Resources for citizen journalism

Citizen journalism is in a unique league of its own. As a movement that really started out with people sharing what was going on in front of them—from camera phone videos of students being tased to tweeting about elections in Iran—citizen journalism comes from very DIY roots.

RAPIDIAN DOCUMENTS

We also have a reporters manual available to anyone who needs the basics to get started with The Rapidian. Additional documents and hard copies are are available upon request.

The reporters' manual is a compilation of basic information about The Rapidian's public hours, equipment checkout and the CMC family of which we are a member. It also has a publishing checklist, tips from our reporters, and it lists some of the most common editorial issues. 

The instructors' guide is written with classroom collaborations in mind but is useful to anyone who wants step-by-step details on the technical side of submitting content to The Rapidian. New reporters interested in publishing without prior review must also master this before graduating to reporter status.

RAPIDIAN STAFF EDITORIALS

Each week, a member of The Rapidian staff publishes an editorial related to goings-on at The Rapidian, developments in the world of citizen journalism and tips for making the most of the site. Topics range from Creative Commons licensing to effective headlines to our site development docket. They are archived on the site.
 

TOOLS

For leads on what's going on in the Grand Rapids area, you can follow @Happn_in_GRcity on Twitter or check out their site. Happn.in scrubs through all Grand Rapids tweets to compile lists of the most popular topics and trends Grand Rapidians are talking about.

 

Stephanie Condon of CBS News' Political Hotsheet put together these word clouds of two opposing speeches on national security given by President Barack Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney. She used Wordle, a free word cloud generator that reads through text content entered to create an image with varying sized words based on how often those words are repeated in the or text. Although CBS is a renowned news source, as a blogger, Condon had to pull together a quick and stunning insight using free internet multimedia resources.

Mashable also came up with a fairly comprehensive guide for popular sites to get free multimedia.

Open source design software are free and getting more user friendly everyday. Several open source design software that might be useful for creating content for The Rapidian are:

• Audacity for audio editing
• Blender for 3D creation
  • Video tutorials for Blender
  • Tutorials for how to create specific effects in Blender
• GIMP for photo editing and manipulation
  • GIMP tutorials from beginners to experts
  • Tutorials for creating specific effects in GIMP
• Inkscape for digital illustration
  • A list of 10 helpful tutorials for Inkscape
• Jing to make a video of what's happening on your computer screen

TUTORIALS

For all things citizen journalism related, visit the Knight Citizen News Network's learning modules page.

To learn how to do professional quality video on the cheap, Izzy Video is where it's at. Israel Hyman also regularly produces bite-sized podcasts that cover everything from three-point lighting to audio levels.