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Pass the microphone to the people: KVDA's foray into community journalism
Very quietly, an experiment has begun in San Antonio that could revolutionize television news. It's the first really new effort since the carefully packaged "Eyewitness News" format came along some decades ago; contrary to what you might expect, it's not being tried on local cable access or public television, but a commercial station.
A few weeks ago, News Director Victor Landa and his crew at Spanish-language KVDA-TV kicked off what may be the first serious attempt at community-based television journalism in the United States.
Citizen-correspondents get a computer, a webcam, and a high-speed Internet connection, and they're expected to generate and report stories. Landa says the correspondents are "...people who are not necessarily leaders, but people who are involved in their community already, so they're known and they have the pulse of what's going on around their neighborhoods."
Correspondents report their stories live, from their homes, via the Internet.
Trinity University communications professor Rob Huesca says, "It was refreshing to see ordinary people on television -- that unrehearsed, unscripted, unedited genuineness did come through."
The station started off small with only two neighborhood correspondents, but Landa hopes to have two or three more on board...