We'll admit it. It has been a tough six months for us here at The Commons.
In these past six months, we've seen the fire at the Brooks House on April 17, the Entergy v. Vermont court proceedings in Brattleboro in June and September, flooding in Westminster West in May, the slayings of Melissa Barratt in July and Michael Martin in August, and finally, Tropical Storm Irene, the worst natural disaster to hit Windham County since the Hurricane of 1938.
We've done our best to report on these stories and provide you with the news in a way that's thoughtful, complete, and compelling.
But, frankly, we never could have done anywhere near as well as we have without the help of you, our readers.
In the 15 or so years that the modern Internet has been with us, it has utterly changed how information is gathered and distributed.
The biggest change is that our audience now has access to the tools of modern media. Our readers can now share information directly instead of waiting for it to show up in a newspaper, on the radio, or on television.
This shift in how people are getting at least some of their local news has changed the terms of the media contract. The journalistic elite is losing an authority that has now been eroded by the ability of people to create their own media.
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Putting control of the media into the hands of readers isn't a bad thing. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have become essential news-gathering tools, and such social networking sites have allowed us to report more completely on events and get news from places we couldn't get to.
During Irene, we (metaphorically) slogged through a torrent of information on Facebook. Most of it was useful, some of it was gossip, some of it was flat-out wrong.
That is to be expected. Our job, as professionals, is to verify this material as we turn it into news copy.
Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University and a leading theorist on the evolution of news media in the digital age, coined the term “pro-am” - professional/amateur - journalism to describe this process.
Rosen's idea - to develop a network of volunteers to pool their intelligence and collaborate with professionals to produce news stories - has become a model for media in the age of Facebook.
But it's not a totally new idea, and Brattleboro and the surrounding area is just large enough for pro-am journalism to work and just small enough for both the pros and the ams to want it to.
In 2003, Chris Grotke and Lise LePage began iBrattleboro, an exciting outlet that gave people in the area a venue and a voice. The website, then ahead of its time in so many ways, predated the explosive popularity of blogging, tweeting, and other sorts of sharing of news, photos, and other media.
The media-savviness of Windham County residents extends to nonprofit radio stations such as WVEW in Brattleboro and WOOL in Bellows Falls, and vibrant public access television stations like FACT in Bellows Falls and BCTV in Brattleboro, which just celebrated its 35th anniversary.
Around here, a community newspaper has to foster a two-way conversation with its readers if it wants to survive, and admit that, sometimes, its readers know more than they do.
We saw these principles at work during Irene, especially with the blogs and websites that were created in the wake of the storm - communications that have proved indispensable in assembling our coverage.
Windham County VT Status Information, a collaboration between Marlboro College and the United Way of Windham County, collected storm information and assembled it effectively.
VTRecovery.com, started up by Dover's Colby Dix, became the Deerfield Valley's storm information clearinghouse.
A collaboration between Google Maps and the Vermont Agency of Transportation created a real-time road conditions map.
The state's utility companies collaborated on the Vermont Power Outage Map, to allow users to track where electricity was out.
VTResponse provided a statewide electronic meeting place for those seeking help, as well as those wishing to volunteer after the storm.
It is sometimes temptingly easy to rely too much on technology or perceive it as a panacea. Privacy issues and concerns only get more disturbing as corporate sites like Facebook begin to infiltrate and even replace the public sphere.
But especially in times of crisis like we have endured in the past few weeks, these sites that popped up after the storm have provided an incalculable good. These sites, which would not have been possible just a few years ago, collectively serve as a perfect illustration of how individuals, with knowledge of, and access to technology, can chip in to fill the information gap in a crisis.
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Newspapers nationwide are in a state of turmoil and change, and the rise of social media has made virtually every news operation stop and question their purpose, their strategies, and their role in the larger community when their own readers are busy informing one another in bursts of 140 characters.
However much social networking challenges us and our newspaper brethren, the very usefulness of these websites has convinced us that newspapers provide important nuance and perspective in times of community trauma and personal need.
Raw video on YouTube can freeze 10-minute slices of time, or a Selectboard meeting. But it still takes accurate, conscientious, and professional-grade journalism - the kind that collects, orders, and clarifies the information our readers need - to fully and thoroughly inform our community.
It's one thing to find out news on Facebook. It's another thing to use Facebook as a tool to make it easier to correspond with newsmakers about potential stories.
The new media revolution has made it easier for those of us old-media aficionados to do our jobs. Access to your content has made The Commons a better newspaper - one that's as traditional as it is innovative.
In the end, we're using this new technology in the most traditional ways to create stronger and deeper connections between our reporters and our readers in communities we seek to cover.
That's truly the best of both worlds.