Media Re:public

Actually, my talented colleagues Wendy Seltzer, Geoff Goodell and Steve Schultze did the very eloquent telling of the FCC that their proposal to give away spectrum to be used for “family-friendly” Internet, accomplished by network-level filtering of potentially harmful content, which I wrote about a few days ago, is wrongheaded on many fronts:

– it mistakenly treats the Internet like a broadcaster, which denies the Internet’s essential nature as a space for creation, collaboration and innovation;
– it will stifle both competition and innovation in important areas;
– it is in conflict with the FCC’s own policies promoting openness and neutrality; and worst of all,
– it violates the First Amendment (oh that!), suppressing large amounts of speech

That’s the supershort version, if you have time to be really enraged about this (and you should!) you can read the whole comment on the FCC website, in docket 07-195. And sign up for Berkman’s mailing lists, where news will surely be posted as it appears.

Update: My fellow fellow Harry Lewis has a lovely post on the absurdity of the proposed rule.

Image: Free Speech
Uploaded on May 1, 2007
by mellowbox

Tags: FCC, pornography, censorship

Two conversations today shifted my feelings about a couple of the metaphors we use a lot to talk about media and journalism:

First, the media “ecosystem,” a term some of my colleagues love and that I have resisted, with support from fellow fellow David Weinberger, including in his presentation at our March event. I felt “ecosystem” sounded too neat, too organic, too rational, to represent the messy forces at work in the media environment. In a discussion yesterday I was convinced that other people don’t get that from the word, that they think of ecosystems that can be out of balance, polluted, on the verge of collapse. So, with the idea that the multiple media ecosystems include dangerous jungles, toxic Superfund sites and great barren deserts, I’m cautiously giving the word a chance.

The second opening I’m considering is for the vegetable metaphors: usually “eat-your-spinach journalism” or “the broccoli on your plate.” This came up a lot in LA, and like Adrian Monck, I didn’t like it much. I found the implication that the challenge is to “sugar-coat the broccoli” (a disgusting image) or as Ethan more appetizingly says “make broccoli au gratin,” adding just enough cheese sauce (cheese may be cheap processed America, as in gratuitous of pictures of distressed children, the expensive artisanal (Abomination! Word Press just tried to tell me the correct spelling of that word is ‘artisinal’ the end is near) goat cheese of powerful storytelling).

Now I’ve decided the problem is not the metaphor itself, but with the implied attitude toward broccoli and other healthy vegetables, that even those of us who know we need to eat them would eat mostly potato chips and chocolate cake if we could. I think we need to give both broccoli and people more credit. Like the healthy school food movement, we need to have a positive attitude, making sure the people who prepare and serve the broccoli are passionate about vegetables and eager to share their love with others, not trying to force the kids to eat soggy overcooked frozen broccoli because it’s their duty. And we need to include the education part, where kids learn what spinach looks like growing, how to cook it so it tastes good. It’s repeatedly worked in school cafeterias. So maybe we should be looking for the Alice Waters of journalism? Oh could someone please also write the equivalent of Fast Food Nation about the media to shake people up about what’s in their journalistic lunch bag?

Photo: Broccoli
Uploaded on April 19, 2005
by Tzatziki

We want to support the programs we love.
We want to support the people who might produce programs we might love in the future.
We don’t want to save public broadcast stations just because they are transmitters that used to be the only way we could get these shows, but we do want to support stations that create and support communities.
We want to be able to donate money for podcasts, individual shows and stations.
We want to do this in ITunes and on the IPhone and in other places too.
We want to support stations to produce shows we don’t care about, because other people might be interested in them.
Some of us (OK, exactly one of us) don’t mind pledge weeks, but want additional options for supporting podcasts.

We all hope that this little picture
will help us do what we want.

That’s the “Relbutton,” “rel” being short for “relationship.” The Relbutton was one of the hot topics at the first workshop of Project VRM, which I was lucky enough to attend some of yesterday and today. Sadly other commitments interrupted, so I missed some sessions, but I did make sure to be at the session on VRM and Public Media, which is where we reached the above conclusions.

VRM is Vendor Relationship Management, the alternative to CRM, Customer Relationship Management. As someone who only learned what CRM was when learning about its replacement, I believe that VRM will eventually need a less geeky, less reactive, more assertive name like BISS (Because I Say So), but that will come.

In the meantime, VRM is a wonderful set of concepts and projects-in-progress about giving consumers control, even consumers who are getting something for free. Hence the excitement about the public media and the Relbutton. The button will let us as listeners/viewers/readers say: “Hey, I am interested in this story/podcast/program/series/station/website and I would like to support it in some way, on my terms, when and how it’s convenient for me.”

Once every public media distribution platform is outfitted to accept Relbutton input, you’ll be able to use the Relbutton to build whatever kind of relationship you want to establish with them, whether it’s donating $5 once or $50 monthly or getting on a mailing list or learning that the station needs in-kind donations of something you have a garage full of. If the object of your desire isn’t set up (the technical term is “VRM-compliant”) yet, the Relbutton will collect and escrow this information and send the producers a message to let them know that they are missing out on your love.

Those of us who don’t love pledge week can hardly wait for the VRM gang to make this real. Stay tuned.

I thought I might lose my Trader Joe’s Blueberry Muesli this morning, listening to Adam Davidson chat with Morning Edition co-host Ari Shapiro about free trade, Colombia and the US election. Their 4-minute conversation is ickily chatty (”Hey Adam, hey Ari”) and unbearably arrogant and US-centric. Adam contends that making a big fuss over trade agreements with Colombia is, in his words, “nutty” because Colombia is just too small to matter: “I did the math and… the entire Colombian economy is the size of Hollywood, Florida, not Hollywood, California” They both laugh. Indeed, what could be more entertaining than living in a country where the per capita gross domestic product is less than $20 a day?

So, Ari persists, why do US politicians care about this silly little country, since only “some people here and there” (Adam’s words) will be affected by any trade deals? Well apparently, unions are upset because a lot of union leaders get killed there, but as Adam goes on to observe in the same cheerful “gosh-how-silly” voice, “a lot of people get killed in Colombia, it’s a very violent society.” Wow, that’s even funnier than being poor!

The hilarity continues as Davidson notes that in some states “trade is a big, big deal” even though those foolish voters are just wrong about trade being the reason they lost their jobs. Davidson presumably thinks that American voters in those states may be almost as stupid as the people who choose to live in poor, violent Colombia.

I’ll leave union members and residents of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio to defend themselves against Davidson’s flip dismissal of their concerns. On behalf of the rest of the world, though, I urge NPR to make both Ari Shapiro and Adam Davidson spend a few hours learning something about Colombia. Wonderful place to start is on Global Voices, which will steer them to a heart-breaking series of short videos on the struggles of a brave group of women to fight back against the violence and economic hardship in the Barrancabermeja region, home to the country’s biggest oil refinery. Hey, did Davidson really fail to mention that petroleum accounts for almost 30% of Colombia’s exports? Yup, I listened one more time to be sure.

This offensive piece of “analysis” (perhaps that’s just another word for “filler” at Morning Edition?) added nothing to our understanding of trade issues or the election politics it was supposedly about, while actively encouraging the worst sort of American closedmindness. Which public is public radio aiming for?

Photo: Bogotá
2600m + montañas paisas…
Uploaded on December 27, 2006
by One*mandarino
Some rights reserved

It’s time to forget the warnings of our childhood and start talking to stranger, says Doug McGill, whose new column is called “Talking with Strangers.” [Warning: Live Blogging from New England News Forum - accuracy went thataway] It’s based on the idea that xenia, which was apparently considered a civic duty in ancient Greece, is the best way to ensure our national security. He talks about his work teaching journalism workshops, about trying to make citizens think like journalists, understand what it means to be a journalist even if they don’t think they’re doing journalism.

In addition to teaching the food pyramid, we should create and teach a “media pyramid.” “Lost” and “Project Runway” will be the sugary tip, on down to healthy servings of coverage of the city council and so on. He also suggests that experienced journalists who took the buyout go to their schools and offer to teach media and journalism and that we start pushing the culture of reporting as a civic enterprise everywhere we can: in civics class, churches, and so on. Journalism should be like jury duty. His other new slogan for what we should be doing is “Superpoking power.” He’s taken this from David Mathison’s presentation, after admitting that he hadn’t heard the term “Superpoke” before today.

After him Wayne Sutton (left) gives us a tour of some social networks and other tools. Plurk (looks twitteresque) and Stickam (social video network) and Kyte.tv (mobile video) Flixwagon.com (more live video) are all new to me. Bill Densmore chimes in with a bit from a recent “webinar” on advertising, where it was said that button and banner ads are likely to drop in real numbers and video will zoom. So he encourages folks to get video into the sites now. Wayne mentions “location-based social networking” (see brightkite.com) as the up and coming thing, geo-tagged photos and video. Also mentions Viddler and Tubemogul. I want to ask him if he thinks editors and journalists need to know this stuff or whether the role of people like him is key. Will have to do it in coffee break. He and I agree that there has to be something in between journalists and community news site publishers trying to keep up with all the new technology and feeling overwhelmed and them ignoring it entirely. This is of course what he does for a living, as Community Content Manager at NBC-17 WNCN in Raleigh.

Now Len Witt, telling the story of representative journalism, (”rep-j” Bill Densmore calls it) which I’ve heard before. Really happy to hear that they finally found their first “fellow” to report from (and to) Northfield, MN. Misse

(We interrupt this blog post for a brief political plus: One more click on the health care counter! Someone asks whether community-supported journalists will get health care. Will everyone who thinks more people doing journalism in more and more flexible ways PLEASE spend a few minutes promoting universal single-payer health care?)

… and now back to our regularly scheduled debate about whether someone paid by the community can possibly stay independent.

Howard Schneider describes his news literacy course at Stony Brook University. It’s done by the Journalism School but open to all undergraduates. Verification, independence, accountability are the 3 things he says a journalist adds to the media we consume. He tells his students that if they can’t find all of those three things they’re not in the “news neighborhood.” Teaches them between news and commentary and then the difference between verification and assertion. Analyzing the NY Times coverage of the Sean Bell case, the reports of murders, rapes, bodies in the Convention Center freezer during early days of Katrina. See fascinating AJR article where the reporter who wrote the story explains how he made those mistakes.

He teaches them about 5 kinds of sources:
named/unnamed
authoritative/uninformed
independent/interested
sources who verify/sources who assert
multiple sources/single sources

Phase 3 of the course is understanding the difference between news media bias and audience bias. In survey at beginning of class: 79% believe the media has strong political bias. He says this is the biggest challenge of all - getting the audience to recognize their own preconceptions. Points us to Project Implicit, where you can test yourself for hidden bias. Stony Brook is committed to teaching this course to 10,000 undergrads. Their Center for News Literacy is now working to help share what they’ve learned with other institutions, including high schools. They’re even doing pre- and post-course survey of the students to see how their media consumption, voting and other civic engagement and attitudes change and comparing them to a sample of students who haven’t taken it. Sounds great. What will it take to get this kind of course into every school and college? Though I agree with Helen Smith, who teaches high school students to do journalism, adding even a small component of hands-on reporting would be invaluable.

Images: Doug McGill, borrowed from his site, Wayne Sutton and Howard Schneider snapped from my unsteady mobile

Dave Mathison, author of Be the Media is opening Sharing the news: Reaching students, training citizens New England News Forum ’s one-day event here at UMass Lowell (watch it live here, follow #nenf on Twitter) Warning: live blogging, expect mistakes. A small group with a mix of community news, students and education folks here, plus a couple folks from professional media outlets. Looking forward to meeting folks from well-known community news sites the Forum and New Haven Independent to hearing about what journalism educators are thinking about participatory media.

Dave is a “traditional” cyberutopian, anyone can do it, cut out the middleman, don’t let the artist be treated like slave labor, self-publish, get on facebook and twitter, etc. “What about credibility?” is heard muttered nearby during his presentation (can you guess that I’m sitting with the professional journalists?). In fact, when we get beyond the 1000 true fans who can support an independent rock musician to discussions of hard news (he reminds folks he did used to work at Reuters) Dave admits that he doesn’t actually think editors and editorial judgment will go away, in fact he predicts an “explosion of the need for editors and editorial judgment,” but it will exist in new structures.

Image: Photo of David Mathison taken on my phone

The FCC says they want to make it easy for someone to deliver wireless broadband for free. But, as we say here at Berkman, there is free as in beer, and free as in speech. And the FCC’s new idea is UNFREE as in speech. Why? Because the license for the spectrum they want to auction requires a mechanism that “filters or blocks images and text that constitute obscenity or pornography and…any images or text that otherwise would be harmful to teens and adolescents. For purposes of this rule, teens and adolescents are children 5 through 17 years of age.” As someone pointed out in a gathering here at Berkman just now, that puts the United States right up there with China. Further, the rule states, “should any commercially-available network filters installed not be capable of reviewing certain types of communications, such as peer-to-peer file sharing, the licensee may use other means, such as limiting access to those types of communications.”

The problem is the ruling makes the Internet like broadcast television or radio, where we still can’t use George Carlin’s seven words, when it really should be like the telephone, where it’s none of your @O#*$U# business what I want to talk about. I am neither a lawyer nor a technologist-philosopher (like David Weinberger who blogged it here), but I know this is BAD. I read the text (actually I just searched for the word “pornography” and read that bit) and then went here to tell the FCC how I felt. (The comments submission form is very tricky, the 2 relevant dockets are 07-195, and 04-356, but I found it rejected my attempts to put them in myself (got an error message after submitting) so I clicked on proceedings and search for them.

That’s the basic Internet freedom part.

There’s also the sleazy background part about the M2Z, the company that’s pushing this. Business Week points out that one of the two founders of M2Z is a former FCC official. The company’s site encourages visitors to send letters to Congress and the FCC tell them to support “free, family-friendly, nationwide broadband.” Wendy suggested they rename it the “free, family-friendly, FILTERband.”

See also Scott Bradner, David Weinberger, Wendy Seltzer

Tags: FCC, pornography, censorship

Continuing a provocative afternoon of discussion here at (warning as-live blogging, errors ahead)
Larry Irving: Please don’t sell out, I think there’s got to be a commercial space and a noncommercial space. Having worked in politics in Washington, I can tell you: there is no such thing as free money. Anyone who gives you money wants something, even more so if you happen to be producing media. I’m a lawyer, I live in an upscale zipcode, Look at the CPM for black radio stations vs. country and western; some people are valued differently. Let’s talk turkey about demographics. Public broadcasting does not reflect the demographic changes in the U.S. Media age of audience is 46, media age of country is 36, media age of Latinos is 26. Riff on Dean Wilson’s comment of yesterday: Actually pubcasting serves all people from ages 1-7 but if you’re black or brown they don’t even care about you when you hit 47.

Technology matters too. If you’re not on mobile platforms, you won’t reach the young and the non-white. Mentions slingbox, watching Tiger Woods on the Metro. Says it’s not “new” media, it’s just media. New survey says: 76% of kids would give up TV before the Internet. People of color use more media of all kinds than whites, even corrected for income. Simultaneous technology revolution in all countries.

Dennis Harsaager has given him hope that perhaps the stations are not going to (by booting CEO Ken Stern) stop NPR from dragging them kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Also talks about trusted public sources for e.g., health information. He’s a former cancer patient (me too - it’s that weird club that you’re never really happy to find another member). Irving hopes that the president will bring smart people together to talk about technology and democracy and media and NOT about money. We need to get public institutions (is this being webcast? Are Obama advisors watching?) together with the best technological minds.

Question from Pat Aufderheide: What are the chances of getting legislative language changed to allow public media funding to be spent on digital stuff? Irving: You gotta make the case, but I think you can and should.

Question audience member: what about access issues? Pub’casting is so moribund in their approach to interactivity. Irving: Now that we’re in the age of abundance we have to talk to people in power, in congress and we need to explain to them what we could be doing with a little bit of vision. The system

Q: What about spending the income from the analog spectrum auction? A: The $19 billion we got from the last auction unfortunately went into general funds. We do need a way to fund public broadcasting. Even if we’d gone to a TV tax, we’d need to redo it anyway, how do we create an endowment that is politically insulated.

We have angry old white men (right-wing talk radio), angry young white men (left-wing blogosphere) - where are the black and brown men?

We need for the white space on the spectrum to be available for experimentation, Google and Microsoft have an interest in the white space too, why don’t we work with them?

Q: We see a talent drain of Hispanic producers to commercial media. I worry that the experiments that funders are interested are all about form, what about content? Diversity can’t be outsourced. But my question to you is about what I see young people being less siloed off by race, working towards multicultural content (and life). (applause) Irving: I agree 100%. Diversity needs to be in the organization’s DNA. We need to mainstream (though I hate the word) producers of color.

Huge applause - Irving was an inspired choice of speaker. I do worry that after a self-criticism session like this a reception that apparently will not include alcohol is ill-advised.

David Isenberg points out that we’re getting open fiber architecture experiments we need to get our act together there too because “fiber is the future.”

Quick demo of the uuorld interactive mapping site www.uuorld.com (it’s world spelled with 2 u’s in place of the ‘w’ get it?)

The Mapping Where’s the money? panel* here (warning error-prone as-live blogging ahead) at Beyond Broadcast - Diane Mermigas (Mediapost) totally gets it about the fact that the challenges to public and commercial media are the same. I’m not sure I agree with her on all the ideas for public broadcasters should make money in what she calls the “Consumer-Centric Public Media’s Interactive Sphere” see image at left, paper here), but they’re definitely smart.

Keith Hopper (Public Interactive): my advice to you: focus on getting more online users. User interaction is the new currency. The best stuff on the web is free. Follow the model of successful online sites: build user base first, monetize later. You need real interaction, people downloading stuff, remixing, discussing. No users means no money. Lastly, if you monetize first and build users later, you can corrupt your environment, people will get turned off.

Craig Reigel, (Nonprofit Finance Fund): “Bringing in revenue needs to be decriminalized.” He doesn’t care whether it’s donations or ads (hmm) he just wants us to get busy getting the important stuff we do funded.

Vince Stehle, (Surdna Foundation): Compares Radiohead model to public brodcasting (shortened by the folks here to “pubcasting” which sounds too much like pubcrawling to me). Commercial media are more challenged, but they may be adapting more quickly. What if you’re not a superstar, how does that work? Take Colby Calais she was working in a tanning salon. She got a recording contract after 10 million free downloads of her music on MySpace. Look to what we can do in public media to dramatically reexamine our business model(s). Where is our 99 cent Itunes model - how do we let folks do micropayments? (Doc Searls’ gang will fix this.) Too early to say we can’t raise money online. Look at the progression from Dean to Obama.

Ernest Wilson, (Annenberg): An interjection of pessimism: Let’s not forget what we’re talking about here is the BASIS of democracy. If people in this room don’t get it right soon, democracy will suffer and it will be our fault. (He bangs the table for effect!) We need to create dialogue, discussion, serve the underserved. Our beloved local stations especially, possibly the last local voices in many communities, are not doing it. If we don’t change that quickly, our democracy will be poorer for it. Get people out of our silos!! (GO, Dr. Wilson, GO!) He lists 4 silos: print, digital media folks, public broadcasting, and commercial. (I would add a 5th non-profit civil society silo, myself) He says public broadcasting is serving people well from birth to age 7, ignores folks till they’re 47, and then serves them from age 47 till shortly after their death. Big laugh line.

Mermigas leads an active discussion on how to light a fire under the asses of public broadcasting. Mentions VRM work on the funding question. She and Wilson are relentless about the need for the people in the room to get relevant fast. Stehle: you need to help each other, build up each other’s sites and networks. I tell my neighbor this panel should have been called not “Mapping the Money” but “Speaking Truth to Ostriches.”

self-promotional P.S. Gave a supershort (they are actually keeping to SCHEDULE here, what an idea) chat on the current versions of Media Re:public conclusions and recommendations. Sildes are here: http://www.slideshare.net/guest95ccec/media-republic-beyond-
broadcast2008

*1:45pm - 3:00pm Roundtable Discussion: Mapping the Money
Conversation Leader:
Diane Mermigas, Editor-at-Large, Media Post
Discussants:
Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program, MIT
Keith Hopper, Product Manager, Public Interactive
Craig Reigel, Vice President, Western Region, Nonprofit Finance Fund
Vince Stehle, Program Officer for the Nonprofit Sector Initiative, Surdna Foundation
Ernest J. Wilson, Walter Annenberg Chair in Communication and dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California

Rick Borovoy from nTAG interactive is telling us about how we’ve been interacting with members of other groups. The groups are Knight Foundation staff (there are a lot of them here and they’ve been talking to each other 103% more than random chance would predict), MIT folks, 2007 Knight winners, 2008 Knight winners and staff/guests. Meanwhile, Ellen Hume and Gary Kebbel are at the top of the “Kevin Bacon” list of folks who interact most (I made number 5!)

Now Gary (the proud father) is going to emcee a review of the grantees. He first explains the genesis of the project: newspaper circulation falling, revenue falling, newspapers losing influence, do we have to sit and watch this happening, or are there tools that can help fill the vacuum that is being created? We think yes, we believe in the mission of the news and information industry. What we think newspapers do: unite a town, bring people together to discuss their problems, perhaps lead them to solutions. But it’s also about place. So when we started the News Challenge, people said what is this nonsense using digital media to serve geographic communities, this just shows you don’t understand the Internet, it’s about virtual communities. But we don’t elect virtual presidents, it’s not a virtual school board that cuts arts funding, this geography thing is still important.

Anyway, he’s now going to try to get ALL the new Knight grantees to describe their projects and have the 2007 grantees say something about the impact of their projects (turns out foundations don’t just give away money, they want to see impact from it - who knew?). Important to notice that many grants are using OLD technology in new ways to bridge the digital divide. He gives the 2008 grantees a couple minutes each, see if I can keep up:

Brenda Burrell (Kubatana.net) explains that dial-up radio in Zimbabwe is able to provide the information and community-building role of radio without expensive transmitters.

Brein Macnamara of SignCasts is working to find ways for deaf people to be able to do civic reporting using their primary language of American Sign Language (ASL), which means finding ways for them to get better access to video technologies. He’s also remarkably cheerful about the exhausting task of participating in a conference in a foreign language through an interpreter.

Aaditeshwar Seth from University of Waterloo describes his Community Radio in India project to provide radio in rural India, using telephone-based playback and also bringing the Internet to the radio stations who can interpret and contextualize the information for their audience.

Joel Selanikio, co-founder of Datadyne, an organization generally seeking sustainable projects to deliver needed services in the developing world. Knight grants funds a cell-phone project to deliver news. They will likely roll out in Kenya.

Guy Berger, South Africa, project is “The News is Coming,” working with journalism students to connect citizens of black township with white urban residents.

Jessica Mayberry is in India, where her project Video Volunteers is making videos in rural India that are shown on mobile video screens. They promote these screenings widely, sometimes to people who’ve never seen a movie or TV in their lives.

Alexander Zolatarev ’s Sochi Olympics Project is going to track the attitudes of the people of Sochi, Russia as the town is prepared for the Olympics in 6 years. He’s been studying citizen journalism at CUNY for the year, goes home to Sochi later this summer. Gary Kebbel points out that the accumulation of 5 years of data on citizen reactions will be useful to international journalists who arrive to cover the Olympics.

Transparent Journalism, the project of Tim Berners-Lee and Martin Moore, is presented by Gary K. The idea is you will be able to know more about the journalism that ends up on your screen, things that will let you decide something about its quality. Partnering with Reuters and BBC. I like and respect Martin, but I still find the idea that metadata will solve the credibility problem dubious. Looking forward to being proven wrong.

Printcasting - presented by Dan Pacheco of the Bakersfield Californian, making tools to allow people to produce high-quality printed products.

Tools for Public Access TV presented by Tony Shawcross, is exactly what it sounds like - helping public access stations link to each other and share expertise and content.

RadioDrupal is a really interesting model for a grant-funded project! Local NPR station wanted to hire Margaret Rosas and her company Quiddities to build their site, but had no money. So they applied for the Knight grant to make it happen. And of course be available to other stations. Gary explains why they like funding tools and why they insist that everything developed be openly available, something that to their sadness has led to fewer newspapers applying for these grants (will they ever learn? no, they’ll never learn) because they don’t want to give technology away to their competitors.

Student editors from the UCLA student paper did apply though, to come up with a system that would replace the whiteboards most college newspapers are using now (helloo digital natives - aren’t all people their age know instinctively how to collaborate online??) Project is Community News Network, difficult from their description to get how it’s different from any number of other things, but I’m sure there’s some secret sauce I don’t get. Warning to professors - student says the system will let kids “work on the paper while they’re in class,” stealing away those last few who haven’t succumbed to supplementing your lectures with Facebook, etc.

Ryan Sholin has a small grant to help him develop “Reporting On” in his spare time (his day job is interesting too, helping really small papers across the country get wired). It’s a resource for journalists working on stories of any kind to share and find expertise. So if you’re reporting on an earthquake and building codes, you find out what sources others used, etc.

Our buddy David Cohn explains SpotUs, which I’ve mentioned before. Freelancers pitch stories to communities, communities/individuals can make microdonations to fund reporting on the issues they care about. I think this could be an incredibly tool and if anyone can get it up and running with only $300,000, it’s Dave.

That’s all the 2008 winners, now progress reports from 2007 winners:

Our City, Our Voices project for digital inclusion of immmigrant workers in Philadaelphia also presented through an interpreter. They’re training people in video and online tools and using the free wireless from the city. Originally started with one English-language and one Spanish-language class, used the video to bring people together. Distributed via DVD, public screenings and web.

Geoff Dougherty of Chi-Town Daily News. We have 50 volunteer citizen journalists we train them pair them with professional editors and task them with covering their neighborhoods. Results have exceeded their own optimistic expectations. Now at 18,000 visitors per month. 75% of readers are 18-40, which is exactly who the Tribune is losing. (Gary: Geoff has 2 Pulitzer Prize winners on his board, the original goal was one reporter in each neighborhood: how do you find them, train them, and retain them. Now Geoff knows that 3-4 reporters is what you really need. Also they have synergy with 2 other Chicago Knight grantees: Everyblock and the project at Northwestern. We hope this is what will happen with this year’s 16 projects, that they will help each other do more than they originally planned.)

What is the project at Northwestern? We have 2 students here with us - it’s a scholarship program to give Masters degrees at the Medill School of Journalism to Computer Science students. Ryan Mark says it was surprising that it’s difficult to learn this writing and other stuff that journalists do. He’s getting an A though. Thinking about how to use technology to connect to source or improve data collection. His buddy Brian Boyer says his friends thought he was crazy to do this. Until he read post about this project on Boing Boing it had never occurred to him to consider that journalists have a mission. But the commercialization of the media is weird. He reiterates the broccoli theory (people eat their newspaper for the horoscopes not the news) though he calls the news “medicine.” So although technology has ruined the newspaper, perhaps it will save it. Near-zero cost of production and distribution. Make the news portion of the Tribune part of a foundation and then sell it back to people who want to print it?? He’s out to fix the business model. Rich Gordon is their professor, he’s pleased that Knight would take this risk. All they’ve promised is that 9 folks with CS backgrounds will learn journalism just as we’ve always taught it (well our curriculum is updated, but you get it). I’m confident that they’ll all go off to do something interesting. They still have 5-6 slots - apply now!!

Well that was exhausting, but fun (the liveblogging part). Additional coverage by prolific Tweeter Amy Gahran and others here and by Mark Glaser here.