Iggers in discussions with Star Tribune about his volunteer role at TCDailyPlanet.net

Jeremy Iggers (MGP2006 alum) at the TCDailyPlanet is in a protracted set of discussions with his main employer, the Minneapois Star Tribune, about whether he has the right under a Newspaper Guild contract to be involved in the TCDailyPlanet. Iggers offered an update on the situation at the Citizens Media Summit II in Washington, D.C. today, where he was a panelist. The basic issue: is TCDaily Planet competitive with the major daily?  The Star Tribune's management "is saying this is a conflict of interest and I should resign from the board and distance myself from the operation," Iggers told  attendees today. "It may mind up in court."  Iggers is a reporter at the Star Tribune and volunteers his time on the DailyPlanet project. “As I read the guild contract, I’m entirely within my rights as an employee of the Star Tribune to be doing this ….. I am the unpaid board chair of a nonprofit which created a website which has non-economic relationships with about 40 local media.” TCDaily Planet is currently mostly an aggregation site with points to other regional ethnic and non-mainstream-media content sites. Some of its volunteers also produce original posts. For example, Doug Mcgill has been running a citizen-journalism center and has created a citizen-journalism syllabus from the RCA Muckrakers website. (Email doug@mcgillreport.org to get a copy of the syllabus.) Says Iggers: "we're hoping for a big expansion of our citizen-journalism program."