Today the Journalism class I am in had a meeting with the editor of the community papers that are distributed around Winnipeg.
Each student got to choose what paper they want to write for (my friends Kirah and Cindy are writing for the Times with me - we all grew up/live in the North End of town and that is where that paper is distributed). I am pretty excited, actually. We have to contribute three stories by the end of the semester.
I am excited for this assignment because it got me thinking about community papers, and why they exist. The most obvious reason is that they are a way to keep people informed about what’s happening specifically in their neck of the woods, and to me it’s comforting to know that people would actually care to know about that.
It’s comforting because that means people want to stay informed about their surroundings, so in the bigger picture they must care about the state of affairs around the place that they live. You might be saying something like “well duh, Kristy. Obviously people care about stuff like that what’s the big deal,” (or maybe no one is saying that - it’s never safe to assume anything in journalism) but if someone did say that I would say back “the big deal is that people want to know what’s going on and if they know what’s going on they can change some stuff.”
Or they can get involved in something that is already working towards seeing change in the community, which is why I am happy to be writing for the North End paper. I want to contribute interesting stories about cool and positive things that are happenong in the North End of town - like youth centers that I know of operating around there and other initiatives that are taking place to see the neighbourhood improve and become safe and enjoyable for the whole community.
I see a lot of terrible stuff about the North End in the paper all the time so it’s cool to have the chance to seek out something positive and write about it in a space where people might actually read it and care.
I am excited for this assignment because it got me thinking about community papers, and why they exist. The most obvious reason is that they are a way to keep people informed about what’s happening specifically in their neck of the woods, and to me it’s comforting to know that people would actually care to know about that.
It’s comforting because that means people want to stay informed about their surroundings, so in the bigger picture they must care about the state of affairs around the place that they live. You might be saying something like “well duh, Kristy. Obviously people care about stuff like that what’s the big deal,” (or maybe no one is saying that - it’s never safe to assume anything in journalism) but if someone did say that I would say back “the big deal is that people want to know what’s going on and if they know what’s going on they can change some stuff.”
Or they can get involved in something that is already working towards seeing change in the community, which is why I am happy to be writing for the North End paper. I want to contribute interesting stories about cool and positive things that are happenong in the North End of town - like youth centers that I know of operating around there and other initiatives that are taking place to see the neighbourhood improve and become safe and enjoyable for the whole community.
I see a lot of terrible stuff about the North End in the paper all the time so it’s cool to have the chance to seek out something positive and write about it in a space where people might actually read it and care.
