Glossary of terms — Local Journalism Initiative

Civic journalism | Creative Commons | Underserved community | News deserts | Areas of “news poverty”

Civic journalism

Civic journalism covers the activities of the country’s civic institutions (for example, courthouses, city halls, band councils, school boards, federal Parliament or provincial legislatures) or subjects of public importance to society.

Creative Commons license

A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work." A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that he or she (that author) has created. CC provides an author flexibility (for example, he or she might choose to allow only non-commercial uses of a given work) and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work.

There are several types of CC licenses. The organization Creative Commons offers a core suite of 6 copyright licenses. Because there is no single “Creative Commons license,” it is important to identify which of the 6 licenses you are applying to your material, which of the 6 licenses has been applied to material that you intend to use, and the specific version.

Further details on how to apply a CC license can be found on the Creative Commons organization’s website.

Underserved community

Communities are considered underserved if they are:

News deserts

Communities where citizens do not have access to journalistic information about community issues and institutions because there are no daily or community newspapers and other media (for example, community radio or television). Also, if they are other public or private broadcasters, they do not produce local news.

Areas of “news poverty”

Communities where there is limited access to journalistic content about community issues and institutions through a daily newspaper or public or private broadcaster. Available sources of local news — whether a newspaper, a community radio station or other media — demonstrate significant gaps in coverage due to a lack of capacity.