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

EVENT: New Pamphleteers/New Reporters, June 4-5, Minneapolis -- training for passion about place

A host of MGP2006/JTM alumni are coming together to host "New Pamphleteers/New Reporters: Convening entrepreneurs who combine journalism, democracy, place and blogs," on June 4-5, 2008 in the McNamara Alumni Center at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. DETAILS:

https://www.123signup.com/event?id=tzfmb OR:
http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Jtm-mn

"We're presenting a how-to program for people who are passionate about place," says Bill Densmore, Media Giraffe Project director and a member of the Journalism That Matters collaborative. "We're pulling together experts for discussions on the business, marketing, legal, advertising, journalistic, technical and fund-raising skills needed for local oneline news and community-building websites to approach success." Densmore says the event may also be the launching pad for the American Society of News and Community Forums (ASNCF), a professional/trade group for "placebloggers" -- part pamphleteers, part reporters and part entrepreneurs. "America's new online citizen journalists are inventing a new business and a new passion -- the business of building local, literate, digital domains on the web where community and commerce flourish," says Densmore. "But efforts -- and structure -- to share best practices are only just emerging."

The event is timed to occur immediately before the fourth National Conference on Media Reform, also in Minneapolis on June 6-8 and discounted registration to NCMR is an option for those attending "New Pamphleteers/New Reporters." "We'll serve as an incubator / think-and-do tank for those who are considering starting their own civic engagement / citizen journalism projects in urban/rural Minnesota and nationally," says Densmore.

TO REGISTER: https://www.123signup.com/event?id=tzfmb

New York Times piece revives thinking about "micropayments"

Dan Mitchell, writing Aug. 27, 2007 in The New York Times, has revived the conversation about so-called "micropayments," noting that iTunes is working and suggesting larger small-payment aggregation networks which facilitate advertising and user exchange might be feasible. The piece ends with a quote from Bill Densmore.

ORIGINAL URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/27/technology/27micro.html

ALTERNATE LINK: http://newshare.blogspot.com/2007/08/nytimes-in-online-world-pocket-change.html

He writes:

"Bill Densmore, a founder of the payments firm Clickshare, a former newspaper publisher and now a consultant and a director of a citizens' media project at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, has been promoting micropayments from the beginning. He envisions Web publishers joining with one another and with producers of other content to create huge networks, sharing users and, in effect, revenue.

"For example, he said, a large newspaper could sell subscriptions that would allow its readers to download music from iTunes or Rhapsody, read articles from regional papers, and watch movies and TV shows from YouTube or Comedy Central. Some material would be sold for a fee -- with the payments managed internally by the network. Mr. Densmore acknowledged that this is all pie-in-the-sky at this point. But, he said, for newspapers in particular, the status quo is not good enough. In that business, he said, there are "enough people feeling enough pain that they need to be open to asking what models might work."

Also see: http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Mit-gathering

Better to build, not buy, metro news organization, Parr says

Doing some catching up, we just came across MGP2006 alum Barry Parr's Oct. 12, 2006, blog posting about the future of the Los Angeles times. Parr, the Jupiter Research analyst who also is a pioneer local online news community operator with Coastsider.com, suggests it is now better to build, not buy, a metropolitan news organization. Is he right?

See: http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/parr/archives/2006/10/dismantling_the.html

Here it is -- the Knight challenge which Gary Kebbel talked about at MGP2006 -- $5M for journalism innovation

The Knight Foundation today formalized its "Knight Brothers 21st Century News Challenge," an effort to seed out-of-the-box innovation in journalism which supports communities and participatory democracy. The initiative was described in draft form June 29 at the MGP2006 summit by Gary Kebbel, journalism program officer for the Miami-based foundation. Here is today's statement:

HEADLINE: Knight Foundation Competition Will Award Millions to Innovative Community News Experiments $5 Million "Knight Brothers 21st Century News Challenge" To Fund New Forms of Community Journalism in Cyberspace

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation today launches the Knight Brothers 21st Century News Challenge, investing as much as $5 million in its first year in community news projects that best use the digital world to connect people to the real world. The News Challenge is looking to fund new ideas, prototypes, products and leadership initiatives that use innovative news methods to help citizens better connect within their communities. The competition is open to anyone, not just the journalism community.

"News and information are the glue that binds communities. We want to help today¹s high-tech news do in the 21st century what the Knight brothers' newspapers did this past century," said Alberto Ibargüen, president of Knight Foundation. "Through their newspapers, the Knight brothers helped build a sense of community in cities and towns across the country. They did it by providing news, information and commentary that helped citizens understand their common interests and opportunities. The Knight brothers helped define the geography where people lived. We want to continue that tradition using new media to do what the brothers used to do with ink on paper," said Ibargüen.

If the quality of entries warrant it, the foundation may spend as much as $25 million during the next five years in the search for bold community news experiments. "We¹d like to encourage the newest ways for people to pursue a great American tradition: the fair, accurate, contextual search for the truth," said Eric Newton, Knight's director of Journalism Initiatives. "We want to help the citizens of this new century get the news they need to run their governments and their lives."

The Challenge web site, with an online application form, is at www.newschallenge.org . The competition will accept applications through Dec. 31, and expects to begin announcing winners in the spring of 2007.

The foundation and its special panel of new media advisors will look for innovative proposals that contain a unique combination of vision, courage and know-how in their ability to use cyberspace to better connect people to the physical space where they live and work. Cell phone documentaries? New operating software for news collectors? Journalism games? Nothing is too far out to qualify.

"We hesitate to set too many rules," said Knight journalism program officer Gary Kebbel, "because we expect the best entries will be ideas that totally surprise us."

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since its creation in 1950, the foundation has invested nearly $300 million to advance journalism quality and freedom of expression. For more on Knight¹s work, visit www.knightfdn.org

Contact: Larry Meyer, Vice President of Communications John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (305) 908-2610, meyer@knightfdn.org .

MGP2006 participant Heather Brandon featured in alt weekly piece about homesteading in an urban city

MGP2006 particpant Heather Brandon, who writes a blog for the MassLive website (part of the Newhouse/Conde Naste group) is featured this week in a cover story of the alt-weekly The Valley Advocate, which is owned by the competing Tribune Co.  The piece by Maureen Turner, "A Blog of Her Own: Heather Brandon says Springfield is tough, frustrating -- and totally worth it,"  includes generous excerpts from Brandon's blog, Urban Compass, describing the challenges of being a 35-year-old, white, middle-class parent in a older Eastern city challenged (or blessed) by ethnic diversity,  struggling schools and a shortage of tax revenues for municipal services.

MGP2006 participant Terry Mollner offers theory of the "mature journalist"

Terry Mollner, executive director of the Trusteeship Institute, has developed a theory of the "mature journalist."  It's provocative, and challenges the assumption that a reporter can be objective in the common use of the phrase.  Is this a throwback to advocacy journalism, or a new twist based upon a careful reading of community needs and consensus?  Mollner's argument is  posted at the MGP2006 wiki HERE. Comment below.

Is a "public-media" segment necessary to counteract the advance of social-network sites like MySpace?

Josh Wilson, editor of NewsDesk.org, and a participant in MGP2006 at UMass Amherst, has been thinking about journalism and social-network marketing.  He wonders if  a "public media" segment may be necessary to counter its effects.  He's an except of his post on the topic:

"One of the biggest points I was hoping to make at the UMass Media Giraffe conference is that the Internet is as fully vulnerable to the negative effects of commercialization as "traditional" mass media has been. Rupert Murdoch's prescient acquisition of MySpace.com was my primary example. How ironically gratifying to come back to SF and discover that Wired mag's featured article this month, "His Space," is on exactly that topic. It's certainly true that the Internet is taking power away from media corporations and give it to "the people." But in so doing it is showing corporations how to access markets and cultivate their traditional fare on an exponentially more "personalized" level. "The Daily Me," I believe, is how it's been phrased.  I think it's high time Thomas Frank updated "Commodify your Dissent" for the Internet era! As Murdoch understands, the Internet offers extraordinary potential for developing truly pervasive and implacable "one to one marketing" and "customer relations management" technologies and methods:

"The most immediate [challenge] is to avoid doing anything that might interfere with the runaway growth that has already made MySpace the biggest aggregation of people on the Web. But that's just step one. Step two is to turn MySpace's teeming masses into a wholly new kind of media entity, an advertising, marketing, and distribution vehicle that gives News Corp. a hand on the steering wheel of popular culture worldwide."

"The capital and savvy corporations will bring to the task may in fact eclipse, or at least seriously co-opt, the democratizing power of the Internet -- assuming one subscribes to the thesis, advanced by Bagdikian et al., that monopolistic commercialization of media is anathema to democracy. It's clear from the article that MySpace is the raw material from which Murdoch intends to build his next-generation media empire. But what does this mean for commercial news operations online? Well, suffice it to say that Murdoch is the man who made Fox News possible. ** My comments, by the way, should in NO WAY be taken to imply that commercial news media is incapable of serving the process of democracy. I know for a fact that there is deep and lasting commitment to the public good in for-profit newsrooms. I've worked in them before, and most likely will again. But I think we must frankly recognize that, with the extinction of viable newspapers due to unrealistic, Wall Street-driven profit expectations, there are some serious problems with the commercial news model. Establishing the "Public Media sector" online should be one of the highest priorities of New Media thinkers, producers and funders -- and media reformers in general. Unfortunately, I do not find this to be generally the case. I welcome your thoughts and conversation on this matter.

American University's Jessica Duda reviews MGP2006 and seeks it as key moment

MGP2006 participant Jessica Duda of the Center for Social Media at American University has penned a good summary of the June 28-July 1 event at UMass Amherst, with links to many local online news citizen efforts.

NEXT STEPS: What we learned, what we want to happen next after MGP2006

AMHERST, Mass. -- What did some of the 230 participants in MGP2006, the first summit of the Media Giraffe Project, learn? What do they want to happen next?  Here's what a sampling said at the end of the June 28-July 1, 2006 gathering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst:

(source: Easel pad notes taken by Bill Densmore)

Q: What should happen next?

• Build a process to keep things going 
• Connect with Investigative Reporters & Editors in order to present substance and medium in one place.  (Geoff Davidian)
• More talking and sharing of resources and intelligence via social-networking tools (Wayne MacPhail)
• Citzen journalists should get together and support one another (Tish Grier)
• End the marginalization of media education. It is up to journalists to engage with schools to change curriculum (Gillian Andrews)
• Find ways to support independent journalists (Ilona Meagher)
• Mainstream media needs to share platform vision which includes rather than competes with citizen journalists (John Wilpers)
• Accept a role as leaders; don’t assume mainstream media doesn’t want help – they do and they do care. (Gary Kebbel)
• Must reconvene in 2006: We are at our best when sharing.  (Aldon Hynes)
• Pick five people you met to do something with over the next month (Aldon Hynes)
• Organize a ‘retreat’ in Brattleboro for citizen journalists (Chris Grotke)
• Adopt best practices discovered from others at MGP2006 which melp make the audience the creators of news (Maureen Mann)
• Get more people to become activists (Paul Thomas)
• Work to eradicate complacency in both MSM and citizen media (Vin Crosbie)
• Don’t all try to do the same thing – that would duplicate the current problem of media homogenization (Remus Bryce)
• Partner to develop new content (Steve Brandt)
• Figure out how to build local online news communities (Jon Garfunkel)
• Involve young people in important conferences (Eman AlAraj)
• Start more outlets for “authentic journalism” (Ben Melancon)
• Start your own local website (Ben Melancon)
• Build a platform to connect local online news/blog communities – an open collaboration which preserves local independence (Ben Melancon)
• Youth should use media to express opinions (Uli  Botzojorns)
• Encourage a spirit of compromise (esp. among youth)  to join with MSM  (Mike Deehan)
• Harness ideas of the “crusty older generation” of MSM retirees who formerly “got paid too much to say what they felt.”  (Josh Wilson)
• Use timer cards at conference panels  (Josh Wilson)
• Youth should step up efforts to learn about media and info tech (Tianna Mason)
• Reconvene next year; see opportunities not obstacles; continue dialogues toward evolution/revolution – more exciting than draining.  (Mark Karlin)
• Remember to share not just watch. “You’re not here unless you share.” (Muhammed Abu-Jamous)
• Spread and repeat the MGP2006 experience. (Fatim Toghui)
• What are we going to do to stick our necks out a little more? (Stephen Silha)
• Talk about journalists as citizens (Stephen Silha)
• Initiate Journalism That Matters training in conjunction with b-schools (Stephen Silha)
• Embrace “both/and” not “either/or” thinking; come to ACME October (Rob Williams)
• Read the New York Times complaint (Helena Sassower)
• Be a player in the community; facilitate dialog; don’t just incite conflict (Terry Mollner)
• Secure seed money for working on new organizations (Donna Liu)
• Understand that not all leadership is noisy (Bruce Wilson)
• Bridge the gap with mainstream media; don’t dismiss (Michael Stoll)
• Join the Society of Professional Journalists; they want to reach online (Michael Stoll)
• Focus on needs and assume everyone is doing the best they can with what they have (Eric Muten)
• Develop a source for good models (Jane Johnston)
• Post “how-to” tutorials to MGP wiki (Jessica Duda)
• Start a monthly videoconference (Paul Thomas)
• Form a community-media center; offer wireless; newspapers should focus on access to content, not content itself (Wally Bowen)

Q: What did you learn at MGP2006?

·          The value of getting people together in physical space

·          That doing it differently is probably doing it right.

·          New communication tools

·          The need to “get a second life!”

·          How to engage people through multimedia

·          Tips on learning who you are reaching

·          The need to share social tools, resources utilities among those doing “local stuff.”

·          Patronizing attitudes toward education by traditional reporters

·          New ways to support citizen journalism

·          Need for MSM to “share the platform” with citizen journalists

·          How MSM “has not got it,” but “they are getting it.”

·          How to congratulate ourselves on point of connection between MSM and bloggers

·          The great connection with people at MGP2006

·          No two citizen blog/journalism sites is doing the same thing. All are unique; but all care deeply about the quality of journalism.

·          A (wrong)  perception that CitiJ doesn’t have standards.  Now sees CitJ as interested in content

·          A chance to meet other people, share new ideas

·          The group is self-selected voices. How to get more people involved?

·          That tech talk goes over some people’s heads and leaves them behind.

·          Complacency is a common enemy of MSM and new media.

·          That doing it differently is probably doing it right.

·          Report solutions, rather than just problems

·          Saw systematic research showing details of how things are working

·          No one can represent youth except youth

·          Local citizen reporting is exciting

·          Some people care about youth and media

·          Need more students – they will  become the MSM when the over-50s set retires

·          Like spices to food – anything in media can be powerful

·          It’s not enough to watch – you have to share, too

·          See opportunities rather than obstacles – a revolutionary process is underway in media.

·          Saw boundaries breaking down between citizens and journalists

·          Groups function better with “both/and” rather than “either/or” thinking

·          Large swaths of information are still being kept from the public.

·          Insure sustainability of organizations such as MGP.

·          Profound innovation online and good journalism in MSM – need to combine

·          Sustainability issues important to both MSM and other media.

·          Access issues as important as journaism topic.

PROGRAM SUGGESTIONS

·          Integrate  the tracks more without contrivance

·          Break down the panelist/audience relationship 

Is this how America's newspapers lost touch with mainstream readers? A talk by Tom Stites

If America's daily-newspaper publishers are wondering about causes of circulation decline, they should look at the content of their product, says Tom Stites, a veteran major-daily editor who now works for the Unitarian Church in Boston.  In the last decade, according to Pew Research data analyzed by Stites, a stark pattern has emerged: While circulation declines have been across the board, they are far more pronounced among middle- and low-income readers.  "Why?" asked Stites in the text of a speech given June 30 at the first Media Giraffe Project summit at the University of Massachusetts Amherst  Stites suggests the answer lies in the type of stories papers publish -- appealing more to the upscale, moneyed demographic favored by advertisers. Imagine how a daily newspaper looks to a single mother with three children?  To illustrate his point, he took one day of The Boston Globe -- not because the paper is unique, but because, in his view, it is typical. "My purpose has not been to pick on The Globe," he writes. "Given changes in retailing and thus advertising, the changes in newspapers have been inevitable."

Is Stites' analysis fresh? Is it right? What should the nation's editors do?

Media Giraffe Project advisor Dan Gillmor has now posted an updated version of the text at his Center for Citizen Journalism site. You can also choose a PDF DOWNLOAD VERSION

Some inciteful blog posts about Stites' talk:
http://retrovirus.com/brunch/2006/07/reading-and-democracy/

Launch QuickTime video of Stites speech:
http://psg2.princeton.edu/mediagiraffe/MGP2006_063006_stites.mov

HERE ARE THUMBNAILS OF THE GRAPHICS: