MichiganRadio

Take That, Citizen Journalism! GRAND RAPIDS, MI (Michigan Radio) - A new citizen-driven news outlet launches later today (4p.m. TUES) in Grand Rapids. It's called The Rapidian.

Anyone in Grand Rapids can be a reporter for The Rapidian, and the focus will be on hyper-local neighborhood news that most news outlets rarely cover. Michigan Radio's Dustin Dwyer decided to cover The Rapidian itself.

He sent in this completely objective, and totally professional report.


The Rapidian is all about being a community-based, free and open kind of thing. But if it can be said to have a headquarters, that headquarters would be a drab room inside the offices of the Grand Rapids Community Media Center.

As a professional reporter, I can tell you, this is a real newsroom. A half-eaten muffin sits on a desk, coffee cups are everywhere. There are no windows. But there is a huge white board, with different colored writing that no one can understand except the people who work here.

One of the people who works here is Laurie Cirivello. She's the head of the Community Media Center. She likes to say she's the mom of The Rapidian. And it's a big family.

"We have 500 people on our Facebook group," Cirivello tells me. "Some of them came to a meeting, some of them have written in comments. Some of them have stepped up and put in massive amounts of hours trying to sort through editorial policy and mechanics. We have 97 people so far who've signed up to be reporters."

Ninety-seven people. Each one of them says they'll put in the grueling, thankless job of being a news reporter. And they're going to do this work voluntarily for The Rapidian. As in, they won't be paid.

Now, I don't know what you do for a living, but if 97 people suddenly showed up and said they're willing to do your job, your bread and butter, for free, what would you think?

Clearly, I needed to know more about this The Rapidian business. I turn to Denise Cheng. She's the citizen journalism coordinator for The Rapidian, meaning she helps train these people.

I ask her to tell it to me straight. How good are they? Should I be worried?

"I don't think that professional journalists should be seeing this as competition," she tells me. "I think if the end goal is news, then that's what you're creating here. You're creating a situation where people are becoming more civically engaged."

Sure, sure. That all sounds good.

But look, I'm a professional. We reporters, we know what you need to know.

That's why in our ads, we always use words like "trust," or we say we're "on your side," or "Your NPR news station." We're really good at deciding what's important, and then telling you about it. That's the way it's been for hundreds of years.

I mean, what important things could citizen journalists possibly tell you about that we professionals can't handle on our own?

"I've taken it upon myself to go to meetings that I probably wouldn't go to otherwise," says George Wietor, who works at the Community Media Center. He's also working on a story for The Rapidian.

Anyway, he was saying...

"So I went to a fire code meeting (LAME!) to learn about fire codes as they relate to special events," he says. "Which is pretty relevant to my life, cause I'm always doing special events and things. It was interesting."

Yeah I bet it was.

Folks, as a professional newsman, I can tell you the number of fire code meetings I've covered in my career falls somewhere between zero and zero. 'Cause they are boring.

And, besides, we don't have enough reporters sitting around to just go cover that kind of stuff ... downsizing, recession, the death of newspapers, you've heard all about it.

Then now comes these The Rapidian folks. And they're all like "fire codes," and "civic engagement," and "unsung heroes," and "neighborhood meetings."

They're also going to license all their stories through creative commons, so the stories can be republished for free anywhere.

The news will never be the same.

The website www.therapidian.org goes live today at 4p.m.

Contact Dustin Dwyer at dtdwyer@umich.edu

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