Mike Fancher's blog

More than 200 people are registered to attend Journalism That Matters/Pacific Northwest, which opens today at the University of Washington.

For fun, I arbitrarily categorized how the participants described themselves in biographies they posted on the JTM site. Nobody fits neatly in any one category, so I picked the description that seemed most central to the person's work.

Here is a breakdown:

1. Civic activists / Community representatives 42
2. Educators 23
3. Online journalists 21
4. Students 14
5. Newspaper 12
6. Radio 11
7. Television 10
8. Technologists 9
9. Organization representatives 8
10. Filmmakers 7
11. Targeted publications 7
12. Entrepreneurs 6
13. Freelancers 6
14. Public and Media Relations 6
15. Business representatives 5
16. Photographers/visual 5
17. Media Reformers 4

I'm delighted that the largest category is made up of people who don't produce journalism themselves but who care about it enough to attend this gathering. After all, the convening questions for JTM/PNW include:

Journalism That Matters/Pacific Northwest is the right conversation, in the right place, at the right time, with the right people.

I say that because of work I've done in the past year with the Aspen Institute and the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. The Commission identified three key objectives:

1. Maximize the availability of relevant credible information to all Americans and their communities.
2. Strengthen the capacity of individuals to engage with information.
3. Promote individual engagement with information and the public life of the community.

It identified these central points that resonate with JTM/PNW: