New Online Application System

Last week, we promised to share information about our new grant application process. The new system enables you to complete your Letter of Inquiry online, save your responses, review your application, print it out and e-mail drafts to your colleagues.  

To access the Journalism Program Letter of Inquiry form, click here.

If you are a new user, you'll need to enter your e-mail address and create a password. If already are registered with us, you can use your existing McCormick Grant Request log in and password. (Current grantees: This is the same log in and password you used to complete your year-end grant reports). 


Grants Review Process 
Letters of Inquiry for requests of more than $50,000 are due May 1. LOIs for grant requests of $50,000 or less are accepted on a rolling basis and reviewed in February, July and November. Program staff will contact you via phone or e-mail should we require more information about your application. Full proposals are accepted on an invitation-only basis.

If you have questions about the application system, please contact administrative officer Aaron Smith.


At the risk of burying the lead, the Feb. 22 Director’s Notes will provide information about a new Request for Proposals initiative.  Stay tuned.

--Clark Bell, Journalism Program Director 

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6 Free Trainings for Reporters in 2012

Mark your calendars for these free training workshops for reporters on important topics you and your news organizations are covering now.  Travel and tuition are paid for by a grant from The McCormick Foundation.  Apply now for these workshops: 

• Iraq/Afghanistan war veterans return home, straining government resources for veterans beyond capacity. (Hosted by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University, which plans a workshop March 5-7 in Boston. Details and an application at www.necir-bu.org.  Deadline to apply is Feb. 20.)
  
• Covering globalization at the local level — beyond the G8/NATO summits. (Hosted by DePaul University in Chicago and organized by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and The Poynter Institute.  Workshop March 19-21. Details and an application at www.poynter.org/12sriglobal.  Deadline to apply is Feb. 29.)

• Investigating Super PACs -- following the money. (Hosted by the Sunlight Foundation, which plans a workshop April 21-22 in Washington, D.C.  Details and an application at http://sunlightfoundation.com/training/sri/.  Deadline to apply is March 11.)

Watch for details on these workshops later in the year:

• Stress, suicide and the economy – the recession and mental health. (Hosted by Local Media Foundation (formerly Suburban Newspapers of America) and Associated Press Managing Editors. Workshop will be this summer in Chicago. Details to come.)
• Covering social protest movements in an age of social media. (Hosted by California State University, Fullerton, and the Orange County Press Club, which plan a workshop in October at Cal State Fullerton.)
• Covering school violence and discipline. (Hosted by Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.  The workshop will take place in October in Chicago.)

Reporters from small and medium-sized news organizations are especially encouraged to apply for these two- and three-day workshops, called McCormick Specialized Reporting Institutes. Watch for a live chat on each topic in the month or so before each workshop on Poynter.org.


If you can't attend the workshop, you can learn key lessons from the training through a webinar that will take place after each workshop on Poynter's e-learning site, News University (www.NewsU.org).  NewsU will also host a page of resources on each topic, sharing sources, tip sheets, story ideas and more.
Questions, email mccormicksri@poynter.org.

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Listening to You

The Feb. 1 Director’s Notes covered results of our recent Customer Service Survey. Some 128 grantees, former grantees and organizations declined funding participated in the anonymous survey.

The Journalism Program first asked for our customer opinions in 2008 and in response made a number of procedural changes. (Incidentally, we showed incremental improvement in nearly all customer service categories in 2011 when compared with the 2008 results.)

Last month, we shared the findings with other McCormick Foundation programs. After reviewing the results, some of our colleagues plan to launch similar customer service surveys later this year.

We take this “pulse of the customer” stuff very seriously and now will undertake surveys every other year.  The data will become a permanent part of our learning agenda.

Here are some other changes we are making in response to the 2011 survey results:

• We are issuing regular e-newsletters that will include information about the Journalism Program and its grantees. Also, you may have noticed an updated layout for our blog, including the punchier nickname M3 (McCormick Media Matters).
• We will publish our evaluation logic model later this month.
• We are actively soliciting grantees for quotes, interviews, photos, videos and ideas for postings.  Check out our Best of, Brainstorm, Blueprint and Backto You features.
• A year-end recap to explain the realities of funding and chances of success. 
• We will attempt to customize decline letters to better explain why proposals were declined. Some proposals are bad fits. Many others are declined because of limited funds during a highly selective process.  
• We will continue to accept letters of inquiry year-round for grant requests of less than $50,000.  They will be reviewed by staff in February, July and November. Top McCormick management approval is   required before grants can be paid out. We will attempt to release grant checks of $50,000 or less in March, August and December.
• Letters of inquiry for grants of more than $50,000 must be submitted by May 1, 2012. These proposals will be reviewed by our Board of Directors in September and paid out in January of 2013.

The Feb. 15 Director’s Notes will provide details of a new online letter of inquiry and proposal process tied to our grant management process.

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Face-to-Face: Conversations with Journalists

Put your students in touch with journalists they'd never otherwise meet. Virtually, undergraduates and high school students talk to reporters who work in challenging environments. Bonus: Lesson plans to accompany the conversations, aimed at helping students develop their news literacy skills.

In January, two St. Pete reporters (Kathleen Flynn and Kris Hundley) discussed their story "Testing Grounds," about drug testing for Big Pharma in India's hospitals.

In February, 22-year-old reporter Alex Pena talks to us from southern Sudan, where he's been reporting for VOA and others for the past month.

In March, we hear from Yemeni reporter Malak Shaher, an Alfred Friendly Press Fellow.

The series runs monthly during the academic year, through April of 2013. After-the-fact replays, along with lesson plans, will be available on Poynter's NewsU for a nominal fee.

Teachers, apply here to participate in a Face-to-Face conversation:

Face-to-Face: Conversations with Journalists is sponsored by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. It's a partnership between Florida Gulf Coast University and Poynter's NewsU.

Contact Lyn Millner for more information.

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Brainstorm: Journalists and Fair Use

January was a big month for free speech and online press freedoms, in light of the strong responses to the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP (or PIPA) bills.

A group of 30 journalists convened in D.C. on Jan. 20, 2012, to discuss new research by The Center for Social Media (CSM) at American University on how fair use and copyright policies impact professional standards in digital journalism.

Fair use, according to lead researchers Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, is the right for journalists to quote copyright material (in some circumstances) without permission or payment. Two questions are key in determining whether source material passes the fair use test:

1. Is the new use of copyrighted material “transformative” (i.e. reusing for a new purposes rather than repeating the use for which there is an existing market?)
2. And if so, is the amount used appropriate (even if it’s 100 percent) to the new use?

CSM performed a scan of current standards and practices in U.S. news organizations, including newspapers, magazines, broadcast news outlets, blogs and aggregators. It also conducted interviews with 80 journalists regarding their fair-use practices.

The preliminary results of the research, supported by a McCormick Foundation grant, identified a need for better shared understanding of fair use within journalistic practice, including original reporting, aggregation, within large institutions or in an one-person operation.

Participants at the convening discussed ways to engage different journalistic communities in better exercising fair use.

Download the Center for Social Media’s Journalists & Fair Use report.

Have you come across a fair use issue in your journalistic work? Have ideas on how to help the next generation of journalists build a better understanding of free press issues?  Let us know what you think.

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McCormick Media Awards for Chicago High School Journalists

Don't miss Chicago's annual high school  journalism workshop and awards ceremony. This year, the event will be held on March 16, 2012 at the Chicago Cultural Center.

Register now and submit your students’ entries for a chance to compete in dozens of categories. The top student journalists will receive a $1,500 scholarship. Applications are due on Feb. 17.  SPAC is also accepting nominations for Principal of the Year.  

For registration and nomination information on The Scholastic Press Association of Chicago/McCormick Foundation High Schools Media Awards, visit http://spac-chicago.blogspot.com/. 

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