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Entrepreneurial journalists in the Pacific Northwest continue to draw attention for their innovative ideas. The News Leadership 3.0 blog at the Knight Digital Media Center features the work of Teresa Wippel in creating and sustaining MyEdmondsNews.com.
In addition to advertising, the site generates revenues from live internet streaming of local high school football and basketball games.
Kudos to Wippel for her journalistic passion and dedication.
Tickets and info via Eventbrite page for the Society of Professional Journalists (Western Washington Chapter) Continuing Education Series
Bring your laptop and four media professionals will show you how to get the information you need through the web. A hands-on session that takes you beyond simple searches. Scheduled presenters include Kellie Cheadle, KING-TV; Kathy Gill, University of Washington; Cheryl Phillips, The Seattle Times; Matt Rosenberg, Public Data Ferret.
Recommended that you read Seattle Journalism Commons’ coverage of a similar presentation with Cheryl Phillips on digging deeper into data
Tickets and info via Eventbrite page for the Society of Professional Journalists (Western Washington Chapter) Continuing Education Series
From researching, reporting and interviewing to writing, tech know-how and critical thinking skills, journalists make great employees in just about any communications job. And in this shifting ecomony many of us are moving in that direction. So how do you leverage your years in the news room in a new job market? What can journalists bring to public relations firms, tech start-ups and nonprofits (and what should we leave behind)? What are employers looking for and how do you adjust to a new career? Join us for a panel discussion with journalists in our region that have answered those questions for themselves. This session also includes one-on-one career change counseling.
Tickets and info via Eventbrite page for the Society of Professional Journalists (Western Washington Chapter) Continuing Education Series
Search Engine Optimization: What it is, who does it well (and not so well) and how to make it work for you. Whether you’re a blogger, freelancer, journalism professor or newsroom reporter, everyone has to know about keywords, metadata and headlines that grab the attention of Google bots and humans alike. Learn tricks of the trade, ask those questions you’ve been afraid to ask and compete in headline writing contests with online journalists from about town in this hands-on session.
Notes from Linda Benson
From January 9 News Oasis/Nourishing Networks meeting
The question was, “What are some ways to get individual community members to take direct action on behalf of Nourishing Networks?”
Notes from Parker Lindner
From January 9 News Oasis/Nourishing Networks meeting
Our discussion covered various ways to engage people with the issue.. We talked about how to encourage participation from journalists and the general public.
Some ideas included:
We also discussed the notion that the stories must be able to grab attention. They must be brief. We don’t think people will read long tomes. Instead we could build a simple structure for exposing personal stories – both of people with needs and of people/groups who are inventing (taking responsibility for) providing solutions.
Also, consider the ‘master birder’ model. Train a set of individuals who then commit to training others.
By now, most people know about the epidemic of hunger. Here in the US, 1 out of 5 kids are going to bed without a solid meal — meaning every student you know is sitting next to someone in class who has to ignore the sound of their empty stomach while trying to concentrate on what the teacher is saying.
Last year the USDA released a map and downloadable dataset of the 6,501 food deserts in America. These are places marked as “low income” and “low access” where at least a fifth of the population lives at or below the poverty line, and there isn’t a supermarket within a one-mile radius (or within a 10-mile radius in rural areas). There is an estimated 13.5 million people, 6.5 million children, nationwide who have little or no access to stores selling healthful food based on correlation with the 2000 census.
Local news coverage of the hunger in Puget Sound is not necessarily void, but you don’t see anyone covering the “hunger” beat like they do business, sports, or entertainment. There are interesting pockets, such as Carol Smith’s story for Investigate West, where she profiled our own backyard food desert along South Seattle’s Duwamish River. Smith found that people are resorting to eating out of the river, despite the government warnings of toxic PCBs, heavy metals, and other contaminants that have resulted in a 5 year lower average life expectancy in the area. Due to a partnership with KUOW to do a radio piece, and features in places like Business Insider, her story brought in a significant traffic spike and increase in Twitter followers. However, it’s important to keep in mind that Carol’s work was only made possible by a health journalism fellowship from the California Endowment out of USC Annenberg, and doing the work she did requires a lot of effort and directed intention.
A vital part of the mission of Journalism that Matters and the Seattle Journalism Commons is to enhance the information needs of our community and help ensure that our important stories are being told. This week our network took a critical first step by holding an all day summit in Issaquah with the aim of creating a “news oasis” that fosters vital information around hunger in Puget sound.
Community organizers, journalists, researchers, and business modelers
The participants:
Linda Benson, Vice President, Community Initiatives, Hopelink | Karma Ruder, Director of Community Collaboration, Center for Ethical Leadership | Anne Stadler, Independent Civic & Social Organization Professional, Producer, KING TV (ret.) | James Whitfield, President, Leadership Eastside | Jan La Fond, Convener, Redmond Nourishing Network | Marsha Iverson, King County Library System, Public Relations Specialist | Jo Anderson Cavinta — Diversity program coordinator. Outreach Services. King County Library System | Parker Lindner — Freelance @newmediamatters.com | Ann Zavitkovsky — community enthusiast | Carole Carmichael, Assistant Managing Editor, Seattle Times | Mike Fancher, Executive editor, Seattle Times (ret.), co-founder Seattle Journalism Commons, Journalism That Matters board member | Michelle Ferrier, Associate Professor, Elon University, North Carolina, Journalism That Matters board member. Founder of locallygrownnews.com | Sheetal Agarwal, Doctoral student studying political communication and technology, Research Assistant, Instructor at University of Washington, Department of Communication | Cori Benson, UW Bothell, intern with Nourishing Networks. | Jacob Caggiano, digital strategist and co-founder Seattle Journalism Commons | Rae Levine, Rae Levine Consulting, Co-op consultant. Northwest Cooperative Development | Erin MacDougall, Program Manager Healthy Eating and Active Living, Public Health – Seattle & King County | Dave Ortiz, Cascadia Community College | Peggy Holman, Co-founder, Journalism That Matters, co-founder Seattle Journalism Commons
Using conversational practices that support productive self-directed co-mingling, many diverse stakeholders with common goals and interested were introduced and immediately started bubbling with ideas and determination. We were sure to make it known who was absent from the room, mainly those affected by hunger, as well as young people, who were identified as potential leaders that are critical for a movement like this to succeed. It was pointed out that there are still silos that exist where community organizations and non-profits who work directly with the hungry are not interacting enough with the “good food movement” — that is supporters of policies aimed in bringing more local organic food to the dinner table.
It was clear that the best thing we can do is amplify efforts that are already successful, and use those lessons to spawn new ideas that are more likely to succeed. Some existing models mentioned were:
The 10 Percent Campaign — Hosted by North Carolina State University, a campaign to encourage farmers, businesses and communities to pledge to spend 10% of their food budgets locally. Their surveys indicate they have 4516 people and 500 businesses who have spent $12,248,980 locally since they began.
South Whidbey — Strong community networks like The Whidbey Institute, South Whidbey Commons, South Whidbey Tilth, and an upcoming Thriving Communities conference are alive and well in that part of the region.
The Seattle Happiness Initiative — a project of Sustainable Seattle, inspired by Gross National Happiness index used in Bhutan, and the desire to base economic decisions on not just GDP, but overall well-being. The SHI has been endorsed by The Seattle City Council and is now spreading nationally at happycounts.org.
Mobile News Oasis — We were lucky to have Jo Anderson Cavinta, the Diversity Program coordinator for King County Library Systems attend a session and talk about their new mobile library vans that will deliver free computer access to areas in need. Why not take advantage of the parking lot space at churches and food banks and bring computer access to where people who need them are getting their meals? There could also be a student or community reporter on site that conducts interviews / training / publishing on the spot, as well as nutrition advice, snacking tips etc. At the Greensboro Create or Die 2 Unconference, Journalism that Matters helped incubate the Wake Up Tour, a bio-diesel powered van which provides on the ground mobile media literacy training.
Food Moving Technology — During the 3rd Random Hacks of Kindness there were teams who set out to make apps that allow establishments who throw out food to put out a call for pickup instead. Three groups started a prototype, Bring the Food, Moving Food (Seattle based), and FoodMovr. I’m hoping there’s potential in jumpstarting this back up again, with the help of organizations like Nourishing Networks who can adopt it in their workflow. It appears Bring the Food is the furthest along on development while the other two haven’t shown much activity since June, but maybe that can change with a few emails 
SeedBombs — This came from Michelle Ferrier who was visiting us from North Carolina’s research triangle. Her locallygrownnews.com startup has a guerrilla marketing tactic of placing little plantable mud balls with seeds in them that are wrapped with business cards that advertise her “locally grown news” site. The idea of packaging food and leaving it for others to enjoy as a random act of kindness kind of rings a similar tune to the Ben’s Bells project. You could weave a community narrative together by leaving a number code that publishes a tweet or blog post via text message from the random food package recipient.
No Rooftop Left Behind — I brought up my frustration that so many rooftops are being underutilized as potential gardens or places to install solar panels, and feel there should be a campaign to make use of every naked rooftop in the country.
Stockbox Outreach — A team of business leaders are trying to tackle the the food desert situation by starting up a chain of “mini mini marts” that serve fresh food out of empty shipping containers. Stockbox Grocers raised over $20,000 on Kickstarter to prototype a popup store in Deldridge, which was open September – November 2011. They are now working to launch a permanent store in Spring 2012, and it would be great to load up and disseminate good information as well as good food.
Some folks in the room wanted to see more work done reporting and addressing underlying policy issues that affect the state of hunger (food prices, tariffs, corporate farm subsidies, etc.) as well as the quality of food available to those in need (healthy, organic, local), and ensuring the support of sustainable farming practices into the future. There are also questions of structural bias when you have large agricultural giants (i.e. The ConAgra Foods Foundation) contributing to programs like Feeding America.
This led to two key discussions: 1. When you’re hungry, your first order of business is to eat, and that is the priority. 2. Focusing too much on policy and pointy headed experts alienates people and makes them feel less welcome or able to participate in the movement. As noted by James Whitfield of Leadership Eastside, “It’s really really big, and also really really small” and it’s important to focus on the emotional stories while also keeping sight on the broader overlapping issues.
Another interesting challenge is coming up with strategies to address cultural barriers, not just structural ones. A survey in Redmond was mentioned where police found that teens would rather be arrested for stealing than face the stigma of admitting reliance on social services to get by. Many people who actually qualify for food assistance don’t even use it because of the shame that comes with it. To overcome this, it was suggested that the news oasis we are trying to build is one which transforms the community story (narrative) about food and hunger from consuming & unequal distribution (lack) to the gift exchanges happening in:
• the food system
• human capacity building initiatives for change that are linked to needed policy changes
• the evolution of community interdependence
The day ended with positive aspirations and each person writing down a single commitment to take back and start working on. On the support side, Nourishing Networks (@nourishnetworks) has launched several community chapters and is enthusiastic about bringing in more entrepreneurs into the scene. On the policy side, Erin MacDougall, was there on behalf of the Healthy Eating and Active Living Program for Seattle & King County, and is quite passionate about taking on the systemic challenges that lead to difficulty accessing good healthy food. Our agreed focus for the news oasis is to connect community and journalists around issues of community need/civic importance to:
• Tell stories that matter because they link to felt need in community.
• Support community members to tell their own stories (create, disseminate and use their own stories) and link them to the “big” stories about the whole system.
• Reach out to professional journalists to ampl
Quick Summary of Outcomes
January 10, 2012
Anne, with her fabulous ability to find the essence of story named the throughline of the story we want told:
At every level, how do we take responsibility for nourishing ourselves and others?
Others supplemented with:
• We start with food and why there’s urgency.
• We tell the “big” story — context, policy, etc., and the “small” stories — the actions happening everywhere to address the need.
• We tell stories of possibility that highlight strengths and opportunities because they inspire people to get involved in solving the challenges they face.
Next steps for the core team:
• Connect everyone and get out the notes. (This quick summary from Peggy, edited by Anne, will be followed by a story from Jacob)
• Follow up with those who were interested but couldn’t attend. (Peggy, Anne, Karma)
• Convene the core team shortly — Karma, Anne, Peggy, David Ortiz, and Parker Lindner have volunteered. If you are interested, please let me know.
• Follow up on the KCLS bus with the Issaquah Nourishing Network idea – a bus with computer equipment, a nutritionist, food, and a journalist. In a sense, an omnibus, with whatever is needed. (Karma, Jo)
Some other activities people stepped up to pursue:
• Cori Benson blogging (perhaps with Seattle Journalism Commons and/or the Seattle Times)
• Convening stakeholders with reporters at the Seattle Times (Anne and Peggy will explore with Carole)
• Jacob Caggiano and Karma Ruder working on an app to connect surplus food to those who need it.
• Linda Benson will organize an effort to support community storytelling in her five areas of community activity.
Any other items others want to add?
Focus of the news oasis:
Connecting community and journalists around issues of community need/civic importance to:
• Tell stories that matter because they link to felt need in community.
• Support community members to tell their own stories (create, disseminate and use their own stories) and link them to the “big” stories about the whole system.
• Reach out to professional journalists to amplify the stories, big and small (strategy: bring stakeholders to them).
The connection between the News Oasis and the idea of nourishing ourselves and others:
A news oasis transforms the community story (narrative) about food and hunger from consuming & unequal distribution (lack) to the gift exchanges happening in:
• the food system
• human capacity building initiatives for change that are linked to needed policy changes
• the evolution of community interdependence
Tickets and info via Eventbrite page for the Society of Professional Journalists (Western Washington Chapter) Continuing Education Series
Want to take great pictures but don’t have a bulky, expensive SLR camera? Learn how to take impactful news photos with your mobile phone from award-winning Seattlepi.com photographer (and phonographer) Josh Trujillo.
Tickets and info via Eventbrite page for the Society of Professional Journalists (Western Washington Chapter) Continuing Education Series
Join Tracy Record of the West Seattle Blog, Evonne Benedict of KING 5 Seattle and Amy Duncan of My Green Lake and MSNBC’s Breaking News as they discuss what it takes for journalists to build, grow and sustain great news communities in the kick-off to the 2012 SPJ Continuing Ed Series Monday at 7 p.m. at Fisher Plaza. Moderated by Monica Guzman of GeekWire.
(tickets event is now free. Info via Eventbrite page)
It’s back. Join your friends and colleagues as we roll out the red carpet for Seattle’s biggest journalist party of the year: The Holiday Scoop 2011.
Our 2nd annual all-media holiday party will bring together television, radio, online and print journalists. All Puget Sound-based newsroom staffers and former staffers invited.
Dec. 9, 2011
The Last Supper Club
Pioneer Square
Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Ages 21 and over
Let’s celebrate the holidays, great journalism and the successes of our local news organizations with emcees Lori Matsukawa of KING TV and Dave Ross of KIRO FM.
Nosh on hors d’oeuvres and drink at our no-host bar.
This event is not sponsored by any company or organization, but is being funded by private donations from your journalism colleagues, program ad sales and your donation of $20 per person. The suggested donation will rise to $30 at the door on the night of the event.
New this year: Caption contest. Entries cost $10, and you can pay the entry fee in advance or at the party.
Also new: Holiday Karaoke Throwdown. Does your newsroom have the pipes for our karaoke showdown? Individuals or groups can enter to compete our holiday carol karaoke competition for $40. Winner gets bragging rights.
All proceeds will benefit the Northwest Journalists of Color Scholarship, a 25-year program for talented college students who aspire to become professional journalists.
(Tickets and info via Eventbrite page)
Join hundreds of movers-and-shakers in the tech community, as we take a moment to celebrate “geeks who give back.” We’ll toast the men and women of the 2012 GeekWire calendar, and Newsmakers of the Year, but that’s not all. Enjoy calendar-themed activities, spirited contests, techie give-aways and the geekiest of chic nights on the town, not to mention your own complimentary copy of the coveted calendar.
What to expect: The evening will be festive without being a formal sit-down affair; hors d’oeuvres will be passed and we’ll feature a tasty buffet. ”Heavy apps” include chicken satay, teriyaki meatball lollipops, spanikopita, mac and cheese, and more. With your admission you’ll also receive a drink ticket from GeekWire– but wait, there’s more! The first 100 guests to arrive with a donation for the Toys for Tots drive will also receive an extra cocktail, as will those who encounter Stormtroopers from a galaxy far, far away.
The evening’s activities: Take a swag-studded tour of the Year in Geek. From National Umbrella Day (February 10), to National Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you), play to win fabulous prizes. Attire for this gala? No need to get formal. Fancy if you like, and flying your GeekWire red, white and black is a bonus. Fame and prizes await our “best dressed guests.”
via ONA-SPJ group on Meetup.com
We’re excited to have been able to reschedule two-time Pulitzer winner David Horsey, who will join us at the next ONA-SPJ Seattle Meetup Wednesday, Nov. 16 at 7 p.m. at Jillian’s, where he’ll talk about transforming his art and journalism from print to digital. He’ll discuss how his craft of cartooning has changed, how he’s added blogging and even slideshows to his storytelling, his experiences as a nationally syndicated cartoonist with Hearst, and where he sees it all going. See more of his work at http://www.davidhorsey.com.
This is our fifth in a series of the #Newsnext meetups, where we’re talking to interesting locals working in the digital space. If you’re interested in gathering with writers, editors, photographers, producers, developers, designers, engineers and anyone else with an interest in the production of news, Jillian’s will have a cash bar and some great space to meet with like-minded digital professionals.
Seattle area students and advisers meet Nov.8 to celebrate and discuss future plans.
by John Bowen and Kathy Schrier from the Washington Journalism Education Association to the Student Press Rights Commission blog
Principals will not have a chance to prior review Seattle School District journalism students because the school board recently withdrew its proposed and controversial policy change.
“As a former journalism teacher, it is important for me — as I know it is for our Board — that we uphold our practice of trusting our teachers to educate our students on the rights and responsibilities that come with freedom of expression and a free press,” Interim Superintendent of Schools, Susan Enfield, a former journalism teacher and adviser, said in a press release.
Supporters of the existing free expression policy will now have a year to convince the Seattle School District board to keep its hands off and continue to encourage students to make final decisions and have responsibility for content.
During the first week of November as part of a system-wide policy overhaul, school officials announced they would seek to change a 2o-year policy of allowing students to make final decisions of content without prior review. The Washington State School Directors Association had recommended the new policy.
Washington students, advisers, media groups and citizens mounted a public and active four-day campaign reporting about and speaking against the policy change.
The press release indicated the school district would revisit the issue in 2012 to see how a policy change might fit with community values.
Students and supporters met Nov. 8 to celebrate and plan
Student journalists from five of Seattle’s high schools (Ballard, Garfield, Nathan Hale, Roosevelt and West Seattle) met Nov. 8 in the Nathan Hale journalism room to debrief following a promise by Seattle interim Superintendent Susan Enfield to leave unchanged the district’s current student press rights policy. The meeting followed a four-day, whirlwind campaign to thwart the passage of Policy 3220, a controversial, restrictive student press policy.
The students came together to celebrate the immediate victory, as well as to talk about how they must work together to make sure this doesn’t happen in the future. The discussion focused on how the district policy-making process appears to be badly flawed, especially since some school board members seem to be ready to approve policies they haven’t even read.
Students plan to create a Facebook page and a website to keep in touch with each other, as well as to co-produce an article and possible insert about procedures used to decide policies in their school district. Students hope to run the piece in all their papers at about the same time. A coalition of Seattle student journalists is now in the works with plans to meet regularly.
Applauded for their efforts in fighting back the passage of Policy 3220 were Katie Kennedy and Kate Clark, Ballard High School editors, who went on the attack with community flyers, letters to school board members and on-air interviews with local talk radio hosts. The group also applauded NPR reporter Phyllis Fletcher, KPLU-FM Seattle (who was in the room covering the meeting), for first discovering the proposed policy change and alerting Mike Hiestand of the Student Press Law Center, who in turn contacted the Washington Journalism Education Association.
Fletcher shared how she discovered the information on the policy. She explained how, as part of her regular preparation for covering upcoming school board meetings, she looks at the agenda and tries to become familiar with the items for consideration. A red flag went up when she discovered the language in Policy 3220 under consideration.
Clearly, her quick action made all the difference in preventing its passage.
Garfield High School adviser Casey Henry shared with the group a late afternoon message to Seattle journalism advisers from Susan Enfield, in which she apologized for the “consternation” caused by the whole ordeal and promised to make sure any future revisions to the scholastic press policy in Seattle will include input from media advisers.
Students in the room added they should be included, as well, and intend to make that known to the superintendent and the board.
This was a close call for student journalists in Seattle Schools, with lessons to be learned about staying vigilant. In fact, the students discussed creating a session for the 2012 National JEA/NSPA Spring Convention in Seattle, a case study on four frantic days for student journalists and their supporters in Seattle that fortunately ended positively.
Coverage from Seattle-area media
Announcing the proposed change
• Stop the presses, let the principal check them first
http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=25002
• Seattle school board moves to censor student newspapers
http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/11/seattle_school_district_moves.php
• Proposed Seattle school-newspaper policy raises censorship concerns http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016707090_censorship07m.html
• Students say Seattle school board threatens censorship
http://www.mapleleaflife.com/2011/11/05/students-say-seattle-school-board-threatens-censorship/
Announcing the withdrawal of the proposed changes
• Seattle public schools beats hasty retreat
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2011/11/07/seattle-school-district-beats-hasty-retreat/
• Students say school board ‘setting the stage for censorship’
http://www.myballard.com/2011/11/04/students-say-school-board-setting-the-stage-for-censorship/
• Proposed ‘censorship’ policy for school newspaper withdrawn (Ballard High School)
http://www.myballard.com/2011/11/07/censorship-policy-proposal-for-school-newspapers-withdrawn/
• Ballard High newspaper editor-in-chief Kate Clark on her censorship fight with the Seattle school board
http://www.mynorthwest.com/?nid=577&a=35563
• School board withdraws controversial proposal: free speech maintained for students
http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper/tabid/100/newspaperid/4554/view/frontpage/Default.aspx
• Seattle public schools withdraws controversial student newspaper oversight proposal
http://today.seattletimes.com/2011/11/seattle-public-schools-withdraws-controversial-student-newspaper-oversight-proposal/
• Schools back off on policing student papers
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016713513_censorship08m.html
• KUOW-FM late afternoon story/interview with Ballard editors Kate and Katie
http://www.kuow.org/mp3high/m3u/News/20111108_PF_freepress.m3u
• The Stranger
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/news-clash/Content?oid=10654053
Other coverage
• How Seattle journalist got school censorship scoop
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/als-morning-meeting/152652/how-seattle-journalist-got-school-censorship-scoop/
• Seattle school board pulls controversial publications proposal, will revisit in 2012
http://www.splc.org/news/newsflash.asp?id=2292
• Seattle School District seeks to remove forum policy for prior review
http://www.jeasprc.org/?p=4150
• Seattle school board pulls controversial publications proposal, will revisit in 2012
http://www.jeasprc.org/?p=4150
In my first post on the Seattle Interactive Conference, I went over some locally developed tools designed to make information more relevant and insightful. Mobile apps like Trover, which allows geo-discovery through photos, and Evri, which organizes ~15,000 news feeds into a friendly iPad interface, are useful on an individual level. But my concern is:
How can they scale to community heights when it comes to breaking, spreading, and contextualizing important public information?
This is not an easy question. To help answer it, I needed to figure out how the mobile sausage is made. So at SIC, I tracked down John SanGiovanni, co-founder of and product design VP for the Zumobi mobile network. It would be wrong to call Zumobi an “ad network,” because while they do serve ads to mobile devices, they also design and build the apps on which the ads run. Right now its “co-publishing network” is being used by some of the biggest heavy hitters in the content world, with clients that range from MSNBC and The Week magazine, to Popular Science, Good Housekeeping, Parenting Magazine, and Motor Trend.
The good news is that SanGiovanni happily reported financial success on the journalism side of their business. He said their MSNBC app is “a whale” (very profitable) and both the advertisers and the publisher (MSNBC) are happy with the model they’ve set up. It’d be hard not to be, because Zumobi designs and builds the app absolutely free of charge to publishers whom they choose to work with. The company also helps with some of the ad sales, but as a co-publishing network, they expect the publisher to already have a drawer full of dedicated advertisers.
The not-so-good news is that Zumobi only works with top tier clients and doesn’t have plans to scale down their model to independent and hyperlocal publishers. SanGiovanni assured me he’s a big fan of Maple Leaf Life and cares about supporting grassroots journalism, but it’s just not in the cards for Zumobi right now. The company prefers to swim with bigger fish.
The reason why this is not-so-good news, rather than bad news completely, is that it means there are still entrepreneurial possibilities for co-publishing networks within the mobile hyperlocal space.
Journalists have always covered the tech industry as a section of the newspaper, but now, due to the personal media explosion, the very existence of the trade is dependent on conversations and decisions that happen at events like this year’s Seattle Interactive Conference.
#SIC2011 had many of the same trimmings as the now messianic #SXSWi (South By Southwest Interactive). The obligatory cute cartoon logos, fancy afterparties, overt corporate sponsorship, installation exhibits, free marketing schwag, and custom smartphone app were all part of the $300+ ticket, a tad steep for your average journalist trying to get a bite on how to stay alive.
So how does this deliver in terms of fulfilling the “information needs of a community?”
First let’s talk mobile. “Social/Local/Mobile” #SoLoMo was the expression I picked up from Jason Karas of Seattle startup Trover, who put up some interesting stats on rapid mobile adoption:
What’s more interesting is the motivation behind the SoLoMo phenomenon. The Location Based Marketing Association has research that breaks down the motivations of early adopters:
The premise behind Trover is to tap into the human desire to discover and share discoveries, not by means of text reviews and pins on a map (Yelp and Foursquare), but through a rich photographic experience.
My question to Jason was, how can Trover enable journalists and citizens alike to break stories and receive critical information in their communities?
Matt Rosenberg of the Public Data Ferret blogs about another example of emerging media in Greater Seattle.
MOVE — Mapping Our Voices for Equality — is a government-funded effort to enable people to tell their stories about healthy living. It is another example of providing a journalistic service outside the context of traditional journalistic organizations. MOVE helps people tell their own stories, in their own voices.
Thanks to support from The Patterson Foundation, the Seattle Journalism Commons, in partnership with Lisa Skube — creator of the Journalism Accelerator, ran a 6-month experiment in supporting the people in the Puget Sound region’s emergning news and information network. The executive overview is below. The full report is attached: SJC Final Project Report
The intent of the project was to cultivate a robust, collaborative regional network of people in the news and information community by sharing resources, learning from one another, and documenting area activities – doing journalism on journalism.
What did we do?
We reached out to understand what the local journalism community wanted. They told us that they would like:
We organized to meet these needs and took action. We brought people together face-to-face and online, curated a calendar, and did “journalism on journalism”. For example, we have original coverage of local journalism activities not found elsewhere: http://journalismthatmatters.org/seattlejournalismcommons/category/events-2/.
We reflected on the experience and made plans for our next steps (see “What’s next” below).
One team member analyzed the online information flow among food organizations in the Puget Sound region.
How did it go?
We took a nebulous concept – a “journalism commons” and gave it form. We drew people in, formed a great working team, and found wonderful partners – notably Lisa Skube and the Journalism Accelerator. Our biggest obstacle was technology. The site wasn’t as user friendly as we hoped and our technical support person took a full time job just as we were getting started.
What did we learn?
What’s next?
We’re reaching out to the leaders of the local chapters of:
We believe that we share goals and expect that partners can help with technology, infrastructure, and funding support.
We are investigating an alternative technology route: integrating tools people already use, such as Google Groups and Twitter, into the site.
The mapping of the food network may inform another initiative of Journalism That Matters: identifying and addressing “media deserts” – areas of limited news coverage.
How does our work connect with others in the field?
Given a healthy local news and information ecosystem is essential to a healthy community, this project has helped to shed light on how to foster a spirit of collaboration among people of the local news and information ecosystem.
What’s our advice to others?
UPDATE: Mini Doc video from KING5 at bottom and criticism of the licensing agreement from open source developer Jeff Reifman (via Geekwire)
Hackathons are getting trendy. Not just in journalism, but health care, education, entrepreneurism, crisis management, mobile tech, government, and other arenas. Yes, it’s another technology buzz word, but one that hopefully sticks around and evolves into a combustible formula. Bringing together software experts and social leaders who sprint together to solve big challenges is a remarkable thing, especially when there’s a $10,000 prize attached to it.
That’s the ante that KING 5 TV put up over the weekend, in the first ever hackathon run by the broadcast industry. The NBC affiliate’s digital media director, Mark Briggs, laid out his vision of unearthing quality news in the same way that one would find the right place to eat brunch in New York City. Describing his recent trip to the Big Apple, Briggs pointed out that finding a delicious spot could take hours, or it could take five minutes; the difference being whether you know someone who already lives there.
Other information challenges were presented by co-organizer Shauna Causey and local meme expert Ben Huh, who both had different ways of expressing a similar need for relevant information served up in a dynamic, user friendly environment. Mr. Huh shared a mockup of his recently announced Moby Dick Project, which generated a warm current of ideas through the room, leading 12 people to step forward and pitch their solution in under two minutes.
After punching away through the 48 hour weekend, “Dimensions” came out on top. Cooked up by Leon Wong and a team of four others (Mohammad Almalkawi, Lewis Lin, Adam Loving, Becker IV), Dimensions takes its own spin on on news filtration/curation. Based on the premise that even personalized RSS tools like Google Reader are still a dumping ground of too much information, Dimensions allows users to filter through their news feeds based on location, timeline, and friends’ interest. It has both a personalized element of delivering custom news that can be drilled down into various “dimensions,” as well as a social element, where you can view the different news feeds of your friends and other prominent users. The team managed to put up a live demo what was pretty impressive considering it manifested in 48 hours from start to finish.
You can also check out the nine other projects that were demoed over the weekend by looking at the notes I jotted here (and feel free to fill in any details I may have missed).
The other contenders also had some pretty nifty hacks to share. There were projects designed to break stories and publish audio through your phone, serve up personalized news based on similarities to others, and collaboratively curate tweets based on importance as well as chronology.
Grinding around the clock is not for the faint of heart. Roughly one half of the 65 people who signed up actually made it out to the Friday night kickoff, followed by a 30% evaporation of people by the start of the first working day. Part of the dissipation was due to another mobile hackathon hosted by AT&T the same weekend.
Participants could sign up as a designer (8), news geek (30), technologist (21), or developer (11).
As is typical in tech situations, the demographic was skewed heavily male. In fact, you could count the number female competitors on your nose (two). However, some have worked to change that with a ladies-only hackathon.
Based on a show of hands, half the crowd reported that they had already been to a hackathon before. Some were graduates of Startup Weekend (which began in Seattle), others had helped with Random Hacks of Kindness and Crisis Commons.
As expected, there was clear presence of Seattle’s tech industry amongst the room. The event took place on Adobe’s Fremont campus, who donated their shiny space and helped purchase some of the food. Amazon gave away a $50 of free AWS Cloud hosting to all participants who showed up and also footed the pizza bill. The winning team had a current Microsoft employee on board, as well as a former one who had recently walked away from his job a few weeks earlier to start up his own company. Most people were locals, though one pair came up from Portland, and one fellow even flew in from San Francisco to bust his chops for both the KING5 and AT&T hackathons. There were at least a few startups that were represented amongst the crowd as well, the ones I met with were from Timber Software and DocuSign..
Also interesting were two Microsoft employees hovering the room who were evangelizing the Open Data Protocol (Odata), which they happily develop during their day jobs. They were very helpful in providing general information not just about their product, but all things big data, and even let me pick their brains about various pet peeves and challenges across tech in general. Although they were very candid and unbiased in their opinions, it’s worth mentioning that employees of big companies like Microsoft sign a contract that they cannot participate in certain activities outside of the job (i.e. hackathons) that may conflict with the business interests of their employer. They chose to forfeit their odds of competing for the $10,000 in order to avoid brushing up against any sort of dispute, but were pleasantly willing to donate their time to help others succeed.
Even a $10,000 prize will have a tough time answering a few million dollar questions.
As evidenced by the lackluster adoption and later abandonment of Google Wave, even really cool tools have to be picked up by a fair amount of people in order to stay healthy and remain useful. It’s easy to forget how wide the digital divide really is, and difficult to predict what kind of new habits people are willing to adopt. Are there enough news junkies out there who will want to add yet another tool into their consumption diet?
Similar to other high energy gatherings, hackathons still have a “post-conference blues” effect. Many projects with good intentions undergo silent decay once the creators step back into the vortex of life’s routines. It was good to hear that local disaster expert Pascal Schuback is still working tirelessly to get the MadPub framework deployed on a national scale (built in Seattle during Random Hacks of Kindness 2.0), and he reported feeling optimistic about its eventual adoption by FEMA and other government agencies. However he told me that it’s rare to see hackathon projects evolve into live deployable applications.
It is undetermined if KING 5 will find a way to integrate Dimensions into their news product, but Briggs spoke of his intention to be a liaison for the project and see what happens. It would be interesting to see KING 5 reporters themselves using the app to share the “dimensions” of stories that they both report, as well as consume.
Regardless of the tangible outcomes, there is still a feeling of accomplishment that pervades the hackathon spirit. Professional networking is inevitable when working under a time crunch with a room full of strangers, and everyone walks away having learned a little bit more about what it takes to make technology work for the rest of us.
Image credit by Lucas Anderson
Saturday, October 08, 2011 at 8:00 AM – Sunday, October 09, 2011 at 5:00 PM (PT)Follow #infocampseattle for live updates
Join us at InfoCamp Seattle 2011 for an exciting weekend of talking & learning about:
- user experience
- information architecture
- user-centered design
- interaction design
- library & information science
- online search
- information management
- informatics
- anything relating to the intersection of information, people and/or technology!An invited speaker will kick off each day before we leap into multiple tracks of participant-led sessions & discussions. We’ll provide a light breakfast, lunch, coffee, and snacks to keep the energy up.
The environment is informal, fluid and dynamic, utilizing tried and true structures along with fresh new ideas to encouraging engagement and collaboration. Everyone who attends is a participant. Participants are just as likely to break out markers and whiteboards, as much as projectors. As always, it will be you, the participants, talking amongst yourselves, driving the content of InfoCamp.
Want to learn more?
- For more info check out InfoCamp Seattle
- Follow Twitter for updates
- Join our mailing list or contact seattle@infocamp.orgCan’t wait to see you this October at the University of Washington!
Brian Glanz
JTM Test
Mike Fancher
Jessica Partnow
Kristina Bowman
Sono Hashisaki
Katelyn Hackett
Patrick Fancher
Peg Achterman
Michael McCarthy
Liz McClure
lucy mohl
Berit Anderson