Greetings,

Journalism That Matters (JTM) has good news to report! In March, Humanosphere will distribute a draft plan to improve global health and development journalism in the Northwest through the expansion of its existing platform. Our working group is collaborating on the plan because it makes sense to focus our efforts on supporting an excellent existing news provider.

You are invited to attend a Humanosphere meeting in late March to provide feedback on the plan that will emphasize collaboration and partnerships. One incentive for partners is possible national coverage on NPR. If you would like to attend the meeting, please let us know and we’ll send the details.

The Journalism That Matters role has been to convene a working group that brings everyone to the table. Rather than rush into a solution, we’ve taken the time to complete the due diligence groundwork so we can conduct research, build consensus and be confident in the approach moving forward. Here’s a recap of our work over the past two years:

2010 – Sanjay Bhatt, Michael McCarthy and I met with multi-sector stakeholders and conducted audience research with the help of Steve Gloyd, Wendy Johnson, Dan Chang, Geoff Froh, Anita Verna Crofts and Bobbi Nodell at UW, Lawrence Pintak at WSU, Lisa Cohen at Washington Global Health Alliance, PATH, City of Seattle, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and many others.

2011 – We presented the audience research findings, welcomed feedback, and created a larger working group that includes the people on the To line. As the year progressed, we met bi-monthly to discuss common challenges, current coverage and several possible approaches to improve it.

2012 – Now we are ready to hit the ground running and deliver results in one year. We will focus on supporting Humanosphere, building a network of collaborative partners, and developing a sustainable business model.

From Tom Paulson: ”We emphasize that Humanosphere’s plan, while independent and moving forward on its own, is built on the work/thinking done by many others at JTM – Kristi’s proposal, Pam’s management, the audience survey and lots of back-and-forth exploratory conversations. …I want to emphasize that the collaborative discussion at JTM has been – and I hope will continue to be – invaluable. We are willing to take the lead and try to move this forward but for it to succeed we need it to remain collaborative.”

Lawrence Pintak, if WSU is ready to engage, please contact me. We are interested in your content. Thanks.

Thanks to Bobbi Nodell in the UW Department of Global Health for regularly providing us with a conference room.

Questions? We’ll update the JTM site as soon as the new plan is finalized. Thanks for your support!

Kind Regards,

Pamela Kilborn-Miller
Project Director
Global Health and Development Journalism
Journalism That Matters
http://www.linkedin.com/in/pamelakilbornmiller
pamkm@comcast.net
Let’s connect on Google+
206-310-7561

I have an extensive list of community engagement ideas from a meeting in Hawaii that the Kellogg Foundation sent me to last summer for my TED Prize work. If we get the Global Health Working Group blog going, I’ll post the ideas there since community engagement is a key part of our project.