Naples Monitor publisher Morris Craig was honored by the Texas Press Association in 2010.
Sierra Wells/TCCJ contributor
Despite facing unexpected obstacles over the past few years, local newspaper in Naples, Texas, has persevered and is continuing to print new editions after a nearly a year out of print.
“The Naples Monitor was established in 1886 and is the oldest continuing business in Naples, Texas,” Owner Morris Craig said.
Morris and Melba Craig took over ownership of The Monitor in 1972.
The Monitor covers all types of news from Bowie, Cass, Morris and Titus County. They print about 1,200 papers each week, as well as the occasional special edition.
“Special editions are always put together at Christmas, Easter and some local Naples Watermelon Festival specials,” Morris said. “We also did a sports special edition a couple of times when the Paul H. Pewitt Brahmas won the Class AA football State Championship and then another time when the Bulls made it to the State Finals,”
In 2010, the Texas Press Association presented Morris with their Golden 50 Award, honoring his long career in the news industry.
However, the Craigs’ service in the news industry was interrupted when Morris was diagnosed with stage four cancer. During this time, their last set of papers for a while printed on July 15, 2021.
“We were not sure about the future at that time, and we had The Monitor on the For Sale market,” Morris said.
Months passed without a new edition. This, however, was not the end of The Monitor. Over time, things started looking up for Melba and Morris.
After receiving good news from the oncologist, the Craigs decided to return to their newspaper and start printing again.
“We had a couple of bedrooms that were not being used since our children had gone out into the world on their own. We moved the needed equipment from the downtown area to our remodeled rooms at our home,” Morris said. “New equipment was purchased and a grandson was offering to help with the new typesetting equipment and new programs.”
Their first edition back from hiatus printed in July 2022, marking the official return of The Monitor.
During a time when many newspapers have had to permanently close their doors, Mary Rampellini was inspired to open her own newspaper, the Metroport Messenger, in Roanoke, Texas.
“I know it’s been very tough for those in print. Part of opening this was wanting to have something tangible in people’s hands, so their histories are recorded,” Rampellini said.
Publishing its first edition in July 2020, the Metroport Messenger covers school news, economic developments and public services in Roanoke, Westlake, Justin and Trophy Club.
“Serving others is one of the features I try to have every issue. And that’s someone who goes out and is working to better the lives of somebody else. They’re serving others, and that’s very important to me,” Rampellini said.
When the newspaper was first getting started, the COVID-19 pandemic posed various challenges with advertising.
“I really felt that it’s proper that I not go into a lot of stores face-to-face to business owners, so I made calls, phone calls, to try to sell ads, out of respect for others,” Rampellini said. “So that was probably limiting not meeting people face-to-face. We’ve been able to move beyond that.”
The Metroport Messenger prints five to six times a year, with approximately 10 editions already out. Rampellini hopes to grow the newspaper to print monthly in the future.
Rampellini previously opened a newspaper in Roanoke when she was 19 years old. However, after selling it, the newspaper eventually shut down.
“At that time there were about 5,000 addresses in the community; it’s the same communities that I’m doing, and now there’s over 15,000, so the growth has been incredible,” Rampellini said. “I think part of the challenge is uniting a larger amount of addresses and people with a community newspaper. I think it was easier when there were 5,000.”
Despite the popularity of printed news wavering, the Metroport Messenger has been consistently growing since opening.
“Our sales were the highest they’ve been this last edition, and I would say, generally speaking, we’ve climbed with each edition with sales. So, it’s been a very slow but steady growth,” Rampellini said.
Along with the print edition, community members can find links to the paper on the Metroport Messenger’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
“I certainly know its very tough to compete with the electronic world. We do put out a digital edition; we post that on social media,” Rampellini said. “I realize that has to be an aspect of business nowadays, but I was just really hoping that throwing it back, going a little old school might be a hit.”
“I think it’s very tough for print, but I’m hoping that there’s places for all of us that have newspapers to still have enough people supporting us in the print that we can carry on,” Rampellini said.
Sierra Wells is a senior journalism major at Tarleton State University. She is the Managing Editor of the Texan News Service and is a TCCJ contributor.
From left, Juwan Lee, Alesia Woolridge, Sonya Roberts-Woods and TCCJ Director Austin Lewter discuss diversity in the newsroom at last week's Newspaper Management Boot Camp in Austin
Christa Wilson/TCCJ Staff
The warmup of summer has just begun during the first sighting of June.
School is out, but not for everyone. One classroom at the University of Texas in Austin was filled and bustling with ideas last week.
June 1-3 marked the calendars of many newspaper professionals, a crash course, and an opportunity for networking and sharing ideas.
These were the dates that the Texas Center for Community Journalism kicked off its Newspaper Management Bootcamp.
There were more than 30 participants at this year’s session. They represented papers from all over, some within the state, and some as far as Minnesota.
Gathering from all age groups and diverse backgrounds, they traveled to Austin. One thing brought them all together, a deep love and commitment for community journalism.
So, who are these people that write about the events in your communities week in and week out?
What are some of the problems that they overcome in their day-to-day jobs?
If you’d like to know the answers to these questions, read on.
What are some of the challenges that Community Newspaper Professionals face?
One of the battles that newspaper employees face is the fight to keep the papers expanding and growing. As technology continues to advance, newspaper owners and managers must collaborate and find new ways to grow and adapt.
The importance and necessity of community journalism has not changed, but the way that we consume our information has.
“It’s not tough times for the newspapers, it’s different times. How can we navigate and embrace these different times?” Austin Lewter, Director of the Center said.
This can be accomplished by “embracing the mundane,” said Lewter.
Diversity and inclusion are some additional important issues. There was also a discussion regarding the need for proper representation in newsrooms as well as in the stories journalists cover.
Alesia Woolridge, Juwan Lee and Soya Roberts-Woods participated in a panel discussion to address how the industry can bring more diversity into newsrooms.
Some very powerful and thought-provoking points were brought up.
The consensus was to hire people from various ethnicities and backgrounds as starting point to solving this problem.
The topic of trauma and covering traumatic events was also addressed. Listening to several discussions, I learned about the struggle that reporters and journalists face when covering tragedies.
There was an immense level empathy, care, concern and attentiveness involving this topic.
Sometimes local reporters may personally know the people involved in these catastrophic events, which can make reporting on them immensely difficult.
There was the ever-present dilemma between discretion and concern for the families involved, versus the need to inform citizens and the public about the incidents.
I overheard several people talk about their struggle with such issues and how it affected them both mentally and emotionally.
These are just a few of the dilemmas that community journalism professionals face on a daily basis.
These issues affect everyone differently and some make it their mission to find solutions to the problems.
Who are they?
They are pioneers.
Woolridge has some major accomplishments under her belt.
These include, being the first African American managing editor of two separate newspapers and later becoming the first African American publisher of both of those papers.
They have amazing stories.
Hugh Lewis of the Jefferson Jimplecute has interviewed some of the world’s most prominent political figures throughout his career.
This list includes, President Bill Clinton, President Barak Obama and Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, to name a few.
They are writers, authors and businesspeople.
They need to be everything short of lawyers to keep up with liable and copyright laws.
“Every time you publish a story, you are taking a chance that you will get sued,” Dr. Chip Stewart said.
Stewart is an attorney, professor and former editor, who specializes in media law.
I learned this week that community journalists are the know-alls and be-alls of the business, yet still modest enough to scoop up trash next to the intern.
They are researchers and academics.
Jim Moser manages 32 community newspapers and is the equivalent of a data analyst.
He is working on an important research project with Kathleen McElroy, Iris Chyl, Christian McDonald and Christopher Assaf.
McElroy is the Director of the UT School of Journalism.
She also worked at the New York Times for 20 years.
Their project focuses on the vitality of community newspapers and planning for the future.
They are representatives.
They write stories on issues that are import to the community. They stand up for what they believe in and report stories that speak out on important issues like bullying, city council policies and racial inclusion, to name a few.
They are teachers and mentors.
Lewter inspires leadership by coordinating and bringing events like this one to life. He serves as the Director of the Center for Community Journalism.
He is also a newspaper owner and professor who helps mentor students by introducing them to community journalism and potential employers.
They are spectators.
They keep a watchful eye on the communities and its citizens. They are there to witness the outcome of your child’s sports games and their triumphs week in and week out.
These are just a few examples of what some of the journalists in your communities do, on top of keeping the public informed about what takes place every day.
This list could go on.
As I learned this week, the takeaway is that these individuals bring so much more to the tables of your communities than just local news.
They are invaluable members of your cities and towns. They are hidden leaders, whose job it is to be as unnoticeable as possible.
So, the next time you see your local paper’s journalist, reporter, editor or owner (yes, they do all the above), out in your community working hard to keep a watchful eye, maybe offer a quick thank you.
Just a little spec of advice from an intern who knew nothing about community newspapers six months ago.
I have since gained a serious dose of humility from shadowing these individuals and learning the secret identities of your local, friendly, neighborhood journalists.
Christa Wilson graduated from Tarleton State University in May with a bachelor’s degree in communications. She served as a student intern for the Texas Center for Community Journalism in her last semester as an undergrad.
From left, Tarleton students Nick Ratcliff, Krista Wilson, Kyley Wilhite, Taite Read, Sierra Wells, Lizzie Guajardo and TCCJ Director Austin Lewter field questions from a roundtable of newspaper managers Friday in Hamilton.
By Abigail Allen/TCCJ Contributor
The future of Texas journalism sat in front of representatives from North and West Texas community newspapers Friday in Hamilton to discuss how to engage young people.
Six Tarleton State University students accompanied Austin Lewter, the director of the Texas Center for Community Journalism as well as a Tarleton instructor and the Texan News Service coordinator, to share their thoughts on how to reach them and their peers at the second-annual combined convention of the North and East Texas Press Association and the West Texas Press Association.
“Wyndi [Veigel] called and said, ‘Hey, would you come talk for about 45 minutes about how to engage younger people?’ and I said, ‘It would be a lot easier if I just brought you some younger people to talk to,’” Lewter said.
Those younger people were TNS Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Guarjardo, Managing Editor Sierra Wells, Senior Producer Nicholas Ratcliff, Associate Producer Kyley Wilhite and graphic designer Taite Read as well as TCCJ’s student intern Christa Wilson.
The Texan News Service staff produces more than just a print product, Lewter said, also churning out television and video news, audio news and online news.
“These students who come out of our program come out with audio chops, with video chops, digital chops,” Lewter said. “And, by the time I’m done with them, hopefully they’ll know how to write a good story, too.”
The subjects the students tackled ranged from how they get their news and what their peers are interested in consuming, to what they’re looking for in employment and why they’re pursuing journalism.
All of them access their news online, whether through their social media feeds, Google News for the Android users or Apple News for the iPhone users, or through email.
“Social media brings it to me,” Guarjardo said.
Ratcliff is a self-proclaimed over-reader who accesses the media bias chart weekly and reads articles on the same topic from varied sources to combat issues of media bias.
He encouraged the editors, publishers and other journalists in the room to demonstrate to people his age that they are a trustworthy source of news.
Lewter also suggested that decisionmakers at local papers prioritize hiring “digital native positions”—for both editorial and advertising, when possible—to reach those online eyes.
When the discussion shifted to what publishers can do to entice young adults to work for them, the students had a few suggestions.
Those including promising a salary increase so the young journalists know they won’t be stuck at entry-level pay forever, providing a flexible work environment, and fostering an engaging and supportive newsroom.
Drawing on a practice hospitals in the Tyler and Longview area are using, Jim Bardwell, the Texas Press Association president and publisher of the Gladewater Mirror, Lindale News and Times, and the White Oak Independent, asked whether offering to help employees repay their student loans would attract them.
Wilson said that would help give her peace of mind as she leaves school and has to start making those payments.
Barbara Brannon, who is the editor and associate publisher of The Texas Spur, who also works with The Caprock Courier and the Floyd County Hesperian Beacon, brought up the “creative fringe benefit” of providing housing as a way to attract young reporters.
The students also talked about the responses they’ve had, either from peers or professors, to their work.
Wells talked about getting the most response on something that had a big impact on the culture of the school—a piece called “Purple Poo suspended for hazing” that discussed the spirit organization being suspended in March of 2021.
The responses can be harsh at times, Ratcliff said, with people sometimes asking how he and the TNS staff can be so critical of Tarleton.
“I love [the school] enough to do this,” he said.
Lange Svehlak, publisher of the Athens Daily Review, expressed his appreciation for the students and their willingness to be put on the spot for the roundtable.
“You give me hope, not just for the journalism industry, but also for your generation,” Svehlak said.
To see the work the Texan News Service staff creates, visit texannews.net.
Abigail Allen is the Managing Editor of the The Pilot Point Post-Signal.
The students studying journalism at Texas A&M University could have a valuable tool hampered by that school’s administration.
Taking away the print product produced by The Battalion’s staff by TAMU Pres. M. Katherine Banks, who at her own admission didn’t get why a paper newspaper matters, seems shortsighted.
“I’m not a professor of journalism; I don’t understand exactly why [print media] is important to the field,” The Battalion quoted Banks saying.
None of the journalism professors who work with the paper were asked for their input, according to the staff report.
Why ask an expert you trust to teach your students for their thoughts before making a sweeping announcement that you’re altering a paper that’s over 100 years old?
When I got to the University of North Texas, I had big plans for my future in journalism.
I was going to double-major in journalism and international studies and a minor in Spanish with the intention of becoming a foreign correspondent.
War had been in the news since Sept. 11, 2001. I graduated from high school in May 2007.
My history and language courses were filled with lessons about the difficulties people in third-world countries faced.
Plus, I wanted to do something that made a big impact on the world.
When I got to UNT, the way I wanted to immerse myself in the journalism world was to work for the North Texas Daily.
My professors helped us understand the value and impact our reporting could have when done well.
I got to practice my skills at news reporting, leadership, opinion writing, copy editing and various other aspects of working at a newspaper.
My work there helped me land an internship at the Dallas Morning News and led directly to the work I did with the Community Impact Newspaper after I graduated.
I’m grateful life took a turn from my aspirations of being a foreign correspondent to working for this local newspaper with a young family, but the work I do is still important. Without the practical experience I got at the Daily, I would have been lost in the transition to the work force.
The Daily was a laboratory with real accountability for any mistakes I or my fellow journalists made.
It was also a place where we as student journalists worked next to professional journalists, both still in the field and on the college’s staff.
Those professors would mercilessly tear apart our work with literal red marks coating the printed page, telling us how we could improve.
I still remember many of those comments as well as the tiny drawings in the white space that we left bare.
If such a major change is going to happen to a university newspaper, it should be done with the input and direction of the stakeholders who understand the stakes.
On Wednesday, Banks indicated that she might be changing her mind, in large part to the response to her decision.
“I care deeply about journalism at Texas A&M,” she said to The Battalion. “The reaction to this plan makes it clear that I should seek additional community feedback on the role of The Battalion and the rebuilt Department of Journalism, while also getting feedback about industry trends and future workforce needs.”
I commend her for taking the feedback, and criticism, she received and being willing to re-evaluate her decision. I hope that keeps the paper printing for years to come.
Abigail Allen is the Managing Editor editor of the Pilot Point Post-Signal. She can be reached at [email protected].
A research team at Texas Wesleyan University (TWU) is seeking input from community newspapers for a research project.
“We are working on a paper about archiving community newspapers in Texas,” Dr. Kay Colley said. “We are collecting data about how publishers are archiving at community newspapers. Based on the results, we will seek to build appropriate training to help make saving the ‘first draft of history’ easier.“
According to Colley, there is a significant lack of news archiving at community news organizations across the nation.
“When they hear the word ‘archiving’ most people automatically think of preserving the hard copy printed newspapers,” Colley said. “There is more to it than that. There is a growing need for proper archiving of our digital content and data as well. This project is geared to train community publishers how to archive better while on a budget.”
Colley is a professor of journalism at TWU where she has partnered with Librarian and Archivist Nancy Edge.
The pair have received a nod from the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Journalism to pursue research in newspaper archiving with the possibility of presenting a paper on the topic at their annual conference in Manhattan, Kansas later this year.
“We want to start with research specific to Texas newspapers and later expand to a nationwide scope,” Colley said.
As such, Colley and Edge are seeking input for Texas editors and publishers.
“If you are an editor or publisher of a community newspaper in Texas, please take my very brief survey,” Colley said. “The information we gather there will help us build case studies for the project.”
The survey is 10 short questions and can be found at:
“We are on a bit of a tight deadline though,” Colley said. “We need to receive all responses by Friday, March 4. Anyone willing to participate will be greatly appreciated.”
The proposed paper will be titled “Keeping Community News Alive: How to Create and Maintain an Archive.”
The nod from the Boyd Center means the TWU has been invited to submit the paper for approval and presentation at their next conference.
Once completed and, if approved, Colley with Edge will present their findings at Kansas State University.
Alesia Woolridge continues to make history as one of the few African American newspaper publishers in Texas.
She first made history in 2014 when she became the first African American Managing Editor of The Eagle Lake Headlight.
Eagle Lake is located in Colorado County, about an hour west of Houston.
The newspaper dates back to the 1890s.
Woolridge served as Managing Editor there until February 2016, when she accepted the same position at The Colorado County Citizen in Columbus.
She was the first African American Managing Editor there as well.
The Colorado County Citizen started publishing in 1857.
Woolridge purchased The Eagle Lake Headlight in August 2017 and became the first African American newspaper publisher in Colorado County.
That purchase also made her one of only a handful of African American newspaper publishers in the state who is not producing niche content geared toward the African American community.
In June 2020, Woolridge made history again when she returned to The Colorado County Citizen to serve as publisher.
She was the first African American to lead the county’s newspaper in its 163-year history.
“I’m the first, but I won’t be the last,” Woolridge said. “I will continue to do my best to make The Citizen the most diverse, inclusive news sources in this county, region and state.”
Woolridge is an award-winning writer.
She has won several journalism awards from the Texas Press Association, among other organizations.
She continues to serve her community through her leadership at The Citizen.
Woolridge also serves as a Fine Arts volunteer and mentor for cadets at the Rice Campus of Texas Challenge Academy.
She also volunteers with a journalism class at Rice High School. There, she mentors students on the importance of effective communication skills, telling stories with photography and finding their voice through writing.
Woolridge publishes weekly columns written by TCA cadets in The Citizen.
Her work with TCA helping students once at risk of dropping out of school discover a love for reading and writing has earned her local and statewide recognition.
According to Woolridge, the TCA campus unique in its relationship with their local newspaper.
STEPHENVILLE, Texas — The Texas Center for Community Journalism (TCCJ), based at Tarleton State University, is again offering face-to-face sessions with community journalists throughout the state.
The Nov. 18 “Eye on Design” workshop maxed out within 24 hours, a TCCJ record, according to Director Austin Lewter.
“To me, it’s just proof positive that we are doing work that is needed,” said Lewter, a communication studies Instructor. “Because of the pandemic, we placed workshops on hold and worked through virtual means. I think people are excited about being back in person.”
Newspaper veterans Broc Sears, Robert Bohler and Lewter will lead the design workshop in the Texan News Service newsroom on the Stephenville campus. The workshop encompasses an array of digital and print concepts geared to give attendees tools to take back to their newsrooms and use immediately.
Lewter and Bohler have taken writing workshops to community newsrooms over the last couple of months. In Snyder they worked with writers from three Texas papers. Future workshops will be in Ozona and Atlanta, Texas.
Recently, Lewter spoke with students at the Texas A&M College of Law on “The Sustainability of Local News.”
“It was a wonderful time,” he said. “The media law students were genuinely interested in the future of local news. It was inspiring.”
TCCJ’s spring workshops will include a Newspaper Management Bootcamp and a Community News Symposium. Details will be posted on the TCCJ Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/communityjournalism.
The Texas Center for Community Journalism moved to Tarleton in 2020 and partners with the nonprofit Texas Newspaper Foundation to invest in sustainable community journalism. Founded in 2009 at TCU, it provides training and professional development, industry networking and support for almost 400 small-town news outlets.
A founding member of The Texas A&M University System, Tarleton transforms generations by inspiring discovery, leadership and inclusion through teaching and research. Degree programs for more than 14,000 students in Stephenville, Fort Worth, Waco, Midlothian, at RELLIS Academic Alliance in Bryan, and online emphasize real-world learning that addresses regional needs while sustaining the values of excellence, integrity and respect.
TCCJ founder Tommy Thomason was inducted into the Texas Newspaper Hall of Fame in June 2021 at the Texas Press Association 141st annual convention in Denton, Texas.
Thomason retired in 2019 after teaching and mentoring journalism students for 35 years at the Texas Christian University Department of Journalism/Bob Schieffer College of Communication and the Texas Center for Community Journalism. While at the Schieffer College, Thomason taught many courses in communication, writing, history of mass media, reporting and media ethics.
Before his career at TCU, Thomason was a sportswriter with the Little Rock bureau of the Associated Press and director of sports information at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark.
He served Dallas Baptist University as director of public relations and was a columnist, copy editor and contributing editor with magazines in the DFW metroplex.
Thomason graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ouachita Baptist in 1970. He received a master’s degree and a doctorate in journalism from Texas A&M University-Commerce in 1972 and 1984, respectively. He also attended the University of Virginia and the Dallas Theological Seminary for additional graduate work.
Not only did he teach, he also applied and received $717,847 in grants over the years to support research, training and seminars. Of that amount, $509,247 was from the Texas Newspaper Foundation to conduct seminars for working journalists. Texas publishers, editors and reporters convened on the TCU campus to tackle issues common in community newspapers — refining reporting skills, utilizing the web, mobile journalism and newspaper design.
“Without question, forming the Texas Center for Community Journalism was the single best decision our Foundation has ever made. We had an idea; Tommy Thomason took it and ran with it,” said Larry Jackson, retired publisher of The Fayette County Record and Texas Newspaper Foundation board member.
Thomason has been a guest speaker at national and regional newspaper association workshops, a moderator, judge, panelist, advisor and consultant. He is the recipient of the National Teaching Award from the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, is listed in Who’s Who in the South and Southwest, Dictionary of International Biography, Who’s Who in American Education, Who’s Who in the World, Men of Achievement, Who’s Who in the Media and Communications, Who’s Who in Entertainment and Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. He has also been a board member and held offices in many professional organizations such as International Institute of Literacy Learning, National Network for Education Improvement Initiatives and Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas.
Thomason is an author of nine books about journalism, one on music and a children’s book. He also has authored technical reports and academic papers over his career.
Thomason was inducted into the Hall of Fame by Austin Lewter, a veteran newspaperman who now serves as the director of the Center.
There is much research looking at the negative aspects of media. There are studies addressing social concerns about the impact of media on how people define themselves, success, society, government and many other areas.
There has long been concern that a steady diet of negative news has contributed towards public disillusionment. Seeing images on the news night after night could lend itself to a learned world view far more negative than the world is in reality.
If this is true and negative media creates feelings of disillusionment and despair, then it would make sense that positive media should do the opposite-this was worth a try. Through research considering Interactive Documentary, Constructive/Solutions Journalism and Social Media, this paper looks at this idea.
Introduction
As media changes in the digital age, it is also important to look at story structure and how that is changing the ways in which stories are told. The shift in audience metrics from “exposure” to “engagement” offers important opportunities for makers to think about different ways of communicating a message. Different communication paths containing the message, or story, can be structured in what could be describe as “micro-narratives”—small narrative units that, like Legos, can be disaggregated and reconfigured in various ways (Uricchio,2015). This is where interactive documentary/storytelling come into play.
“If the growth of interactive documentary does anything, I think it will open our eyes to the hundreds of possibilities of telling stories in original ways, and re-defining what a story is, what an audience is, and what a maker is.” Gerry Flahive, National Film Board of Canada.
There are two journalism models considered for this research. Solutions journalism is a practice that looks at reporting on how people are doing better and adaptive responses that people can learn from. Constructive journalism is described by Seán Dagan Wood as “a publication that shines a light on innovation, kindness, co-operation and the ways people are working to create solutions to the problems facing society.” Both of these styles use positivity to increase reader engagement.
This research examines the idea that creating positive solutions-based digital stories can enhance the narrative for social awareness. This research was done using an interactive web-based project entitled Each Others Shoulders. These techniques can be used in many aspects of journalism and storytelling. Using digital and social media to enhance stories is becoming the norm. Organizations such as community journalism, collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, street journalism and social change organizations can all benefit from this research.
The Project
The Each Others Shoulders interactive is a site about women. Women who have made the journey a little bit easier for others. It looks at the positive impact women have had on the world through the eyes of other women. Users are asked to “share a story” of a woman who made a difference in their lives. This can be someone they personally know or a historical or public figure who helped them be a better woman in some way.
Each Others Shoulders was initially set up on WordPress, a blog posting website This project began a few months prior to the first Women’s March on Washington, January 21, 2017. Although there was much negativity among women concerning the election of Donald Trump, this site dedicated to keeping the conversation positive.
As part of the project, open sourced, or approved existing video was re-edited to add to both the Inspirational Women and History sections of the project.
Figure 1: Each Others Shoulders website.
Methodology
A project was created to allow participants to share stories that would make a positive impact on a social cause. Social awareness is defined by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning as, “the ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds and cultures.” Although social awareness was the main goal of this experiment, social change was looked at as a mark of success. Social Change goes further in transforming a culture along with behaviors and social structure(Vago, 2004).
To best understand how to use digital media for social awareness the Ripple Strategies were used as a measurement. Ripple Strategies is a full-service communications agency that designs and implements media campaigns to accelerate positive social change (Ripple, 2018).
Ripple gives 3 suggestions to begin creating media for social change:
Establish Authority:
developing credible content- tell a good, true story
fostering credible relationships- credible, relevant experts and trusted
preparing credible responses- be proactive and to keep control of your messaging
Ignite Conversations and Change:
telling memorable stories
AIDA conversion funnel, which shows the progression a person makes from initially hearing about an issue to taking-action. The conversion funnel involves four sequential steps: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action (AIDA).
Measuring Impact
Online Analytics
Likes, Follows
Three areas of consideration were used for this project:
Interactive documentary
An interactive documentary, or multimedia documentary is a is considered non-fictional storytelling that not only uses video, audio, photographic, but also applies full complement of multimedia tools. These tools allow the user(watcher, listener, doer) to control or modify the journey as the go (Kim, 2014). This can happen in many ways; comment, like, share, add are all available in interactive documentary.
Using:
Unique and original footage
Aggregated footage from the Women’s March on Washington and organizations
Existing open-sourced media
Participatory media
For a project to be considered an Interactive Documentary for Social Change it must create social awareness, civic engagement and ultimately social change.
Constructive/Solutions Journalism
Solutions journalism is an approach to news reporting that focuses on the responses to social issues as well as the problems themselves. Solutions stories, anchored in credible evidence, explain how and why responses are working, or not working. Constructive journalism works alongside Solutions Journalism using positive, solutions-focused storytelling for community engagement. These types of journalism were created in response to the increase in negative, tabloidism and fake news in the new media.
Social Awareness through Social Media
Social awareness, can be defined as consciousness shared by different individuals within a society. We will look at using social media to create awareness of the problems within a society or a community.
Objectives
The objectives are to use the tools of technology to; film and edit short, meaningful segments and aggregate already existing media, to create the story. The story will shed positive light on the social cause. This media will be shared through a social media campaign and interaction through blogging, to create an audience and effect social awareness.
With so much emphasis on the negativity in media, specifically when attached to social causes (Black Lives Matter, Trump Election) this paper will examine if positive interactive media alone can make a difference in creating social awareness.
This research considers the impact that positive interactive media combined with interactive documentary can create an awareness in a social justice situation. The objectives were to use the tools of technology to; film and edit short, meaningful segments and aggregate already existing media, to create the story. The story shed positive light on the social cause. This media was shared through a social media campaign and interaction through blogging, to create an audience and effect social awareness.
Analytics were used to measure citizen engagement in the cause and interaction data will be collected to determine social awareness and change.
This research worked around the experiment, Each Others Shoulders, an online interactive website which looked at the positive impact women have had on the world and share that as a way of advancing the cause.
Literature Review
“Interactive media/documentary/storytelling combined with the use of interactive and social media tools create the stage, audience and actors that are needed to bring about social awareness, engagement and change. In theory, if this is done in a positive way it will create an audience and interaction that is positive as well” (Cardillo, 2018). Interactive media/documentary is considered non-fictional storytelling that not only uses video, audio, photographic, but also applies full complement of multimedia tools. These tools allow the user (watcher, listener, doer) to control or modify the journey as the go (Kim, 2014).
This project combined Interactive documentary with Solutions/Constructive Journalism and Social Media to share a story and find results.
The Interactive Documentary:
Interactive and Cross-media innovations have created a new model of communication that can go in many directions, where audiences can both consume and produce in the social activist setting (Whiteman, 2003). By 2005, more possibilities grew for online participation. The introduction of peer-to-peer broadcasting, largely influenced by YouTube created ever-expanding possibilities for social networking and change. Sites like Facebook continue to add to social networking possibilities. Web 2.0 has created a truly unique opportunity to explore International communities (Miller, 2009).
New interactive tools allow the viewer to take on a collaborative role as creator. When the viewer is encouraged to add their voice to a project, it enhances the community and welcomes others to do the same. This type of interactivity allows the user to become intimately involved with the project and the social cause.
Documentary filmmakers have been producing commentaries concerning the world’s marginalized people and places in an effort to shed light on the problems and help create social movements to effect change for the future (Moyano, 2011). New technologies are now in place that can elevate this light to a much greater audience, through the use of interactive storytelling and multi-media platforms.
Constructive/Solutiouns Journalism:
Journalism today is so focused on highlighting problems; it often misses opportunities to tell the many stories about how society is responding effectively to those problems. Looking at the positive, solution-based side of the story can bring about forward moving conversation and involvement.
Solutions Journalism:
“Journalism’s historical approach is to spotlight social problems in order to spur reform, exposing wrongdoing or generating awareness — or outrage — about injustice, neglect or hidden threats. This “watchdog” role is critical to the vitality of democratic society. But we believe it’s also insufficient, because it fails to capture and circulate some of the most essential information that society needs to understand and solve its problems” (Reeves, 2017,1).
Constructive Journalism is a method of journalism that includes rigorous, compelling reporting that includes positive and solution-focused elements in order to empower audiences and present a fuller picture of truth, while upholding journalism’s core functions and ethics. Constructive Journalism was founded in 2014 by Sean Wood and Danielle Batista in London(Constructive Journalism Project, n.d.).
These types of journalism/storytelling can, not only, engage and empower people as consumers of media but, more importantly, as actors in the solutions.
The University of Pennsylvania did a study where they looked at several hundred New York Times articles to determine the type of news media consumers/users choose to share. The results were overwhelming in favor of positive news. The Times’ John Tierney, describing the research. “The more positive an article, the more likely it was to be shared” (Tierney, 2013).
Social Media for Social Awareness:
According to Dovey (2014), the content of the blog world, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Flickr are all real, journalistic, and expressive and this is what interactive storytelling encompasses. These social media outlets are living documentaries for those who create them. New tools for collaboration and sharing in social media platforms build a participatory culture that creates the formation of groups with common views and goals (Jenkins 2006). (Social) media plays an important rold in molding society and spreading awareness in important events. It is the best tool for spearding social awareness(Dwivedi & Pandey, 2013).
Analysis
The project, Each Others Shoulders is an interactive site about women. The format was set up in the style of Interactive Documentary and used Solutions/Constructive Journalism techniques as a basis. Interactive Documentary uses short form(micro-documentary) clips to engage users to become involved with the cause. Each Others Shoulders invited users to upload video, still photos and written stories to the site in order to engage the audience. These additions also added to the story to make Each Others Shoulders a living document. Constructive/Solutions Journalsim was used by applying positive techniques to the process and production in an effort to create productive and engaging coverage.
Users are asked to “share a story” of a woman who made a positive difference in their lives. This can be someone they personally know or a historical or public figure who helped them be a better woman in some way.
The submission page states:
This is where Each Others Shoulders becomes an interactive, participatory, living documentary.
Please share a story about a woman who has influenced, inspired or changed you in some way. This woman can be someone you personally know who is not “famous”(or known to the rest of us-yet), or she can be an historical or public woman who inspires you.
Please share a story, a photo, a video or audio recording…anything that allows us to know this woman better. The more women we learn about the better we become. We stand on each others shoulders.
In order to create a simple way to collect the Submit a Story information, Wix.com was used to create a small website with the Grabimo application for story collection. “Grabimo is an application that allows you to collect, manage, and publish stories in multimedia format: Video, Audio, Photo, and Text” (Grabimo, 2018).
Figure 2: Submission Page
When considering the Ripple Strategies and social media for social awareness, there were three areas in the project where social media made a difference in awareness.
Establishing authority: the site, along with the Facebook page, was able to create credible content while fostering credible relationships. Great care was taken in preparing credible responses to comments and posts at all times. As this project started with the beginning of plans for the Women’s March and was quickly picked up and carried by those organizers, on their social media, there was immediate establishing of authority.
Figure 3: Response Page of Site
Igniting conversations: This was challenging at first. Getting people involved to submit stories and comments was the most difficult part. Likes, follows and shares were the most common with comments building as the March drew near. In the few weeks prior to the march, as women were preparing for their journey, the story and photo submissions began to upload. Also, during and soon after the march the site continued to get engagement. One issue that began to occur was that the “positive” nature of the conversation began to wane as the inauguration of Donald Trump coincided with the Women’s March. As we continued to only put out positive media the comments began to become more negative.
Measuring impact: This was done through analytics. An early post about the Women’s March on Washington entitled, “Why I Will March: A Bi-Partisan Approach received over 1500 hits and 130 shares in less than two weeks, using only Facebook as a channel. This remained consistent from late November until the end of January (the march was on January 21, 2017). The Women’s March organizers continued to share our posts and women continued to share their stories and photos. We received many photos and news stories on how women were preparing for the march. The march dominated the site. We continued to upload positive stories about women who were making a difference in the world but the uploads continued to center around the march, with a few exceptions of women who uploaded stories of female heroes in their lives.
Figure 4: Post on Facebook
This project continued for a few months after the Women’s March on Washington and proceeded to create numbers in the analytics with user interested in the cause of women’s rights. In a matter of approximately four months’ time the site drew in 3634 views with 2743 visitors.
Figure 5: Analytics on WordPress
Facebook gave this project the biggest boost which funneled traffic to the Each Others Shoulders site.
Figure 6: Analytics on Facebook
On Twitter we used the hashtag: #eachothersshoulders. Twitter worked well for story aggregation in that we could see who was using the hashtag and contact that user to get permission for their story and ask if they wanted to share.
A digital mini-documentary narrative video was made and sent out through social media soon after the march in order to keep the conversation going. This surprisingly received little to know coverage. Once the march was over, although we continued to reach out on social media the interest waned. One hypothesis is that it was over three minutes and that is too long for social media users to decide to click on and stay. Also, the site had no immediate or long-term gratification.
Figure 8: Mini-documentary
Is Social Awareness enough? Or does there need to be Social Change for success?
Results
Deciding to delineate this paper as Positive Solutions- Digital Media Storytelling for Social Awareness rather than committing to Social Change opened up many questions for this researcher. The thought process was to consider Positive Solutions Digital Media Storytelling in a way that it would begin a conversation that would help causes to make users more socially aware. The problem lies in how this plays out in social media and what success looks like.
Considering the idea that visuals help us to learn and act, along with constructive/solutions journalism and interactive documentary, this paper looked at how we can create a social change environment by creating a positive campaign and asking for interaction.
For the most part the campaign stayed positive, with the only negativity coming from user comments about the election of Donald Trump. The use of social media as a tool for social good has its strengths and challenges. The strengths are that if the message is both timely, short and conveniently placed it will get large numbers. But once the timeliness wares off there is little to no interaction, as there needs to be some kind of immediate gratification. The creator would need to continually work to keep the campaign alive in order to have consistent interaction.
Also, there is strong evidence that users prefer to like and share more than comment. And asking them to engage by adding content is difficult to achieve. More research is needed in the area of how to keep consistent engagement for causes. Although this site never asked for money, only time and effort, it was still difficult to get users to engage at that level. If a set of procedures could be developed that would help to prolong engagement, this would benefit all social causes in the future.
When creating an Interactive Documentary for Social Change project there are three things that need to occur:
First the project must create social awareness, which this project did.
Next the project must create civic engagement, which this project also did, to some extent.
And the last piece to the puzzle is that the project needs to create social change.
Did change occur?
This is the piece of the puzzle that will be looked at in future work.
Does the cause campaign need to have a “finish” in order to be successful?
Is the project a success because it made people stop and get involved or did there need to be a greater outcome in order for success to be apparent?
What does change look like?
Conclusion
There is much research looking at the negative aspects of media. This paper looked at what might happen using Interactive Documentary, Constructive/Solutions Journalism and Social media to tell a positive story. Each Others Shoulders was able to create social engagement for a short time.
These techniques can be used in many aspects of journalism and storytelling. Using digital and social media to enhance stories is becoming the norm. Organizations such as community journalism, collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, street journalism and social change organizations can all benefit from this research.
Now more research needs to be done to find out how to keep the audience and create social change. There are so many amazing causes in this world that people can become involved with, we just have to find ways, other than like, share and comment to get people to act.
References
Cardillo, S. (2015). Interactive documentaries: Emerging technologies for social change (Order No. 3682111). ProQuest Central Essentials; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global: The Humanities and Social Sciences Collection. (1656502076).
Cardillo, S. (2017). Media Technology and Justice: Teaching Interactive Storytelling for the Greater Good. Contemporary Issues Summit, Harvard, Boston, USA, March 2017, Vol 13, No. 1, ISSN: 2330-1236
Miller, E. (2009). Building participation in the outreach for the documentary The Water Front. Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes, 43(1), 59-86.
Moyano, M. (2011). Documentaries for social change: an examination of Blooming Hope. St. Thomas University. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 1(1), 60.
Norris, P. (2000) “A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Post-Industrial Societies.” NY: Cambridge University Press
Whiteman, D. (2003). Reel impact: how nonprofits harness the power of documentary film
Uricchio, W.(2015) Mapping The Intersection Of Two Cultures: Interactive Documentary And Digital Journalism
Vago, S. (2004). Social change (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
About the Author
Dr. Susan Cardillo, Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Journalism at the University of Hartford focuses her tenure work on Interactive/Micro Documentary for Social Awareness and Change. She is currently in post-production with Campus ReBoot, a crowd-sourced, interactive and collaborative documentary about College during Covid19. She can be reached at [email protected]
