As the first snow of the year started coming down here in Connecticut, word slowly leaked out that the Journal Register Co. has shut sixteen of its weeklies in Connecticut and laid off twenty-one reporters and editors. These are different papers than the eleven weeklies and two dailies that the Journal Register had announced plans to close in January. All in all, over the course of a month, Connecticut could lose nearly thirty newspapers.

The reactions were fairly predictable. Some lamented the loss of local government coverage and the decrease in public accountability it would produce. Others suggested that the newspapers had long ago stopped providing adequate coverage of local government, that this was part of the reason for their demise, and there would be little change. Still others fretted about the loss of cheap material for wrapping fish or training puppies.

Some blamed the youth for not being more interested in the news. Others blamed the news organizations for not making their news more readily accessible where youth look for the news online. Many blamed the management of the Journal Record Co.

Some people did find bright spots, highlighting the work of CTNewsJunkie and the New Haven Independent as examples of where quality reporting still happens.

Perhaps, some have suggested, online citizen journalism can help take up the slack. I’ve often suggested this myself. However, we need to think very carefully about how this could happen.

Steve Collins has raised the concern about what happens to people that are not online, especially the elderly who are major subscribers to many of these papers. I’ve suggested that one solution is to get people to use community access television to read some of the news. Already, we have good government access broadcasts of various meetings in Woodbridge. Yet getting new community channels up and running is a lot of work, and this would be a large project.

Doug Hardy has commented about the loss of institutional memory. There are reporters who have covered events in Connecticut for many years and they bring a very important perspective of how the current events relate to a bigger picture. This is a big issue in my mind. Sure there may be some Web 2.0 type ways of gathering, storing and searching a little bit of this, but that is a big project in and of itself. Perhaps we need a Connecticut News Wiki. Yet even the best Wiki fails in searchability when compared with asking the person in the newsroom who knows where all the bodies are buried.

Yet there is a greater issue; how do you get citizen journalists to cover events that matter in a fair and informative manner? People write about what interests them. You may find some good coverage of Little League by parents of star pitchers, but what about getting someone to cover local selectmen meetings or the town committee meetings of various political parties?

Here, there is a chicken and egg problem. Unless someone is covering what is going on, others may not realize that there is something important going on in their backyards. If people don’t know what is going on they may not be inclined to produce try and cover events themselves. Even if they to get motivated, it may take a while before they get proficient in writing good articles.

It seems as if this is a place where two interesting groups can and should get involved. The New England News Forum has suggested getting journalism schools in New England to help jumpstart online citizen journalism. Central Connecticut State University and Southern Connecticut State University could play key roles. It would be great to see some conferences around the state on this.

Help Fill the Local News Gap: How to be an Effective Citizen Journalist

Other organizations like the Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists would be great additions to such an effort. The IRE provides great training for investigative reporters and some of their material would be a great addition such conferences and every journalist, whether they be a professional journalist or a citizen journalist should read and adhere to the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.

The other interesting group would be local good government groups. Organizations like Common Cause and The League of Women Voters as well as people energized by the 2008 Presidential campaigns could bring energy and an important focus on watching local and state government.

Would such efforts help the situation here in Connecticut? It’s better than nothing and I would love to work with anyone who wants to help bring together people to provide better citizen journalism. If people have better ideas, I’d love to hear them to and see if there are ways I could help in that area.

In the meantime, I’m going to try to have happy holidays, and keep up my own writing about events in Woodbridge, in Connecticut, and in the media ecosphere.