November has been a busy month for us here at the Community Reporters project.  We have run blogging workshops at Whitemoss Club for Young People, Trinity Church Welcome Centre and Manchester Foyer.

We are planning a blogging workshop at Cheetham Surestart and will be helping them to transfer their existing website into a blog.

And finally we have had meetings with the Jewish Museum to explore the possiblity of some joint working in the new year.  They are very interested in the Community Reporters project and we would hope to hold workshops in the new year covering the whole of the project - so watch this space.

We have been approached by Victor Gonzalez - a lecturer in the Department of Informatics at Manchester University.  He is interested in working with us on the Community Reporter project.

We had a very productive meeting with him on Monday (21 August) and more information about how we are going to work together will be posted here.

Community reporters can now see their stories published on the myManchester community portal at www.mymanchester.net

MCIN, who run the portal, have completely redesigned the site and now stories from community reporters take pride of place on the front page of the site. There is also a section of the site specifically dedicated to stories from the local community.

So check it out.

As you can see not only are we playing around with the look of the site (and watch this space for a radical new look coming soon!), but we have also been playing around with new names for the site and we have come up with Web Connect Community Reporters.

Web Connect is a partnership of local community portal sites which is co-ordinated by MCIN.

The aim of the network is to empower local communities in Greater Manchester by improving access to appropriate, accessible public, private and community and voluntary services through community portal sites. These sites are virtual communities that provide a sense of community and belonging, a wide range of local jobs as well as a chance to showcase the vibrancy and sense of place of the community.

And as you know the Community Reporters will be feeding news and information into these virtual communities and contributing to that vibrancy and sense of place - in short connecting people through the web.

Post a comment and let us know what you think of the new name.

There’s a big conference going on in London, all about the kind of thing we’re doing with M-CR. Media’s current big players (who will it be tomorrow?) are throwing around ideas about the future of news. Take a look at www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wemedia/

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

We’re playing around with different ‘themes’, which give the site different colours and change some of the layout. As soon as we’ve settled on one we’ll stop messing about like this! In the meantime we hope you enjoy the variety.

We’re looking for people in North Manchester to produce reports that will appear on local websites.

It can be serious stories where you want to give your side, or just fun stuff that you want to tell the world about.

We offer free training and can lend you equipment - or you might have your own, if only a mobile phone!

You don’t need any experience - just ideas and the enthusiasm to learn.

Call Gary, Graeme or Jane on 0161 203 4422 for a friendly chat and to find out more, or email gary@mcin.net

Manchester Community Reporters (MCRs) cover the area they live in and people they know.

Their reports feature on local websites, their own personal websites and potentially on other local media like the BBC. Reports can be in the form or words, pictures, sound and video.

MCRs learn how to use new technology such as mp3 recorders and digital cameras - or just mobile phones! The use new web tools to publish their work, such as:

• blogs - easy to create personal web pages or diaries

• podcasts - sound files that you can download and listen to when you want, on your computer or portable player

This site will feature the best of the MCRs’ work, with links to each reporter’s personal blog. It will give the background to the project and latest news.