Thanks for the Heads up from Becky LaPlant for the update on KAXE, is a community radio station with stations in Grand Rapids, Brainerd and Bemidji. They have a huge focus on community. I first really learned about them at the Blandin Broadband Summit last year.

I was so impressed with their work incorporating web 2.0 applications into their community-building strategy. Well, they are going to take it even further. With the help of some grants (including a $124,000 from the Blandin Foundation), KAXE is going to develop individual news and information Web sites for each community in its market.

Here are the things I love about the project:

1. They are creating individual community web sites and will use KAXE to market those sites. Who thought of that idea? Buy them a beer! I’ve seen similar projects fizzle because of turf wars. The umbrella organization usually wants to keep the fishing pole and just dole out the fish but the best way to really get a community involved is to give (not lend) them the tools. (From a search engine perspective the community-focused pages is a ton better too!)
2. They have been providing citizen journalism education. They brought in some worldly expertise in Doug McGill (former NY Time reporter). That’s a great way to draw attention to the importance of a topic. Then they have also drawn on local expertise such as Aaron Brown (former editor of the Hibbing Daily Tribune) and the journalism program at Bemidji State University.
3. Finally it seems as if KAXE has invited anyone and everyone who might be interested to participate in the process. The others may or may not hop on the bandwagon – but just the transparency is laudable.

I live in St Paul – mostly I love living here. But I hear about a project such as KAXE and I get a little jealous. I know we have at least one great community radio in the Twin Cities, but I feel as if the focus is a little different. (In a good, but different way.)

I would love to get involved with something that really focused on my zip code. What I’d love to see is the local community paper increase their presence online. Maybe the KAXE model will become the norm and it will happen eventually.