Media Trust is empowering people across the UK to become citizen journalists through its newsnet online community project. SiftGroups were appointed in late summer 2011 as the digital partner for this 3-year, Big Lottery Fund backed programme of work.
newsnet is a free online network showcasing the amazing social change that's been triggered by local people telling their own hyperlocal stories and creating grassroots campaigns. The site aims to help and inspire everyone to connect, share and learn to tell their local story.
We worked closely with Media Trust and a core user group of aspiring citizen journalists to scope a community solution that would be integrated with rich content provided by the Media Trust and their expert contacts.
We also defined and built a publishing platform that means that members of the community can disseminate their content much more widely to established news sources such as Press Association and Looking Local.
Alongside the community development work, we then ran a 3-week training course with key Media Trust staff using our bespoke Community Management online training platform - a lot of the Media Trust team had no prior exposure to engaging via online communities, so we needed to accelerate their learning.
Anyone with a story to tell can become a citizen journalist - newsnet is there to inspire and empower you to get that story out there.