“Stickiness”
Co-conveners: Patrick Phillips and Tish Grier
Patrick Phillips (The Vineyard Voice) moderates.
Notes by Sara Majka, Media Giraffe Project
(I put some of the most concrete things to come out of session in bold—trying to make it easy to scan).
Session opens. It’s agreed there should be a vehicle for ongoing communication, but also that there’s not a lot of funding—Peggy and Steve have trouble getting paid for their work as is.
Bill mentions that in the early going, they had a fear of institutional dry rot if they were defined by link to one organization. He says now, though, they have mutated enough where they need structure.
Tish says ning.com URL is currently the community. Do we need to continue and build this community out further?
Some general discussion. Patrick mentions he is sensing a split in what people want. Group (1) wants to codify the community at large. (2) another enables community to gather.
Clinton says it would be helpful if they were given a little bit of the JTM history.
Jim says that in ’02 (missed the name of funder) institute started two conferences in Kalamazoo based around preserving journalism while economic foundation disappeared. He invited Bill to one in St. Louis. The funder had withdrawn support. After that they cobbled together resources.
Questions come up: Join old organization? Start new one? Mention need to anoint someone to oversee.
The largest question comes up, which is whether people see the direction of the organization being:
1) One that focuses on the topic of the conference. A “community weaver” focus,
2) Or to take a broader view of sustaining journalism and create an umbrella organization for all the different topics of past JTM conferences.
Bill says that we are getting close to the point where place blogging community needs a support. He brings up the idea that it might not turn out to be sustainable, that it might end up being a dry hole.
Tish adds that place blogging is not always journalism, that people place blog out of passion.
Man in black shirt (didn’t catch name, he had to leave early to catch his plane) says he started a group for Public Broadcasting that was similar. He says that with this, in his opinion it should be built around Bill. Also that it will need academic resources and connections.
Clinton says that JTM didn’t finish history. He asks, what is Media Giraffe? He expresses confusion over all the different names that get used. He says that the Journalism that Matters name, along with its eye logo, are good trademarks. Everything else just confuses. (Later in the closing circle, people mention that all the different websites are confusing. Don’t know where the best site to go for dissemination of conference information).
Bill returns to explaining history. He has committed a lot of time in past years helping JTM because they do something similar as Media Giraffe. Bill says work in J-schools are not doing something quite like this.
With history gone over, there’s an agreement to go around the circle and take turns answering that large question, asking people to say which of the two choices they lean towards.
Len votes for a JTM umbrella organization with everyone working towards community building.
Tish says she sees goal of needing something like this for this group in particular. Considers the idea of alumni from each JTM conference sticking together.
Josh says preference is towards bigger organization. Maybe a hybrid like Poynter that runs classes. There can be the smaller community under larger organization.
(didn’t write down name, this might have been Julia) says ditto. Has an interest in conferencing on the web to make it more financially accessible.
Ned (who was Ned?) wants a community that keeps something from this. Place blogging and community news.
Clinton throws out some abstract ideas for organization: new, optimistic, nascent. A group talking about beginnings, not endings. He supports anything that comes under that.
Patrick says need to remain agile.
(man in gray shirt) says group just needs to do something. Haven’t seen anything concrete.
Diane—if she writes stories or reads stories she wants to share, a place to do that. A group that gives ways to share that information with goal of reform of news and related issues.
(didn’t get his name, but the guy who spoke in sign language) says something to follow up on what organization is doing.
Ned says even updates on what bloggers are doing.
Tish says they can be that organization.
Patrick says he has no time but offers an hour a week.
Man in black says partnering with other bloggers. A way to aggregate blogger partnerships.
Josh Woolf says JTM is “fucking brilliant in the words of Bono.” Then he threw out some suggestions:
- Technology is not intertwined.
- Need projects that can be underwritten by JTM.
- Outreach with students and grants to get them here.
- This conference was connected to MCR but could line up with Society of Professional Journalists. Try to bridge gap between professionals and us.
- Have one place to links with everything. Consolidated tools.
Peggy says there is a need to research projects that have come out of JTM conferences. Gives David Cohn’s project as an example.
Steve—the goal is to not create a monster. There’s a need to have it mirror architecture of things that are actually helping people get things done.
Michelle—we should model the behaviors you want to take back into the community. Success is not measured by money but by influence.
Ned likes something not too formal. Not too institutionalized. Fresh. Stress organizational form that is not an organization. If you try to make it into an association/formal group there will be a lot of backlash and negativity from other groups doing something similar.
Peggy calls that a networked form.
Michelle—doesn’t see a lot of diversity in room. Missing a chance. Need a form of participation that looks for diversity.
Clint—don’t minimize value of getting together. Value in people in traditional media who are losing their jobs and looking for something optimistic.
Tish—idea of sending out an email asking people to send updates of where they are at.
Jim says might be useful to have people in group sign a petition about the value of conference, so they can give it to funders. Suggests sending out an email asking for testimony and projects that have been borne out of this.
Michelle tells people that in their blogs, they should write takeaways from conference and tag as JTM.
Man in black shirt says stick with brand of JTM. Don’t use other names. Anchor identity.
Patrick—what about an RRS feed on the site?
Tish says could do that with pamphlet.
Peggy says there should be an information, architect role and Josh volunteers. (earlier Tish volunteered for a role).
Man in black shirt says not a newsletter! They are a pain to do. Recommends a webinar.
Len says Romenesko wrote about mainstream media every day and Poynter was built around that. He says Romenesko does not write well about new media. He says a person personalizes the relationship and says “we need a Romenesko.”
(man who speaks in sign language) says do something similar to the idea of Drinking Liberally. Change it to this purpose.
Bill says for a Romenesko we can get someone or a group of people to fill the role.
Michelle volunteers for the role. Wants to build it around hyper local in particular.
Len says take it off ning site and put it on JTM.
Bill asks if people want to do a teleconference to follow up.
Tuesday, June 10th at 9 PM Eastern.
641-715-3200.
Patrick final words—project will need both doers and philosophers.