Audio By Carbonatix
The City Beautiful isn’t just about historic Mediterranean
homes and manicured lawns. Today,
Coral Gables is launching a new website that will hopefully shake a few stately
columns and bring one of Miami’s oldest cities well into the leading edge of
citizen journalism in the 21st century.
George Merrick, the city’s founding father, would be proud.
Gables Home Page is a community-driven website created
by a generous grant of $156,000 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
with matching cash and in-kind funds from the Coral Gables Community
Foundation.
The website, which is still in its infancy, hopes to be a one-stop
shop for all things Coral Gables, made by the people for the people. Its focus is on hyper-local issues and
news, giving residents and business owners an online place to connect and take
advantage of social media.
The website also aims to get seniors involved — a dying
breed of citizens who shouldn’t miss out on the digital experience.
If a city could have a classy MySpace, it would be Gables Home Page. An uncluttered,
neat and elegant user-friendly design welcomes readers with pages featuring
news, blog posts, classifieds, community calendar of events, and, the hottest
item of all, a “town square” where citizens of the 33134 and other zip codes
can discuss issues in a civil and courteous manner.
Content editor Matt Bokor is excited about the
project. “If something like this
is going to work anywhere, it’s Coral Gables. We’re a historic community that is very well-defined,” he explains.
He’s not the only one who’s excited. “We’ve been going to churches, temples,
civic and business groups asking for input,” says Bokor. “The reactions we’ve gotten are very
positive. People are happy to hear
about our insistence on courteous dialogue. They’re tired of hateful attitudes.”
Gables Home Page has its work cut out in an online social media world where snark gives trolls
plenty of fodder, but the
idea is noble.
Anonymous posting is discouraged; real photo avatars are
encouraged. The website literally
wants to put a face to the name of the city, except that it’s many faces and voices
all in one place.
Citizen journalists will be free to post, though content
will be supervised. “After some
time, we hope that the community will police itself,” admits Bokor.
University of Miami students are also jumping on the
neighborhood-friendly wagon. “Right now, we’ve got several professors handing out assignments to
journalism students,” says Bokor. “I can’t say enough about how enthusiastic and helpful UM students have
been since we started this project.”
Claudio Luis Vera (@modulist), local geek from Studio Module and Gables Home
Page website architect, was thrilled to get involved. “We had a unique opportunity here to build something
completely from scratch,” he said. “We’re going to continue refining the site in the weeks to come.”
Gables Home Page is also on Twitter (@gableshomepage)
and Facebook. City Beautiful tweetups are in
the works.
