Yesterday had to be the coolest day on the job yet. And it was a Sunday!

As part of my job as the Community Journalism Coordinator for MAIN, I will be reporting, writing and producing a local news show on our radio station, wpvm 103.5 fm. In order to prepare for this, I have been sitting in on other people’s radio programs to get a feel for the studio and to observe how to use the equipment. Last week I was invited to sit in by the hosts of a program called Wordplay, a show devoted to poetry and creative writing. I have been reading and writing poetry for as long as I can remember so, as you can imagine, I was very excited about this opportunity!
As luck would have it, one of the hosts was out for the day because of a family reunion, so the other host emailed me on Friday asking me to bring a poem along that I enjoy as well as some music I’ve been listening to. I spent Saturday hunting through the poetry books on my bookshelf trying to figure out who to read. I settled on an old love of mine, Pablo Neruda, and chose to read “Fable of the mermaid and the drunks” and “Ode to the sea.” I also picked some Paul Simon and brought a cd of some friends of mine to play.
It went really well. I was extremely nervous about being live on air, but once I got into the poetry and grew more comfortable with the headset and the mic, I really didn’t want to leave the studio!

In other preparations for our news program, I have been cultivating a small group of Ashevillians who will be community journalists along my side. I have been attending community meetings including a CopWatch meeting and a Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods meeting, where I have given brief presentations on MAIN’s community journalism project.
I have attended various protests and vigils in downtown Asheville to test out my recording equipment and practice audio editing. I have also taught some of the core group of reporters how to use this equipment and held mock interviewing sessions followed by learning how to edit.
I have also signed up MAIN to be involved in Project Connect, an event held in Asheville to unite the homeless community with resources in the city. I will be there with my recorder conducting interviews to be compiled on MAIN’s web page, to be aired at some point in some form or fashion as part of the news program, as well as to be used by the Homeless Initiative of Asheville as documentation of the plight of the homeless in our city. We are hoping this material can be used to advocate for the homeless at City Council meetings and the like when politicians make decisions on things like housing and development in Asheville.
I have also been sitting down with one of the web development staffers to learn more about how to redevelop MAIN’s web page so as to incorporate the community journalism project. This has been an interesting process because I really have not had any of this kind of technical training or experience, but Chris has been extremely patient and supportive!
I am in the process of researching organizations that support local independent media or help to explain the phenomenon on community journalism. I have found these sites:
J-Lab : www.j-lab.org
J-Learning : www.j-learning.org
Knight Citizen News Network : www.kcnn.org
Center for Citizen Media: www.citmedia.org
Center for Future Civic Media (C4FCM) at MIT: http://civic.mit.edu
Citizen Media: Fad or the Future of News? http://www.kcnn.org/research/citizen_media_report/

other cool sites: www.wordpress.org and www.archive.org

In my down time, I have been reading a lot of local news and listening to local news programs on the radio. I have also done research on genetically modified foods, development and the housing crisis, and the ecological crisis in Patagonia (kind of off topic, but every thing's connected in the end). Part of this job has to do with rethinking how we frame stories and trying to create new ways of framing stories that help create dialogs in the community about important issues like (over) development, homelessness, the abuse of power (cop watch), but also to help empower people with information and create an awareness in Asheville that will allow people to create a better (and talk about what that means) city.

On an odd note, I found myself with a pen and a beer in my hand at a friends house, ripping apart a local magazine advertising all of the beautiful mountain top, golf course, huge housing developments surrounding Asheville. It's really cool to have a job that encourages me to read the fine print and tell other people about it!

Hope everyone else is getting along well. Finances aside, I'm pretty happy at this point.

p.s. I'm figuring out how to get the WordPlay media in here. It will probably be in an above post.

Abby