Project Spotlighting Neglected Urban Residents Gains Support

As the journalism landscape becomes increasingly fragmented, low-income people and minorities often get left out.

The People’s Post, a project started by the San Diego Foundation, seeks to give a wide range of city residents a platform for speaking out by allowing them to record their own story ideas on video and post the videos on the project’s site.

One goal is to expose San Diego residents to positive stories that feature some of the city’s most depressed neighborhoods. The fund also hopes the creators of the videos—and their friends and family—will explore the Voice of San Diego, the online news site that houses the People’s Post project.

“The value from a news perspective is that people who would otherwise not be engaged might become engaged,” says Daniel D. Beintema, the foundation’s vice president of operations and community partnerships.

Neighborhood Stories

The project was a 2009 winner in the Knight Community Information Challenge, a challenge-grant competition sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Knight is putting $500,000 into the project over two years, and the San Diego Foundation has supported the project with $1.1-million in grants.

The People’s Post is using some edgy marketing to encourage people to participate. Its home page features a woman with a piece of red tape over her mouth, bearing the message, “Haven’t you been quiet long enough?”

Participants can schedule a session with a videographer at one of six branches of the San Diego Library. So far, 321 of their stories have been produced, and the videos have been viewed nearly 40,000 times.

The grants from Knight and the San Diego Foundation also pay for a “neighborhoods reporter” at the Voice of San Diego.

Trabian Shorters, who oversees the Knight challenge, says the fund has also supported a handful of projects similar to the People’s Post. He says, “When people have the opportunity to raise their own voices around issues that matter to them, and have the opportunity to interact with others, at the minimum that establishes a strong sense of community for the people who are doing so.”