“I Guess They’re Being Journalists, Right?” Identifying and Interpreting Journalistic Roles among Civic Media Practitioners

The Rapidian is a hyperlocal news program of the Grand Rapids Community Media Center that collaborates with community residents to produce and disseminate local news and information at a time when legacy newsrooms have been closing across the country for decades. Collectively, these civic media practitioners and their work prompt questions around how they are situated in relationship to the local community and, inevitably, about who is a journalist. The aim of this ethnographic study was to identify and understand the roles assumed by those involved in the production of news and information with The Rapidian. Informed by practice theory, this study applies the boundary work framework to both journalists and civic media practitioners not traditionally trained in the journalism discipline.