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We’ve been on the move in Europe and the U.S. in recent weeks - and also hunkered down at We Media HQ working on a group of new projects. Now we want to share with you what we’ve been up to. The big news we hope you’ll share and act on: We’re announcing and seeking nominations now for the new We Media Game Changers Awards. We also want to give you a preview of plans taking shape for We Media Miami 09. We’d like to see you there and urge you to register now to confirm your seat. There’s more, so read on.

Here are the details …

We Media Game Changers Awards - Submit Your Nominations Now: We’re launching these awards to recognize people, projects and organizations leading change and inspiring a better world through media. The We Media Game Changers Awards will identify, amplify and draw lessons from the most significant achievements with media in the connected society. Winners are beacons of inspiration and will be featured participants and speakers at We Media Miami 09.We’ve recruited a stellar group of judges who are game changers themselves, including Fast Co. founder Alan Webber, Hip Hop Caucus founder Rev. Lennox Yearwood, MobileActive founder Katrin Verclas, Associated Press chief strategy officer Jim Kennedy and Real Girls Media founder Suja Araj. The first step is gathering nominees. Read up on the awards and criteria here, then submit as many nominations as you can think of with our online nomination form. This fall we’ll ask you to vote for the Community Award. For now, help us gather nominations. Yes, you can nominate yourself or your company. Tell your friends, clients, customers, readers and employees about the open nomination process. Also, let us know if you’d like to sponsor the awards.

• Nomination Form
• About the We Media Game Changers Awards
• Join the We Media Facebook Group

We Media Miami 09 - Feb. 24-26, 2009: Registration for We Media Miami 09 is OPEN. It’s our 5th annual global forum, so we’ll have reason to celebrate and we’re planning to make it special. It’s still going to be intimate - we cap registration at 300. We’ll be at
the lovely University of Miami for a full two days (ending with mojitos under palm trees at sundown on Feb. 26), and we’ve already confirmed more than a dozen people we admire will be there, including Witness Hub director Sameer Padania, Kenyan Pundit Ory Okollah, DailyMe CEO Eduardo Hauser and WorldChanging founder Alex Steffen; we’re ELIMINATING panels and instituting a new 2max rule (no more than two people at a time in conversations on the main stage), and we’re adding
some optional small dinners and tours in South Beach and Little Havana. Contact us if you’re interested in sponsorships or exhibit space - and check out the new self-service signup for sponsors at the Supporters and Catalysts levels.

• Conference details here.
• Online registration and sponsor signup here.

Pitch It: We’re expanding our Pitch It competition to seed and inspire the next generation of game changers. Stay tuned. We’ll be making the formal announcement and seeking applicants in September. Finalists will do live pitches of their big ideas on the main stage at We Media Miami - and we’ll be offering a $50,000 investment to the winning pitch. Let us know if you’d like to become a sponsor - or plan now to enter your big idea in the competition this fall.

Buenos Aires: Come to the We Media Regional Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Oct. 14-15, sponsored by Clarin. Participation is limited to 150 people. Speakers will include Oglivy PR’s global digital guru, John Bell, Google News GM Josh Cohen and CCR CEO Guillermo Oliveto.

• Register Now
• More Details

WeMedia.com: We’ve launched a new web site to expand our reporting and analysis - and to help anyone create, operate and sustain media ventures in a media-saturated culture. That includes analysis of media business models, partnerships and opportunities for innovation - and of media’s role in the connected culture. The site will also be the online home for the conference, awards and community-organizing around We Media. Please drop by and say hello to the brand new WeMedia.com. You also may want to update your feed reader since this is where we’ll be publishing our analysis and news from here on. You can also find links to our social outposts on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Also: We’re looking for global correspondents to provide reports, links and analysis on trends and innovations in media and communications around the world. Contact us if you’re interested in contributing to WeMedia.com.

As you can see, game changers and dreamers are the heart of the We Media story. Clearly, there’s much more to come.

All of this is made possible by the participation and financial support of members and by our shared commitment to explore, collaborate, inform, inspire, influence and define what comes next in the We Media movement. Thanks for your continued interest and involvement, for renewing your membership or joining the We Media Community if you haven’t done so already - and for urging your company and others to join.

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Steve,

It takes real chutzpah to ask Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster of craigslist to help newspapers salvage their classifieds businesses and thus save democracy, or at least the part of it that newspapers presumably foster.

Your clever open letter to them, at the same time congratulating and blaming, misplaces responsibility. It assumes they have the authority to solve a problem that the news industry inflicted upon itself: how to replace a subsidy predicated on controlling and authoritarian business practices.

Steve, I can’t decide if your modest proposal is naive, self-serving or tragically poetic.

Craig Newmark never set out to disrupt the newspaper industry. Motivated only by helping people out, he created a simple list for his friends, initially distributed through email, and later on the Internet when one friend showed him how to create a Web page. Their trust in him, as well as a passion for serving others through technology, gave craigslist its authority.

You miss the magic of craigslist. It is Craig’s “friends” — a community that has grown to 40 million people a month in 500 U.S. cities and 50 countries (larger than all news sites combined by several factors) — who disrupted newspaper classifieds. Call them users, customers, an audience, a market, or marketplace, they discovered that through craigslist they could do for themselves what others charged excessively in order to handsomely subsidize their businesses.

Trust in Craig, still craigslist’s chief customer service representative, remains at the heart of it. So are democratic, open markets: the right of the people to conduct commerce and journalism among and between themselves.

Meantime, newspapers charged premium prices for access to an arcane classification system that published a few, annotated lines of shorthand in very small type at the back of a dense product with limited, daily distribution. The hard-to-find, hard-to-read, one-way advertisements were distributed to parts of a relatively small geographic region for sellers and buyers to discover, at least those who happened to buy the newspaper and read the classifieds section on the very day they were prepared to make a transaction.

For a lousy experience, newspapers in growth markets such as Dallas, Denver and San Jose made hundreds of millions of dollars that drove margins of 30 per cent or more with these high-yield liners.

The experience was not significantly improved by importing this business to the online version of the newspaper. What didn’t work in print didn’t work online.

Newspapers used their profits not to expand their social mission, but rather to drive the stock price of the companies that owned them, to finance acquisitions, to reward management, and to acquire additional wealth through cost-management: death by acquisition accelerated by cutting their way to profitability.

Financing news operations has never been much a part of it; ask any editor who has asked for budget increases or additional staff to cover a society growing increasingly complex and competitive. The moral imperative is a myth perpetuated by editors and journalists, not by the publishers you (Steve) are asking Craig and Jim to help.

Now, other forms and systems – a collaborative, more democratic Fifth Estate, if you will — are emerging to replace an institution that is broken. Almost anyone can deploy the simple technology that craiglist uses. Anyone can participate in its journalism and commerce.

Publishers would be better served by implementing enlightened business strategies with a passionate consumer connection at its core. Until then, they will continue to be cast in a survival drama of their own making.

Newspapers are like a broken satellite falling of orbit. The technology is failing; the mission may soon be scuttled. To stay in orbit, the engineers must repair and update the technology systems. More importantly, the flight controllers must restore trust in the mission and its results by relinquishing control. Otherwise, Satellite Newspaper – classifieds and all — will burn up in the atmosphere.

Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster may be talented astronauts, but they shouldn’t go down with the pilots of their competitors’ obsolete ships.

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Our friend Mark asked me if I had seen an amazing video. Best catch he had ever seen. Ball girl streaks down the left field line at minor league baseball game, climbs the corner of the wall like Spiderman, jumps and turns to catch the foul ball at the peak of her outstretched arm. She lands softly on the field, casually tosses the ball to the stunned leftfielder, then jogs back to her seat with a wry smile as the play-by-play announcer describes the action in breathless detail.

Unbelievable, said Mark. I hated to break it to him. It was.

The video sweeping the Internet is a masterstroke of deception, a staged event designed to create buzz through viral marketing. Chicago ad agency Element 79 created it for Gatorade. When the ball girl sits down after the amazing catch, there’s a bottle of the power drink at her feet. The implication is that the beverage has imbued her with athletic powers worthy of a Sports Center highlight reel. The payoff is not so much in the subtle product placement, but in the buzz that eventually becomes associated with the product.

The real story is how marketers can use social media to manipulate consumers as well as reality. Ball girl is actually stunt girl Phoenix Brown. Film director Baker Smith shot the “catch” after a Fresno Grizzlies-Tacoma Rainiers game last month by attaching Brown to wires and having two stunt men yank her up the wall. Smith combined footage taken during and after the game, then created the illusion of the spectacular catch on his computer using software known as computer-generated imagery (CGI).

The marketing manipulation is so slick that Element 79 never released the video, thereby distancing itself and its client from criticism about the video’s true motives. “Ball Girl” was posted on You Tube by a filmmaker associated with the agency. It has been viewed about 4 million times, has received a glowing review from Advertising Age, and been featured on CNN and ABC’s Good Morning America. Now word is spreading at a concert outside Washington, D.C.

Gatorade has acknowledged that the video has reached critical mass and helped associate its brand with popular culture. While many now know the spectacular feat associated with a power drink is a special effect, a Gatorade spokesperson says millions are still entertained by it.

But many web watchers are still fooled. From the top returns on Google:

Break.com: “A minor league ball girl makes an incredible catch on a foul ball in left field. Her coach later informed her that there is no crying in Baseball.

Digg.com: “Warning: The Content in this Article May be InaccurateReaders have reported that this story contains information that may not be accurate.”

Feministe: “Love this.”

And, of course, You Tube, the top return: “Amazing ball girl catch. This is the most amazing thing ever”

So we lay back on the lawn, gazed at the stars above, and listened to Lyle and his gifted ensemble elevate our souls with true music and poetry. Pure, real, amazing ….

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I discovered that a lot of folks came to PdF for the same reasons. They played catch with familiar ideas. And they used the event to measure influence, familiar and emerging. PdF soared with both activities. An impressive roster of speakers from the converging worlds of political action, civic technologies and individual empowerment stimulated, and occasionally stirred, a network of Web buddies and budding online politicos.

Missing an Aha! moment that changes the world, PdF is more noteworthy for its momentum. At this moment, you can feel democracy shifting amid civic engagement enabled by technology. PdF is a forum where you can almost get your head around that big idea. Organizers Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifrey deserve as much praise for their impeccable timing as their star-studded roster of speakers. In two days of dense programming, content frequently rose to the level of the venue, the stunning Frederick Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center overlooking New York’s Central Park.

Playing catch on an elastic string, a few highlights and insights:

– FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, high-profile tech execs and industry advocates launch an initiative to make broadband access a national priority in the U.S.

– Lawrence Lessig touts the Change Congress movement by using every distracting feature in Keynote.

– Arianna Huffington declares that she knows The Truth that others don’t. About 50 people in the audience who blog at Huffington Post say they agree with her.

– Jay Rosen likens professional journalists to a migrating tribe in the midst of a survival drama.

– Mayhill Fowler demonstrates why she’d be irrelevant without a tape recorder. Did anyone actually read her story (lead buried somewhere in the 7th graph)?

– Virtual Reality pioneer Mark Pesce forecasts that the future looks nothing like democracy “because democracy, which sought to empower the individual, is being obsolesced by a social order which hyperempowers him.” The brilliant-but-huh? text here.

– Obama Girl, because she was there.

– Elizabeth Edwards charms the conference via Skype from her living room because her flight is canceled. Husband, John, the former presidential candidate, wanders into the room and is surprised to find his wife talking into a computer.

– Mark Soohoo, the deputy internet director of John McCain’s campaign, defends his boss for not personally understanding how to use a computer. Tracy Russo, Soohoo’s counterpart on Edwards’ former campaign, takes issue. Then fireworks. The video:

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As one way to try to understand the state of leadership in news and communications, I’m attending the renowned Wharton Leadership Conference at the University of Pennsylvania. Here executives from more than 400 companies are considering “emerging trends in the search for leadership.” The first two speakers – former presidential advisor David Gergen and American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault — identified critical qualities of leadership at a time of turbulence:

Gergen:
Intelligence and judgment (formerly enough, but not anymore).
Character.
Vision.
Hairy audacity (attributed to leadership guru Jim Collins).

Chenault:
Integrity as expressed through words and actions.
Courage to manage openly.
Collaboration and constructive confrontation.
EQ: Executional Quotient.
Concern for “people” (current bizspeak for employees).
Ability to adapt.

Gergen and Chenault contend that true leadership emerges during challenging times, and that real leadership drives change. Here’s a test based on questions they posed at Wharton. Take it yourself or apply it to your executives:

Are you accountable for results?
Do you articulate a true understanding of issues?
Do you define reality and give hope?
Do you provide a narrative of purpose for your organization?
For your community?
Do you deliver on the promise?
Do you inspire peers and employees?
Do you have a concern for people (again, they mean employees)?
Do your have hairy audacity?

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The thing about innovation is that you know it when you see it.

One version comes from Tribune Co., which has been exuberant about becoming “an oasis of creativity.” Newsies have encouraged us to watch Tribco’s Orlando Sentinel where Sam Zell’s new regime of former broadcasters is touting an innovation model for newspapers. The first sighting: a redesign of The Sentinel leaked by “oppressed” journalists at the Los Angeles Times, also a Tribco paper. Alan Mutter calls the radical format “scary.”

Desperate may be a better word. Radical is fine, but bad is bad. This kind of “innovation” not only gives design a bad name, but it is a cynical assault on real change. Design isn’t the problem at The Orlando Sentinel or most other newspapers. Relevance is. Innovation and creativity are ways to change that story. Tribco could have started by distinguishing its journalism, then designing inspired products that make it immediately accessible and relevant. Instead, Tribco’s shock jocks seem to have taken their lead from the Broadcasters’ Easy Guide to Change: One, change the management. Two, replace the “talent.” Three, after One and Two exacerbate the problem, change the set.

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At Nokia Beta Labs, the Finnish handset maker lets users test the latest smartphone software. Instead of people recording silly Web cam videos for YouTube or inventing frivolous advocacy groups on Facebook, they help make the mobile Internet more useful.

At Nokia Trends Lab, creative thinkers push the boundaries of how to use mobile technology as part of the creative process through film, music, photography and design. Thousands attend collaborative events and independent experiments around the world, all designed make Nokia devices and products more valuable to them.

At Nokia.com the company allows users to share and rate applications they have created such as screen-savers or games. Over the past year, Nokia designers have traveled to the developing world to ask users to sketch their own dream cell phones.

At its public Research Center, Nokia posted a mobile phone application called Sports Tracker designed to let runners and cyclists take advantage of the global positioning capability included in some Nokia models. Users can record workout data such as speed and distance, and can plot routes. More than 1 million people downloaded the widget and used it for sports the developers never dreamed of, such as paragliding, hot-air ballooning, and motorcycle riding.

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The site was designed for The Times by Roger Black Studio and DaniloBlack with consultation by the SEVEN26group. It is a visually-striking approach to news that is packed with content: pathways to 400,000 story topics, say Times editors. An impressive marriage of design and content, the site is notable for allowing users to control their experience and choose levels of engagement. A companion redesign of the newspaper relates it to its website and extends the “themes” approach.”

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“We trust people to drive moving vehicles at high speeds on our highways. We arm them and ask them to fight wars in the name of democracy. We put life and death decisions in their hands as juries deciding the fate of their fellow citizens. But we don’t trust them to participate in the news and information that impacts their lives? What’s up with that?”

Then I told attendees, mostly managers of news web sites, that “putting a wall between you and your audience is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.”

In our “debate,” my old friend Arizona Daily Star publisher John Humenik generally supported the idea of “user-generated content,” but had grave concerns. “UGC on our site is essential — but not if it threatens the credibility of the environment it is built on,” he said. “Don’t allow your news brand to be somebody else’s graffiti wall.”

Why do newspaper publishers always seem to frame the debate over participatory media in terms of isolated bad behavior on their online forums — a problem that is easily managed these days?

Publishers can only discover opportunities that are as good for business as they are for democracy when they change the environments they’ve built and begin to respect their audiences.

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The stages of grief: Denial, Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.

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Thanks for the link from Scott Heiferman, who got it from ZeFrank, and thanks most of all to the editor, filmmaker Andrew Filippone Jr.

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Who: You

What: Cocktails, hors d’oeuvres and conversation

When: Thursday, May 15, 2008, 6-8 p.m.

Where: National Press Club, 529 14th Street NW, Washington, D.C.

Why: The University of Miami School of Communication and Dean Sam Grogg invite you to join them for an informal conversation with the school’s new endowed Knight Chairs, Joseph B. Treaster and Rich Beckman.

Topic: Is Global Converged Journalism a Reality or Still a Dream?

Dress: Business Attire

RSVP: By May 7 to socevents AT miami DOT edu or 305-284-2539. Seating is limited.

You can learn more about the speakers here.

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The latest Audit Bureau of Circulations report showed a 3.5 percent drop in circulation – to about 50 million — for the largest U.S. newspapers over the six-month period ending in March. That level is the lowest in more than 60 years. The population has more than doubled since that time, so the market share for the “mass” medium known as newspapers in the U.S. is now about 18 percent or less.

The news on the advertising front is worse. The downward trajectory of revenues and ad share for newspapers is so steep that Advertising Week, the bible of the advertising industry, initiated a front-page installment called “The Newspaper Death Watch.”

While some news enterprises are finally embracing digital media, albeit somewhat reluctantly, that window of opportunity seems to be slipping away, too. Revenues from online products are about 10 percent or less of the declining print pot. And for the first time, pure-plays dominate the local ad-revenue marketplace where newspapers once reigned.

None of this seems to phase the industry trade-group Newspaper Association of America, which has cranked out press releases about the “jump” in online newspaper advertising and audience, or the World Association of Newspapers which trumpets newspapers as “a multi-media growth business” in a promotion for its World Newspaper Congress in Sweden next month.

See Also: A Satellite Falling Out of Orbit

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I love the description of Christy by her students at KU: “combination den mother/drill sergeant.” It was the same for us in her newsroom, a creative yet disciplined place where Christy gently demanded — and usually got — our best.

I suppose that many of us look back at a time when people, relationships, and work converged in a moment that we were meant to be a part. I had more of those moments in Detroit than I deserve, and Christy was at the heart of them. In a place as tough as a Detroit, she could find the deeper of meaning of events that became the hallmark of coverage at The Detroit News for a few extraordinary years. It was never easy, but it was always intoxicating. No one understood the ingredients of a good story more than Christy. No one had more fun stirring them into something meaningful or fun. She was a friend who taught me to be a good editor, and a editor who became a good friend.

Never sentimental, she understood that when it was time to go, it was time to go. Too soon. Too soon.

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The first is “Font, coffee or baby name.” I was five for five (I think). I’ll reveal answers and score later.

The second, The Rather Difficult Font Game, is for those fools who think they know the difference between Goudy, Gaudi and gaudy. Not a good test for MySpace designers, but my 24-out-of-34 was disappointing, too.

All of which recalls the priceless zefrank video send-up, “I knows me some ugly.”

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Publishers underestimated Craigslist once with devastating results. Newspapers, which derive nearly 80 of their revenue from classified advertising, lost half or more of their lucrative classified business over the past five years, a loss that now threatens the economic stability of the industry. So while, as my friend and former publisher John Greenman suggests, Craigslist may not be remarkable for the amount of money it takes from a single newspaper market, it is hardly inconsequential. Were it not for its mostly free approach Craigslist could do much greater damage.

Now the question is whether publishers will make another, perhaps fatal, mistake by missing the point of the Craigslist experience: shifting trust in the digital marketplace. Craig Newmark is a mensch, the trusted face of online classifieds, an always-on customer-service celebrity with the world’s biggest buddy list. “Trust is the new trust,” is how the enigmatic Newmark once explained it to me. What he means is that in an environment where anyone can do what he does, the authentic expression of trust is the key differentiator. That may not be entirely true, but it is enough true to crush a greedy, feudal business predicated on controlled distribution and an arcane classification system for categorizing commerce among and between people. It is the emergence of everyone as an online broker in an open, connected marketplace that warrants coverage, breathless as that may be.

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For the past week I’ve been playing with the private “alpha” of a new social bookmarking tool called socialmedian. You can also give it a try. To register as a tester, use this code on the signup page: wemedia. (This code is available for 100 testers).

What’s social bookmarking? It’s Digg, del.icio.us, Mixx, or my favorite of the bunch, Diigo. Here’s another one I have’t tried that sounds similar: Twine. NewsTrust, a non-profit focused on group evalutions of journalism to assess trustworthiness, also fits in this group (Disclosure: I’m an advisor there). I think Publish2 is a similar concept designed for professional journalists and newsrooms. These are all tools that allow you to bookmark your links to a web server, share those links with other people (or professional colleagues) and benefit from their links and recommendations.
Here, for instance, is a page that aggregates feeds and links about social media. It aggregates items from various sources I know well, such as TechCrunch and investor Fred Wilson’s blog, A VC.
But it also includes some sources I don’t know well, such as louisgray.com. Socialmedian allows users to rank the relevance of the sources to adjust the feed. I’m not sure how those rankings impact what I see.

Here’s a longer explanation of how socialmedian works at ReadWriteWeb.

I’m not quite sure where this fits. It’s partly an alternative to del.icio.us or Diigo, and I like Diigo too much to drop it; and partly an alternative to personal feed collections. I track my feeds through Netvibes - and I’m not looking to drop that either. Meanwhile, social feed tools that incorporate all of someone’s online behaviors, like friendfeed, suggest another way to learn from the behavior of friends.
In other words - there are lots of companies playing in this space.

Also worth noting: The company was founded by Jason Goldberg, formerly CEO of Jobster. He told me via email that he’s backed by undisclosed angels and an investment (amount not disclosed) from The Washington Post Co.

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But the despair of recent years seemed muted last week when about 1200 leaders from the news industry came to Washington at a joint conference of the Newspaper Association of America, American Society of Newspaper Editors and a newspaper production and technology exhibition.

Resignation filled the corridors of Washington’s drab and confusing convention center as publishers and editors contemplated the demise of the printed newspaper amid the emergence of digital media. The annual sessions with political leaders, as well as the opening of the industry’s $450 million museum, provided the only energy for a satellite falling out of orbit.

For that matter, there was little enthusiasm for the session on social media in which I participated. About 60 people attended our session. My slides are here.

The conference exposed troubled and turbulent times for newspapers. The technology hall was deserted, a stark contrast to the high-energy, shoulder-to-shoulder exhibitions that other sectors hold. One major publisher held a high-profile retirement party for a news exec getting out while the getting is still there. Editors shared painful stories about change, layoffs, finding news jobs, and dreams deferred. Some, already retired, returned to spin tales of better days gone by.

As with all their conferences, NAA and ASNE made and spun news. Highlights from a strange, sad week.

– At a luncheon for the editors hosted by the Associated Press, MediaNews founder and CEO Dean Singleton quizzed Sen. Barack Obama about whether he would send more troops to Afghanistan, where “Obama bin Laden is still at large?” “I think that was Osama bin Laden,” a somber Obama answered.

— Two reporters covering Sen. John McCain greeted their-favorite-senator-running-for-president with a box of Dunkin’ Donuts and sugar-coated questions that brought groans from fellow journalists. “We even brought you your favorite treat,” said AP’s Liz Sidoti. “Oh, yes, with sprinkles!” replied the candidate, who ate it up.

– A glass elevator in the Newseum stocked with colorful cocktails lifted news execs to seven floors of digital exhibits and sumptuous spreads prepared by Wolfgang Puck. In a city of free museums, the public must pay $20 for the privilege, drinks not included, of appreciating the Constitutional amendment that guarantees citizens free speech and a free press. Happily, the best of the Newseum is free: the daily, front pages of newspapers displayed as posters outside the building.

– The Newspaper Association of America issued a press release boasting that newspaper-owned web sites earned more revenue than all local media companies combined. Reason to celebrate, I suppose, if you ignore the pure-play Web sites that now have a 44 percent share of the local online ad market, eclipsing the share held by newspaper sites, currently about 27 percent and sinking. Which is like saying that Sen. Clinton is the leading the Democratic candidate if you don’t count Sen. Obama.

– The American Society of Newspaper’s annual census showed that the number of full-time journalists working at America’s daily newspapers shrank by 4.4 percent in the past year, the largest decrease in the past 30 years. Given the performance of newspaper moderators at the candidates’ sessions, it appeared as if the best journalists had either left their jobs, were laid off, or didn’t attend the newspaper conference.

See Also: The Burn

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On April 19 he’s ripping a page from the tech world and organizing an “unconference” to help the San Jose Mercury News talk with and learn from, well, anyone. He’s calling the effort CopyCamp, an homage to BarCamp and FooCamp, events for software developers and techies without a fixed agenda. They set an agenda, then try to come up with brilliant ideas, new code or at least new friends.

What brilliant ideas, new code or new friends might CopyCampers come up with?

Should the owners of the big newspaper in Silicon Valley give up and shut it down now? Or stay the current course - and painfully plunge from relevance, ever hopeful that there’s a bottom down there somewhere? Or does the San Jose Mercury News, in any form, have a future, a place in the heartland of U.S. technology innovation and investment - and a place in the cultural fabric of community life there? Might Silicon Valley’s best and brightest have anything to contribute to the conversation?

How about the newspaper where you live? Or newsANYTHING - TV, radio, web, mobile, whatever. Who’s producing the journalism you need to inform and influence life in your community?

Even if you don’t care about the future of the San Jose Mercury News you can consider these broad and generic questions about the future of news from a variety of angles. Here’s a new set of essays on the subject from Britannica.com (now a blog!), with contributions from Jay Rosen, Clay Shirky and others. Here’s a new report from the World Association of Newspapers that reviews the many ways newspaper companies can “maximize the Content Value Chain for efficiencies and revenue-making.”

In the U.S., at least, the business outlook for newspapers is grim. Earnings are down, share prices are down, and investment analysts are bleak on what comes next. Eric Alterman wrote last month in The New Yorker:

Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago.

Actually, it was imagined. And anticipated.

The trends are similar in the UK - and we’re even seeing signs of declines in traditional media usage in China, which now has the world’s biggest Internet audience.

Perhaps less obvious, or less interesting to those interested only in maximizing revenue, is the corresponding social urgency revealed by the decline of newspapers. Our research finds Americans deeply dissatisfied with their traditional sources of news, but also deeply mindful of the importance of journalism in their communities.

So there’s a gap to be filled - an opportunity to provide better journalism for people who believe it’s important. This is the We Media News Gap.

But what, exactly, does that mean? What does better journalism look like in the culture of We Media - the mediascape of free, networked, digital everything, news unbundled from advertising, ubiquitous, always-on creation, distribution, recommendation, sharing and information overload?

From the CopyCamp web site:

CopyCamp is a one day un-conference that brings community members into the newsroom to meet and discuss important issues with local journalists. After an initial meet and greet, reporters from the San Jose Mercury News and active members of the San Jose community will suggest topics they believe will benefit through an open dialogue in the hopes of improving the quality of journalism in the Bay Area and figuring out how the SJMN can better cover under represented communities.

Several editors and reporters from the newspaper have signed up to attend, including the newspaper’s influential designer/business development director, Matt Mansfield - but he’s also on his way out the door via the newspaper’s most recent round of layoffs/voluntary “departures.” Here’s the CopyCamp participant list.

Analysis: If chatting with members of the community you purport to serve is a novel idea for a newspaper company then CopyCamp is too little and too late to help. But making such conversations a priority, and re-imagining the relationship between a news organization and its community, is a big idea - and taking it more seriously would be a smart step for anyone who wants to meet the We Media News Gap.

You can find more details about CopyCamp and register to attend here.

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Here’s one response: A pleasant photo-video montage, set to a Natalie Merchant song, Carnival.

Analysis: If she’s going to be taken seriously, and have any impact, the beautiful queen, sans burka, is going to need to respond directly, rather than dismiss, the more challenging questions she fields about violence and rage in the Arab world - directed against women, the West, Jews and anyone who insults Islam, as seen here:
(WARNING: This has some disturbing images that are inappropriate for children)

Technorati Tags: softpower

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Last month at We Media Miami Susan led and moderated two sessions - one focused on social media and social experiences in business; the other focused on women in media and technology. If you don’t know Susan, you can get to know her through her widely-read blog and connect with her through the We Media Community [here's her profile]; and starting now through her contributions to guiding and growing iFOCOS. Welcome Susan!

And, for those of you reading this who know Susan but don’t know iFOCOS and We Media: Welcome to you too! We hope you’ll dive in, join the community, and find people, ideas and activities here that make a difference in your work and help you make a difference for others.

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Adrienne Ammerman, the organization’s media and communications organizer, attended We Media Miami 08 - and she came home inspired to take action. She’d like to launch a Bread for the City blog “to create dialogue and action around the issues we address every day: hunger & poverty, food & nutrition, access to legal services, medical care, and affordable housing… to name a few.”

Adrienne is looking for help from bloggers, techies, electronic and social marketing experts, journalists, and other media makers. The first step will be a tour and brainstorming meeting on April 11. I’ve been there - it’s a humbling place and a startling setting for a conversation about the role of media in society, and opportunities to inform each other and change the world through our stories.

For this first meeting capacity is limited to about 15 people, so if you’d like to attend, please RSVP. Also contact Adrienne if you can’t attend but would like to help,
Details:

When: April 11, 10 am

Where: Bread for the City: 1525 7th St. NW, Washington DC (Green Line to Shaw, Howard University. Street parking available.)

RSVP: To Adrienne Ammerman via email: AAmmerman [at] breadforthecity [dot] org. Or, connect with her in the via the We Media Community [profile]

Phone: 202-380-7848

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Blogged by Barbara Iverson: post one, two, and three.

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Blogged by Barbara Iverson: post one, two, three, and four.

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Blogged by Barbara Iverson: post one and two.

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Session Chair: Andrew Nachison, Co-Founder, iFOCOS

• J. Sebastian Traeger, CEO, Razoo
• Jim Brady, Executive Editor, Washingtonpost.Newsweek.Interactive
• Katrin Verclas, MobileActive
• Jean Marc Coicaud, Director, United Nations University
• The Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., CEO, Hip Hop Caucus
• Darya Shaikh, Executive Director, OneVoice

Closing Thoughts from Brian Reich, author, Media Rules!

Blogged by David Cohn, (with additional commentary from Jillian York, and comments on UNU from Renata Avila)

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Session Chair: Brian Reich, author, Media Rules!

• Ellen Miller, Sunlight Foundation
• Catherine Geanuracos, Live Earth
• Carolyn Washburn, Executive Editor, The Des Moines Register
• Michael Silberman, EchoDitto
• John Della Volpe, SocialSphere
• Amy Schatz, The Wall Street Journal
• Anthony Wojtkowiak, MTV Street Team

Blogged by Nathaniel James, (with additional commentary from Jillian York)

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Session Chair: John Bell, Managing Director, 360° Digital Influence, Ogilvy

• Vinita Srivastava, Assistant Professor, Ryerson University
• Sam Grogg, Dean, University of Miami School of Communication
• Sara DeWitt, Senior Director, PBS KIDS & Parents Interactive

Blogged by Travis Smith, (with additional commentary from Renata Avila)

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Session Chair: Jim Kennedy, VP Strategy, The Associated Press

• Fabrice Florin, Executive Director, NewsTrust
• Mary Hodder, Founder, Dabble
• Josh Cohen, Director, Business Development, Google News

SEARCH WORLD - Trust, Relevance and Rights (Breakout): Blogged by Jonathan Hendler

Afternoon sessions:

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Leading edge thinkers discuss one of the most important and personally meaningful issues of the 21st century: How communications technology and the content delivered through it will be used to improve the health and quality of life for people worldwide.

Introduced by Dr. Pascal Goldschmidt, Dean, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine

Session Chair: Kendall Lockhart, Co-Founder, Nenuphar Mobile Media

Keynote conversation with Scott Mowbray, Editorial Director, Health.com

Forum conversation:

• Bert van Hoof, Director, Microsoft Health Solutions Group
• Don Jones, VP, Health & Life Sciences, Qualcomm
• Emilio Pardo, Chief Brand Officer, AARP
• Dr. Andrew Wiesenthal, Associate Executive Director, The Permanente Federation
• Grant Harrison, Vice President, Integrated Consumer Experience, Humana

Blogged by Jacqueline Kreinik: post one, two, three, four and five, (with additional commentary from Zita Arocha)

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Session Chair: Susan Mernit, Senior Director, Yahoo! and blogger, Susan Mernit’s Blog

• Mary Hodder, Founder, Dabble
• Judith Meskill, Co-Founder, Crowd Fusion
• Carolyn Washburn, Executive Editor, The Des Moines Register
• Barbara Kahn, Dean, University of Miami School of Business
• Jan Schaffer, Executive Director, J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism

Blogged by Jessica Mikulski, (with additional commentary from Renata Avila)

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Chair: Rick Ducey, EVP, BIA Financial Network

• Suha Araj, Founder and VP of Strategy, Real Girls Media
• John McKinley, Founder, LaunchBox Digital
• Joe Natoli, SVP, Business & Finance, University of Miami

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Working Group Chair: Brian Reich, author, Media Rules!

• Ruth Behar, professor of anthropology, University of Michigan
• Luis Ramiro Beltr√°n, Bolivian journalist and scholar
• Andrew Karanja Githeko, Chief Research Officer & Head: Climate and Human Health Research Unit, Kenya Medical Research Institute
• Tom Kennedy, Managing Editor for Multimedia, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
• Pedro Paulo Poppovic, Editor, Sur International Journal of Human Rights
• Tini Tran, correspondent, The Associated Press
• Wang Wei, Senior TV anchorwoman and journalist, Shanghai Media Group

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Session leaders: Solana Larsen and Georgia Popplewell, Co-Managing Editors, Global Voices

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During the meeting, we will introduce what we’re doing at NewsTrust to address these questions– and ask your thoughts on how to best expand this public service — to help more citizens make informed decisions about their lives and governments.

Session leaders: Fabrice Florin, Rory O’Connor and David Cohn, NewsTrust.net, a non-profit social news network dedicated to good journalism.

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Session Chair: Merrill Brown, Chairman, NowPublic

• Lawrence Wilkinson, Founder, Global Business Network
• Chris Tolles, CEO, Topix
• Nic Fulton, Chief Scientist, Reuters Media
• Tom Bosco, VP, Video Sales, Fox Interactive Media
• Suha Araj, Founder and VP of Strategy, Real Girls Media
• Jennifer Carroll, VP, New Media Content, Gannett
• Randy Paynter, Founder and CEO, Care2

Blogged by Lauren Movius: post one, two and three.

tags:We Media Miami 2008

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Keynote conversations with:

• Alberto Ibarguen, President, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
• Diana Wells, President, Ashoka

Moderated by Keith Hammonds, Ashoka

Blogged by Rob Park (with additional wrap-up by Andrew Nachison)

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Session Chair: Dale Peskin, Managing Director, iFOCOS

• Chris Willis, Footnote
• Eduard Danilo Ruiz, Danilo Black
• Michael Smolens, CEO, DotSUB
• Adam Hoey, Director, Enterprise Business Development, Proteus

Blogged by Brooks Lindsay

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Introduced by:
Sanjeev Chaterjee, Director, Knight Center for International Media

Session Chair: David Sasaki, Rising Voices

• Cristina Quisbert, Producer and Eduardo √Åvila, Director, Voces Bolivianas
• Luis Ramiro Beltr√°n, Bolivian communications-research pioneer
• Leonardo Ferreira, author, Centuries of Silence

Global Voices blogging (and additional commentary from Renata Avila)

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Session Chair: Carin Dessauer, Senior Fellow, iFOCOS

• Neil Budde, former VP and Editor-in-Chief, Yahoo! News
• Kinsey Wilson, Executive Editor, USAToday and USAToday.com
• Jennifer Sizemore, Executive Editor, MSNBC.com
• Maria Thomas, SVP, National Public Radio

Blogged by Travis Smith

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Social networking, un-conferences, wikis and other web tools can not only strength communities but also build momentum for brands and causes. Their success, however, depends on more than just digital connections. How can companies make the connection between online networks and real-world outcomes?

Session Chair: Susan Mernit, Senior Director, Yahoo! Personals

• Maria Gallagher, Senior Vice President, Fleishman-Hillard
• Kaliya Hamlin, Founder, Unconference.net
• Elisa Camahort Page, Co-Founder, BlogHer
• John Todor, Principal, The Whetstone Edge
• JB Holson, CEO, NewsGator
• Dr. Isaac Prilleltensky, Dean, University of Miami School of Education

Blogged by Barbara Iverson: post one, two, three and four.

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New media is defined by online interactivity; no blog posting or article is complete with a comments section, for example. How do such virtual conversations influence, inform and reflect real-life public conversations? How can online community organizers keep participants on track and maintain order without stifling the conversation?

Chair: Hal Straus, washingtonpost.com

• Mark Jones, Global Editor for Community, Reuters
• Steve Arend, VP Digital Services, Head of Technology Innovators Group, CMP
• Robin Miller, Editor, Slashdot and SourceForge, Inc.
• Chris Tolles, CEO, Topix

Blogged by Sarah Schacht

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• Jeff Nolan, VP Business Development, NewsGator

Blogged by Jacqueline Guitierrez

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