West Virginia University journalism students have more resources to help small rural newspapers connect with their readers.
The Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation awarded the WVU P .I. Reed School of Journalism an $85,000 grant forWest Virginia Uncovered: Multimedia Journalism from the Mountains,a project designed to help small regional newspapers adapt to the demands and opportunities of the digital age.
Interim Associate Dean John Temple and a small group of dedicated students launched the project in fall 2008. Along with Visiting Shott Chair of Journalism Bill Kuykendall, Temple and his students have been traveling throughout the state, working with newspaper staff to produce multimedia stories for their Web sites.
The students also are training staff members how to gather audio, video and text to produce and deliver their own content for the Web. All the student-produced stories are available on the project Web site at http://WVuncovered.wvu.edu/ .
Currently, five newspapers are participating in the project. The money from the Benedum grant will allow Temple and his students to expand their efforts to include 10 newspapers in 20 different communities.
The funding also will help to strengthen the training program. Besides teaching newspaper staff how to produce multimedia content on a limited budget and with limited personnel, students and faculty will help them engage more effectively with their communities through blogging, citizen journalism and social networking. Students also will work to help the newspapers develop an economic model to make their publications viable.
Temple says the project is designed to help these newspapers survive in a time of declining readership and advertising revenue.
If a community newspaper dies, those citizens lose their only vehicle for learning about the local issues that affect them,Temple said.We want to prevent that.
In addition to the Benedum grant, the project received a two-year $85,000 grant from the McCormick Foundation and a $10,700 WVU Grant for Public Service in 2008. See http://wvutoday.wvu.edu/news/page/7140/ for details.
The Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation is an independent foundation established in 1944 by Michael and Sarah Benedum, natives of Bridgeport and Blacksville respectively. They named the Foundation in memory of their only child, Claude Worthington Benedum, who died in 1918 at age 20. Grants are made in the areas of education, economic development, civic engagement, community development and health and human services.