Deadline for NAHJ Contest Submissions

Leadership, Emerging Journalist, Student Journalist, Print, Broadcast and Photojournalist of the Year... these are just some of the categories for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists' DC Noche de Triunfos awards. The award program will be held Sept. 17 in Washington, DC. If you are a Hispanic journalist or want to encourage a friend to enter, the deadline for submissions has been extended to June 1.

Click here for more information and guidelines: http://www.nahj.org/awards/2009/2009awards.shtml

To see the list of winners from last year, click here: http://www.nahj.org/sponsorship/specialevents/2008/noche/08awardwinners.shtml

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CIMA Launches Global Media Assistance Resource

The Center for International Media Assistance has just launched a new web site aimed at filling a gap in globally accessible media law assistance. The goal of the site is that it serve as a source for both information and analysis through seminal texts, legislation, and court decisions on media law. The result of a two-year process involving various stakeholders, the web site has been designed and administered by the Center for Global Communication Studies at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. Two of the key features are an online community where users can discuss issues related to media law with lawyers, journalists and academics, as well as a news blog covering developments in the area of global media law.

To visit this new resource, go to: http://www.globalmedialaw.com

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How Do They Get Away With It?

On April 1-2, 2009, the John Jay Center on Media, Crime and Justice in New York held an MF-sponsored Specialized Reporting Institute on covering financial crimes. Entitled “How Do They Get Away With It? Tracking Financial Crime in the New Era,” the well-received two-day conference and workshops featured panelists including former SEC regulators, FBI agents, economics professors and even a white-collar crook.

To see the agenda, background papers, reporting that resulted from the conference and a Bill Moyers interview with Professor William Black, click here:
http://thecrimereport.org/2009/04/16/financial-crimes-resource.

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May 1 Deadline for Applications to Leadership Institute for Women Journalists

Apply now to attend the International Women’s Media Foundation’s U.S. Leadership Institute for Women Journalists. The three-day, MF-sponsored training program, to be held in Chicago July 20-22, is designed to provide mid- to upper-level female journalists working in print, broadcast or internet media with critical career-building skills and the opportunity to network with colleagues. In addition to the onsite training, participants will receive one-on-one coaching on implementing personalized action plans for the three months following the institute.

For more information on the program, click here: http://www.iwmf.org/categorydetail.aspx?c=institutes

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It's Never Too Early!

It’s always encouraging to see young folks get interested in journalism—especially when they’re as young as Damon Weaver.

Brian Hamacher of NBC Miami tells the story of the fifth-grader from Pahokee, FL who has attracted national attention for his skills interviewing such luminaries as Joe Biden Caroline Kennedy, and Oprah Winfrey. And it only gets better from there: this sharp young guy was recently awarded a full-ride scholarship to Albany State University in Georgia. The school will be officially presenting him with the offer at a June alumni convention in Miami, and Damon plans to accept, calling it a “big relief to my mother and my family.”

As his first assignment, he’ll no doubt go after his dream interview: President Barack Obama.

See the full story here.

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RTNDA and RTNDF Appoint New Executive Directors

Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) and Foundation (RTNDF) have named new Executive Directors...and announced a name change, too!

Jane Nassiri will assume the helm at RTNDA, where she has served as VP for Finance and Administration since 2005. Kathleen Graham, currently the VP for Foundation Programs since 2005, will now lead RTNDF. Both appointments are effective upon the retirement of current RTNDA/RTNDF President Barbara Cochran on June 25, 2009. Cochran will continue to serve as President Emeritus.

Besides overseeing the financial and administrative activities of both RTNDA and RTNDF, Nassiri has also directed the RTNDA/UNITY and Murrow Awards, as well as the RTNDA annual convention and membership services. She joined RTNDA in 1998. “We look forward to forming new partnerships and reinventing the organization as we move forward in changing our name to RTDNA (Radio Television Digital News Association).”

Graham, who joined RTNDF in 1996, has been largely responsible for high school broadcast journalism programs, the U.S.-German Journalists Exchange, and diversity, scholarship and fellowship programs. She says that RTNDF will serve as a vital training source for digital journalists whose organizations have reduced training. “RTNDF will offer affordable, cutting-edge programming for digital journalists and managers to connect, learn and succeed on air and online.”

RTNDA Chair Ed Esposito said, “Jane and Kathleen know every facet of both organizations…they understand the tremendous shifts we are seeing in the industry as well as the mission and activities we need to undertake to transform RTNDA and RTNDF to meet the needs of journalists in the digital age.”

We’ll miss Barbara, but are confident in the incoming leaders Jane and Barbara!

For more information, visit the RTNDA/RTNDF website.

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Survey Assesses HS Papers in Southern Cal

An MF-funded survey on the state of high school journalism in Southern California reveals that First Amendment issues, poor literacy skills, and lack of time and resources are among the challenges facing high school journalism teachers and students. It also revealed both significant need for and interest in the area of high school journalism: Nearly one-fifth of teachers reported having no budget for their school newspapers, and nearly 90 percent of teachers at schools without journalism favor starting a journalism program.

The research was conducted as a joint project by Los Angeles-based Youth News Service, the publisher of the teen-written L.A. Youth, and the Evaluation and Training Institute (ETI), a nonprofit research and consulting firm that specializes in the evaluation of educational and social programs. It included an online survey completed by 235 teachers and a student focus group of 11 student journalists.

For more on this study, click here:
http://caljec.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/survey-shows-obstacles-for-hs-papers

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'Be Bolder'... What Teens Want From Online News

The Newspaper Association of America Foundation and the Media Management Center have teamed up to explore the online news preferences of teens. Based on findings from previous studies of youth media patterns, researchers developed a series of prototypes of home pages and story-level pages, then tested them with 96 teens in focus groups in six cities. The result is a new report and upcoming one-hour Webinar, to take place April 23.

In a nutshell, the report recommends a bolder approach in packaging news for teens. “Given that teen responses were very similar to those of adults who are light readers, researchers recommend creating a new type of site - not just for teens, but for all people who lack experience with news and have a limited amount of time to get engaged with it.”

For more on this research, click here:
http://www.mediamanagementcenter.org/blogs/mike/2009/04/what-teens-want-from-online-news.html

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10 Journalists Chosen for Environmental Justice Fellowships

Ten journalists have been chosen by USC Annenberg’s Institute for Justice and Journalism (IJJ) to take part in an MF-funded fellowship program that will help them report on the complexities of urban environmental justice with clarity, depth and context.

The selected Fellows all work for ethnic media or are independent journalists who cover issued related to racial justice. The 10 Fellows are:

Edwin Buggage, editor-in-chief/writer, New Orleans Data News Weekly
Lori Edmo-Suppah, news editor, Sho-Ban News, Fort Hall, Idaho
Nadra Kareem, contributing writer, L.A. Watts Times, Los Angeles
Kari Lyderson, independent journalist, Chicago
Brentin Mock, writing fellow, The American Prospect, Washington, D.C.
Julio Cesar Ortiz, news reporter, KMEX-34 (Univision), Los Angeles
Fabiola Pomareda, reporter, La Raza newspaper, Chicago
Devin Robins, radio producer, Los Angeles
Huascar Robles, arts and culture editor, Metro San Juan, Puerto Rico
Talia Whyte, freelance journalist, Boston

The program will be divided into two parts: First the reporters and their editors will go through five days of intensive training and site visits in Los Angeles in May, to be followed by a similar segment in Chicago later this summer. The work they produce as a result of the fellowship will be posted on IJJ’s web site following the program at http://www.justicejournalism.org.

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Washington State Hosts Specialized Reporting Institute on Second Life

Word was that the questions from the Avatars were tougher than those that came from the real world audience.

WSU’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication has just wrapped up a two-day, MF-funded conference for reporters on covering virtual reality, with real-life and 2nd Life speakers Helen Thomas and Bob Schieffer converging on stage at the same time. There was, as you’d expect, a good amount of new media coverage of this one as it unfolded.

To follow some of this fascinating event, visit links below.

Some great coverage can be found at:
http://nwn.blogs.com
http://eurekadejavu.blogspot.com/2009/04/launch-of-journalistic-experiment.html

Live photo stream at:
http://www.koinup.com/sim/WSU+II

Twitter round up at:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%22virtual+journalism+summit%22

A humorous read at:
http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2009/04/virtual-journalism-heavyweights-gather-in-virtual-journalism-summit.html

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Stephen Colbert on the Newspaper Industry

In the 'It's so funny it hurts' category, Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" interviews Newspaper Association of America President & CEO John Sturm. On the news that the Chicago Sun-Times had filed for bankruptcy (“Chicago hasn’t suffered a blow like this since every October”) Colbert mock interviews Sturm, explaining to his younger viewers that 'A newspaper is like a blog that leaves ink on your hands, and covers topics other than how much you love Fall Out Boy.' And what is the NAA? It's "named for the noise Americans make when you ask them if they care about thoughtful analysis of current events. Naaaa!"

To see the short video clip, go to:
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/towerticker/2009/04/stephen-colbert-notes-the-suntimes-bankruptcy-looks-at-the-industrys-problems.html

Incidentally, the Guardian issued an April Fools Day press release that after 188 years of ink, it was turning to an all-Twitter format. The subhead read: "Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters." To see that story, click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/01/guardian-twitter-media-technology

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Knight Funds Facebook News Apps

The Knight Foundation’s grant to News Cloud to develop Facebook applications has just launched. The goal was to see how social networking sites can be used to spread news, particularly among young people.

One is general news, provided by the University of Minnesota Daily newspaper; the other is concerned solely with environmental news, provided by www.grist.org. A University of Minnesota researcher will study the effects of each of these apps.

The links are:
http://apps.facebook.com/mndaily

http://apps.facebook.com/hotdish

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