$40,000 Grant Enables UA Web Site to Serve Pickens County

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Pickens County now can share its stories with the world through a new Web site that journalism students at The University of Alabama have created.

DatelinePickens.com uses a weekly news magazine format to feature people and places. Cover stories focus on important issues such as recruiting physicians, while other sections present stories on business, music, religion, tourism and other aspects of life in this rural Black Belt county of about 21,000 people.

The site also has extensive data on the economy and people of Pickens County, as well as directories for public offices, chambers of commerce and other institutions.

“The Black Belt project serves two purposes, training and education for our students and getting the news out to the larger world for the citizens of this wonderful region,” said Dr. Ed Mullins, professor and chair of the journalism department in UA’s College of Communications and Information Sciences.

The journalism department received a $40,000 grant to support the project. An earlier grant, from the New York Times Company Foundation, provided a pilot study that resulted in a section dedicated to the Black Belt on Dateline Alabama, the student operated Web site of C&IS. These new funds will continue the work under the previous grant, independent of Dateline Alabama.

The grant comes from a fund the University uses to promote development in rural areas such as the Black Belt, a swath of counties across the state’s middle that once formed the center of the plantation economy. Today, this region suffers from poor economic prospects and often low expectations.

“Reliable information is necessary for civic and economic progress in rural counties no less than it is in urban areas,” said Dr. Bailey Thomson, associate professor of journalism. He created the DatelinePickens project, working with Nisa Miranda, director of the University Center for Economic Development.

The UA grant supports scholarships and salaries for the student journalists who will write and edit the stories, take photographs and maintain the Web page. Graduate students will serve as editors and senior writers.

“Often the stories coming out Pickens and other counties in the Black Belt are grim and focused on negative qualities, such as unemployment and illiteracy,” Thomson said. “While we don’t intend to ignore such problems, we will provide more comprehensive coverage.”

Counties and cities typically hire public relations firms to create Web sites for them. Poorer communities often can’t afford such services.

DatelinePickens.com is different. The site will approach the task with journalism in mind, and the service will be free to residents of the county. “We want to help Pickens, and we also want to give our students an opportunity to practice community journalism,” Thomson said.

Audiences for the site will include people and companies who might be interested in doing business in Pickens County or in visiting its cultural and recreational places. “The Web truly gives you a global readership, which makes this new medium a powerful means for telling your community’s story,” he continued.

The Web project draws inspiration in part from Auburn University’s Rural Studio, which deploys architectural students to design housing and other structures in the Black Belt. Students and residents alike gain from the experience and the results.

Journalism students under Thomson’s direction have produced several special reports on rural areas, which the Mobile Register and the Huntsville Times published. For such efforts, Thomson in 1999 received the National Excellence in Teaching Award from the Society of Professional Journalism.

Thomson is a native of Aliceville in Pickens County and has written about his experiences growing up there in a farming family. Changing times and conditions demand new strategies for development, he said.

“Our state will not reach its civic and economic potential until all of its regions, particularly the Black Belt, can provide and have access to information, which is the lifeblood of the global society.”

Plans for the new Web site call for inviting residents to write about their experiences. There will also be video clips to illustrate some stories. You can see the site at WWW.DatelinePickens.com.