Making the News

Seven journalism students at the University of Montana are filling a big hole left in the nearby town of Dutton (pop. 372), after its newspaper folded about five years ago.

The Rural News Network (RNN) class, taught by Keith Graham and Courtney Lowery, is working hard to provide Dutton, and other rural towns, with an online newspaper. The plan is to eventually let the townspeople take over as reporters, editors and photographers.

“As far as we know, no one has done this exact kind of thing,” says Graham, an associate professor of photojournalism at the university’s School of Journalism. “We’re building everything from the ground up.

With the help of a $12,000 “New Voices” grant from J-Lab (The Institute for Interactive Journalism at the University of Maryland), this “hyperlocal citizen journalism initiative” allowed the RNN students to travel three hours each way to Dutton for scouting and content-gathering trips.

Graham says he was “stunned” when 80 people showed up at the first town meeting. The class attended the meeting to get a sense of what residents wanted to see in their online paper. From that experience, students got a firsthand view of just how important communication is, even in the smallest of towns.

“I think when some people think of photojournalism, there is this grand idea of foreign countries, conflict zones and just dramatic scenes in general,” writes Sarah Welliver, one of three photojournalism students in Graham’s class, in an e-mail. “I think that by focusing a lot on these big stories…we forget about the stories that are just as important and affect people from all over the United States in rural areas. Montana is 75 percent rural, but the news coverage in this state barely taps into the lives of these people who are struggling to keep their communities alive.”

The upper-level course, which was first offered in fall 2006, is the brainchild of Lowery, an alum and managing editor of newwest.net (“The voice of the Rocky Mountains”). In the multifaceted class, students cover photojournalism, print and broadcast news, and production disciplines. Students have worked on a number of stories, including a football game during homecoming weekend, the closing of a local café and two of the town’s grain co-ops.

Graham expects the site—rnnonline.org—to launch in March and hopes to expand RNN coverage to seven towns.

With more grant money, Graham hopes to acquire more gear. “What I’d love to do is buy the town a little point-and-shoot digital camera,” he says. In that sense, the townspeople will be following suit with the photojournalism program at Montana, which is shifting to a 100 percent digital environment by fall 2007, when the journalism school’s new facility will be complete.

“I think this project can be just as much about the eyes of the community as it is about the voices of the community,” writes Danny Lester, another photojournalism major in the class and the design director of the Web site. “Anyone who would like to contribute images will be encouraged to, and hopefully, we’ll discover some citizen photojournalists.”

© 2007 Top two photos copyright Keith Graham, Bottom photo copyright Sarah Welliver, All rights reserved.