Online Community News Sites to Expand Coverage

Four online community news sites will expand their local reporting staffs and bring their communities more content with a combined $390,000 investment from the Miami-based Knight Foundation. "As the news industry cuts costs by reducing staff - including local reporters - citizens are receiving less of the news they need to lead informed lives and hold their governments accountable," said Gary Kebbel, Knight's journalism program director. "These young, online-only sites help fill the void and offer the information needed to make decisions."

To see more about these grants click here
And to visit the four news sites, click below:

MinnPost, which provides news and analysis, including video and audio, from experienced journalists primarily in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
voiceofsandiego.org, the only professionally-staffed, nonprofit online news site in California.
Chi-town Daily News, which uses citizen journalists and staff reporters to cover Chicago’s 75 neighborhoods.
St. Louis Beacon, which emphasizes local news on its site founded by veteran journalists, and partners with its local public TV station.

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DC Reductions

The NY Times has picked up on a trend many are seeing in the media industry: The shuttering of news bureaus and cutbacks in Washington-based correspondents. Richard Perez-Pena describes the trend in a piece this week, noting that the cuts (both in DC and at home organizations) come at a time of increased change and need for scrutiny in Washington: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/business/media/18bureaus.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink.

The troublesome trend comes on the heels of a McCormick-funded study, conducted by Arizona State University's Cronkite School and UNITY, that noted only about 13 percent of the Washington daily newspaper press corps are journalists of color. Though this was slightly higher than a study in 2004, it was conducted in early 2008 so the diversity may have decreased since then. For more on the study, http://cronkite.asu.edu/news/diversity-072408.php.

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Loss of Daily Reporters Hurts Great Lakes

In his turn as Guest Speaker for The Great Lakes Town Hall (www.greatlakestownhall.org), David Paulson of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University makes an eloquent case for the role of the daily reporter. And his or her impact on the Great Lakes.

"When a sewer fails, water suffers. Level a forest and the critters flee. A purple loosestrife invasion chokes a wetland in weeks. But what's the impact on the Great Lakes environment of a failing system of news and information?
Huge..."

See Paulson's posting here:
http://www.greatlakestownhall.org/opinion/guest.php?forumid=3&topicid=1225&sid=124a03fd020c4a77fd24de10b6219fba#starttopic

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It Hurts To Laugh

"What's black and white and completely over?" The answer is (ouch) "Newspapers." Jon Stewart on newspaper industry woes...
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=213347&title=clust

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We Media Game Changers Awards Winners

Online media star ZeFrank, mobile texting service Twitter, Obama campaign mastermind David Plouffe, Japanese digital designer Yugo Nakamura and Kenyan mobile alert service Ushahidi are among nine winners of the We Media Game Changers Awards. The awards, organized and administered by iFOCOS, a media think tank and futures lab, will be given out at the We Media Miami conference Feb. 24-26. Other award winners are The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Innocentive’s crowdsourcing for the science crowd, Humana’s Freewheelin’ and social network Socialvibe.

We Media defines Game Changers as entities that ‘lead society to knowledge.’ It invited entries from ‘big companies, little startups, social entrepreneurs, independent thinkers, brands, causes, tools, ideas, commercial, nonprofit – all were welcome.’ To learn more about the MF-sponsored awards and the winners, click here.

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NYCMA Announces 2008 Ippies Awards

The New York Community Media Alliance (NYCMA) announced the 28 winners of the 2008 Ippies Awards for ethnic and community press in New York City on Friday, Dec. 5 at Baruch College. Established in 2001, the Awards recognized excellent journalism chosen from more than 170 entries, in categories covering: investigative reporting; feature writing, editorial or commentary; coverage of immigrant, racial or social issues; coverage of labor; election coverage; overall design and photography.

To see more about the awards and winning articles and photo essays, click here.

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December is Ethnic Media Month

The Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University has posted its MF-funded study “The Health of Ethnic Media: Needs and Opportunities.” The report, directed by Cristina Azocar and Jon Funabiki, offers a snapshot of the health and resiliency of the nation’s ethnic news organizations from the point of view of their proprietors, publishers, editors and reporters. To see the study, click here: http://ciij.org/downloads/Health_of_the_Ethnic_Media_Final.pdf

Also, hyperlocal journalism was celebrated Dec. 5 at Minnesota’s Twin Cities first regional Ethnic and Community Media Awards. Co-hosted by the Twin Cities Daily Planet and New America Media, the event honored stories about such topics as Asian-American theater, the recent arrival of refugees from Bhutan, education in the Hmong community and the Service Employees International Union strike in Minneapolis.

To view a NAM story on this event, click here:
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=2d396e99f74e9f3b7500319ce0b599a2.

For audio coverage of the event, click here: http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=979cee7dfd9e5c88c47004478bd04e31.

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Dollars for Ideas

Here at MF we get dozens of ideas for digital media news start-ups annually. Unfortunately, there's not enough support to seed all these ideas or projects, and our work is generally focused in other strategic journalism areas.

But we're happy to point out MF grantee J-Lab's New Voices grants program, that funds the launch of participatory community news ventures. The guidelines are pretty broad and innovation is encouraged.

If you want to start a new Web site or online community, check out their guidelines - they're accepting proposals through Feb. 12, 2009 - for more details at: www.j-newvoices.org/apply/V09.

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AAJA Announces New Executive Director

Former newspaper and television industry professional Ellen Endo has been appointed the new executive director of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA), replacing Rene Astudillo, who has led AAJA since 1999.

In her 24 years in TV industry leadership positions, Endo has served as an executive at Republic Pictures Productions, MGM/UA Television, Embassy Communications and ABC. She has also served as managing editor of The Rafu Shimpo, Los Angeles Japanese Daily News and chief operating officer of the nonprofit Go For Broke National Education Center.

Founded in 1981, the San Francisco-based AAJA is a nonprofit professional and educational organization with approximately 2,000 members and 20 chapters in major cities across the U.S. and in Asia.

To see more on Endo’s background and her video introduction as AAJA e.d., click here

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Communities in Flux

With media companies slashing their workforce and opportunities for in-depth reporting waning, the Journalism Center on Children & Families has some promising new free resources for covering the impact of economic turmoil and changing demographics.

The materials, available online at http://www.journalismcenter.org/fellowships/ConferenceMaterialschicago.html, include source lists, speaker handouts and Power point slides from a McCormick Specialized Reporting institute on "Communities in Flux: The Impact of Economic Turmoil and Shifting Demographics" in Chicago Nov. 16-18. Topics included the foreclosure crisis, local government budgets, rise of the working poor, and more. Check it out for some quick, but substantive reporting ideas.

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