Exciting news - we have managed to arrange behind the scenes visits for our new community reporters on 27 and 28 June.

And we hope to arrange a second round of visits towards the end of September.

If you are an individual who doesn’t belong to a specific group, then you can still become a community reporter. You will have to be able to fit in around our schedule of group workshops. And it is possible that we may ask you to come along to one of the group sessions, rather than have a 1 to 1 session.

All you have to do is contact Graeme (graeme@mcin.net) or Jane (info@mcin.net) for more information. Alternatively you can ring us on 0161 203 4422

We were extremely busy through out May and the beginning of June signing people up as potential Community Reporters and delivering introduction sessions and workshop sessions.

The people we signed up at Cheetham Jobs Fair have completed their introductory sessions and are now ready to start creating their content. There will be links to their blogs on this site.

The meeting with the Monsall Women’s Group went very well and they are due to start their workshops this Thursday. We are also due to start working with a group from Cheetham Sure Start at the end of the month.

We have also been meeting with Chatterbox - a community outreach project in North Manchester. Of the initial 20 people who express an interest in becoming Community Reporters, 12 people have signed up for the workshops.

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/

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

This Friday we’re off to talk to the “Monsall Women” who meet at the TLM centre. The are a group of young parents who’ve already made a video, produced a CD and done an IT course. Next step: build a website. This is where M-CR comes in - they could use their site to produce community reports on the subjects they’re interested in. Let’s see what comes of it…

Grove Village in Ardwick are the latest group to join the reporters. There’ll be an event on Wednesday 19 April from 5 to 7, where people will get together to start the ball rolling. The venue is St Luke’s Church. Any Grove Village residents are welcome to come along and find out what it’s all about. Contact Kate Dutton at Harvest Housing to find out more. She’s on 07725 765 190 or Kate.Dutton@harvesthousing.org.uk