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The article looks at the increasing importance of local weekly newspapers in community journalism. Topics mentioned include experiences of Rebeca Rivas, a reporter for the newspaper "The St. Louis American" while covering protests following the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, local newspapers as an important source of news as regional papers reduced coverage of outlying communities, and debates on expanding the presence of community newspapers online.

The article presents brief profiles of several journalists chosen by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism as members of the 76th class of Nieman Fellows at Harvard University. "The Sun News" metro columnist and senior writer Issac Bailey is the 2014 Donald W. Reynolds Nieman Fellow in Community Journalism. Other fellows include network television and video producer Susie Banikarim and "Esquire" magazine articles editor Tyler Cabot.

The article examines citizen journalism and its use by traditional mass media and online journalism outlets. The possibility of harnessing the resources of many individuals to produce journalism to supplement the reporting of traditional journalists moved from theory to practice in the 2000s. The start-up period saw many reverses, as the first attempts to make citizen journalism an ongoing enterprise met unanticipated problems with organizing and managing large numbers of volunteer participants. Two examples are provided of citizen journalism which surmounted those difficulties, a regular feature called "Get Published," which provides local news to the "Cincinnati Enquirer" newspaper, and the "Off the Bus" feature of the Web site The Huffington Post, which offered coverage of the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

The article focuses on iReport, CNN's platform for citizen journalism. According to the author, the vetting process is the core of iReport with about 8 percent of contributions being selected for vetting. The author adds that the vetting process also alerts television (TV) and digital producers that there will likely be an element ready to be featured later in the day.

The author offers opinions on television broadcasting of news and broadcast journalism. Technological innovations in video recording and distribution are seen as having made what was once a field limited to large mass media outlets with significant financial resources an open area of competition where citizen journalists and journalism can flourish. This is seen as especially important in foreign news, where costs have caused mass media to reduce their coverage.

The article examines the effects on journalists, both broadcast and print, of writing blogs for their organizations' Web sites. A survey of over 200 such journalists was conducted. The study found that most journalists reported significant changes in how they conducted reporting and presented their work. A majority said that blogs altered their relationship with their audiences to an interactive one. The primary effect of this shift was that the journalists noted they were generating far more story ideas from comments and suggestions made by blog readers than from official sources of information in business and government.

The article focuses on Street Team '08, a team of volunteer young adults who cover the U.S. presidential election for MTV News, the news division of the cable television network MTV. These so-called "citizen journalists" present video and audio reports on the election campaign to be broadcast on MTV, each one covering a separate U.S. state and Washington, D.C. Their training is detailed, as are the technological hardware and computer software with which they produce and distribute their reporting.

The article presents information about the "Team Watchdog" of "The News-Press." After the newspaper utilized crowdsourscing to enhance reporting, Team Watchdog was formed to improve investigative reporting and further involve the community. The team focused on various topics including a database of day-care inspection reports, the use of taxes for services and time-out rooms utilized to discipline students with disabilities. It is mentioned that editors and reporters got to work well with members of Team Watchdog. Online research is also done by the team.

The article presents a discussion of new partners for investigative reporters. It is mentioned that people who live in the community could help reporters exceed their limitations when it comes to inside information and insight. Some strategies for investigative reporters are beat blogging, citizen journalism and partnering with local television or radio station. Beat blogging is a concept created by Jay Rosen wherein reporters are linked with a social network of experts. Under citizen journalism, technological know-how is provided by citizens.

The article focuses on hyperlocal news Web sites created by citizens to provide information to communities and social networks whose size prevents them from being covered by traditional mass news media. The Web sites serve communities ranging in size from Dutton, Montana, population 375, to teenagers living in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. The sites examined were founded in part thanks to grants from the Knight Foundation and the University of Maryland journalism school. The organizers of the sites are surveyed, and almost all are highly positive about the experience and optimistic about the future success of the Web sites. Costs of the projects are very low, so the organizers do not rate them though conventional business metrics. Most do wish to generate enough revenue to be able to pay their contributing reporters.

The article reports on the need for Facebook to hire editors to manage its Trending section and ensure the truthfulness of the news published on the social network site. Topics discussed include the impact of the publication of false news stories on journalism credibility and the factors that affect the health of the information ecosystem. These factors include the rising personalized social feeds and the decline of the business models of the mass media organizations.

The article discusses the disconnect between the U.S. citizens and the government as observed by the author after covering the failed democracies in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Topics discussed include the Americans' view of democracy, its link with capitalism and money and the author's experience of covering the war in Iraq.

The author discusses the importance of watchdog journalism in democracy. She cites the "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel" 10-member watchdog team and the newspaper's dedication of its resources to in-depth investigations on various topics. She explains the significance of crime data including driving policing strategies and affecting the public's perception and actual of the safety of their neighborhoods.

The author discusses the commitment to watchdog journalism by news outlets. An overview of the investigative projects at "The Philadelphia Inquirer" about the May 13, 1985 debacle involving a self-proclaimed radical group is provided. He claims that the commitment to watchdog journalism that provides readers with answers to questions should be the top priority in modern newsrooms.

The author considers the impact small newsrooms on journalism. She describes transforming her kitchen into a one-person newsroom and her mission as founder of Homicide Watch D.C. to mark every murder death, remember every victim and follow every case. Her project won the Knight Award for Public Service Journalism at the Online News Association conference in San Francisco, California.

The author offers opinions on online journalism. He cites his experience as a college journalism teacher as an example of how consumers, and young people in general, actively dislike the traditional formats of newspapers and television broadcasting of news, a view he shares. The reduced size and breadth of news coverage in both of those mediums dictated by their financial problems is acknowledged, as is the difficulty of replacing them as sources of news. The author believes the passion and emotional commitment that drives online and citizen journalism will eventually create those replacements.

A reprint of the article "Are Reporters Doomed" published in the November 12, 2007 issue of "The Guardian" is presented. It focuses on citizen journalism and the adoption of new media in journalism. It is mentioned that media companies are likely to have fewer employees in the future whose responsibility will be to process reports from freelancers, bloggers and citizen journalists. It also discussed the use of the Internet and the role of reporters.

The article presents a first person account of the workings of Backfence Inc., a series of hyperlocal news Web sites which serve the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. The sites depend on user-generated content and use of local concerns that would never be covered by a major metropolitan newspaper and are covered by community newspapers only on a sporadic basis. The sites do not practice traditional journalism, and their standards for publication concerning such matters as sourcing and objectivity are far less rigid. The sites are not supposed to offer competition to larger news organizations. They are supplements which are too narrowly focused to exist on anything but a small scale. Journalists should consider these sites resources to use rather than as an economic foe.

A list is presented of recommendations for persons wishing to start a hyperlocal news Web site for their social network or community. The first priority is realizing that dealing with citizen journalists requires a great deal of personal interaction and a constant need to be aware of the contributors' motivations. Creating a high public profile in the community is essential for the Web site's organizers. Organizers should be aware that as in all volunteer-based activities, growth will be sporadic, there will be many more people peripherally involved than there are regular contributors, and that success cannot be measured by a conventional business model.

The article examines newspaper coverage of environmental issues and how they are effected by the introduction of multimedia operations through newspaper Web sites and the emphasis on "hyperlocal" news. Due to their very nature, environmental issues can be presented most effectively in a local context, more so perhaps than any other social or economic news. Newspaper Web site treatments of environmental stories, including a map of pollution sites created by the Raleigh, North Carolina "News & Observer" and a series of first-person videos of homeowners with environmentally-related problems created by the "Houston Chronicle" of Houston, Texas, are used as examples of how the Web site is an invaluable resource. The Web site of the Society of Environmental Journalists is recommended as a resource for all journalists.

The article focuses on the need for journalists to be more aware of the role of community colleges in higher education. Topics mentioned include the link between ethnicity and how a journalist covers and interprets community stories, investigations conducted on alleged financial mismanagement and admissions procedures at Florida A&M University, and the role of education and learning experiences in shaping a person's life.

The author points out that traditional media in South Korea should find ways to convince people that watchdog reporting is worth watching. She describes the investigation she and her colleagues at Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) did to produce a story about violence in the conscripted police. An overview of news censorship in South Korea under the military-influenced governments of the 1970s and 1980s is provided.