Newspapers, stations turning to ‘citizen journalists' to help fill reporting void

Yahoo

31-03-2025

At the Sidney Sun-Telegraph, all new reporters are required to take a course called "Earn Your Press Pass" to better acquaint them with the job of a reporter. (Courtesy of Barbara Perez)
OMAHA — Mele Mason recalls the days when the newsroom at Omaha TV station KMTV had journalists covering city hall, the county courthouse, the statehouse and the 'cop shop.'
Reporters attended multiple other governmental meetings and community gatherings, said Mason, who worked as a news videographer at the station in the 1980s.
But those days are gone, she said, with her old newsroom now about one-third the size.
So when Mason saw that an effort was underway to address shrinking newsrooms by enlisting local residents to document actions taken at government meetings, she signed up.
'It just has been frustrating to see the lack of information that's coming out. Coverage has gone way down. They don't have the usual beat reporters,' Mason said.
Today, she is among about 60 people in the Omaha area who have undergone training to become 'Documenters' at local government meetings, by taking notes and passing them onto editors for publication.
'I wanted to do something for the community,' Mason said. 'I think it's important that people have access to what happens at public meetings.'
That is one of the example of how news outlets increasingly look to ordinary folks to help them cover news events. This comes as there are fewer reporters and fewer applicants for reporting jobs, particularly in rural areas.
At Nebraska's community newspapers, would-be citizen reporters are taking an online training course called 'Earn Your Press Pass' to learn how to cover meetings. Other papers rely more on retirees, freelancers and 'sports moms' to help.
At the Sidney Sun-Telegraph, Barbara Perez took the Press Pass course after being promoted from advertising manager to editor-publisher. She didn't have any formal training as a reporter, so the Press Pass program — which she now requires of every new hire on staff — got her up to speed on issues like open meetings laws, public records and newspaper style.
'It's especially helpful when you're not hiring classically trained journalists,' said Perez from her office in western Nebraska. 'We can't just print anything, like the hearsay you see on social media.'
At the West Point News, editor Mike O'Brien lured a former news editor, Willis Mahannah, out of retirement to cover city council and county board meetings after losing a news reporter and being unable to fill the vacancy. To help cover the communities of Beemer and Bancroft, O'Brien relies on 'contacts' in those towns to provide tips and stories.
'We had three full-time reporters, but now we're down to me as the lone reporter,' O'Brien said. 'Papers are finding it harder and harder to have a full staff, so definitely we're relying more on contributions to the community.'
A recent study by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln found that there were 565 full-time reporters at print and broadcast outlets in the state.
While there was no past data to compare with the number of journalists now, Jessica Walsh, an assistant UNL professor of journalism, said there's no doubt the number has declined.
Her effort to map and track local reporting in Nebraska found at least nine counties with no local reporting outlet and 16 county seats that had no local news organization.
Walsh said that when she talked to local editors and station managers, she was struck by the strong sense of dedication to providing local news.
But they also told her how hard it has become to hire trained journalists, particularly in rural areas.
Part of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln report on journalists in the state included developing an interactive 'map' of where reporters are located.
Jessica Walsh, the UNL professor who headed up the study, said it provides an instant look at where 'news deserts' are located in the state, and where they aren't.
Fifty-five of the state's 93 counties in the state, the study found, have two or fewer full-time local journalists.
Walsh said the map shows the 'areas of concern' for news coverage, since studies have show that civic engagement declines in areas with no coverage.
She said she hopes her work makes Nebraskans 'more appreciative of their local journalist(s)' and inspires those who don't subscribe to the local newspaper, to do so.
The result is that the remaining journalists often cover multiple towns or beats. One recent ad for an editor/reporter in central Nebraska sought someone to cover eight communities.
'When I look at this report, I don't see that everything is horrible and there's no hope,' Walsh said. 'On the people level, there's a lot of dedicated local journalists, covering meetings and sports at night. They're really part of the community.'
She said she 'was encouraged by all the people still working in local journalism despite the challenges.'
'They're just really spread thin,' Walsh said.
One way local newspapers are addressing the shortage of reporters is by enlisting non-journalists to help out, said Dennis Derossett, the executive director of the Nebraska Press Association.
While many small-town papers traditionally had their 'chicken dinner' correspondents, DeRossett said that the goal of the Press Pass program is to train someone to cover 'true news events' and happenings in a community.
The Press Pass program was created by Joey and Lindsey Young, who saw how difficult it was for western Kansas newspapers – including the three they own – to recruit college journalism grads to rural areas.
Joey Young, who served as president of the Kansas Press Association, said his wife used her background as a teacher to develop the online program. It covers topics like interviewing skills, covering meetings, writing in newspaper style and journalism ethics.
Hundreds of prospective journalists across the country have taken the course, Young said, with several advancing from correspondents or part-time reporters to full-time jobs.
'Community newspapers have to adapt. The traditional pipeline of journalists fresh out of college working in rural community newsrooms isn't there anymore,' he said. 'I think newspapers have an opportunity to pivot to this model in training interested community members into becoming good reporters.'
Documenters is a national program now active in 27 U.S. cities that seeks to train people to attend under-reported meetings and take notes – notes that can later be turned into reports on what happened.
The Nebraska program, based in Omaha, is run through the Nebraska Journalism Trust, which also operates the online news outlet, the Flatwater Free Press.
About 60 Documenters have taken the training since the Nebraska program was revived last summer, said Leah Keinama, director of civic journalism for the Trust.
For more information about the Nebraska Documenters program, access the website, flatwaterfreepress.org/documenters/
Earn Your Press Pass information can be obtained on the website, www.earnyourpresspass.com
About 10 of those graduates consistently cover meetings in the Omaha area, from the Omaha School Board and Omaha City Council, to the Douglas County Board and Westside School Board.
The program is seeking to expand into Nebraska's Panhandle, to document meetings in a rural area over the next couple of months, Keinama said.
Documenters are paid $16 an hour, with a minimum of three hours paid to attend a meeting, take notes and turn them over to Keinama, who edits the notes into reports posted on the Flatwater website.
'What we want them to do is produce very objective notes of what happened,' she said. 'So that if someone wasn't at this meeting, they would understand what happened.'
Keinama said she feels that the Documenters notes offer more detail and are often more objective than the official meeting minutes generated and posted by a clerk of a government board.
The reports generated by the Documenters, besides providing accountability, can be used by full-time journalists to generate more detailed stories, she said.
The work also serves to give people a taste of what it's like to be a reporter, Keinama, perhaps leading someone to pursue a job as a journalist.
'It's really important for people to know that they have a place in citizen journalism and the civic process and that you don't need special credentials or special exposure,' she said.
Nebraska TV and radio stations have nothing akin to Documenters or Earn Your Press Pass to train regular citizens to become reporters, but they are relying more and more on video and photographs submitted by citizens, according to Jim Timm, president and executive director of the Nebraska Broadcasters Association.
The recent blizzard, Timm said, was a good example, with people sending in images of damage. Accidents and fires are other examples, he said.
Mason is well acquainted with the news landscape. Besides being a former video journalist at TV stations in Omaha and Seattle, she has her own freelance video outlet, Mason Video in Omaha.
Her firm is regularly hired by NBC, CNN, Fox and ESPN to provide video of Omaha — and Nebraska-area events. Recent live feeds included an interview with former astronaut Clayton Anderson and video from the tumultuous town hall held by U.S. Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb.
She said she was impressed by the quality of the Documenters training. Mason said she realizes that traditional news outlets don't have the staff anymore to cover all the government meetings, but the work is important.
'It's kind of scary that all these things could go on without anyone knowing what is going on in their government and their city,' she said.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX