MGP2006: Democracy & Independence -- Sharing News & Politics in a Connected World

ALUMNI NOTES: ABOUT THIS BLOG

As an ongoing resource, this blog spotlights the work of Media Giraffe Project/Journalism That Matters alumni  that fosters participatory democracy and community -- starting with "MGP2006" -- the event "Democracy and Independence: Sharing News & Politics in a Connected World" held June 29-July 1, 2006 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Organized by the Media Giraffe Project, the event drew some 300 journalists, educators, technologists and political strategists to consider the funding and future of journalism. Click on the links in the column to the left for archived teaching videos and background.  Or view the archived MGP2006 HOME PAGE. Oher MGP/JTM convenings have been in St. Louis, Memphis, Washington, D.C., and, soon, Sunnyvale, Calif.  Send "alumni" notes to mediagiraffe (at) journ.umass.edu.
GO TO MEDIA GIRAFFE PROJECT HOME PAGE

Students, journalists, writers academics due at March 20-22 Nieman confab in Boston

Graduate students, midcareer journalists, writers and academics are invited to join more than 50 award-winning broadcasters, filmmakers and online experts at the ttth annual Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. The March 20-22 event is at the Sheraton Boston hotel.

The annual event celebrates the art of storytelling in every format and medium. Participants learn skills, interact with experts, share ideas with peers and expand their horizons.

Keynotes include Gwen Ifill (Washington Week), Jon Lee Anderson (The New Yorker), and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz (The Plain Dealer).

"Our theme, "Telling True Stories in Turbulent Times," reflects the urgency journalists feel to learn new skills and adapt to new technology at a time of dramatic change in the news industry," says Ellen Tuttle, communications director of the Harvard University-based Nieman Center.

PROGRAM/BIOS/SCHEDULE: http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/narrative2009/

DOWNLOAD PDF FLYER: http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/assets/pdf/conferences/narrative/ncnj09_flier.pdf

REGISTER: http://www.events.harvard.edu/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x82855a28

For more information, contact Tuttle at 617-495-2342, or
ellen_tuttle@harvard.edu.

Giraffe prospect John Stauber's CMD launches "election protection" wiki

http://www.EPWiki.org

John Stauber's Center for Media and Democracy said today it had launched a new wiki web site as a "non-partisan, non-profit collaboration of citizens, activists and researchers to build a one-stop-shop for reports of voter suppression and the systemic threats to election integrity." There's also a Google group associated with the wiki:
http://groups.google.com/group/epwiki

Stauber writes in an email today:

"Our Election Protection Wiki <www.EPwiki.org> team led by Conor Kenny and Dave Johnson are working hard to make it as valuable as possible to journalists in the crucial hours and days ahead. The Election Protection site is getting a lot of traffic despite being so new, and our editors will be working hard on it after Tuesday too so as to make it a great resource for evaluating this election and preparing for the next."
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John Stauber, Founder & Executive Director, Center for Media and Democracy
520 University Avenue #227, Madison, WI  53703 Phone (608)260-9713
Website http://www.prwatch.org

J.D. Lasica developing proposal for regional citi-j workshops

Journalism That Matters alum J.D. Lasica, founder of OurMedia.org and author of the book, "DarkNet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation" is advancing a funding request for a nationwide series of educational bootcamps focused on increasing civic engagement through social media. The effort is undergirded by an online community of social media mentors and a resource center for social media, online curricula and peer-to-peer learning. If you'd like to contribute to the authoring process, read the proposal here:

http://writer.zoho.com/public/jdlasica/Innovation-Camps

Writes J.D.: "Everyone's invited to add their own revisions, make suggestions or share this with other interested parties or organizations."

J.D.'s at: jdlasica at gmail.com

-- bill densmore

MGP alum / Newstrust founder Fabrice Florin named Ashoka fellow

Fabrice Florin, (SEE MGP PROFILE) an MGP alum and founder of Newstrust, nas been elected an shoka Fellow for his work as a social entrepreneur to promote quality journalism online. The Ashoka Fellowship includes a three-year stipend for Florin's efforts to create "lasting, visible, systemic change in the way society sees journalism." Fabrice will become a lifelong member of the Ashoka community, which includes over 2,000 social entrepreneurs worldwide, working in economic development, education, human rights and other fields.

Florin calls the fellowship a key milestone for NewsTrust (newstrust.net). Not only will it provide much-needed financial support, but he calls it an important validation of our social news network's potential for social change -- as a compelling example of how news consumers and journalists can join forces online to find quality news coverage.

"I've always believed that good information is as important to society as clean water is to the environment," Fabrice said. "In our increasingly polluted media landscape, I see a real and growing need for quality information -- and news literacy tools to tell good journalism apart from misinformation. I want to bring these public services to millions of people, so we can filter news and information collectively, based on shared values that make us better informed as citizens. "

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, created the journalism fellowship program in February, in partnership with the Knight Foundation, with the goal of identifying "outstanding individuals with ideas that will have far-reaching impact on the field and practice of journalism, using Knight Foundation's definition of good journalism -- the fair, accurate contextual search for truth."

"This is quite an honor, coming from the folks who coined the word 'social entrepreneur,'" Fabrice said. "This gives me a special responsibility to bring this service to a broader community."

In related news, NewsTrust just launched a new version of its website.  (READ  BLOG)

Jon Greenberg posts analysis of Kilkenny Palin email

Jon Greenberg, executive editor at New Hampshire Public Radio, has written a post about the Kilkenny-Palin email which Persephone Miel posted on her blog at the Berkman Center. He says it validates some of the lessons Jon has learned form his "Primary Places Online" project -- about the best qualities of citizen observers. Here's the link, and Jon's contact info.

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediarepublic/2008/09/09/anne-kilkenny-citizen-journalism-heroine/

Jon Greenberg, Executive Editor New Hampshire Public Radio 207 N. Main St. Concord, NH 03301 603.223.2435 cell: 603.724.5749

mgp2006: Announcing "Project: Report" -- YouTube's First Journalism Program

1. [Application: Project_Report_Press_Release_FINAL.pdf] (104KB) ""

Journalism That Matters event alum Olivia Ma, news manager at YouTube has announced what she call's YouTube's first journalism program in partnership with the Pulitzer Center (http://pulitzercenter.org). Ma describes it as "a journalism contest for non-professional, aspiring journalists to tell stories that might not otherwise be covered by traditional media.

See the *Project: Report* channel page for all program details: http://youtube.com/projectreport

Or downoad this PDF: http://www.mediagiraffe.org/pdf/Project_Report_Press_Release_FINAL.pdf

Ma writes in an email:

"In each of the three rounds of Project: Report, reporters will be given an assignment to complete. Each of these assignments gives people an opportunity to report on the important individuals, issues, and communities in their lives that others do not yet know about.

"The assignment for Round 1 is to profile someone in your community, in three minutes or less, highlighting a story you think deserves to be heard by a wide audience. Video submissions for Round 1 are due by midnight EST on Sunday October 5, and a panel of journalists from the Pulitzer Center will narrow the field to 10 semi-finalists. The assignment for Round 2 will then be officially announced, and the judging for this round will be opened up to the YouTube community to determine the five finalists who will move onto the third and last assignment. Winners of each round will receive technology prizes (video cameras and laptop computers) from Sony VAIO and Intel, and the grand prize winner will be granted a $10,000 journalism fellowship with the Pulitzer Center to report on a story outside of their home country.

With Project: Report , the Pulitzer Center and YouTube hope to bring an audience to as many of these stories as possible and draw attention to important topics that have been under-reported, misreported, or not reported at all.

AUDIO: Online news pioneer acquires competing Maine newspapers

rs When Richard Anderson came to mid-coast Maine in the mid-1990s, he became the interloper . . . the disruptor. Now that he's mainstream, will he continue to innovate?

Proving that local online news can be a valuable business weapon against legacy media, the owner of Maine's VillageSoup.com is acquiring six weekly newspapers he has been battling competitively for more than 10 years.

Anderson's Village NetMedia Inc. -- two award-winning local community news websites and two weekly tabloid papers -- are acquiring the six other weeklies, four of them direct competitors, from Crescent Publishing Co. LLC, of Greenville, S.C., headed by William deB. (Bern) Mebane, a former Gannett Co. Inc. executive.

AUDIO STREAM: >

(or: DOWNLOAD PODCAST)

In Media Giraffe Project interview, Richard Anderson predicts his business victory is a harbinger of things to come -- an indication that once-dominant local media interests must cease thinking of themselves as primarily print businesses or face effective, even overpowering, competition.

Even the seller agrees. "We have adopted the VillageSoup model for our remaining newspapers in Alabama," says Mebane. "We competed with Richard up here . . . and he realized that he was the real deal . . . this is a marriage between the traditional titles and trademarks and franchises of print with the recognition that it isn't just print any longer. It's the three-legged stool of learn, share and shop. News doesn't come down on high."

Anderson said about 26 positions will be lost in the merger and consolidation, in which three flags will be shuttered, leaving a total of five publications in five Maine locations, two existing VillageSoup web communities, and 92 employees. Anderson said the company will launch two new websites to lead and support the print publications it is acquiring.

"With the declining revenue of traditional newspapers -- both in circulation and advertising, the 10-year VillageSoup experiment is finally being recognized in the industry," Anderson said in a statement. "Our approach helps transition traditional community newsppaer companies into community host companies, and that's the future of the industry."

Liste to a 17-minute interview with Anderson by clicking on the left carat of the bar below, or downloading an audio podcast (4MB) for offline listening. A four-page news release about the transaction may be downloaded as a PDF (source: Village NetMedia Inc.)

GMP2006 alum Michael Stoll pursuing non-profit web "daily newspaper" project

Michael Stoll, MGP2006 alum, writes in an April 23 email post:

The Public Press www.public-press.org [2] is a concept for the next-generation daily newspaper. We're organizing a group of journalists, technologist and nonprofit managers to organize a new newsroom for the San Francisco Bay Area that would produce a Web site, daily print newspaper and collaborations with nonprofit news-gathering organizations locally and nationally. We've built a simple Drupal 6 site that we will be growing in the coming weeks and months, and we plan to start publishing on the Web using this platform.

[2] http://www.public-press.org

Read more: http://groups.drupal.org/node/10941 Post reply: http://groups.drupal.org/comment/reply/10941#comment-form

Garfield illustrates the "viral" power of short-form video

MGP2006 alum Steve Garfield, the Boston-based videoblogging expert, conducted a test over the last few weeks illustrating the viral/distributive power of the Internet -- if you know (as Garfield does) how to package it. The lesson: Short-form videos that can be spread on the popular mass-market video web services will reach many more people than long-form on a single website. The example he used for his test: A 90-minute video shot of the New England News Forum's multimedia-newsroom presentation at the Feb. 9, 2008, New England Press Association annual meeting. Here's a link to see what he found:
http://offonatangent.blogspot.com/2008/04/making-your-videos-spreadable.html

Fair Media Council's Clement alarmed about "Newsday" sale talk

MGP/JTM alumna Jaci Clement, who runs the Fair Media Council out of Briarcliffe College in Bethpage, N.Y., is sounding an alarm about talk the Long Island daily "Newsday" may be sold by Tribune Co. Read her concern at: http://mediasavvybyjaciclement.blogspot.com/2008/04/what-price-for-local-news.html