Big Stories to a Small Community

The newest craze in news today is the citizen journalist. Now that more newspapers have looked to the web for posting stories, so have local citizens. Most news websites allow readers to post comments, however readers are now being given the opportunity to post their own news stories. All someone has to do is write up a story that is relevant to their local neighborhood and then post it on a website for the rest of the community to read.

I was checking out some of these new websites to get an idea of what kind of news is being posted by local citizens. One website I came across was called neighborsgo. This website is strictly for residents of a small community in Dallas who want to write local news to share with the rest of their neighborhood. After reading a few of the "top" stories I got an idea of what types of stories were important to this community.

The site had multiple stories related to school activities and local events and I found most of the stories to be very short and simple. One story talks about a Family History Night at a local elementary school and shows a picture of a young boy dressed up as Uncle Sam. Although the stories are simple and upbeat they aren't what you would call hard news stories. I also noticed that many of the postings came across as advertisements rather than news stories, which may make them a little bias.

Overall, I found that this website is a great way for local residents to share positive stories and feedback about their community. Although they aren't your typical "hard news stories", I feel that it is necessary to acknowledge small events, such as a Family History Night, otherwise no one else will.

Although these new websites are becoming more and more popular, I don't feel that they will completely take over the world of news. After reading over a few websites, I believe that they are more for small stories that no one else cares to cover, but are still of importance to people in the community. I feel that the more news there is the better and I hope to see more of these citizen journalist websites in years to come.