I think it’d be too much to say that I love blogs because ‘love’ is a word that shouldn’t be tossed around lightly, but I do enjoy the ability to blog and document my work on a day-to-day basis.

Or in this case, “our” work at Local Fourth.

Kevin Shalvey and I are the proprietors of this site and our main goal, more than anything else, is to catalog the thoughts of our team of 15 students as we venture deeply into this hyperlocal project that we’re working on at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. When it comes to storytelling, I’ve always had the mentality of trying to utilize different ways to disseminate information to the public. Written content is fine and, more or less, should be the default manner in which we communicate to an audience on this type of platform, but I think utilizing technology like video is important as well. Photos, too.

In terms of spreading the word about the Local Fourth blog and our efforts, I think this is where Twitter becomes a powerful tool to interact with others and engage in discussions when the opportunity presents itself. Facebook, also. These are the most popular avenues for conversation, and they should be utilized to their fullest extent.

All in all, I’m excited about the direction of the project as a whole and I can’t wait to continue to document our progress as we go along. I’m only speaking for myself but I hope that Local Fourth eventually will serve as an archive of information that people can refer to somewhere down the line.

This is only the beginning.

The first round of videos include insight into our first few weeks from Spencer Rinkus, Jordan Turgeon, Shane Shifflett and Rich Gordon.

Embeded here is Rinkus, one of the project leaders, discussing synergy between the Audience Research and Technology teams.

I’m really excited that our project is working in the domain of local online-first news. Recent discussions at the Block by Block conference and analysis of best practices from recipients of the Knight Foundation-funded New Voices grants show that local news is a vibrant space for people trying to both innovate and meet the needs of their communities. But some of my interest is personal – local is what made me interested in journalism.

Prior to starting at Medill, I had been involved in a community project that engaged around prisons and literacy and was closely following debates around a proposed expansion of the county jail in Bloomington, Ind. Going to heated community meetings and also noticing apathy in other parts of the community made me recognize that information gaps and how issues are framed within a community can mediate who participates in community decision making and how they participate. Moving to Chicago with two school-aged roommates made me realize how, despite lots of news coverage of Chicago Public Schools, understanding how the system worked and how to navigate it was no easy task. At some point, the need for local news and information comes colliding into one’s life.

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