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EARLY-BIRD OPPORTUNITY: Sign up now for second-annual U.S. Slow Living Summit -- Brattleboro, May 30-June 1, 2012

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bill Densmore <slowliving2012@gmail.com>
Date: October 19, 2011 10:54:02 PM EDT
To: wpdjr53@yahoo.com, carydeb@aol.com, wpdensmore@aol.com, wpdensmore@gmail.com, mediagiraffe@gmail.com, slowliving2012@gmail.com
Subject: EARLY-BIRD OPPORTUNITY: Sign up now for second-annual U.S. Slow Living Summit -- Brattleboro, May 30-June 1, 2012

Dear Friend:

Even though you did not attend Slow Living 2011, I invite you to take advantage of the early-bird rate offered in this first announcement of the second-annual Slow Living Summit.

EVENT: "Cyberspace and Civic Space," Nov. 19 / Boston College

DETAILS:

http://masshumanities.org/?p=symposium

REGISTER (free):

https://go.masshumanities.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=358

Eighth Annual Fall Symposium

A more transformative technology has never been invented. And yet the Internet's potential to educate and empower citizens is being thwarted by other interests. How does the Internet influence society? How can we ensure that cyberspace allows room for a robust civic space? Join a distinguished group of scholars, journalists, activists and innovators for an examination of these important questions.

SESSION ONE:
Political Impact of the Internet

Panelists:
Mike Klein
Evgeney Morozov
Eli Pariser
Joe Trippi
Moderator: Callie Crossley

SESSION TWO:
Social Impact of the Internet

Panelists:
Kate Crawford
Virginia Heffernan
Siva Vaidhyanathan
Moderator: Cullen Murphy

SESSION THREE:
Cultural Impact of the Internet

Panelists:
Hiawatha Bray
Amber Case
June Cohen
Chris Csikszentmihályi
Moderator: Charles Kravetz

VIDEO: Chinese rising seniors (16-17-year-olds) offer world, tech, education perspectives in New England visit

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Eight high-achieving Chinese teen-agers -- ages 16 or 17 -- are touring the U.S. northeast looking at elite colleges they may apply to -- and one of their stops was Williamstown.

The eight students are from Changsha, the capital city of Hunan Province. They are on a 12-day tour covering 19 universities and colleges -- Columbia, Barnard, Fordham, Kean, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Loyola (Baltimore), Rutgers, Skidmore, Williams, Amherst, Harvard, MIT, Boston University,Babson, RISD/Brown, Connecticut College, Wesleyan, and Yale - for the purpose of giving them a first-hand experience with the college selection and admissions process.

The students and their instructor, Stephen Wilmarth, arrive in Williamstown on Friday, July 15, ate dinner at an Indian restaurant and attended the Williamstown Theatre Festival's "free theater" production of Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors."

On Saturday morning, they visited with the New England News Forum and answered questions about their aspirations, their biggest surprises about their first visit to the United States, their use of technology, what the care about and why their parents are willing to commit to $100,000 or more to underwrite college outside of China.

Watch the video of our discussion by clicking below. We'll update this post more extensive as their trip progresses.

Video streaming by Ustream

WBUR's John Davidow reports on Knight-funded "open court" project in Quincy

John Davidow of WBUR posted:

I'm pleased to announce that OpenCourt.us went online on May 2, 2011. Thanks to a Knight News Challenge grant in 2010 OpenCourt.us will stream live video from a pilot courtroom in Quincy, Massachusetts. The purpose of this pilot project is to bring digital transparency to the nation's courts. With the cooperation of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, OpenCourt.us is working to develop a model that can be adopted by jurisdictions across the country to better connect the public with our nation's courts.

Our courts were founded with the idea that justice would be administered in public. For those who couldn't make it to the courts there were reporters who were assigned to cover the courts and inform the citizenry. As we all know there are fewer and fewer reporters out there to be that bridge to the public. At the same time, the public equipped with smartphones have the requisite tools to cover the courts as citizen journalists.

In addition to providing a livestream of court proceedings, OpenCourt.us has outfitted the Quincy District Court, one of the state's busiest courts with a wifi network to allow citizen bloggers to live blog to cover the court.

This project has already received a lot of interest in the press, legal journals, and online forums. http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=opencourt.us

I'd love to know what fellow Foo's think about OpenCourt.us. I'd also appreciate any thoughts you have about future funding ideas any of you have now that the project is up and running.

Thanks so much,

John Davidow
Executive Editor, wbur.org

NEWS: Columnist, free-press advocate to lead talk about new roles for libraries, journalists

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Famed columnist and free-press advocate John Nichols will lead a public discussion about new roles for libraries during a Thursday, April 7 evening symposium at the Cambridge Public Library, beginning at 7 p.m.

The free, public event will wrap up a two-day inquiry, "Beyond Books: News, Literacy and Democracy in America's libraries," involving more 130 librarians, journalists and scholars gathered at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media. (www.biblionews.org )

Besides speaking himself, Nichols will convene a discussion of the best ideas emerging from the MIT-hosted gathering. The evening will include a chance for the public to sit in breakouts with "Beyond Books" participants to add their thoughts.

"For three centuries, in American communities, two institutions have uniquely amrked a commitment to participatory democracy, knowledge and open inquiry -- our libraries and our free press," says Bill Densmore, co-convenor of the MIT event and director of the New England News Forum. "How can they work together?"

Nichols, who is based in Madison, Wis., but is also Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine, will put the role of libraries in the context of what's happening to the flow of information on the web, and how that affects citizen participation, whether in Egypt, Iran, Libya or the Wisconsin state capitol.

Nichols is in Boston to co-host the National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR), a project of FreePress.net, a non-profit he co-founded. The NCMR is expected to draw thousands of people to South Boston on April 8-10 for dozens of breakout sessions and plenaries. See: http://conference.freepress.net  for more.

"In cities and towns across the nation access to information is becoming more complicated, and more technical," says Densmore. "At the same time, local news coverage is often more limited, or at least more fractured. Librarians may be able to help the public, help journalists, and help citizens who want to assume a watchdog role abandoned by journalism."

Densmore said the evening will be intentionally interactive among Nichols, the "Beyond Books" MIT participants, and the public. He said the evening should end with additional ideas for journalist-librarian collaboration.

Some questions being asked at the MIT gathering: What does engagement mean to journalists and librarians, and when does engagement become partisanship? What might libraries do to facilitate community social news networks? Must free speech be absolute within a tax-payer supported institution? How can libraries advocate for a free, digital-information commons?

CALENDAR LISTING:

Public Discussion: "BEYOND BOOKS: News, literacy, democracy and America's Libraries -- Assessing the common mission of journalists and librarians." April 7, 2011, 7-9 p.m., Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge, Mass. Admission free. Info: http://www.biblionews.org

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

Bill Densmore, director
The New England News Forum
108 Bartlett Hall / Univ. of Massachusetts
Amherst MA 01003
OFF: 413-577-4370 / CELL: 413-458-8001
http://www.newenglandnews.org
bdensmore@newenglandnews.org

Sign Up Now for Multimedia Journalism Training

Forwarded from the New England Newspaper & Press Association:

The New England Newspaper & Press Association and the New England Society of Newspaper Editors are pleased to invite you and your staff to participate in a valuable one-day training program in multimedia journalism. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn how you can quickly, easily and inexpensively add compelling, original content to your web products.

No Shovelware!

A multimedia journalism workshop conducted by Dr. Brett M. Rhyne. This one-day workshop will get you started using blogs, audio, slideshows, video and interactive graphics to cover the news. Best of all, most of the apps you'll learn about are user-friendly and cheap - or free - and require no computer savvy.

WHEN: Thursday, April 21, 2011

WHERE: NENPA Headquarters on the Dedham, MA campus of Northeastern University

COST: $65 for registrants from NENPA member publications (includes lunch)

By the end of the day, you'll know how to produce, and in many cases embed on your
website:

¨ blogs using WordPress

¨ live blogs using CoverItLive

¨ audio using Audacity and SoundCloud

¨ slideshows using SoundSlidesPlus

¨ video using YouTube and Vimeo

¨ customized searches using Twitter

¨ interactive maps using GoogleMaps

¨ interactive timelines using Dipity

Workshop Facilitator

Dr. Brett M. Rhyne is founder and managing editor of RhyNewService, a multiplatform
source for social change news, links and opinion; a lecturer in online journalism
at Boston University; and the current president of NESNE: The New England Society
of Newspaper Editors Foundation. He is the author of the forthcoming X-Platform
Journalism Handbook 2012.

If you'll be traveling from a distance and need convenient and affordable overnight
accommodations please contact the NENPA staff at (781) 320-8042.

This will be an outstanding professional development opportunity, and we're very
pleased to be able to offer it to NENPA and NESNE members at this low price. Space
is limited, so be sure to sign up soon. Don't hesitate to call with questions.

Two Events with Open Media Boston - March 22nd and March 31st

Forwarded from an email from Deborah Elizabeth Finn of the Mission Based Massachusetts blog. For full details, see http://ow.ly/48xoA

1) Media Reform/Community Tech Day

March 22, 2011
3:30 - 9 p.m.
Charles Hotel
Harvard Square
1 Bennett Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

2) Digital Media and Popular Uprisings

March 31, 2011
6 - 8 p.m.
Lesley University
University Hall Amphitheater
1815 Mass. Ave.
2nd Flr.
Cambridge, MA 02140

American Journalism Review piece on news councils

The American Journalism Review posted on March 2 a story about the state of news councils in the United States. It includes a quote from Bill Densmore, executive director of the New England News Forum.

Here's the story:

http://ajr.org/Article.asp?id=5025

And at the bottom there's a link to a blog post by John Hammer, executive director of the Washington (state) News Council.

What do we mean by engagement? An RJI fellow studies

In 2008-2009, Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow Mike Fancher concluded that journalists needed to develop a "new ethic of public engagement" as an enhancement or amendment to The Journalist's Creed. This year, RJI fellow Joy Mayer has been following that thread. She's been asking: "What do we mean by engagement?"

The idea of sorting out the meaning of public, or civic engagement, will be a convening theme of "Beyond Books: News, Literacy, Democracy and America's Libraries," an April 6-7 symposium and do-session at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media.

Co-organized by Journalism That Matters, the American Library Association and others, RJI will fund the participation of Mayer and Mizzou journalism librarian Dorothy Carner.

In this short discussion in late January with 2008-2009 RJI fellow Bill Densmore, Mayer talks about her thinking on "engagement" so far. Click on the carat to the left of the bar below to launch streaming audio of the eight-minute discussion, or DOWNLOAD AN MP3 PODCAST for offline listening.

State sides with Northampton, Mass. newspaper in mug shot flap « New England First Amendment Center

http://nuweb9.neu.edu/firstamendmentcenter/?p=453