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Baltimore, Maryland
2007
To most people, starting a newspaper would seem a daunting venture. But 29-year-old cabinet-maker Nicholas Petr is, at heart, a muckraker. Petr is using his fellowship to support The Indypendent Reader, which he and a group of community artists started a year and a half ago with members of the Baltimore Independent Media Center.
The Indypendent Reader is a free, quarterly, news-print and web-based tabloid currently distributed in barber shops, coffee shops, community organizations and other locales. The intent behind The Reader is to build a grassroots media outlet that provides visibility for marginalized communities in Baltimore. "Working people didn't have a strong media outlet on their side," says Petr, who has a master's degree in sculptural studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art. "But visibility is needed to change policy. We didn't think we could become the Baltimore Sun. But we thought if we started a small media project that would help people become the media, it would give marginalized communities a voice."
Petr has been impressed by how many people want to contribute to The Reader, which has a quarterly circulation of about 6,000. He has dozens of volunteers who write about issues that are important to them: neighborhood disputes, local politics, and environmental concerns. Some new contributors and editorial board members are graduates of a summer community journalism course that The Reader offered to youth. The course was opened to anyone, and about 15 young people, ages 13 to 21, attended. Petr hopes to offer the course again soon as well as classes in layout and design.
Like most publishers, Petr spends a lot of time thinking about the bottom line. And during the next three months he plans to focus almost entirely on fundraising. His goal: $30,000. Some of the money will be used to rent office space - The Reader's editorial board currently meets at Petr's warehouse apartment - and to possibly add pages to the print version of the newspaper. Petr says he needs the extra space to accommodate all the submissions he gets, including some from Washington. The Reader publishes articles from an array of contributors, from business owners to death row inmates, and contributions are growing.
"Our goal is to have an army of reporters who could be anyone - community leaders or service industry workers - and who feel confident enough about writing and editing that they can write an article and send it to us," says Petr. "That's what community journalism is all about."
