Citizen One is a new approach to local journalism. We’ll be delivering news, information, and stories the way you like to read them – via a mobile app, available on both iOS and Android. Our website, citizenonenews.com, will also be available, as will a Progressive Web App (PWA) that gives you the same experience as a native app without having to download one. We will also be providing stories via email newsletter. Up to date, reliable local community news – always right in your pocket.
Buckle up, hang on – and try to enjoy the ride.
What you’re seeing today is essentially a first-draft – what we call a “pilot program” – meaning, we are still figuring a lot of stuff out! Many of the things we are doing at Citizen One have never really been done before, or in this particular manner, so there is a lot of experimenting going on in order for us to figure out the best way to make the program work efficiently and effectively.
This pilot program is focused on delivering news to the Cloverdale, Indiana community, but we do have plans to expand it into other areas, and if it works, across the country and someday the world. And it’s important to note that Citizen One is not just about news – we have plans to bring new approaches to media literacy education to our schools, and to help local businesses connect to communities as well. But as you will learn in other articles on the site, local journalism is struggling, and it is having a negative impact particularly in rural communities just like ours – and that is the first problem we want to solve.
So – for now, and probably for the next several months – Citizen One is going to be far from perfect. In fact, it will likely be a bumpy ride the next few months as we iron out the wrinkles, fix the bugs, sand and polish, and generally improve what we have started with. Initially this pilot project was set to launch in November after Thanksgiving, but Gannett’s announcement that the Hoosier Topics would be shutting its doors caused us to move up our deadline to get the Citizen One pilot live as quickly as possible, so our community would not be without a local news source. There can be no progress without action – so we thought it best to move quickly and get Citizen One live as soon as we could, and what you are seeing here is the best effort we could put forth.
When you need something done – ask a busy person.
More than 45 different people right here in this community are actively collaborating on Citizen One. In the last 90 days, we have moved from a concept to a fully functioning website, three different mobile options, an email newsletter, and an enterprise-grade content management, production, and analytics infrastructure – and produced more than 30 local stories together.
Those first 30 stories represent more local content and information than this community has seen in its local paper in the last six months combined. Most importantly, those stories are coming from people you know and trust. Our civil servants from organizations like Cloverdale Main Street. Our local elected officials on the School Board and Town Council. Our public safety team from Cloverdale Police Department and Cloverdale Volunteer Fire Department. All of these organizations have agreed to contribute news and information directly as contributors to Citizen One.
But the real heroes in all of this are the students, teachers and administrators who have championed and embraced the idea of starting a local community news service, and benefiting from the learning experience of being directly involved. The heart and soul of Citizen One is its Bureau Chief, Ms. Maria Skiles.
Ms. Skiles, an English teacher at Cloverdale High School, is working with a team of bright, hard-working volunteer student authors to make sure Citizen One is not just providing news to the community – but making sure it is accurate, fact-checked, well-sourced information we can all trust. So we should all thank Ms. Skiles (and all of her volunteer student authors) for what they have agreed to do for all of us.
We should also thank Cloverdale Community School Corporation Superintendent Greg Linton, who not only green-lighted this project with the support of the School Board – but played an active role in developing the concept from the start, and along with Mr. Stoltz, Mr. Wade, and the rest of the school administration, has fully supported this effort every step of the way, and removed every barrier we have encountered in trying to get this project off the ground.
Please Stand By.
For our audience, our readers, the local community members – we only ask one thing: Please Stand By.
Please stand by your community. Stand by the civil servants who are contributing stories to Citizen One. Stand by the students, teachers and administration who are the backbone of this operation. Stand by the police and firemen who are taking a half hour in between saving people’s lives to write a quick story here. Stand by the elected officials who are already contributing their time on top of contributing stories. Stand by the civic organization volunteers who take the time to share a story while spending their nights and weekends working on events for you and your family.
Give this effort a chance to continue to improve. So many good things can come of a community brought together by a common sense of place. We want to see that happen here, and we want you to be a part of it. So tell a friend. Download the app. Contribute a story. Please stand by Citizen One, and we will give you the best source of local information you’ve ever seen.
This is just the beginning. Please Stand By.