Last night I had the opportunity to attend an open house to see the Dallas South News newsroom. While I was supposed to be taking pictures for this post, I found myself engaged in some great conversation with various attendees of the event. It was a good chance to meet some new people and network I even got the chance to chat with some college friends I hadn’t seen in a while (shout to the A&M crew).

For those who haven’t been to the website, check it out at www.dallassouthnews.org. This is going to be a good deal for the South Dallas community. Blogging has opened up a different way in which news can be reported. Through it, us little people can have a voice and the real discussions can begin. Shawn Williams, the DSN editor shared an email with his board on how this type of media benefits the community.

Dear DSN Board and Advisory Board,

At the most recent board meeting, a discussion took place around why efforts like Dallas South News are important, and what type of value we bring to communities. I have reached out to a few people across the country leading initiatives on innovation in media to share their thoughts with us about just how significant our effort is at this critical juncture in journalism.

The first person that we hear from is Kelly McBride. Kelly is the Ethics Group Leader at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Florida. More importantly for this discussion, it was Kelly that convened the “Sense Making” project funded by the Ford Foundation, “a yearlong project to help the public develop skills for making sense of news in the digital era.” At the gathering of “sense makers” last Spring, I learned about other cities utilizing local nonprofit news.

Here’s what Kelly had to say:

Humans understand the world through narrative. Communities exist because groups of humans share portions of a common narrative (That could be, “We live on this street.” or “We share the same faith.” or “We fought the same war.”)

The more narratives are communicated, the more effective they become in building communities. Communities are necessary to create positive social change. People may argue about the veracity of these statements, but I believe they are demonstrably true.

Since the dawn of American democracy, we have had reliable institutions that create a common narrative for our communities. Granted these have been flawed institutions that left out huge portions of that narrative. But these newspapers and later radio and television stations, at least had the capacity, if not the will, to tell the stories of their communities.

Today, those institutions are losing their ability to tell a community’s story. As a result the community is losing the ability to address problems and make the world better.

So, other institutions must be created to share stories and to document narratives, particularly untold stories, so that communities can continue to move forward.

Kelly McBride
Ethics Group Leader
The Poynter Institute
kelly@poynter.org
Twitter: kmcb
www.poynter.org

Check out the site and let me know what you think. If you would like to donate or volunteer, email editor@dallassouthnews.org or call 214-485-0683 for more information.
BTW, here a slide show with some of the photos that I was able to take between conversations.