CoJMC launches community news website

The College of Journalism and Mass Communications launched a community news website called Nebraska Mosaic that will allow refugee communities to tell their stories in videos and post them online.

"Nebraska Mosaic will give Lincoln's growing refugee communities a voice," said Tim Anderson, journalism associate professor. "These communities exist, but they are, to a large extent, hidden."

Since the 1990s, when the federal government designated it a resettlement community, Lincoln has attracted a growing and diverse refugee population. In the Lincoln Public Schools, refugees or immigrants speak more than 40 languages and come from more than 50 nations.

Anderson said, "We thought it was important for our students to cover diverse populations and our goal is to create something that will sustain itself through the involvement of the refugee communities themselves."

Beginning in fall 2010, supported by a $25,000 grant from J-Lab, University of Nebraska–Lincoln students worked to develop a new community news initiative. Advertising students helped to research the information needs of the refugee community, and how to reach them, while journalism students in the same class focused on content. The result was the beginning of the Nebraska Mosaic website.

This year, the College of Journalism and Mass Communications partnered with the Lincoln Community Foundation and received a grant from the Knight Community Information Challenge, which the Lincoln Community Foundation matched. These grants, totaling $48,000, supported efforts by the Mosaic class to further reach out to Lincoln's refugees. Each week the university class now also meets in the Community Learning Center at Arnold Elementary School, where refugees are invited to attend to discuss issues important to them, to raise questions that might be answered through journalistic articles and even to learn reporting, photography or videography skills.