Journalism News, JTM News

LINK: Join the RJI Collaboratory: entrepreneurial journalists in action

Submitted by Steve Hanson on Thu, 01/29/2009 – 9:55am

LINK: Join the RJI Collaboratory: entrepreneurial journalists in action – The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) has launched a new network, the RJI Collaboratory, to enable entrepreneurial journalists to connect with each other while providing resources and knowledge on how to start successful Web-based news organizations or improve existing ones. On Jan. 21 more than 100 journalists, advertising experts, community activists, technology experts, librarians, educators and students gathered from Washington, D.C. to Hawaii, in person and virtually — to launch this news organization incubator. [JTM Google Group]

Journalism News, JTM News

Minneapolis Star-Tribune files Chapter 11

Submitted by Steve Hanson on Sat, 01/17/2009 – 8:54am

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has filed for Chapter 11 protection amid some controversy with the Newspaper Guild members, who were not notified of the impending bankruptcy filiing.  Reporters have apparently had difficulty cashing payroll checks, and have had their company credit cards stop working.

Journalism News, JTM News

Large Parts of Progressive News Infrastructure Hacked

Submitted by Steve Hanson on Wed, 01/07/2009 – 9:48am

A large part of the U.S. progressive blogging infrastucture was hacked overnight and is currently down or defaced.  Many of the blogs in the 50-State Blog Network are hosted on the SoapBlox platform.  At least one of the SoapBlox servers was hacked overnight, and the sites hosted on that server have been defaced or are down currently.  This includes sites such as

Blue Hampshire
Blue Jersey
Blue Mass Group
MN Progressive Project
My Left Wing (site loads w/o diaries)
Never in our Names
Pam’s House Blend
Swing State Project
West Michigan Rising

Personally I have always thought that having large amounts of the progressive infrastructure hosted with one small company was a mistake, which is why we’ve developed Uppity Wisconsin on it’s own open-source platform, Drupal.

Our condolences go out to the various sites that are down, and we hope they’ll recover soon.