Report – Hacks/Hackers Seattle & Knight-Mozilla News Innovation Challenge

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Jacob Caggiano

Mozilla is best known for Firefox, the open source darling loved by millions which showed us that a browser is more than just a way to load websites, it’s a way to customize your experience of the web itself. Under new direction from Mark Surman, Mozilla is growing new legs to go beyond Firefox. They recently launched #Drumbeat as an effort to do more than just build portals, they are now seeking to change the flesh and bones of the internet itself to make it more open, accessible, and free (see project examples from drumbeat.org).

It was recently announced that Mozilla received a hefty sum of money from the Knight Foundation to bring journalism along for the ride.

The three year Knight-Mozilla News Challenge dubbed #MoJo (for Mozilla + Journalism) is now in full throttle with five news partners on board (BBC, Al-Jazeera, Boston Globe, Zeit Online, and The Guardian) who will host five fellows with full salary to innovate from inside the newsroom. 10 more fellows will come along the way in the next coming years, but until then, the heat is on and challenge submissions are underway.

Mozilla asked me to link up with the Seattle chapter of Hacks/Hackers, an organization that shares a similar MoJo hybrid theory of bringing together journalists (hacks) + technologists (hackers) with the goal of changing news for the better. One week later we threw together a sold out Brainstorm 2011 that brought in journalists and technologists throughout the city who came to mash up ideas and enter the challenge. Continue reading →

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Ben Huh – CEO of Cheezburger Network – May 16

Posted on May 14, 2011 by Jacob Caggiano

Part two of the #NewsNext series brought to us by the Online News Association/Society of Professional Journalists collaboration featured a lively discussion with Cory Bergman (msnbc.com, breakingnews.com, Next Door Media) and Ben Huh (Cheezburger Networks).

As the owner of the largest humor network in the world, you’ve probably stumbled upon one of his many sites FAIL Blog, Babies Making Faces, There I Fixed It, Engrish Funny The Daily Wh.at, Totally Looks Like either on purpose or by accident through a social network.

Many people in the online news circuit cover Huh for his ability to turn internet memes into a profitable enterprise (his company employs 50 staff and they’re looking for more) and has been consistently topping the Seattle 2.0 startup index for the last year.

Instead of his typical appearance to discuss the secrets behind making something go viral (he says consistency is much more important), this particular room full of people wanted to hear his ideas on keeping journalism strong. Coming out of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern in 1999, he never became a reporter, but has been thinking of ways to fix what he sees as a lingering problem in online news.

“The story structure hasn’t changed for hundreds of years…how many times have you read a story and think by the third paragraph didn’t I already read this before?”

Huh believes that we have lost touch with the golden days of journalism where everything was partisan and there were multiple diverse points of views fighting for what they think is right.

But isn’t that what we have now? Continue reading →

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May 25 – Seattle Digital Literacy Mixer

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Seattle Journalism Commons

More info on the Seattle Digital Literacy Facebook Event Page

Time

Wednesday, May 25 · 5:30pm – 8:00pm

Location

Slims Last Chance

5606 1st Ave S
Seattle, WA
It’s been over a month since we convened at the UW for a conversation about how we might all pool our resources and talents to enact positive change for youth around the city. Let’s not let any more time pass before planning another get together.

Catch up with the Seattle Digital Literacy Initiative, a project that spawned from Journalism that Matters Pacific Northwest Wednesday, May 25th at Slim’s Last Chance in Georgetown for food, drinks and conversation about what we’ve been up to, and more importantly, how you can get involved in the summer and fall.
Also,  learn more about their

Summer Digital Literacy Institute 2011

Please post any questions you may have here, and as always, feel free to reach out to either Sarah Stuteville (sarah@clpmag.org), Jessica Partnow (jessica@clpmag.org) or Michael Bean (michaelbean06@gmail.com).

Hope to see you in late May!

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Beyond Google: Exploring the Visible and Invisible Web

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Seattle Journalism Commons

Where do investigative journalists go to dig up their dirt?

How do you rake through all the muck?

Alex Johnson, investigative reporter for msnbc.com, and Cheryl Phillips, Data Enterprise Editor at the Seattle Times gave us a guided tour through the vast jungle of data, telling us which plants are edible and which snakes may be poisonous (i.e. the FBI Uniform Crime Database only gives you the law enforcement side of the story).

This was the last installment of the Spring Continuing Ed series presented by the Society of Professional of Journalists – Western Washington, and it was definitely a diamond in the rough.

Alex and Cheryl are true professionals, and were very open about sharing the secrets they worked so hard to develop over the years.

In fact, Alex very kindly published his entire slideshow, it’s chock full of links that’ll get any gumshoe journalist through puberty overnight.
He also compiled a free reference dashboard that can serve as a great sidekick while you do research. (Seriously though, download the slideshow because there are wayyyy to many links to post here).

Besides the deluge of links to awesome databases, Cheryl and Alex showed off their Google-Fu and gave some tips on crawling like a ninja. Continue reading →

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Newsdex Seattle — Measuring brand reach of local news sites

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Mike Fancher

For an intriguing glimpse into how well Seattle news organizations are connecting with social media, check out Newsdex Seattle, a spare-time project by Gary Love and Chuck Taylor. It is a daily rundown of the Facebook and Twitter data for organizations ranging from The Seattle Times (36,885 in network today) to My Everett News (25 in network).

Love and Taylor readily acknowledge, “Measuring the effectiveness or reach of a company’s social brands is, to be sure, an inexact science, and our metrics are decidedly a work in progress.” Kudos to them for stimulating discussion, anyway.

One purpose of the Seattle Journalism Commons is to help local media people learn from each other, so here are some questions prompted by Newsdex:

Continue reading →

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[UPDATE – Dorothy Parvaz now released] Journalism that Matters PNW supports the Free Dorothy Campaign

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Mike Fancher

***UPDATE 5/18/11*** Dorothy has been released. Read about her experience about being detained in Syria from Al-Jazeera here

Journalism that Matters Pacific Northwest joins the Asian American Journalists Association and others in calling on the Syrian government to assist in the safe return of  Dorothy Parvaz, a former staff member of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, currently working for Al Jazeera. She has been missing in Syria since Friday, April 29.

JTMPNW encourages others in our region to join in this effort by writing to:

Ambassador Imad Moustapha

Embassy of Syria

2215 Wyoming Ave N.W.

Washington D.C. 20008 USA

To support the campaign to Free Dorothy, please “Like” the Free Dorothy page on Facebook and Tweet a message of support with hashtag #FreeDorothy. People across Facebook are also replacing their profile pictures with the supporting graphic in this post.

Here’s a sample tweet: “We stand with @AAJA in calling for the safe return of Dorothy Parvaz @dparvaz from Syria. Join the #freedorothy campaign here http://ow.ly/4OSew”

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TAO of Journalism – The Washington News Council presents their progress

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Jacob Caggiano

It was at the Journalism That Matters unconference in Washington, DC when the Washington News Council‘s John Hamer realized that the words Transparency, Accountability, Openness spelled TAO and deserve to be displayed proudly by those who demonstrate these basic ethical principles.

The TAO of Journalism seal was born, and has since been endorsed by the Journalism Education Association and carried by Seattle publishers such as B-Town Blog, Common Language Project, and Fremocentrist. It’s being adopted by national journalism figures such as David Cohn at Spot.us, Tom Stites of the Banyan Project, and Rhonda Roland Shearer of Stinky Journalism and has recently been featured by MediaBistro.

The staff of the Washington News Council presented these developments to the public on May 2, 2011 and took in suggestions for ways to extend the adoption of the TAO seal and spread it’s message.

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ONA + SPJ – What can news organizations learn from startups?

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Jacob Caggiano

One of the goals at the Seattle Journalism Commons is collaboration. We like to talk about it, and LOVE to see it. Members of the Online News Association and the Society of Professional Journalists have linked up to put on a series of conversation mixers titled #NewsNext

The theme of the kick off discussion between former PI.com reporter Monica Guzman and KING 5’s Director of Digital Marketing Mark Briggs revolved around the question:

“What can news organizations learn from startups.”

Guzman was well positioned to elaborate on this topic, having jumped ships from a traditional print newsroom, over to an online only publication with the Seattle BigBlog, and most recently into the adventurous startup Intersect.

One of the points she made about jumping into a startup was riding with a pirate ship mentality, because “things are too new to become law…it really is lawless.” Whereas the traditional newsroom has defined roles and comfort zones, Guzman explained that the rules of entrepreneurship are made up as you go along, and the team either works together or sinks together.

Another memorable piece of advice had to do with the art of the #fail. Guzman suggest to “fail fast” instead of trying to hang onto something that drags and doesn’t improve results.

Other valuable examples and insight came from Mark Briggs, who officially works for KING 5, but also has earned his stripes as a leading authority on entrepreneurial journalism. His Journalism 2.0 blog and book are a great resource, and as a current Ford Fellow in Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Poynter Institite, he’s done his homework.

Three startup news sites he mentioned as positive examples and role models are:

  • Pegasus News (also in Texas) – Their crew was willing keep working without pay because they had such a strong labor of love
  • Techdirt – A good example of building a loyal following based on their successful CwF+RtB model (Connect with Fans and give them a Reason to Buy).

Briggs parted a little advice to the crowd from hot thinker Lisa Williams, which was to go deep rather than broad. “Instead of ‘something about everything’ you need to be “everything about something.”

Come back and join us for more juice on Seattle Journalism events and meetups here at the #SEAjCommons. We are curating a special calendar and keeping the radar on full scan to bring you coverage and advanced notice of the local journalism scene around Puget Sound.

Continue reading →

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Journalism That Matters

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Mike Fancher

The Seattle Journalism Commons grew out of the January 2010 Journalism That Matters unconference held at the University of Washington, “Re-imagining News and Community in the Pacific Northwest. For a taste of JTM, here’s a video filmed at that unconference..

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZd_Dxr98s[/youtube]

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Something like this might be a cool journalism…

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Jacob Caggiano

Something like this might be a cool journalism commons logo, whaddya think?

Posted in Miscellaneous | 3 Comments