jtm2007

Chart the future of local news and community

Bill Densmore — 2008-03-30T21:31:00-04:00

Seek the inaugural Representative Journalism Fellowship Help chart the future of local news and community. Apply for a Representative Journalism Fellowship. Leonard Witt, holder of the Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Communication at Kennesaw State University, is leading a one-year trial in the college town of Northfield, Minn., 35 miles south of Minneapolis. The representative journalist will spend a year working with the LocallyGrownNorthfield.org citizen blogger site to report one in-depth story per week on a critical civic or social issue. The reporting will be an open, transparent process where citizens can offer facts, comments, and perspective as the story develops. The final form of the story will be published in digital and print formats. Often, citizens will convene to discuss the findings of the reporting and participate in public meet-ups to discuss the results and next actions.

This is not an assignment for an order taker. You must be an enterprising, self starter. You must have a willingness to engage with citizens day in and day out. When needed, you will produce work in multiple formats, including print, web, radio, access-TV and other formats. This will increase civic dialog in a highly educated community of 17,000 people and inspire the community to support and sustain your work.

Bringing to this job a magazine-writing sensibility with in-depth reporting experience would be helpful. In the end, we want to talk about Northfield’s strengths and weaknesses, its joys and tribulations, its people and its governmental, civic, economic and educational institutions, which include Carleton College and St. Olaf College. Part of our inspiration is the Public Journalism Network’s Charter Declaration, which says in part:

• We believe the diversity and fragmentation of society call for new techniques for storytelling and information-sharing to help individual communities define themselves singularly and as part of the whole set of communities; • We believe in the value of studying the dynamics of communities and the complexity of public life; • We believe the best journalism helps people see the world as a whole and helps them take responsibility for what they see.

Your day-to-day guidance will come from the community and the principals of Locally Grown. As a journalist, however, you will report to one of the nation’s most respected daily newspaper editors. You will receive regular guidance from participants in the Journalism That Matters collaborative and when requested from our highly respected national advisory board. The goal will be to provide high quality, ethically sound news and information, which will enrich the daily and civic lives of the people of Northfield. Email a letter of interest, resume, clips and references to Leonard Witt, lwitt@kennesaw.edu. A personal interview will be required at a mutually convenient location. To start immediately.

JTM2007 alum Fabrice Florin's Newstrust lands $450K multi-year MacArthur grant

Bill Densmore — 2007-11-28T09:39:02-05:00

NewsTrust.net, the social news network which help consumers find and rate
quality journalism, reports it received a $450,000 multi-year grant to
expand its non-profit operation. Fabrice Florin (MGP2006 / JTM2007) has
been working with a skeleton crew on NewsTrust for more than three years
from Mill Valley, Calif., keeping it alive mostly with his own money and
time after some initial seed money from the founders of MoveOn.org, and
from the Ayrshire Foundation, the Mitch Kapor Foundation, the Sunlight
Foundation, the Tides Foundation and private donors including Craig
Newmark.

To read NewsTrust's news release, go to: URL: http://www.newstrust.net/about/news/press_release_1128.htm Contact: Fabrice Florin - NewsTrust.net - 415-388-6688

NAA's Beth Lawton seeds the conversation about news-industry future

Bill Densmore — 2007-11-12T11:54:04-05:00

Beth Lawton (MGP2006, JTM2007) of the Newspaper Association of America is doing her part to seed a conversation about the news industry's future. She has sent around word that the NAA's "Imagining the Future of Newspapers" blog is now up. NAA asked more than 20 leaders from inside and outside the newspaper industry to provide their perspectives on the future of the industry. dWe've published the introduction to the project from Randy Bennett, as well as perspectives from Paul Saffo, Paul Ginocchio, Jeffrey F. Rayport and Howard Finberg.

The NAA blog is at: www.naa.org/blog/futureofnewspapers

The RSS feed is at www.naa.org/blog/FutureOfNewspapers/rss.cfm

Beth is manager, digital media for the NAA. She's at (571) 366-1037
(beth.lawton@naa.org)

JTM-DC alum at Mercury News on paper's new effort and transparency

Bill Densmore — 2007-11-05T09:22:39-05:00

Chris O'Brien, a JTM-DC attendee who is helping manage change at the MediaNews Group Inc.-owned San Jose Mercury News is out with a public declaration that the paper's going to be very -- public -- about how it remakes itself. Read what he wrote in an email last night:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 21:30:45 -0800
From: "O'Brien, Chris"
To: Various Subject: Rethinking the Mercury News...

Greetings:

You're getting this note because you're someone who I think is interested in the future of the San Jose Mercury News. Like much of our industry, the Merc has been in a nosedive the past few years. Our newsroom has shrunk from 400 to 200 people since 2001. After the latest round of cuts in June, our executive editor, Carole Leigh Hutton, said it was time to "blow up the newsroom." And that began an ambitious attempt to re-imagine what the Mercury News could and should be, though under a somewhat more benign name: Rethinking the Mercury News.

We announced this process last summer, and then we got very quiet about it. Today, that changes. A big part of what we heard from the many people we interviewed is that we need to find ways to be part of the conversation in our community, and to help facilitate those conversations. Our first step in that direction is to announce that we will begin publicly discussing everything we're doing to Rethink the Merc. You can read about our progress every day right here: http://www.mercurynews.com/rethink . Or you can check out our blog, which is here: http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/rethink . We intend to share our discussions, our ideas, and our prototypes. We are in the earliest stages of taking the information we have gathered and turning that into a new Mercury News.

But we want you to do more than read. We intend for this process to be a conversation between our newspaper and the community it serves. So speak up. We want you to contribute, suggest, rant, applaud, and participate. Our goal is nothing less than to become the leading source of information for the local community and the most innovative paper in the country, the paper that Silicon Valley deserves.

Best,

Chris O'Brien San Jose Mercury News 415-298-0207 AIM:chobrien99

Seven lessons learned teaching citizen journalism: Doug McGill

Bill Densmore — 2007-11-03T13:54:17-04:00

An early expert at training citizen journalists has authored "What I've Learned Teaching Citizen Journalists," an essay listing seven lessons learned. Doug McGill is a former New York Times reporter, foreign correspondent, university lecturer and Internet innovator. He also briefly headed the World Press Institute.

http://www.mediagiraffe.org/artman/publish/article_576.shtml
http://mcgillreport.org/sevenlessons

Clinton advisor's view on how "elite" editors skew news

Bill Densmore — 2007-10-21T21:49:39-04:00

Are newspaper editors out of touch with their mass readership? Hillary Clinton's strategic advisory, Mark J. Penn thinks they may be. Penn was TV talk host Charlie Rose's guest on Oct. 16, 1997. He was pitching his book, published Sept. 5: "MicroTrends: The Small Forces Behinds Tomorrow's Big Changes" (published Sept. 5, 2007 by Twelve) It lists 75 trends.

In the book, Penn told Rose, he writes about the class of Americans called the "impressionable elites." He says these elites are more impressed by the personality of a candidate than the candidates views on issues. The impessionable elite, "today is more likely to be the Ph.D. The elites are becoming more fascinated with personality while working class voters are more educated than ever before, they face everyday life problems . . . [they want to know] what the proposal means, how it is structured for them. The elites don't have the same connection to the everyday problems."

He also talks about the "long-attention spanners."

"It's very surprising that one of the biggest events of the year, is in fact the State of the Union that lasts like an hour, you'd think Americans wouldn't be interested in it, you'd think they'd want to watch the Super Bowl or the World Series. But they love to watch the State of the Union. Because average voters are into the issues. They're into being serious."

Rose: "[I]f they're into it -- why don't we see more of it on television?"

Penn: "Well, that's because the elites have gotten more interested in the opposite. The big newspapers are hiring more style and personality reporters. A lot of the average working-class citizens are moving to the Internet, they are getting a lot more information on the issues and proposals than ever before. They are consuming tons of information . . . part of the point of the book is that you've got to treat these voters with respect because they know so much more and they are so much more issue oriented than people have been giving them credit for."

YOU CAN WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW: http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2007/10/16/2/a-conversation-with-mark-penn-chief-strategist-for-hillary-clinton

VIDEO: Stream or download JTM-DC opening session

Bill Densmore — 2007-10-16T22:52:56-04:00

Streaming video, or a QuickTime download of the opening session at Journalism That Matters-The DC Sessions is now available: CLICK HERE to jump to video options page.

VIDEO: Sustaining journalism -- a critical discussion

Bill Densmore — 2007-09-10T16:19:15-04:00

What will sustain journalism as advertising and circulation falls away from Americas newspapers. On Wed., Aug. 8, 2007, about 15 participants in "Journalism That Matters: The DC Sessions" discussed the challenge in a breakout session convened by Geneva Overholser, of the Univ. of Missouri. View a streaming video of the first hour of conversation. Because of an adjacent breakout session, some of the audio is difficult to hear.

VIDEO: Visions for the future of youth media

Bill Densmore — 2007-09-09T03:40:35-04:00

About 15 participants in "Journalism That Matters: The DC Sessions" shared information about their projects and ideas for youth media and media-literacy education during a breakout session on Wed., Aug. 8, 2007 at George Washington University convened by Ingrid Dahl, editor of the Youth Media Reporter. Read NOTES OF THE SESSION or watch a streaming-video excerpt by clicking on the bar below.

Foundation ownership of newspapers -- Haynes finds a 1916 essay

Bill Densmore — 2007-09-03T13:24:38-04:00

sJTM2007 participant Arthur S. Hayes of Fordham University (ahayes@fordham.edu) has run across an essay published more than 90 years ago that proposes newspapers should be owned by foundations in order to mitigate the pressures of investor ownership. Victo Yarros wrotein 1916:

We have various "foundations" for education, for research, for progressive philanthropy, for certain social and industrial reforms. They are indispensable. We know that higher arts, the higher music, could not exist without liberal endowment. Is it not sufficiently clear that sound, clean, and dignified journalism cannot hope to take root, to establish itself in modern cities, without at least temporary endowment . . . . "

Excerpted from: "A Neglected Opportunity and Duty in Journalism," by Victo
S. Yarros, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 22, No. 2. (Sept., > 1916), pp. 203-211.

LINK TO FULL ARTICLE: http://www.mediagiraffe.org/pdf/endowed.pdf

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