A Clear Panorama

One of UNP’s partnering organizations is a local community newspaper called The West View, which was started up in 2000 by a few west-side residents who wanted to counteract the negative stereotypes that had plagued their community for decades. They felt that their community was largely undervalued, misrepresented, and misunderstood by the rest of the city and the mainstream media.

This black and white paper ran for four years, highlighting positive stories that would help bring diverse community members together, encouraging civic engagement, and providing helpful information to readers.

But in 2005, publishing ceased largely due to burnout by the small, overburdened volunteer staff. After a six-year hiatus, it was revived in 2011, as a 501c3 non-profit organization called West View Media. This time around, West View Media became a partnering organization with UNP, with the goal of engaging more west-side community members as citizen journalists so that they could tell their own stories in their own voice, thereby establishing their own identity.

The West View is now an attractive, full-color quarterly newspaper with a circulation of eighteen thousand copies that get mailed out to every residential address in west Salt Lake City in the 84104 and 84116 zip codes. Another two thousand copies are hand-delivered to businesses and public gathering places on the west side and around town.

The campus-community partnership is helping to develop a stronger relationship between The West View and the U ‘s Department of Communication. UNP has provided funding for student interns from the department who have worked on things such as advertising and establishing a monthly “Community Newsroom” made up of community members who contribute stories, photos and graphic design for the paper.

In 2013, the Department of Communication piloted a Community Journalism class, COMM 4670, taught by graduate student Flor Olivo, that allows U of U students and community members to learn side-by-side about community journalism as they provide content for The West View.

One of The West View’s main goals is to get more community members of diverse backgrounds involved in the newsroom and to offer them continued professional training in writing, photojournalism, multi-media reporting and graphic design.

This partnership is helping to create a more sustainable business model for the paper, and giving U of U journalism and business students real-world experience in a grassroots community-building setting. To learn more about The West View, check out the website at www.westviewmedia.org, and please visit (and “Like”) their Facebook Page: West View Media.