode of WGBH's "Thinking Big" from October 2005 titled "News in the Digital Age". Rebecca MacKinnon, formerly CNN's top person in north Asia, provides a good overview of how blogs are improving (but not replacing) the news as we know it. The show details the benefits that a personal point of view brings to news stories, but it is clear that not all bloggers stand up to the same journalistic rigors as most professional journalists hold themselves to.

It touches a bit on government censorship as well.

Read the transcript here.

Grab the video here in .mov format or here on Google Video.

New York Magazine has a story titled "The Rise of Craigslist and How It's Killing Your Newspaper" describing some of the history behind the makings of Craigslist.org and some insight into its creator Craig Newmark. It's an interesting piece and a good read for anyone that wants to understand more about the site and the motivations that lead to its creation back in 1995.

The piece also hints at Craig's future endeavors in the area of citizen journalism. Should be interesting to see what he comes out with, or more importantly what the world does with what he comes out with.

Amy Gahran wrote a quick piece exploring motivating ideas for citizen journalists "to get your butt out of your house..." and into the community. To summarize, they are:

1. Cover a public talk or lecture
2. Build a "beat"
3. Meet interesting people
4. Review concerts, plays, films, and dance performances
5. Comparison quest

Be sure read the piece for full explanation of each point. Each of our communities have their own unique flavours, and as a citizen journalist you can get involved and sample that uniqueness. Reporting on what you discover can be play a part in "building up" the community and making it even more interesting.

I just came across the on-line version of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. I'm going to plough my way through it, but I'm sure it will be a great read, since I regularly follow the blogs for Dan Gillmor and associates over at Bayosphere.com.

It's interesting to note that one of Dan's blog entries pointed me to Jon Udell over at InfoWorld. Jon thinks that citizen journalism, that is "ordinary people" documenting a news-worthy happening as it's happening, will soon be a commonplace event and hardly considered journalism.