As I mentioned here a week or so ago, I’ve been thinking about launching a local grassroots reporting site here in Ypsi. At the most basic level, what I have in mind would only require about half a dozen people each volunteering to cover one City Council or School Board meeting a month or so (something that they might already be doing for their own sites anyway). It doesn’t have to be anything complex, at least not at first. At first, it could just be a compilation of our notes, photos, links and interviews, with areas for discussion. It could grow from that though. (Just today, it occurred to me that we could compile articles once a month into a pdf which we could then ask people to download, print and leave around town. It would be a newspaper, like The Ypsi Sentinel, but the distribution would be completely dependent upon the interest and resources of the site’s readers. People could print one copy to read and leave on the bus, or they could print twenty to give to their neighbors, or a hundred to leave at a bar or coffee shop… Very inexpensive. Very community driven. Almost no overhead.)

Anyway, the initial response was positive enough (at least half a dozen people told me that they’d like to participate) that I went the next step and reserved a table at Frenchie’s for tax day – Friday, April 15 – from 7:00 to 9:00. (They wouldn’t let me have the whole room as I couldn’t guarantee 50 people, but they said they’d set aside a third or so of the space for us.)

So, with all of that in mind, I’d like to ask those of you with Ypsi/Arbor blogs to consider helping me promote this event by passing this information along, using this logo and linking to this post. It would be greatly appreciated.

As for the event itself, I don’t think it has to be totally focused on this community reporting portal idea, but I would like to at least take half an hour or so to discuss it. The rest of the time, we can just drink beer and talk shit about the people who don’t show up.

All Ypsi/Arbor bloggers and blog readers are invited. And, if you want to come, but don’t want to participate in the conversation about community reporting, that’s cool too. I’m sure there will be enough room for us to break into smaller groups.

UPDATE:
I was just looking at Dan Gillmor’s site and happened across this very cool, and very appropriate quote from a new Carnegie Foundation report entitled, “Abandoning the News.” Here’s the quote:

There’s a dramatic revolution taking place in the news business today and it isn’t about TV anchor changes, scandals at storied newspapers or embedded reporters. The future course of the news, including the basic assumptions about how we consume news and information and make decisions in a democratic society are being altered by technology-savvy young people no longer wedded to traditional news outlets or even accessing news in traditional ways. In short, the future of the U.S. news industry is seriously threatened by the seemingly irrevocable move by young people away from traditional sources of news.