Looking for Leaders

The Poynter Institute is looking for a dozen news leaders to help spread the change gospel via a series of high-impact trainings across the country.

The selected corps - the McCormick Change Leadership Fellows - will gather at Poynter next March to share and absorb some of the best change management techniques. Though the Fellows will continue working in their newsrooms, Poynter will dispatch them occasionally to trainings across the country. The idea is to spread best practices for innovating during a tumultous time by using the experts to teach. Costs are covered through the MF grant.

Poynter's call for applicants can be found at (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=34&aid=152657) . Criteria include:

• Working at a management level.
• Respected and admired as a leader.
• Implementing or accomplishing a significant change.

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Dizzy Dreams

The University of Maryland's Lee Thornton reflects on the dramatic changes in journalism education in the October/November issue of the American Journalism Review. He suggests that the increase in professional training opportunities offered by J-schools prepares students to work on multiple platforms and carve out individual specialties. Thornton also reminds us that Sarah Palin, a 1987 University of Idaho graduate, is the first journalism degree holder to appear at the top of the ticket for either of the two major political parties.

In spite of the economic woes rocking the news media world, enrollment in university journalism/mass communications programs remains strong. The spike in student interest puzzles working journalists and challenges journalism educators to confront a shifting professional environment. An online site asked the journalists of tomorrow to describe an ideal job. One interesting posting cited the need for flexible training and a dream job that offered variety, new technology, working with people, visual platforms, the spirit of teamwork and lots of money.

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Youth Media in Action

Check out the slick new brochure put out by the McCormick Foundation's Youth Voices Network to adverstise their in-school and after-school programs to young people. You can download it here: http://www.mccormicktribune.org/journalism/Chicago%20Youth%20Voices%20Network.pdf.

The Youth Voices Network, a coalition of more than a dozen youth media groups in the Chicago area, is dedicated to collaborating and strengthening nonprofit organizations that provide communication programs to young people. These groups provide training to young people in media arts, journalism and production in mediums ranging from print to online to radio and video.

If you'd like some hard copies to distribute to teens you know, contact the Foundation's journalism program.

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Ohio State Hosts Conference on Coverage of Climate Change

A tour of the Byrd Polar Research Center to see up close actual ice cores each containing a piece of the history of the earth’s atmosphere. A talk by global warming pioneer Lonnie Thompson and a thoughtful speech by Sen. John Glenn. A timely session contrasting the proposed policies of the presidential candidates on global warming. Sessions on both reporting – and disseminating news interactively – using new media. These were some of the highlights of the Specialized Reporting Institute hosted by Ohio State University Oct. 12-14 that brought together some 28 journalists from across the country and as far away as Australia.

The OSU conference, a collaboration between the university's Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism, John Glenn School of Public Affairs and Climate, Water and Carbon Program, provided a wealth of information in a short time to attendees. The events also were taped, Blogged, Ninged and Twittered for those unable to attend. Kudos to the Kiplinger Program for producing a model in conference communication dissemination.

To see conference materials and links to extensive coverage: http://mccormickc3.ning.com/

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Innovative Partnering

Two MF grantees recently came together to spread the word about voter education issues to journalists across the country. New America Media (NAM) and the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) partnered for an Oct. 1 conference call focused on state-specific voter identification laws, registration deadlines, election information sources and citizenship requirements, according to AAJA (for more, visit: http://www.aaja.org/features/articles/2008_09_26_01/aajateleconference.pdf). The call featured a Q&A with John Bonifaz, legal director of Voter Action.

This unique professional journalism training opportunity allowed NAM, the oldest and largest group representing ethnic media, to partner with a media membership association to provide specific, timely information for journalists serving ethnic audiences.

The teleconference was promoted an NAM public service campaign aimed at informing ethnic media audiences about what documents they need to bring with them to vote on Nov. 4.

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Ethnic Media Put Experience into Coverage of Emergencies

In a compelling piece of online audio reporting, New America Media’s Odette Keeley explores the role of ethnic media as emergency responders. Vu Than Thuy, CEO and host of Radio Saigon Houston 900 AM KREH had experienced Hurricane Katrina and armed with that experience managed to continue broadcasting during Hurricane Ike. She even resorted to using candlelight when power was down to continue reaching the station’s more than 160,000 listeners in Houston and Galveston. Hiram Soto, a multimedia reporter for the Spanish-language paper Enlace (San Diego) had learned from earlier wild fires both what to expect as well as the importance of relationships with other Spanish-language media in the area. When wild fires hit the area on a Sunday evening last year, by Monday he was recording and posting video and by Tuesday a special edition of Enlace had hit the streets with information on what was going on, what to do, where to go, etc. Listen to this piece at http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=969ec31cf7cfc605cfdefccc8232a3aa.

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