As referenced in yesterday's coverage of the ongoing drive by the Cap Times to meet and greet the public, the newspaper is currently working on a 'citizen journalism' project for Madison. The concept of citizen journalism, one of the most hyped concepts among blogerati in recent months, is largely a term for describing what happens when people who aren’t professional journalists report about their communities themselves.

Though citizen journalism has been practiced at community radio stations (like WORT) for decades, and by small community newspapers for even longer, the growing attention given to and commanded by blogs is sexing up the idea. This attention coupled with the growing amount of social networking software available has made online citizen journalism the next big idea among media trendsetters.

The official name of the city's upcoming citizen journalism platform is The Madison Commons Project, which is being spearheaded by UW-Madison J-School Professor Lewis Friedland.

Examples of "citizen journalism" as already practiced to some extent here in Madison include this site, Dane 101, as well as School Information System, the Madison IMC, and even The Daily Page Forum. Besides the fact that these websites feature original commentary (and an amount of original reporting), they are all the products of multiple contributors

According to an announcement about the undertaking from its sponsor, the Madison Commons Project plans

Word of this project was originally disclosed to Dane101 several weeks ago by State Journal editor Ellen Foley, who said that the paper was working on a "citizen journalism" platform. This information was confirmed and expanded upon at the Cap Times meeting yesterday. According to Cap Times managing editor Phil Haslanger and web editor Shauna Rhone, their paper will be affiliated with the Madison Commons Project, as will be the State Journal. Though the Project will be affiliated with Madison's two daily newspapers, they emphasized it will be working independently of the papers, per the wishes of Friedland.

According to them, the project will be focusing on three or four neighborhoods in south Madison. This presumably includes Allied Drive, the focus of an extended series last year in the State Journal, as well as other lower-income areas in the southern reaches of the city. According to Haslanger, the Project will be operating in "economically diverse and underprovided neighborhoods," in order to provide them increased "access to the media."

What is strange about this is that the official granting announcement above makes no mention of the State Journal. Its participation in the project is likely due to the paper's affiliation with a local civic (not citizen) journalism campaign in the 90s promoted by Friedland. Their series on Allied Drive, and the neighborhood contacts and trust built through it, probably have something to do with their participation as well.

The Madison Commons Project is a grantee of a citizen journalism venture named the New Voices project. This is

New Voices is a program of J-Lab (Institute for Interactive Journalism), which in turn is a center at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism. As on of ten grantees out of 243 applicants, the Project received $12,000 to "launch innovative local media ventures," which is administered by J-Lab and funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Though the Madison Commons Project was granted in February, and it appears it will be launching soon, probably in September with the fall semester, the Project has not been reported on yet in Madison, including by its two newspaper affiliates.

Friedland's academic work is heavily focused upon issues including social networking, the online commons (pdf), and civic journalism. This latter concept was employed heavily by Madison media in the 90s (including by the State Journal, WISC-TV, Wisconsin Public Television and Radio, and the Wood Communications PR firm) for a mostly elections-related project named We the People, a venture promoted and studied by Friedland.

An academic perspective on the Madison Commons Project is provided on Friedland's departmental bio page. As one of his three core projects, the Project is a means for

Besides Madison, this year's New Voices citizen journalism projects are based in Deerfield (New Hampshire), Moscow (Idaho), Hartsville (South Carolina), Hood River (Oregon), New York City, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Loudon County (Virginia), and the North Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago. Respectively, these projects include a website/quarterly newspaper combo, a news program for LPFM broadcast/web streaming, a multimedia (text, audio, video) web platform, a Spanish/English LPFM news program, a podcasting program for young women in a lower-income neighborhood, a community blog for hip-hop, a multimedia platform for minority and ethnic journalists, a "public think tank" featuring dispassionate reporting (huh?), and a community weblog for a mostly African-American neighborhood.

Dane101 will follow up on the Madison Commons Project tomorrow, and ask several questions regarding its organizational structure and relationship with the communities it is intended to serve.