For Ottawa, By Ottawa

Welcome to our first version of Web City Beat, a new journalism voice by Ottawans, for Ottawans.
Staffed entirely by second-year journalism students from Algonquin College, with support from faculty, Web City Beat will strive to cover and investigate stories no other media does, in ways that will keep up with the changing reporting and delivery methods local news consumers demand today, and will demand in the future.

Made to fit Your Needs

Here you'll see videos, blogs, sound slides, audio clips and traditional stories -- all original material delivered in fresh and informative ways, and eventually, formatted to fit whatever device you wish to view and read it from. We're learning about that, so consider us as a, well, lab, an evolving test tube intended to act as a training and teaching tool in this brave new era of journalism.

Filling in the Gaps

But we won't be another face in the scrum, providing one more version of the stories that make the big headlines of the established newspapers. We want the stories they don't want, or due to a lack of resources or space, can't cover. In fact, students are under instructions not to follow the stories everyone else is following. We don't want to use public dollars to compete against private media. Instead, if and as news holes in the established media shrink, we hope to help fill a void in the growing number of stories that go unreported in this city every day.

And You Can Help

If you have ideas for stories our students could cover -- stories that are important to this city -- drop us a line. We're still at the fledgling stage, so feel free to e-mail me at banksj@algonquincollege.com with your story idea and contact info.
Not only will you be bringing an issue or event to light, but you'll be helping in the education of our students, who are incredibly enthusiastic about this new world of journalism.

Tell us what you think!

Joe Banks,
Coordinator/professor,
Journalism program,
Algonquin College,
Ottawa, Ontario