We had a great day at the Waterloo Centre on Wednesday 26th April, where 12 potential reporters got their first taste of M-CR workshops. They must have liked it - they all signed up for more!

Jim Clarke, news editor of Northwest Tonight (the BBC’s evening local news programme), spoke about how his organisation is looking for new ideas and talent. He answered questions about what kind of issues the BBC might be willing to look at if Cheetham reporters came up with them (for example if they have knowledge about local crime). He declined to answer the question “How much do you get paid?”

At this ‘Intro Session’ everyone had a taste of blogging, audio recording and video production. Next step is for them to go more into each of these areas in three forthcoming days. Then they’ll be unleashed on the public to go and get stories…

We’re off to ALL FM today to speak to Danielle about members of their 10-strong news team getting involved in M-CR.

ALL FM are the community radio station for Ardwick Longsight and Levenshulme, so seem like ideal partners to hook up with. Their volunteers already get support in radio production - they’ll be able to bring their existing skills and learn new web-based ones.

Check out ALL FM’s new website: www.allfm.org

One way of describing what we’re doing with Manchester Community Reporters is ‘citizen journalism’. This term is being used a lot in the media these days, to mean the general public contributing to news programmes. This often takes the form of mobile phone clips, from events that journalists haven’t arrived at yet. A famous example is footage of people walking out of the tunnel after one of the London tube bombs - taken by a passenger and used on BBC news.

Now Sky and ITN are talking to mobile network 3 about setting up a ‘channel’ for these clips, that can be used in news bulletins.

Read the full story from the Guardian:

Mobile group in talks to create TV link for citizen journalists