Tony Platt commented after the first post: “Not clear if this site is about journalism students or the Mission or both?
Are you training j students for new jobs and using the Mission to do this?
What is “The Mission” and what’s your editorial perspective on it?
Who are the students working on this? What’s their commitment beyond their careers?”
All good questions.
From my POV, our mission is to provide quality local coverage, to get the community to read it and to educate students– all at the same time. Oh, and we would like to re-invent the business model.
In a sense, you could say Mission Loc@l is about figuring out a news model that provides a career and an informed community. It’s not easy.
The first few months have been spent training students to produce quality coverage. That was the easy part. Our students are highly trainable—smart, dedicated twentysomethings. So, we have some strong—even innovative content up. Getting the community to read it and give us feedback, however, is another story.
My sense is the industry would love it to happen with some new gizmo, but I really think it’s a matter of being out there, getting introduced to residents and introducing them to us—and all the while improving the coverage.
If anything, I have learned that we need to be in the Mission even more. So, whenever I can, I wander around looking for stories and real estate (fantasy being an apartment building/office).
It’s such a great community—the long standing immigrants, the newly arrived young and hip,
those who get up in the morning to sweep sidewalks in front of their buildings like Maria
or Fernando who puts out the fruit at El Chico Produce.
Or those who catch a quick breakfast at McDonald’s or an early morning nap on Folsom while others rush to work.