Washington, D.C. - New forms of journalism are being created around the country where online local news sites have launched to report on their communities. 

The journalism is characterized by a deliberate shift in the definition of objectivity, a drive for community conversation and discussion, and broader definitions of “news” that seek to connect readers to a sense of the place where they live, according to new research released today by American University’s J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism.

The research found that journalism on independent local news and information Web sites is increasingly becoming an act of participation, not just an act of observation.  The participatory involvement calls for site editors to collaborate with readers in trawling for stories, unraveling news as it is happening, and ensuring that people know how to engage in community issues and events.

Site editors say they are abandoning what some call “antiquated” notions of dispassionate objectivity to “cut to the chase” and provide news that connects their community, not just covers it - even as they value and adhere to standards of accuracy, honesty, transparency, and sharing.

These are among key findings from focus groups and interviews with women news consumers and news creators who are populating the new media ecosystem. The research was funded by the McCormick Foundation as part of J-Lab’s New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative. It was conducted by Maria Ivancin, an American University assistant professor and focus group expert and Jan Schaffer, J-Lab director.

“We are beginning to understand that the kinds of news that are evolving in the new media ecosystem are different from the news that was delivered by traditional news organizations,” said Schaffer. “Yet it is responsible and seems to be connecting with people in their communities in interesting ways.”

“The New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative is yielding a treasure trove of promising media startups and insightful research on news consumers and creators,” said Clark Bell, the McCormick Foundation’s journalism program director. “This research shows the impact of women on the changing media landscape.”

The research report was released today at a summit in Washington, D.C. featuring women founders and editors of start-up community news sites around the country.

The goal of the research was to understand how women are consuming news in the evolving news ecosystem and how their significant roles as founders of community news sites and placeblogs are impacting traditional journalism conventions.

Through four focus groups and interviews with 11 women founders and editors of hyperlocal community news sites, the project explored how women news entrepreneurs are defining opportunities for creating news, how the news they are creating differs from traditional journalism. It also probed what women news consumers value in news and how they are altering their news habits.

The McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative is a project of J-Lab, a center of American University’s School of Communication. J-Lab helps news organizations and citizens use new media technologies to create fresh ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, the Knight Citizen News Network and the New Voices community media grant program.

The McCormick Foundation supports free, vigorous and diverse news media that provide citizens the vital information they need to make reasoned decisions in a democracy. The Journalism Program supports non-profit initiatives that enhance news content, build audiences and protect the rights of journalists.

Laurels to Len Downie Jr. and Michael Schudson for a comprehensive review of developments in the journalistic ecosystem.

Darts for the mile-wide, inch-deep reportage.

Laurels to Len Downie Jr. and Michael Schudson for a comprehensive review of developments in the journalistic ecosystem.

Darts for the mile-wide, inch-deep reportage. We all know about most of these developments. So, what epiphanies are to be drawn from what is working? I wish their calls to action were grounded in more specific context to convince people of their remediative powers. Indeed, most of the fledgling experiments they cite are too young to be prescriptive. Nor are their recommendations advanced by a depth of explanation that would engender legislative or regulatory support.

Besides, many of their suggestions have been happening for a while now: scores of news ventures have launched as nonprofits; more than 200 community and place-based foundations have invested in news initiatives since 2005; and the public broadcasting community has already announced plans to expand local news reporting.

If we really want to reconstruct American journalism, we need to look at more than the supply side; we need to explore the demand side, too. We need to start paying attention to the trail of clues in the new media ecosystem and follow those “breadcrumbs.” What ailing industry would look for a fix that only thinks of “us,” the news suppliers, and not “them,” the news consumers? I don’t hear from any of those consumers in this report.

The American public has been giving mainstream journalism a steady stream of negative feedback. Most recently, 70 percent gave the press poor-to-failing grades in unpacking the various health care proposals. And while the public still pays homage to watchdog reporting, only 29 percent of those recently surveyed by the Pew Research Center said the press gets the facts right.

So how are some of the new media makers addressing this? Many newly launched sites were triggered by frustrations with or vacuums created by mainstream news outlets.

In looking to reconstruct journalism, I’d start not by asking how do we get money for what we’ve always done. I’d ask instead: How do we provide something worth paying for? As a long-time news consumer, I have recoiled at much of what we are rendering as “journalism.”

What if it’s not just the business model of journalism that is broken? What if the way we are doing our journalism is broken, too? How are some of the new media makers trying to fix that?

Some questions that need to be addressed:

• What if the something-for-everyone, grocery-store model of newspapers no longer meets consumers’ needs—especially in an era of ESPN, Entertainment Tonight, and Bloomberg’s business news?
• What if some of the old conventions of “good” journalism, those things we do on autopilot, are hampering instead of safeguarding good reporting? For example: most new media makers don’t traffic in “scorecard” journalism; they present fewer false equilibriums; conflict is not the most prevalent definition of “news” for them.
• How is objectivity being redefined in emerging news sites? It’s not a dispassionate recitation of facts or he said/she said paradigms. A new objectivity informed by a sense of place and stewardship for community is taking root. TPM’s Josh Marshall, for example, is quoted as saying, “We’re not trying to be completely impartial but fair and rigorously honest.”
• What if just producing “journalism” is no longer enough? What if the public wants more—a scope of “news work,” as project researcher Chris Anderson noted in his recent dissertation, that also includes navigation, aggregation, linkages, access, social networking, crowdsourcing, data mining, visualizations, viral marketing, and transparency?
• What if the public’s definition of “good” journalism is more than the rewards we give ourselves—the prizes on the wall and scalps on our belts? How would the public define it?

When my organization, J-Lab, convened focus groups of news consumers a few months ago, not one person used the word “democracy” in describing the role of news. They valued information they could trust, and they wanted more connections to their topics or community.

New clues to the content and sustainability of journalism are all around us. They are melding good reporting, a sense of place, a passion for community, and information that adds value. To really reconstruct journalism, we need to follow these breadcrumbs, make sense of the patterns and re-imagine what news and information needs to be for the future—not just how we pay for it.

For more reactions to The Reconstruction of American Journalism, click here.

Washington, D.C. - J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at American University has received a $200,000 grant from the McCormick Foundation to fund eight women-led start-ups over the next two years that will generate new ideas in the world of news and information and model a spirit of journalistic entrepreneurship.

The grant also supports annual New Media Women Entrepreneurs Summits. The first summit, to be held Monday, Nov. 9, in Washington, D.C., will provide a forum for women launching innovative news projects to meet and exchange ideas. During the summit, J-Lab will release new research about women news creators and news consumers. See the agenda and register here: http://www.newmediawomen.org/events/register/

Under the new grant, a total of eight winners (four in 2010 and four in 2011) will be given $12,000 each in funding to launch their ideas and to blog about the process during the first year of their projects. The deadline for next year’s proposals is April 12, 2010.  See guidelines and applications here: http://www.newmediawomen.org/site/proposal_guidelines/

The funding is part of a unique initiative to address issues of opportunity and innovation, recruitment and retention for women in journalism. Under the initial support from the McCormick Foundation, six projects have been funded and three have launched. See them at www.newmediawomen.org.

The new grant from the McCormick Foundation:

• Provides a $12,000 award for each of eight women to launch their new ideas. Four winners will be chosen in 2010 and another four in 2011.
• Honors a New Media Woman Entrepreneur of the Year in an awards program.
• Produces a day-long annual summit to showcase the work of women media entrepreneurs.
• Collects ideas, research and more at www.newmediawomen.org.

“Our new research is giving us important insights into how women news creators are redefining and shaping the news of the future,” said Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab, which administers the project.

“We are pleased to work with J-Lab to recognize the most innovative and entrepreneurial media projects created by women journalists,” said Clark Bell, the McCormick Foundation’s journalism program director.  “The expansion of this initiative reflects the interest, need and demand for promising new ideas.” 

Eligible to apply for NMWE funding are new Web sites, mobile news services or other ideas that offer interactive opportunities to engage, inspire and improve news and information locally, nationally or among a community of interest. These can be solo ideas or team projects headed by women.

NMWE seeks to map the creative assets of women, validate ideas, and help newsrooms take some cues from big business, where top companies are disproportionately tapping women to develop creative, consumer-oriented cultures.

Check out existing research, suggest new research, nominate award winners and read the funding guidelines at www.newmediawomen.org.

The McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative is a project of J-Lab, a center of American University’s School of Communication. J-Lab helps news organizations and citizens use new media technologies to create fresh ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, the Knight Citizen News Network and the New Voices community media grant program.

The McCormick Foundation supports free, vigorous and diverse news media that provide citizens the vital information they need to make reasoned decisions in a democracy. The Journalism Program supports non-profit initiatives that enhance news content, build audiences and protect the rights of journalists.

Rather, the idea of a free press is taking on new meaning in a nation where, increasingly, small towns and rural areas, exurbs and even suburbs have less and less news coming from traditional journalism organizations—particularly news reports that cover their local concerns.

Never before has the idea of a free press meant so much to everyday Americans. It’s not that the country is under siege by a runaway tyrant or that we have rampant corruption or government by secrecy. Rather, the idea of a free press is taking on new meaning in a nation where, increasingly, small towns and rural areas, exurbs and even suburbs have less and less news coming from traditional journalism organizations—particularly news reports that cover their local concerns.

Their regional dailies have shrunk both news holes and distribution zones. Their radio stations carry canned music. Their television stations focus on crime for a shrinking number of appointment viewers. And their weeklies are clinging to their own life rafts.

Metro journalists parachute into surrounding communities to cover a major story and vanish as soon as developments slow to a trickle.

Yet even as traditional news business models flail and journalists fret about the plight of a democracy where the supply of news has been diminishing, the United States is re-inventing the very notion of a free press.

We are beginning to see that we are privileged not only to consume news that is freely reported and published, without fear or favor, by professional journalists; we are also privileged and free as ordinary citizens to make the news we need. To gather it, edit it and publish it. To tap those “go-to people” in our communities to help us identify which civic issues we need to address and to share their knowledge about civic affairs.

New media makers with access to digital media tools are increasingly stepping up to supplement their local news media and plug gaps in coverage with their blogs and community news sites. In the process, they are recruiting longtime civic catalysts as content producers. Now these civic catalysts are discovering that producing news can be as much an act of civic participation as voting.

Indeed, I would assert that media participation is a striking new definition of civic participation.

While no one wants to see traditional news organizations disappear, the newcomers who are doing news work are teaching us that the press can be free whether the journalism is undertaken by traditional news organizations or not. Moreover, where journalists in some countries are constrained by government control, new media makers in the U.S. don’t need handbooks on how to blog anonymously to avoid censorship.

We used to call these new media makers “citizen journalists” or community bloggers. However, in a pronounced trend in this SPJ centennial year, we observe professional journalists, newly severed from their news organizations, joining this new free-press movement. From Seattle to San Diego and Denver to Baltimore, they are launching their own town or statewide news sites to complement or compete with traditional local news organizations.

As these news initiatives take on stewardship roles in their communities, they are garnering philanthropic support.

A new study released in June 2009 by my center, J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, found that 180 foundations had awarded at least $128 million in grants to support 115 news initiatives since 2005. Attesting to the trend, nearly 87 percent—or 102 of the 115 news initiatives—launched only in the past 3? years. They range from hyperlocal to health to watchdog sites. 

None of this would be possible without the mindset of a free press in the United States, an expectation that journalists can freely perform their watchdog role without interference by government. That freedom had always applied to mainstream media and then moved to the alternative press. Now the mantle is being taken up by the news gatherers and so-called “fact entrepreneurs” who are affiliated with entirely new forms of media.

Many traditional journalists shudder at these new media makers, asserting that they don’t have the skills or training to be impartial or to verify information. Other journalists are nostalgic for the old days of Big-J journalism, perceiving that the new media makers are devaluing the role of professionals who are trained to deliver fair, balanced and independent coverage. All these core journalism values no doubt have helped to ratify the soundness of our founders’ decision to ensure that the Bill of Rights contained the First Amendment’s free press guarantee.

Slowly, however, some traditional news organizations are experimenting with how to partner with these new media makers. They hope to add feet on the street, amplify the best of the Small-J journalism and ferret out opportunities for local enterprise reporting.

As we celebrate SPJ’s centennial anniversary, we need to be open to new opportunities to maintain a robust supply of news. We must not only use the freedom we have to report on public life in our old ways, but we also must pursue new ideas for a free and open press. Whether the news comes from professional or amateur journalists, the goal is always the same: to hold public officials accountable for serving the public and to hold citizens accountable for being good citizens.

This article originally appeared in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Centennial Book, which was recently mailed to SPJ members. Order your copy here.

Many of the ideas honored are springing from crackerjack programmers and self-described “creative technologists,” now seated in many of today’s newsrooms.

What imaginative stuff the winners showcased yesterday at this year’s Knight-Batten Symposium and Awards for Innovations in Journalism. The awardees again serve as a beacon of hope for an otherwise beleaguered news industry.

Many of the ideas honored are springing from crackerjack programmers and self-described “creative technologists,” now seated in many of today’s newsrooms.

Said Aron Pilhofer, editor of Interactive Newsroom Technologies at the New York Times and creator of the award-winning ‘Document Reader,’ “If you take a technology approach to a journalistic problem, you come up with new ways to tell a story.”

For Ellen Miller- whose Sunlight Foundation is making data openly available on a huge array of things, from government contracts and grants, to lobbyists, to congressional bills, and even to words used most frequently in the Congressional Record- open records serve a vital role in the emerging ecosystem. “Technology is not a slice of the pie of what we do, it’s the pan,” she said.

Among the trends that surfaced this year:

• Lifting the veil on information. The winners built ways to track changes on government Web sites, fact-check assertions in presidential debates and mash data sets. “Transparency is the new objectivity,” Miller said.
• Making up-to-the minute data accessible and easy to visualize and use. See (and soon search and annotate) documents on the New York Times’ “Document Reader.” Learn what single words surface in constituents’ minds on Election Day through the Times’ “Word Train.” See the Twitter feeds that give insight to how ordinary people are experiencing the Great Recession in “Living with Less.”
• Helping citizens track what their elected officials are up to. With the Times’ “Represent” feature, you can track New York state and congressional officials by such things as their floor appearances and their Twitter comments.
• Engaging in collaboration and open sourcing instead of competition. The source codes for winners like ProPublica’s ChangeTracker and the Document Reader are intended to be available to all. “Could we put together a recipe so any reporter could do this?” asked ChangeTracker developer Scott Klein.

Many of the winners had future aspirations for their projects. Andrei Scheinkman envisions a way to let his “Represent” project track not just office holders but also candidates vying for office.

Another aspiration is to lobby for government agencies and elected officials to make their data available online in ways that foster automated access.

What do you get when you start mashing the data collected for Patchwork Nation’s 12 voter typologies with such things as the location of Whole Foods stores?  More nuanced understanding of how people outside the orbit of Washington, D.C. are reacting to and processing changes in the country.

“People in these communities understand there is a fundamental change going on,” said Dante Chinni, the site’s founder.

Check out some of the tools used to build the winning applications in the sidebar.

Many of these creative technologists realize that they are not just building tools for citizens. Things like the Times’ “Debate Analysis Tool” “was quite useful for our own reporters in house,” said its creator Andrew DeVigal.

Even participatory blogs like Vaughn Hagerty’s MyReporter.com, which collects and answers questions from readers of the Star News in Wilmington, N.C.,  gives journalists a “real-time window in our community and what [people] are interested in.”
One insight from the judges: The citizen media sites in this year’s competition were meaty and well-done. But it’s looking like people now know what it takes to publish a good community news sites.  Believe it or not, they’re not so innovative any more.

WASHINGTON, D.C.  The New York Times received top honors today in the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism with six striking entries that netted the $10,000 Grand Prize for a dynamic body of work.

Six other winners were awarded $1,000 prizes for diverse ideas that used digital tools to supply data, embed links, track Web site changes, respond to reader questions, unpack investigative stories, and even publish customized news in printed form.

“This year’s winners show us how creative technology can transform journalism, raise the bar on transparency and visualization of information, and tell complex stories in new and interactive ways,” said Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, which administers the awards. J-Lab is a center of American University’s School of Communication.

The Times’ body-of-work award honors initiatives created in its newsroom and technology department:

• Represent culls information from dozens of sources into a Facebook-style activity feed that helps NYC residents keep tabs on their state and congressional representatives “Tremendous added value for readers,” the judges said.
• Document Reader allows documents to be posted online in a clean interface that enables searching, bookmarking, comments and annotations. “A new high-water mark for transparency.”
• Custom Times, a prototype for personalized Times news reports, seamlessly transitions across print, Web, mobile, television and even the car. “Pioneering news anytime, anywhere.”
• Debate Analysis Tool allowed users to view the 2008 presidential debates and speeches on demand with a searchable transcript and fact-checked insights from journalists scrolling simultaneously alongside the video. “A digital simulcast for watching, reading and truthsquading.”
• Living with Less offers engaging audio and video portraits of peoples’ lives that have been upended by the recession. “Poignant views of the Great Recession.”
• Word Train, a replicable tool that asked users on Election Day to share “What One Word Describes Your Current State of Mind?”  “One word can say so much.”

A national panel of judges also chose five Special Distinction Award winners, including one for Nonprofit Journalism:

• Printcasting, a Web site that allows people to create niche magazines for their communities from their own blog posts as well as other blogs and publications that have registered on the site. Advertisers can create their own ads and target which magazines to appear in. Revenues are shared. “Print still counts, especially in new collaborations.”
• Apture, a powerful multimedia program that allows Web content creators to embed images, video, audio and screen grabs into articles so that the content pops up in a single window, giving readers more information in the same screen. “Sophisticated. efficient and fun.”
• Change Tracker, a Web application developed at ProPublica that monitors content changes on www.whitehouse.gov and that is being shared to allow others to monitor Web sites. “Shedding light and willing to share.”
• Patchwork Nation, a Web site shared by The Christian Science Monitor and the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer that uses reams of demographic data to track how the nation’s 3,100-plus counties are dealing with an era of dramatic changes in politics, culture and the economy. “Deep context made easy to understand.”

The Special Distinction Award winner for Nonprofit Journalism is The Center for Public Integrity for its innovative uses of digital tools to unpack complex topics. “They set the standard for nonprofit journalism,” the judges said. CPI’s body of work included:

• Broken Government. A searchable assessment of 120 executive branch failures of the Bush administration.
• Tobacco Underground: The Booming Global Trade in Smuggled Cigarettes. An expos? of the black market for tobacco by 17 journalists in 13 countries.
• Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown? An interactive look at the nation’s top 25 sub-prime lenders and their Wall Street backers.

Winning a $1,000 Citizen Media Award for innovative and useful citizen participation:

• MyReporter.com, an-easy-to use vehicle by the Star News in Wilmington, N.C., that lets people ask questions and get answers from reporters that are cataloged for future reference. “A tremendous validation of readers.”

This year’s winners were selected from 92 entries. Today they showcased their projects at a symposium and luncheon at the Newseum and heard from three keynote panelists: The Sunlight Foundation’s Ellen Miller, YouTube’s Olivia Ma, and Nieman Journalism Lab’s Joshua Benton.
In addition to the winners, 21 other notable entries are featured at www.j-lab.org.

“The Knight-Batten Award honors excellent, innovative journalism, news and information - not just excellent journalism,” said Gary Kebbel, Journalism Program Director for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which funds the awards. The awards honor creative uses of new technologies to engage citizens in public issues and showcase compelling models for the future of news.

Participating in the judging were Jody Brannon, national director, Carnegie-Knight News21, Arizona State University; Jim Brady, digital editorial consultant, Guardian America; Amy Webb, principal of Webbmedia Group; Jose Antonio Vargas, technology and innovations editor, The Huffington Post; Bill Buzenberg, executive director, Center for Public Integrity; Lee Rainie, founder, Pew Internet & American Life Project; Amy Eisman, director of writing programs, and Larry Kirkman, dean, American University’s School of Communication; the Knight Foundation’s Kebbel and J-Lab’s Schaffer.

J-Lab helps news organizations and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight Citizen News Network (www.kcnn.org and www.J-Learning.org), the New Voices community media grant program (www.j-newvoices.org) and the McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative (www.newmediawomen.org).

Tracking and confirming this activity, however, has given us a taste of the transparency challenges emerging in the new media ecosystem. 

Since June, when J-Lab released “New Media Makers,” its new study of grant-funded media projects, we’ve tracked another $7.5 million awarded by foundations to support or jumpstart news and information initiatives around the country.

Confirmed grants now total nearly $135.7 millions since 2005, up from $128 million reported in June.  This funding went for 322 grants to 125 projects in 19 states and it came from 206 foundations. The vast majority, more than $65 million, have gone to 11 investigative reporting initiatives; six of those have only launched since 2005. Indeed, at least 102 of the projects we’ve tracked to date have only come into being since 2005. Funding to public broadcasters was not included in this particular study.

Tracking and confirming this activity, however, has given us a taste of the transparency challenges emerging in the new media ecosystem.  In short, it ain’t easy to figure out who’s funding the new content generators, even as they become increasingly important sources of news.

With established news outlets cutting newsgathering and news space, these new media makers are helping to ensure that important developments in their cities, regions and states get covered. And philanthropic foundations, deeply concerned about the role of information in a democracy, are stepping up to support more and more non-profit news ventures with grants.

So what’s the problem? Simply put, nonprofit organizations such as many of the new media ventures are not required to disclose their individual contributors to the public - only to the IRS via Schedule B of their 990 tax returns.  The exceptions are private foundations, which are required to disclose their grantees, and 527 political organizations, which are required to disclose their contributors.

With legacy newspapers, it was easy to see where most of their money came from. You could look at the classified and display ads, which used to account for the majority of their revenue, or you could listen to the commercials in the case of television news. And if the companies were publicly held, more information was available.

Some of the most respected new media makers do place a high value on transparency.  Ask the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting or the Investigative Reporting Workshop who is funding them, and they readily supply a list of funders, amounts and dates. We applaud their willingness to disclose the sources of their support.

But not all of the new media makers are happy to share the sources of their funding. More than once we were told: “We’re not at liberty to disclose our funders,” said Tom Regan, who has been collecting data for J-Lab. Some receive support from anonymous donors; others want to guard their donors’ identities for competitive or other reasons.

J-Lab has spent a great deal of time and shoe leather tracking news reports, online databases, and confirming grants with the nonprofit news initiatives themselves.

But sometimes it’s like peeling an onion. Consider San Francisco’s Tides Foundation, a highly valued incubator for non-profit wannabes. It acts as a fiscal agent channeling grants to projects that are not able to take grants directly. The Tides Foundation lists all these grants on its 990s because Tides is legally the one making the grant, but the money is really coming from other funders. And Tides’ policy is not to divulge where that money comes from.

J-Lab urges new media makers who want to be regarded as credible news outlets to seize the moment to set high benchmarks for transparency. Add a page on your Web site and list the sources, amounts and dates of your funding.  Foundations can play a critical role here as well: Consider not donating to news ventures unless they make public their funding sources.

To be sure, advocacy and political points of view are more commonplace in the new media landscape. So just tell it like it is.

For the new media makers, letting the public know who supported your efforts to cover the news is not just an exercise in fair play. It’s a key component in making sure that your news coverage is not seen as front for a hidden group of donors who might have a particular political or advocacy agenda.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Five news organizations around the country have each agreed to work with at least five hyperlocal news sites or producers in their communities in a Networked Journalism pilot project to gather ideas and lessons for future content collaborations, American University’s J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism announced today.

The one-year project is funded with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The funds will support a liaison at the newspaper and provide small stipends to local partners.

“We’ve been moving down this track already, but much too slowly,” said David Boardman, executive editor of the Seattle Times, one of the project’s newspapers. “This will both kick-start it, give us a better organizing framework and give us a way to share successes and challenges with others. It’s perfect timing.”

The pilot news organizations are:

• The Seattle Times
• The Miami Herald
• The Charlotte Observer
• Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times
• TucsonCitizen.com, a newspaper that has become a Web-only citizen journalism outlet.

“A growing number of Web-based journalists now help to fill the need for quality news coverage in many communities,” said Charlotte Observer editor Rick Thames.  “We’d like to see if partnerships with these journalists could lead to richer, more relevant content for all of our audiences.”

The news organizations are beginning to reach out to prospective partner news sites in their communities. “We hope this project will help traditional news organizations and new media makers begin to figure out how to amplify good content coming from their communities ?- sharing it, even monetizing it for all participants,” said Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab, which is overseeing the project. J-Lab is a center at American University’s School of Communication.

J-Lab will assemble the lessons learned into an overall report on how such Networked Journalism collaborations might work.

Among the lessons to be sought are:

• What are the attributes to look for in recruiting partners?
• What kinds of partners do, or don’t, want to work with a mainstream news organization?
• What kind of partner content is valuable enough for mainstream news outlets to give it an added voice or use it as a basis for enterprise reporting?
• What are the opportunities to share content?
• What other community sites asked to join the network?
• How do you maintain a sense of “ownership” among the community partners while also gelling the collaboration as a “network?”
• How do you measure success?

“In these days where anyone can publish local information, we hope that a guided partnership between local newspapers and local bloggers or citizen journalists can increase the amount of local information available in a community and raise its quality. We see this as a win/win for the community,” said Gary Kebbel, Knight’s journalism program director.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $400 million to advance journalism quality and freedom of expression. Knight Foundation focuses on ideas and projects that create transformational change. To learn more, visit http://www.knightfoundation.org.

J-Lab helps news organizations and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight Citizen News Network, the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, the New Voices community media grant program (www.j-newvoices.org), and the McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative.

American University’s School of Communication is a laboratory for professional education, communication research and innovative production in the fields of journalism, film and media arts and public communication, working across media platforms and with a focus on public affairs and public service.

Civic News Networks: Collaboration v. Competition from J-Lab on Vimeo.

Click here for video of the panel

or

Click here for the Q&A after the panel.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The New York Times swept top honors in the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism with six striking entries that netted the $10,000 Grand Prize for a dynamic body of work in the past year.

“This year’s winner shows that even the biggest, most prestigious news organizations can create just the kinds of small, nimble teams they need to successfully innovate in the digital age,” said Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, which administers the awards. J-Lab is a center of American University’s School of Communication.

A national panel of judges also chose winners for five $1,000 Special Distinction Awards, including one for Nonprofit Journalism, and a $1,000 Citizen Media Award.

“The Knight-Batten Award honors excellent, innovative journalism, news and information - not just excellent journalism,” said Gary Kebbel, Journalism Program Director for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which funds the awards.

The Times’ body-of-work award honors initiatives created in the newsroom and the technology department:

• Represent, which helps city residents keep tabs on their elected officials, culling information from dozens of sources into a Facebook-style activity feed.
• Document Reader, which allows documents to be posted online in a clean interface that allows searching, bookmarking, comments and annotations.
• Custom Times, a prototype for personalized Times news reports that seamlessly transition across print, Web, mobile, television and even the car.
• Debate Analysis Tool, a replicable tool that allowed users to watch the 2008 presidential debates and speeches on demand with a searchable transcript scrolling simultaneously alongside.
• Living with Less, engaging audio and video portraits of peoples’ lives that have been upended by the recession.
• One Word, a replicable tool that asked users on Election Day to share “What One Word Describes Your Current State of Mind?”

Winning $1,000 Special Distinction Awards are:

• Printcasting, a Web site that allows people to create niche magazines for their communities from their own blog posts and from other blogs and publications that have registered on the site. Advertisers can create their own ads and target which magazines to appear in. Revenues are shared.
• Apture, a powerful multimedia program that allows Web content creators to embed images, video, audio and screen grabs into articles so that the content pops up in a small window in the same screen, allowing users to get more information without opening new windows or tabs.
• Change Tracker, a Web application developed at ProPublica that monitors content changes on www.whitehouse.gov and that is being shared to allow other news organizations to monitor Web sites.
• Patchwork Nation, a Web site shared by The Christian Science Monitor and the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer that uses reams of demographic data to track how the nation’s 3,100-plus counties are dealing with an era of dramatic changes in politics, culture and the economy.

Winning a $1,000 Citizen Media Award for innovative and useful citizen participation:

• MyReporter.com, an-easy-to use vehicle by the Star News in Wilmington, N.C., that lets people ask questions and get answers from reporters that are cataloged for future reference.

Winning a $1,000 Special Distinction Award for Nonprofit Journalism is The Center for Public Integrity for its innovative uses of digital tools to unpack complex topics in a body of work that included:

• Broken Government. A searchable assessment of 120 executive branch failures of the Bush administration.
• Tobacco Underground: The Booming Global Trade in Smuggled Cigarettes. An exposé of the black market for tobacco by 17 journalists in 13 countries.
• Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown? An interactive look at the nation’s top 25 sub-prime lenders and their Wall Street backers.

This year’s winners were selected from 92 entries. The winners will showcase their projects at a September 17 symposium and awards luncheon at the Newseum. The event is free, but space is limited and pre-registration is required; e-mail news@j-lab.org to register.

In addition to the winners you can view 21 other notable entries at www.j-lab.org.

The Knight-Batten Awards honor creative uses of new technologies to engage citizens in public issues and showcase compelling models for the future of news.

Participating in this year’s judging were Jody Brannon, national director, Carnegie-Knight News21, Arizona State University; Jim Brady, digital editorial consultant, Guardian America; Amy Webb, principal of Webbmedia Group; Jose Antonio Vargas, technology and innovations editor, The Huffington Post; Bill Buzenberg, executive director, Center for Public Integrity; Lee Rainie, founder, Pew Internet & American Life Project; Amy Eisman, director of writing programs, and Larry Kirkman, dean, American University’s School of Communication; the Knight Foundation’s Kebbel and J-Lab’s Schaffer.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $400 million to advance journalism quality and freedom of expression. Knight Foundation focuses on ideas and projects that create transformational change. To learn more, visit http://www.knightfoundation.org.

J-Lab helps news organizations and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight Citizen News Network, the New Voices community media grant program (www.j-newvoices.org), and the McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative.

American University’s School of Communication is a laboratory for professional education, communication research and innovative production in the fields of journalism, film and media arts and public communication, working across media platforms and with a focus on public affairs and public service.

Washington, D.C. - Three entrepreneurial news ideas - including franchises for community news sites, a food policy and strategies start-up, and a health Web site for women ages 18 to 27 - each won a $10,000 award to launch their projects in a robust competition that showcased keen energy and ideas for the future of news.

The award winners were selected from a whopping 435 proposals received in the second year of the McCormick Foundation New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative.  The number of proposals increased 129 percent from last year’s total of 190.

“There was an incredibly competitive field of creative ideas to address specific issues proposed by women who have a great deal of optimism about the future of news and information,” said Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, which administers the program. J-Lab is a center of American University’s School of Communication in Washington, D.C.

The Chicago-based McCormick Foundation funds the New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative. “We are elated about the number and quality of the proposals,” said Clark Bell, the foundation’s journalism program director. “This initiative showcases the energy, creativity and innovation of media entrepreneurs. These women are not waiting for the next big thing. They are determined to create it.”

Each project will receive $10,000 to launch within a year and project leaders will blog about their experience at www.newmediawomen.org. Three runners-up were also announced. The winners are:

• ChickRx - Harvard MBA student Stacey Borden and partner Meghan Muntean will lead a team of women in launching an “edgy, approachable, engaging” online health resource uniquely targeted to women, ages 18 to 27. It will have content and Q&As, updated daily, from medical, family and nutrition experts, addressing such questions as: “Can drinking too much Diet Coke increase my risk of getting cancer?” “Can I lose five pounds in week without starving myself?” “Why am I unhappy, even though I know I shouldn’t be?” Borden is the former campus relations director of 85 Broads, a national professional women’s group.
   
• Women’s Community News Franchise - Former MytopiaCafe.com editor Michelle Ferrier will develop a complete infrastructure, to be franchised, for those who want to launch hyperlocal news sites. A demo site will launch later this year in West Volusia County, Florida, piloting services that will include a Web platform, software development, market analysis, some content, and legal and marketing assistance. Such an infrastructure, says Ferrier, will permit citizen journalists and community members to “focus on what they are most passionate about - building their community conversation through good local information and networking.”
   
• The Good Food Fight - Three media-savvy Seattle women will connect consumers interested in food with larger public policy issues that affect food choices, security, safety, health and sustainability. Partners Kristin Hyde, Jen Lamson and Amy Pennington will use their deep experience in policy, marketing, journalism and digital campaigns “to leverage the growing concern and interest in food with a call to arms.” They plan to use a business-to-business model as well as their own outreach to leverage support from subscribers, sponsors, donors and foundations.

“It’s encouraging to see all the outpouring of talent and interest,” said Advisory Board member Vivian Vahlberg. “There is a lot of pent-up creativity this [awards program] has tapped.”

“Everyone wants a hand in defining what’s next,” added board member Chhayal Parikh.

The Advisory Board of judges also cited three runners up.

• Daily Phoenix - A plan to use the Web and text messaging to interact with light-rail users in the Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa areas of Arizona, using games, business promotions, and news for each stop on the 20-mile route. Proposed by co-founders Aleksandra Chojnacka, an Arizona State MBA student, and Adam Klawonn.
   
• See Jane Grow - A plan by Lisa Kivirist, author of the award-winning book “ECOpreneuring” and innkeeper at Inn Serendipity in Wisconsin, to launch a resource and story-sharing portal for the growing numbers of women engaged in purchasing new farms and launching small, green, rural businesses. These women are “choosing quality of life and stewarding the land over a conventional ‘bigger is better’ mindset,” Kivirist said.
   
• Echo Park TV - A site by documentary filmmaker Carolin Reiter to build community connections in a largely Hispanic and artistic neighborhood, known as the SoHo of Los Angeles, using Webcasts, newspapers, social networks and the sharing of design, music, and video skills.

Winning proposals had prospects for scaling larger and had clear ideas of how to use the funds, how to update content frequently and how to market their projects, Schaffer said.

This year, the largest cluster proposals, 77, focused on new ideas for geographic communities; the second largest cluster focused on racial and ethnic issues. Proposals to cover health and environmental issues were also well represented this year. To see the topic areas and last year’s winners, go to www.newmediawomen.org.

Participating in this year’s judging were: Vivian Vahlberg, former managing director, Northwestern University’s Media Management Center; Chhayal Parikh, Web editor at the World Bank; Cynthia Miller, managing partner, Newsroom Leadership Group; Lee Becker, director of the Cox Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research, University of Georgia; Maria Ivancin, assistant professor and Amy Eisman, director of writing programs, American University School of Communication; Maurine Beasley, professor emeritus, University of Maryland’s Merrill College of Journalism and author of “Taking Their Place: A Documentary History of Women and Journalism”; Amy Lee, consultant for the McCormick Foundation, and J-Lab’s Jan Schaffer.

The McCormick Foundation New Media Women Entrepreneurs (NMWE) is a unique initiative addressing opportunity and innovation, recruitment and retention for women in journalism by spotlighting their ingenuity and entrepreneurial abilities. Pilot projects will show what can be done. Coming soon is a new research report looking at women news consumers and news creators. A summit will be held this fall showcasing women’s creative ideas. To receive more information about the research and the summit e-mail news@j-lab.org.

The McCormick Foundation advances the ideals of a free, democratic society by investing in children, communities and country.

J-Lab helps journalists and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life with projects on innovations in journalism, citizen media, interactive news stories, entrepreneurship, training and research and publications.

American University’s School of Communication is a laboratory for professional education, communication research and innovative production in the fields of journalism, film and media arts and public communication, working across media platforms and with a focus on public affairs and public service.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - At least 180 community, family and other foundations have contributed nearly $128 million in grants to news and information initiatives in the United States since 2005, according to a report released today by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism.

This funding went to support at least 115 news projects in 17 states and the District of Columbia, with many projects receiving multiyear funding.

“We’re sure there are more grants we haven’t yet found, but one thing is clear: Philanthropic foundations are increasingly embracing the idea that journalism projects can be a funding fit,” said Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab, a project of American University’s School of Communication.

The information is contained in a grants database that is part of J-Lab’s report, “New Media Makers: A Toolkit for Innovators in Community Media and Grant Making.” The toolkit, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, offers case studies, videos and online resources that capture lessons from these new media makers and their funders.

The database shows that of the nearly $128 million awarded, more than $56 million has gone to support three investigative journalism projects.

“News is a core community need. People need it to run their lives, and democracy needs it to work. It’s great to see broad and growing support among community foundations for local news and information projects,” said Gary Kebbel, journalism program director at Knight Foundation.

The toolkit offers chapters on how foundations are finding journalism to be a funding fit, how these news projects are impacting their communities and how funders are measuring success.  An accompanying DVD offers compelling inside looks at what it takes to start up innovative news projects, whether the founders are amateur or professional journalists.

The database, believed to be the first of its kind, focuses on funding for news and information projects, including investigative journalism efforts, in the last four years. It acknowledges, but excludes, the generous philanthropic support for public broadcasters, underwriting for documentaries, for journalism training and student news services.

“We sought to begin documenting what we see as a new trend,” Schaffer said.

The database is organized alphabetically by foundation and is searchable online. Funders and grant recipients can update the online list with new or missing grants.

You can access the toolkit, videos and database at the Knight Citizen News Network, http://www.kcnn.org/toolkit. Or you can request a hard copy of the report with the DVD by emailing news@j-lab.org.

About Knight Foundation  The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $400 million to advance journalism quality and freedom of expression. Knight Foundation focuses on ideas and projects that create transformational change. To learn more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

About J-Lab  J-Lab helps news organizations and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight Citizen News Network (www.kcnn.org), the New Voices community news grant program, J-Learning.org e-learning portal, and the McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative (www.newmediawomen.org).

About American University’s School of Communication   American University’s School of Communication is a laboratory for professional education, communication research and innovative production in the fields of journalism, film and media arts and public communication, working across media platforms and with a focus on public affairs and public service.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Eight hyperlocal community media projects from across the United States have been selected as this year’s New Voices grant winners. Each will receive up to $25,000 in start-up funding over the next two years.

The winners were selected from 304 applicants, J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism announced today. With this year’s projects, a total of 48 community news start-ups have been funded from 1,249 entries since 2005.

The 2009 winners proposed frequently updated and robust sites generated by a diverse mix of content contributors. All the projects focus on geographic communities. Most will operate under the auspices of journalism professionals.

“Particularly notable among this year’s winners is a deep understanding of what it will take to launch a hyperlocal site and regularly refresh content. They also had great familiarity with digital media tools,” said Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab, which administers the New Voices program at American University’s School of Communication.

The awards were increased this year so that grant winners will receive $17,000 in the first year to launch their projects and $8,000 in matching support in the second year. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation funds the New Voices program.

“What we can learn from the 48 New Voices community news experiments is all the more important in light of newspaper closings across the country,” said Gary Kebbel, Knight’s journalism program officer.

Added Bruce Koon, News Director of KQED radio and a New Voices Advisory Board member: “With all the anxiety about the future of journalism and news outlets, these projects are a breath of fresh air because of their creativity and commitment to serving communities. They’re providing valuable lessons for the future.”

The 2009 New Voices grantees are:

• GrossePointeToday.com - Wayne State University’s journalism program has recruited more than 20 displaced, retired and otherwise available professional journalists to write and edit content from citizen contributors and online journalism students at WSU and the University of Michigan-Dearborn for a full-service news and information site about Detroit’s five Grosse Pointes. Professionals have pledged $20,000 in seed money to support the first year of the program. The site will receive a 30 percent commission on all advertising sold by a 35-year-old, highly successful community directory called “The Little Blue Book.”
• Oakland Local - A daily-updated Web site and mobile service will be created to cover Oakland, Calif., with a focus on environment, climate, transportation, housing, local government and community activism in Downtown, Uptown, North Oakland, West Oakland, Fruitvale, Lake Merritt, and the Dimond District. An editor, publisher and three paid part-time reporters will produce content, as will citizen contributors. The site will geotag content to an XML data map, encourage users to interact via cell phones and employ a range of social networking tools.
• Backyard News - A former newspaper reporter and founder of the Linglestown (Pa.) Gazette will expand his model to develop a network of four to six independently operated hyperlocal Web sites, to be updated daily, for communities in suburban Harrisburg, Pa. Backyard News will seek joint ventures to provide local content for the region’s daily newspaper and radio and TV stations. The project will also work to deliver content to cell phones.
• Maryland School Information Mapping (M-SIM) - Towson University’s Center for Geographic Information Sciences will partner with the online public policy site MarylandCommons.com to create a Web tool that will combine Maryland Department of Education data with user-friendly geomapping. M-SIM will give parents, educators, policymakers and journalists data and news about K-12 schools at the local, county and state level, and M-SIM maps will complement news and commentary written by Commons staff and citizen journalists.
• Intersections: The South Los Angeles Reporting Project - The Annenberg School at the University of Southern California will spearhead the creation of a community news Web site for a region that is home to African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and immigrants. The project will use multimedia reporting by journalism students, community residents and community leaders and will focus on education, economic development, housing and immigration. Project leaders will target print and broadcast outlets that might also use Intersection stories. They will also work with student-run Annenberg Radio and Television News and will partner with Mobile Voices, a USC Annenberg storytelling platform designed to help low-wage immigrants develop mobile media skills.
• The Austin Bulldog - A longtime Austin journalist, founder of a monthly magazine and political newsletter, will create a daily-updated Web site for public-interest and investigative reporting, using both professional journalists and input from citizens. The site will also synthesize outside news stories in addition to posting original reporting and commentary. Readers will be encouraged to submit tips and their own commentary.
• New Era Media - A Boulder, Colo., foundation will start a blog site covering Colorado news and politics aimed at young people. Initial content will come from 10 citizen contributors (ages 17-30), who will research, develop and post stories. Community contributions will also be invited. In addition, the site will develop feeds that can be posted to Facebook profiles and other social networking applications.
• The Villager, News and Notes from Coconut Grove West - A University of Miami visual journalism professor will launch a community news site for one of Florida’s oldest, but newly gentrifying, communities. News stories and visual documentaries will be generated by partners, which include journalism students, the Coconut Grove Collaborative (http://www.cgcollaborative.org/), the CG Homeowners Association (HOATA), a local health clinic and local residents.

Participating in this year’s selection were New Voices Advisory Board members:

• Charles B. Fancher, president, Fancher Associates Inc.
• Jane Brown, executive director, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.
• Bill Gannon, director of online production and programming, Lucasfilm Ltd.
• Bruce Koon, news director, KQED public radio, San Francisco.
• Peggy Kuhr, dean, University of Montana School of Journalism.
• Michele McLellan, associate, Knight Digital Media Center.
• Ju-Don Roberts, managing editor, WashingtonPost.com.
• Rose Ann Robertson, associate dean, student and academic affairs, American University School of Communication.
• Jan Schaffer, executive director, J-Lab.

Track the progress of New Voices grantees online at j-newvoices.org, where quarterly updates, news and features are posted. Follow other citizen media developments at the Knight Citizen News Network (www.kcnn.org).

About Knight Foundation  The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $400 million to advance journalism quality and freedom of expression. Knight Foundation focuses on ideas and projects that create transformational change. To learn more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

About J-Lab  J-Lab helps news organizations and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight Citizen News Network (www.kcnn.org), the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, J-Learning.org and the McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative (www.newmediawomen.org).

About American University’s School of Communication  American University’s School of Communication is a laboratory for professional education, communication research and innovative production in the fields of journalism, film and media arts and public communication, working across media platforms and with a focus on public affairs and public service.

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Many news organizations are going to fail this year. But I believe local and regional news vacuums are going to be filled - and filled robustly.

Is it important for news to survive - or news organizations? See today’s New York Times for a sampling of opinions.

Many news organizations are going to fail this year. But I believe local and regional news vacuums are going to be filled - and filled robustly. Why? Because J-Lab is already seeing the various ways that hyperlocal news start-ups are creating news Web sites for communities that have little or no available media. When communities are not being covered, people are starting to gather and report local news themselves.

J-Lab will soon introduce you to these New Media Makers in a major video toolkit. You’ll meet the people launching these projects and hear them talk about their ethical dilemmas, the civic impact of their efforts and how they fit in a new media ecosystem.

Some of these New Media Makers are amateur journalists; some are professionals. Some sell ads, others receive grants, and others work as volunteer journalists.

You got a taste of their thinking today from Ed Fouhy, who helped J-Lab produce and narrate these videos. In today’s Times, he liberally quotes the people we interviewed for our videos.

For many of these New Media Makers, an opinion blog is not their aspiration. “We’re trying to produce what used to be a newspaper,” said Christine Yeres, managing editor of the J-Lab funded NewCastleNOW.org in Chappaqua, N.Y.  “I think we get the readership that we do because ... it is professional. It’s been gone over very carefully.”

It is on this new terrain that old journalism values - accuracy, independence, and objectivity - are combining with new journalism conventions. Where Big-J journalists excel at covering communities from the outside-in, many of these New Media Makers are crafting the models for how to cover communities from the inside-out.

“Sometimes, we want to be the New York Times and sometimes we want to be the church bulletin,” says Susie Pender, Yeres’ co-editor.

Deerfield Forum founder Maureen Mann knows that some people will disagree, but “I’m proud of that” thinking, she says.

What I see happening around the country raises, for me, a fresh question: Are we dealing with more than broken business models for Big-J journalism?

Is the journalism broken, too?

(Want a copy of New Media Makers when it’s ready?  E-mail news@j-lab.org.)

WASHINGTON, D.C. - “The Citizen Journalist’s Guide to Open Government,” an extensive multimedia e-learning module to help new media makers understand how to obtain public records and get into public meetings, launched today on the Knight Citizen News Network (www.kcnn.org). The guide features a unique interactive map that tells citizens how they can locate open-government information on each of the 50 state Web sites. Easy-to-find information on either the Governor’s or State Attorney General’s Web site gets a thumbs-up ranking. Hard-to-find information earns a thumbs down. Users can:

• Obtain local, state and federal government records.
• Appeal when a records request is denied.
• Take steps if they are excluded from a meeting.
• Learn what’s allowed in their state.
• Understand access to court proceedings.
• Link to more information.

“As more and more everyday people cover local news and information, this guide gives them a unique road map to resources and information that traditional journalists use every day,” says Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab, which administers the Knight Citizen News Network (KCNN) with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. J-Lab is a center of American University’s School of Communication.

“Information is a core need of communities in a democracy. This module will help new media makers obtain vital government information citizens need to make informed decisions in their own best interest,” says Gary Kebbel, journalism program director at Knight Foundation.

Geanne Rosenberg, a lawyer and the founding chair of Baruch College’s new undergraduate Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions, produced the module for J-Lab. It includes input and video interviews from top media law experts around the country.

“With newspapers nationwide slashing reporting staff, there is a greater need than ever for citizen journalists and the public to understand and exercise rights of access to government records, meetings and courts,” Rosenberg says. “By doing so, they can help shed light on government activities and hold public officials accountable.”

In addition to the interactive map and video interviews from freedom-of-information experts, the site also includes quizzes, animations, a blog and other content. The blog allows site users to ask experts for help and share their experiences. Rosenberg says that governors, attorneys general and other state officials who are dissatisfied with their state’s ranking should write her to request a reevaluation. 

Rosenberg also wrote KCNN’s “Top Ten Rules for Limiting Legal Risk” and co-authored Poynter’s News University’s “Online Media Law: The Basics for Bloggers and Other Online Publishers.”

Collaborating on the project were CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism and Professor Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition and an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism.

“This indispensable site puts the FOI community a click away from the resources in each state, and empowers citizens with the information they need to make information requests under state FOI laws,” Davis says. “It is also a real inspiration to see so many people involved in this vital issue.”

More about J-Lab: J-Lab helps news organizations and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, the McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative (www.newmediawomen.org) and the New Voices citizen-media start-up program (www.j-newvoices.org).

About AU’s School of Communication: American University’s School of Communication is a laboratory for professional education, communication research and innovative production across the fields of journalism, film and media arts, and public communication. The school’s academic programs emphasize traditional skills and values while anticipating new technologies, new opportunities and new audiences.

About Baruch College: Baruch College, a senior college of the City University of New York, is located in Manhattan. The new Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions was created in July 2008 within Baruch’s Mildred and George Weissman School of Arts and Sciences. Baruch College has more than 15,500 students from some 160 countries. To learn about Baruch College, visit http://www.baruch.cuny.edu.

About the Knight Foundation: The Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $400 million to advance journalism quality and freedom of expression. The Knight Foundation focuses on ideas and projects that create transformational change. To learn more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

While we’re at it, let’s stop fretting about whether citizen media makers, as I like to call them, are good enough to be called “journalists.”

The first U.S. forays in citizen media began in earnest only in 2004. Now, as 2008 comes to a close, we need to stop referring to citizen journalism as a monolithic phenomenon and pay closer attention to the many ways it’s evolving.

While we’re at it, let’s stop fretting about whether citizen media makers, as I like to call them, are good enough to be called “journalists.”

Many just hope to let people in their communities know what’s going on, so let’s not require them to be members of a tribe they don’t much want to belong to.

This year, you can really unpack a wide variety of citizen media niches. They all add value in different ways. There is:

• The increase in micro-local news sites founded by people trying to fill a news void in their communities. This is where J-Lab does most of its work. Baristanet.com is well known, but take a look at NewCastleNOW.org in Chappaqua, N.Y. It’s just a year old. Or JDLand.com, the 2008 Knight-Batten Citizen Media Award winner.
• The creation of local or citywide sites founded by former journalists. These include MinnPost.com in the Twin Cities, the St. Louis Beacon and NewHavenIndependent.org in Connecticut.
• Attempts by conventional media to attract user-generated content. Take a look at CNN’s iReport.com, MSNBC.com’s First Person, the Chicago Tribune’s TribLocal.com.
• The rise of national and international sites, such as NowPublic.com, that solicit and publish citizen photos, video and some articles from around the world. Some have attracted venture capital.
• The participation of smart people as bloggers in sites like HuffingtonPost.com.
• The aggregation and curation of Third World bloggers to counter non-existent media or government-controlled media. Look at GlobalVoicesOnline.org and its Rising Voices mico-funding arm.
• And the emerging use of mobile phones and text messaging to report on crisis hotspots. Mobile pioneer Ushahidi.com was a winner of this year’s Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism.

What are the definitions of “news” in these various models? What are the differences in ethical sensibilities? What are the clues to the future of journalism? With the launch of this blog, J-Lab hopes to weigh in, now and then, to share what it’s been learning.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism is calling for a new round of grant proposals to fund “New Voices” community news start-ups around the country. Eight projects will each receive up to $25,000 in grants during the course of two years.

The deadline for this year’s proposals is Feb. 12, 2009. Eligibility guidelines and the online application are available at the New Voices Web site, www.J-NewVoices.org.

The eight projects to be funded in 2009 will join 40 other New Voices start-ups that have received micro-grants since 2005. The projects have been selected from 845 proposals.

This year, New Voices project funding has increased to $25,000 from $17,000 over two years as part of a new J-Lab grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to seed micro-local news projects; support them with an educational Web site, the Knight Citizen News Network; and help foster their sustainability with second-year matching grants.

The 2009 projects will receive $17,000 the first year and are eligible for $8,000 in matching support the second year.

At least three of the 2009 grants are targeted for news initiatives in the 26 communities where the Knight brothers once owned newspapers, but projects from all parts of the U.S. are encouraged to apply.

“We are especially seeking ideas from people who find something missing from their local media landscape and crave news and information that engages and builds a sense of community,” said Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab, which administers the program. J-Lab is a center of American University’s School of Communication.

Eligible to receive New Voices funding are 501(c)3 organizations and education institutions or individuals working under the sponsorship of a nonprofit fiscal agent. Only start-up projects may receive funding; ongoing efforts are not eligible unless they are proposing a new venture.

Projects can produce news and information for a geographic area, such as a town or county. Or they can serve a community of interest.

All New Voices projects must develop a publicly accessible, regularly updated Web site to showcase their efforts and have a plan for generating a steady flow of fresh content year-round.

To receive information about New Voices, e-mail contact information and a request to subscribe to the J-Flash newsletter to news@j-lab.org.

About Knight Foundation The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $400 million to advance journalism quality and freedom of expression. Knight Foundation focuses on ideas and projects that create transformational change. To learn more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

About J-Lab J-Lab helps news organizations and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight Citizen News Network (www.kcnn.org), the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, www.j-learning.org, and the McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative (www.newmediawomen.org).

About American University’s School of Communication American University’s School of Communication is a laboratory for professional education, communication research, and innovative production across the fields of journalism, film and media arts, and public communication. The school’s academic programs emphasize traditional skills and values while anticipating new technologies, new opportunities, and new audiences.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Wired.com’s WikiScanner coverage, which helped readers investigate and expose ego-editing and corporate whitewashing of Wikipedia entries, is this year’s $10,000 Grand Prize winner in the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism.

Wired.com invited readers to use new technology to get all IP addresses assigned to a particular company, organization or government department, then track the anonymous edits made from those addresses anywhere in Wikipedia. Their reports, on the site’s "Threat Level" blog, "insert an air of accountability to those who edit Wikipedia to fit their own agendas," the judges said.
   
Two projects each won $2,000 Special Distinction Awards: 

• PolitiFact.com – This site identifies false and partially true statements in the 2008 presidential campaigns, rating election messages by candidate, issue or ruling. Its "Truth-o-Meter" scores for accuracy. Its "Pants on Fire" feature calls false statements to account. "Others have attempted similar projects, but PolitiFact stands out for making detailed research easy to get," said the judges. The site is a collaboration between the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly.
• Ushahidi: Crowdsourcing Crisis Information – Modeling grassroots information-sharing amid a crisis, Kenyan techies launched a site where bloggers and citizen journalists could text eyewitness accounts and map incidents of political violence in the wake of a corrupted presidential election. "A perfect example of how far-reaching and important citizen reports can be," the judges said. 

Winning a $2,000 Citizen Media Award is the ambitious JDLand.com, Jacqueline Dupree’s digital chronicle of redevelopment, construction and community concerns in Washington, D.C.‘s rapidly changing Southeast/ Ballpark district. Using text, Twitter, interactive maps, and before-and-now photos, the site is "an incredible wealth of information, especially impressive for a one-person effort," the judges said.
   
"This year’s winners show us how creative minds are using new technologies to connect people to hidden truths and hard-to-find information," said Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, which administers the awards.

Four more excellent efforts were awarded Honorable Mentions: 

• Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica – This multimedia project used poetry as a moving way to cover the impact of HIV/AIDS in Jamaica. Commissioned by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the project is "an eloquent example of putting human faces on an epidemic often painted with statistics," the judges said.
• Iowa’s Deadly Tornado – After a May tornado ripped through Parkersburg, Iowa, The Des Moines Register created a house-by-house, color-coded map embedded with first-person survivor accounts, surveillance and cell phone video, before-and-after photographs, and obituaries to chronicle the path of destruction. "Captivating and gut-wrenching," the judges said.
• iReport.com – CNN’s ground-breaking user-generated news site has not only hosted tens of thousands of videos, but the best reports are verified and expanded by CNN reporters and also posted to CNN.com, "adding value by giving higher play to the best and newsiest iReports," the judges said.
• U.S. Congress MAPLight.org – A massive database that tracks and connects the votes of members of Congress and contributions from supporters and opponents of specific bills. "Never before have citizens been able to so easily track the influences on their elected officials," the judges said.

"Today, the future of journalism depends on innovation more than ever before," said Gary Kebbel, Knight Foundation’s journalism program director. "The Knight-Batten Awards play an important role in detecting early innovation trends that later become common." 

You can view the winners as well as 24 other notable entries at www.j-lab.org. The winners were honored today at a symposium and luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Highlighting the event is a keynote address by one of the nation’s leading media innovators: Bill Kling, President and CEO of American Public Media, Minnesota Public Radio, and Chair of Gather.com.

The Knight-Batten Awards honor creative uses of new technologies to engage citizens in public issues and showcase compelling models for the future of news. They are administered by J-Lab, a center of American University’s School of Communication.

Selecting the winners was an Advisory Board that included the Knight Foundation’s Gary Kebbel and Jose Zamora; Jody Brannon, national director of the Carnegie-Knight News 21 initiative; Jim Brady, Executive Editor, washingtonpost.com; Bill Buzenberg, Executive Director, Center for Public Integrity; Nick Charles, Vice President for Digital Content, BET Interactive; Lee Rainie, Executive Director, Pew Internet & American Life Project; Chuck Lewis, Founder, Investigative Journalism Workshop, AU’s School of Communication; Wendell Cochran, Professor, AU’s School of Communication; Chris Harvey, Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland; and Jan Schaffer, J-Lab Director.
     
About Knight Foundation The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $400 million to advance journalism quality and freedom of expression. Knight Foundation focuses on ideas and projects that create transformational change. To learn more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

About J-Lab
J-Lab helps news organizations and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight Citizen News Network (www.kcnn.org) and www.j-learning.org, the New Voices community media grant program (www.j-newvoices.org), and the McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative (www.newmediawomen.org).

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Four bold, savvy projects – including Web sites that reveal corporate whitewashing of Wikipedia entries, help people map political violence in Kenya, separate fact from falsehood in the 2008 presidential campaign, and deliver hyperlocal coverage of development in the District of Columbia’s most neglected quadrant – are finalists for the Grand Prize in this year’s Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism.

Because of the diversity of good ideas, the Advisory Board also cited four efforts for Honorable Mention.

"This year we see how creative minds are using new technologies to connect people with hidden truths and hard-to-find information," said Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab, which administers the awards program. "We are reminded of journalism's potential to reinvent itself as well as its fundamental promise to do good."

"The examples we are heralding show the power of a single person, the power of politics, the power of community," said Advisory Board chair Jody Brannon, national director of the Carnegie-Knight News21 initiative.

For 2008, a national panel of judges chose winners for a $10,000 Grand Prize, two $2,000 Special Distinction Awards, and a $2,000 Citizen Media Award.

The top winners will be announced Thursday, Sept. 10, at a symposium and luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Highlighting that event will be a keynote address by one of the nation’s leading media innovators: Bill Kling, President and CEO of American Public Media, Minnesota Public Radio, and Chair of Gather.com. To attend the awards symposium and luncheon, register here: http://www.j-lab.org/kb08symposiumreg.shtml or email . The event is free, but space is limited and pre-registration is required.

Gary Kebbel, Knight Foundation journalism program director, said, "The Knight-Batten Awards continue to be the bellwether of journalism innovation. Mashups, crowdsourcing and non-profit journalism all were recognized early as trends that were changing daily journalism."

The Knight-Batten Awards honor creative uses of new technologies to engage citizens in public issues and showcase compelling models for the future of news. They are administered by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at American University's School of Communication. You can view the finalists as well as 24 other notable entries at www.j-lab.org. This year’s finalists are:

• Ushahidi: Crowdsourcing Crisis Information – Modeling urgent grassroots information-sharing in a time of crisis, Kenyan techies launched a site where bloggers and citizen journalists could text eyewitness accounts and map incidents of political violence in the wake of a corrupted presidential election.
   
• Wired.com’s WikiScanner Coverage – Using Virgil Griffith’s Wikipedia Scanner, WIRED magazine's blog engaged readers in crowdsourced exposés revealing PR spinmeisters’ editing of Wikipedia entries not favorable to a company’s reputation.
   
• JDLand.com – A one-woman citizen media project documents and visualizes real estate development, construction and community concerns in Washington D.C.’s rapidly changing Southeast neighborhood.
   
• PolitiFact.com – A collaboration between the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly features a rich database for the 2008 presidential election allowing users to sort news items by candidate, issue or ruling. The site’s “Truth-o-Meter” rates the accuracy of campaign messages and statements; its “Pants on Fire” feature calls false statements to account.

Honorable Mentions are:

• Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica – A multimedia reporting project using poetry as a nontraditional entry way into documentary coverage of HIV/AIDS in Jamaica. Commissioned by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
   
• Iowa’s Deadly Tornado – After a tornado ripped through Parkersburg, Iowa, The Des Moines Register created a house-by-house color-coded map embedded with first-person survivor accounts, surveillance and cell phone video, before and after photographs, and obituaries to chronicle the path of destruction.
   
• iReport.com – CNN’s ground-breaking user-generated news site invites viewers to upload and rate stories; some are later used in the cable network’s programs after being verified and expanded by CNN reporters.
   
• U.S. Congress MAPLight.org – A massive database that tracks campaign contributions and voting records of all members of Congress, illuminating patterns of money and influence on a daily basis.

The winners were selected by an Advisory Board that, in addition to Brannon, included the Knight Foundation's Gary Kebbel and Jose Zamora; Jim Brady, Executive Editor, washingtonpost.com; Bill Buzenberg, Executive Director, Center for Public Integrity; Nick Charles, Vice President for Digital Content, BET Interactive; Lee Rainie, Executive Director, Pew Internet & American Life Project; Chuck Lewis, Investigative Journalism Workshop, American University School of Communication; Wendell Cochran, Professor, American University School of Communication; Chris Harvey, Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland; and Jan Schaffer, J-Lab Executive Director.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation makes grants to help transform journalism and communities.

J-Lab helps news organizations and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight Citizen News Network (www.kcnn.org), the New Voices community media grant program (www.j-newvoices.org), and the McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative (www.newmediawomen.org).

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