In 2003, Canadian media conglomerate Torstar closed The Cambridge Reporter, one of Canada's oldest newspapers. But they let the domain names languish. An intrepid resident of Cambridge snapped up the website cambridgereporter.ca and launched an online citizen journalism site for his city.
But Torstar wasn't too pleased with Colin Carmichael. Once citizen journalists across the city began contributing to the site, a Torstar lawyer called Carmichael to remind him The Cambridge Reporter was still their trademark, asking him to stop using it. Carmichael told
Rabble.ca he didn't want to fight against the corporation. He dubbed his new site
The Cambridge Voice, saying, "Now nobody cares what it’s called as long as it’s there."
The CJ site features election news roundups, reviews of arts shows, and discussions on city and cultural issues. All submitted stories must be original work, and writers have to register in order to post articles.
Do you think more cities need hyper-local citizen journalism websites?
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