greylocknews

Coming? Small group in Williamstown to meet March 1 to plan "community information hub"

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Participants are sought to join an ad-hoc group will meet March 1 to consider information needs of the Greylock region, and the possibility of forming an "online information hub" for Williamstown. The decision to meet came at the end of a community-information needs assessment meeting on Jan. 24. Download MP3 podcast. Monday's meeting will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church in Williamstown, say co-organizers Bill Densmore and Gail Burns.

"We met twice in 2006, and in January," says Densmore. "The technology, ideas and need are all present. It's time take some collaborative baby steps."

Tentative agenda:

• Participate in a demonstration of Jeff Vander Clute's "Avanoo" social news-networking software.
• Resume discussing the Knight Commission on Information Needs of Communities report and its list of critical community information needs.
• Learn about the Shires Media Partnership Inc., a 501(c)3 nonprofit which now owns WBTN-AM 1370kc in Bennington.
• Consider opportunities for collaboration among regional media and citizens.
• Take some baby steps at innovation.

BACKGROUND:

CLICK TO STREAM AUDIO OF JAN. 24 MEETING:

The Jan. 24 meeting was not a a town-sanctioned event.  (VIEW AGENDA) It was organized by town resident Bill Densmore (author of this post) a future-of-journalism researcher. Participants besides Densmore and Burns included town residents John Albano, Richard Taskin, Moira Jones, Patrick Dunleavy, Ben Greenfield, Deb Dane and Suzanne Dewey. Pownal, Vt., residents Ray and Dawn Rodrigues  also participated, along with two invited participants:

-- David Scribner, a Pittsfield-based writer and weekly newspaper editor. Scribner, a former editor of The Berkshire Eagle and The Bennington Banner, has applied to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for a grant to launch "Newshare Commons" -- a journalist-guided, social news network in libraries, cafes and public spaces. Scribner hopes the Berkshires/SW Vermont will be one test region.

-- Jeff Vander Clute, of Palo Alto, Calif., president of CircLabs Inc., a company part-owned by the University of Missouri School of Journalism. CircLabs is working to find solutions for sustaining the values, principles and purposes of journalism in our rapidly evolving media ecosystem.  Vander Clute is developing the technology for a "news social network"  which might become part of the Newshare Commons project. Vander Clute is a 1995 Williams College graduate and was part of a core group at the start of Tripod Inc.

LINKS:

• Things neighborhood blogs can talk about

LISTEN TO AUDIO OF 90-MINUTE DISCUSSION

The 12-person group spent 90 minutes considering whether the Williamstown region's "community information needs" are being met, based upona set of 10 key indicators suggested in  a reported released in October by the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities.  And they added an additional proposed indicator: "Does an infrastructure exist for constructive, civic problem solving?"

Reviewing 15 recommendations from the Knight Commission report, the group focused on one on which there was consensus for action: "Ensure that every local community has at least one high-quality online hub." To advance that idea, about half the participants agreed to meet again at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, March 1, at the First Congregational Church in Williamstown.  (The followup meeting was originally set for Feb. 22)

ADVANCES A GATHERING IN BENNINGTON

Tuesday's gathering advanced by two days a more formal gathering at the Bennington (Vt.) Free Library organized by Shires Media Partnership Inc., a 501(c)3 non-profit which owns radio station WBTN in  Bennington (I serve on its volunteer board). The announcement of that event should give you a sense our
subject domain for Tuesday. See: http://dbs.hosting.crocker.com/wiki/index.php/Community-bennington

To get a feel for what a metropolitan area like Seattle can put together to study its 'news ecosystem,' " said Densmore, "Review this page from the Journalism That Matters Pacific Northwest gathering Jan. 7-10 -- http://www.rjiwiki.org . . . . "

Densmore may be reached at 413-458-8001 or densmore@mediagiraffe.org.

Bennington forum draws more than 20 people for public comment on community information needs

By Bill Densmore
(The writer is a directorof Shires Media Partnership and lives in Williamstown, Mass.)

BENNINGTON, Vt. -- Shires Media Partnership Inc., the non-profit owner of radio station WBTN convened a regional meeting at the Bennington (Vt.) Free Library on Thurs. Jan. 28 to gather public comment and advice on how it can meet the information needs of Southwestern Vermont. The session was inspired by the work of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities.  Approximately 20 people participated. WBTN 1370 AM's signal reaches Bennington, Southwestern Vermont and nearby New York, but its Web streaming reaches around the world. The meeting ran from from 5 p.m. to 7:05 p.m. at the library. Light snacks will be available for those missing dinner.

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• LISTEN TO AUDIO OF THE TWO-HOUR MEETING
• READ THE AGENDA AND DISCUSSION DOCUMENT
• READ NOTES OF THE DISCUSSION

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In addition to members of the Shires Media governing board and WBTN staff, the founder of a local online news community for the Burlington, Vt., area -- Michael Wood-Lewis of Front Porch Forum, attended.
"We're asking the public to tell us how they get information and how we can be part of their information network," said Ken Norris, Executive Director of WBTN. "We want to know not only where they get their local news, arts and entertainment but where they get information about what is important in their lives: jobs, housing, taxes, safety, education, transportation, child care, health care and religion."

Public Radio’s Charlayne Hunter-Gault Speaks at MCLA October 15

NORTH ADAMS, MA—National Public Radio Special Correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault will speak at this fall’s Hardman Lecture Series event at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts Thursday, October 15, at 7 p.m. in the Church Street Center. Hunter-Gault, an award-winning journalist with more than 40 years in the industry, delivers a lecture entitled “Africa’s Women on the Move.” The Hardman Lecture Series is made possible through the generosity of the Hardman Family Endowment. The event is free and open to the public.

Hunter-Gault is the author of In My Place, a memoir of the civil rights movement fashioned around her experiences as the first black woman to attend the University of Georgia. Her latest book is New News Out of Africa: Uncovering the African Renaissance. A global journalist, Hunter-Gault spent six years as CNN’s Johannesburg bureau chief and correspondent before returning to NPR.
She was NPR’s chief correspondent in Africa.

Hunter-Gault first joined NPR in 1997 after 20 years with PBS, where she worked as a national correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.  She began her journalism career as a reporter for The New Yorker, before working as a local news anchor for WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. and as the Harlem bureau chief for The New York Times.  Her honors include two Emmy awards and two Peabody awards—one for her work on Apartheid's People, a NewsHour series about South African life during apartheid and the other for general coverage of Africa in 1998.

Hunter-Gault also was the recipient of the 1986 Journalist of the Year Award from the National Association of Black Journalists, the 1990 Sidney Hillman Award, the American Women in Radio and Television award, the Good Housekeeping Broadcast Personality of the Year Award and a 2004 National Association of Black Journalists Award for her CNN series on Zimbabwe. She also received awards from Amnesty International for her Human Rights reporting, especially her PBS Series, Rights and Wrongs, a human rights television magazine.  In August, 2005, she was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame.

Hunter-Gault delivers lectures around the country and holds more than three dozen honorary degrees. She also serves on the board of The Peabody Awards and The Committee to Protect Journalists and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

For information on the Hardman Lecture Series at MCLA call (413) 662-5185 or visit www.mcla.edu/speakers.

SVC convenes May 5 strategy session on regional media center

BENNINGTON, Vt. -- Southern Vermont College is convening a day-long seminar on Saturday, May 5, to consider how the school might foster establishing a "center for community media," according to David Scribner, a spokesman and journalism teacher for the small private college. Scribner discusses the event with Media Giraffe Project Editor Bill Densmore in a 29-minute broadcast inteview aired on WBTN, 1370 AM, the college's community radio station.

CLICK ON RIGHT CARAT BELOW TO LAUNCH AUDIO STREAM OF INTERVIEW:

OR DOWNLOAD MP3 FOR LATER LISTENING 

For details, go to: http://www.mediagiraffe.org/bennington/invitation.pdf . . . the event is by-invitation-only because of space limitations. To seek an invitation, email Scribner at dscribner@svc.edu .

Public invited to film, photo, web, 3D tech session at MGRHS

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- The representative of a new initiative at Boston University is making a presentation on Monday April 2 at Mount Greylock Regional High School on advances in the use of digital-media in filmmaking, photography, animation, game design, graphics and studio recording. The presentation by Bill Chenaille, of BU's Center for Digital Imaging Arts will give a multimedia presentation from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. that is free and open to the public.

The presentation was scheduled by Michael J. Powers, M.Ed., the instructional-technology specialist at the regional high school as part of an effort to update the community on career options in digital media. Powres can be reached at 413-458-9592 ext. 142, or home: 802-447-1754 or Michael_J_Powers@comcast.net.

WFCR, Five College Radio, activates additional transmitter at 96.3 in Williamstown

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Five College Radio, the NPR-affiliated FM station operated by the University of Massachusetts, said today it has activated a "translator" from a location in Williamstown which will improve its signal strength in northern Berkshire County and nearby Vermont. The translator is broadcasting at 96.3 FM. Details: http://greylocknews.blogspot.com/2007/02/statement-wfcr-now-on-air-in.html

Greylock Citizens Media Collaborative meeting draws 21 people to Williamstown library

Citizen-run radio stations in the Berkshires and southwestern Vermont may soon begin trading audio files over the Internet to enhance their programming, and Southern Vermont College is considering filing a grant application to establish a regional community media center, a group was told on Wednesday night.  A total of 21 people gathered for a meeting of the fledgling Greylock Citizens Media Collaborative (GCMC) at the Williamstown Public library.    /  EARLIER STORY / GREYLOCK CITIZEN MEDIA COLLABORATIVE HOME PAGE

Click below to play audio stream:

DOWNLOAD: MP3 File

MediaNews papers try blogging for Massachusetts primaries

UPDATE: Christopher Marcisz' first post of the night is up at 6:20 p.m.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- The MediaNews Group Inc. newspapers in Berkshire County -- The Berkshire Eagle, North Adams Transcript and Advocate weekly -- have joined the blogging world. Eagle Managing Editor Kevin Moran has posted at this URL: http://blogtheberkshires.com/abovethefold/
. . .  inviting readers to bookmark the location for primary-night coverage updated at least every 30 minutes.

Citizen media collaborative targets comprehensive calendar

WILLIAMSTOWN -- In what was billed as a brainstorming session, citizens seeking to improve local news coverage and community information exchange targetted creation of an online database-driven events calendar as their first project and explored ideas about group collaboration and funding.  The 75-minute meeting held Wed., Aug. 2, at the Williamstown Public Library, drew 17 "citizen journalists" and was organized by a group of conveners that included a former chamber of commerce adminstrator, local newspaper reporter and onetime co-publisher of The [Williamstown] Advocate regional newsweekly, Bill Densmore. Densmore, who now heads the Media Giraffe Project at UMass Amherst, described the group as the Greylock Citizen/Media Collaborative (GCMC).

READ OR ADD TO FULL STORY

Parent of Eagle, Transcript, Banner, Advocate reports loss in SEC posting

Denver Post parent posts loss
Denver Business Journal, CO - 4 hours ago

MediaNews Group Inc. reported a net loss of $3.6 million for the quarter ending March 31 -- down from a net income of $2.3 million for the same time last year, according to the Denver Business Journal. Media News is in the process of acquiring three California papers and the St. Paul [Minn.] Pioneer Press as part of the breakup of Knight Ridder Corp.  MediaNews Group is the parent of New England Newspapers Inc., which owns The Berkshire Eagle, The Bennington Banner, the North Adams Transcript and The Advocate newsweekly. 

The disclosure is contained in a Form 10-Q filing made by MediaNews on Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Although MediaNews is not a "public" company in the sense of having stock floating in public markets, it is required to file its results publicly because of other aspects of its complicated debt and ownership structure.  If it completes the Knight Ridder purchases, it will become the nation's fourth-largest newspaper chain in terms of daily circulation.  The company disclosed that it had $877 million in long-term debt as of March 31, as against $1.4 billion in assets, and $41 million in shareholders equity.  The operating loss for the nine months ended March 31 was $16.4 million, compared with an operating gain of $16.7 million for the same nine months a year earlier.

The 10-Q makes interesting reading if you like the intellectual exercise of trying to understand multifaceted financing. MediaNews for several years has been in partnerships to own papers with Gannett Co. Inc., the nation's No. 1 newspaper publisher. At one time its Denver Post was part owned by another newspaper chain, and in its deal to purchase Knight Ridder assets, the 10-Q discloses, The Hearst Corp. is going to take an equity stake in MediaNews. Hearst publishes newspapers and magazines. In the San Francisco Bay area, some media watchers, including Bruce Brugman, publisher of the weekly Bay Guardian, are seeking antitrust scrutiny of the deal because Hearst owns the San Francisco Chronicle -- the only big Bay Area daily that would NOT be owned by Media News.  Hearst also owns the Albany Times Union, so the T-U  would now have an indirect ownership relationship with The Eagle et al.