An aritcle I wrote for the Islington Gazette

Charity helps promote rise of citizen journalist

11 April 2007

Billy Rippe: “We thought it would be nice to add the voices of people all over the world

SIMON Kelner, editor of The Independent, reckons "no one listens to podcasts."

The five men and women sitting silently behind their computer screens, cocooned by headphones, think differently.

Their faces twitch with the efforts of concentration as they are race against the clock to finish their very own podcasts by lunchtime.

The three medical professionals and two AIDS charity workers from Ghana are coming to the end of a two-day course in citizen journalism hosted by On Road Media (ORM), a social enterprise that operates out of the Grayston Centre near Old Street Tube station.

Founded in 2005 by Nathalie McDermott, a former producer for Radio Five Live, ORM trains marginalised groups of people and charities to create podcasts - audio reports which can be downloaded via a computer to an MP3 player - and audio diaries, as well as websites upon which to host them.

Today it's the turn of Owusu Kwasi-Poku, a representative of charity Theatre for a Change, which uses workshops and performance to investigate issues around HIV/AIDS and young people's rights. Owusu has come all the way from Ghana to drum up support for the charity and learn some new skills in the process.

He smiles as he puts the finishing touches to a sound graph he's been tinkering with. "We do projects with young people that try to promote awareness of health issues in Ghana and this is a great way to get the message across to a larger community. It's been fun and should be very useful for our jobs," he says.

In many ways ORM is at the forefront of the citizen journalism revolution that has forced so many changes in the way the so-called "old media" operates.

In America, hyper-local newspapers such as Chicago's Chi Town Daily News, which relies on reporters based in the communities they write about, eschewing professional journalists in the process, are raking in readers as conventional newspapers lose sales.

This is what Nathalie sees as citizen journalism taken to its logical conclusion. She says: "We're supporting people with sustainable skills so they can do it themselves. And citizen journalism is that. It's about people talking for themselves, not through the conduit of an impartial third-party journalist."

Although the hyper-local news revolution is yet to hit Britain with any real gusto, projects like ORM are planting the seeds of the coming change by giving people the tools they need to report on the local issues that concern them.

Earlier this month, homeless charity Ten Feet Away, which runs out of the Union Chapel on Compton Avenue near Highbury and Islington station, launched a website created as a result of ORM's training.

Billy Rippe, the project's coordinator and formerly homeless on the streets of Islington himself, explains the idea behind the project.

"We wanted to deliver an international website and thought it would be nice to add the voices of people all over the world. So we contacted ORM and arranged two days training in citizen journalism."

Now, just a week after the launch, the website already has posts from similar groups in Japan and Argentina, with a forthcoming visit to Russia likely to add voices from another country to the stable.

The content is highly varied and of a high quality, so high in fact that in a few months the best pieces of art (audio and visual) posted on the website will be featured in a Guardian Arts Unlimited online exhibition. Vodcasts supplement blogs, pictures supplement podcasts and the result is that reflections on homelessness, prison stints and art are all conveyed through multimedia in a way unthinkable a few years ago.

"We wanted to create a network of homeless charities so we can have a look at what's going on in other countries and compare, say, homelessness in Islington and Buenos Aires," says Billy.

The training is all conducted on open source software that is free to download, which enables the trainees to take the skills they have learned back to their communities and workplaces. Billy has taken this a step further and extended the reach of the training beyond the UK. "Our international partners can blog anytime they want. We created a training package that we have on our website to support the international people so they can do podcasts as well."

Ten Feet Away is exactly the kind of project that innovative radio slots like Radio Five Live's Pods and Blogs are interested in. The show, hosted by Chris Valance, features content from citizen journalists, interviews with bloggers and reports on developments in new media at home and abroad.

Chris is anxious to see more citizen journalism on the show to supplement the hard hitting podcasts it has already broadcast on topics like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the 7/7 attacks on London and the reaction to a spate of shootings in London.

Chris says: "I do think that the media could do more to raise awareness of how empowering the new technology can be. Of course it's time consuming, costs money, and there are elements that are technically challenging, which is where groups like ORM can help people on the wrong side of the digital divide gain a voice. That kind of work is hugely valuable as is the content it creates."

Chris is reluctant to say the show has broken any stories as most are featured on blogs before they reach him, yet his show has been the conduit through which some major stories have reached a wider audience.

"The story about the US army using white phosphorus for more than just illumination was first broken by a blogger, but he tipped us off to the story and we passed that on to colleagues covering the military."

Citizen journalism is changing the way the media operates across the globe. If Islington's homeless are already on the web reporting, blogging, vlogging and podcasting, that change will surely know no bounds.

* Examples of Ten Feet Away's homeless arts podcasting project can be found online at www.tenfeetaway.wordpress.com