Wigley and Associates

 
Minnesota Public Radio’s Public Insight Journalis (PIJ) project hosted a moderated discussion last Friday night in their UBS Forum. A group of about 20 citizens selected from their PIJ database were invited to discuss the topic: The Press and the Public: What’s the new relationship?

A group of about 10 attendees from the Journalism That Matters conference, New Pamphleteers/New Reporters: Convening Entrepreneurs Who Combine Journalism, Democracy, Place and Blogs, observed the discussion for 45 minutes and then joined in… me among them.

In the PIJ handout that was used to help focus the discussion, Locally Grown (the blog/podcast that I co-host) was cited as an example of Approach 4: the public is the press.

Here’s the text (partial transcription) but click the photos of the doc to see it all:

There is no starker example of the divide between the press and the public than these statistics from a recent survey by Zogby International: Most Americans - 70 percent - say journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities, but almost as many (67 percent) say traditional journalism is out of touch with what they want from their news.

Established news organizations can’t help but notice as newspaper circulation numbers fall and broadcast outlets see fewer people tuning in. The notion of the public as passive consumer of news is passe. What is emerging is a new model of journalism built on partnership.

The question on the table is: What should it look like? Here are four broad approaches that can help get a conversation started.

• Approach 1: the public as critic
  With this approach, the public engages in critiquing news reporting. This can include the creation of the Minnesota News Council - a group of journalists and citizens who rule on complaints with the press, or NewsTrust.net, a website where news stories are rated for quality by the public. It also means that established press organizations become more transparent. Methods include open comments on stories and providing the public with greater understanding of the news-gathering operation (through, for example, chats with reporters online to discuss stories).
• Approach 2: the public as collaborator
  This approach calls for the public to participate in becoming sources for stories. Initiatives like MPR’s Public Insight Journalism reach out to the audience en masse for knowledge, which can then shape coverage.  Other initiatives ask the public to help with investigatory work. This method, called crowdsourcing, sometimes uses the public as a way to compile information on a subject or enlists them to comb through voluminous records (as the Fort Myers News-Press did on a sewer project).
• Approach 3: the public as correspondent
  With this approach, news organizations turn over segments of their space to the public and let them produce content with little interference. It could happen on news pages or on the air, but most times occurs online.
• Approach 4: the public is the press
  This approach avoids established news organizations entirely. The public starts a grassroots journalism effort to provide coverage of issues ignored by the press. It’s typically done online and while there are examples of national Web sites such as Talking Points Memo, most of them work on a local level.  A small scale example is “Locally Grown” - a website dedicated to the news of the Northfield, Minnesota area. This effort is also part of a larger initiative called Representative Journalism that seeks to marry local producers with funding to support them.

Jeff Jarvis, according to the Wikipedia, is an associate professor at City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, directing its new media program. I found his blog post from mid-April, The press becomes the press-sphere, to be helpful in thinking about the changing nature of the press and the public. These images help:

L to R: the way it was; the new press-sphere; the me-sphere.

The new news process

Jarvis: “Stories and topics become molecules that attract atoms: reporters, editors, witnesses, archives, commenters, and so on, all adding different elements to a greater understanding. Who brings that together? It’s not always the reporter or editor anymore. It can just as easily be the reader(s) now.”

Here are the two graphics shown last week at the JTM New Pamphleteers conference:

 
The old news story

An emerging news ecology

Jessica Clark at the Center for Social Media integrates the Jarvis and JTM models (and an LA Times model) with this Visions of the new news blog post. She writes:

The NewsTools2008 map demonstrates that, in the new ecology, community is crucial. It even introduces an unfamiliar term—the “community weaver.” His/her roles include inviting audiences to participate, and filtering reader comments. Meanwhile, in this world, it’s the community’s role to offer editors (now reframed as “sense makers”) tips on coverage, conversation with reporters (now lumped in with “beat bloggers”), content, and, of course, dollars. Are those communities publics? Well, it depends on the issues being addressed.

At Locally Grown, we’re trying to make this vision — or at least a version of it — happen.

The city of Northfield’s civic blogosphere got a boost in the summer of 2004 when a group of government leaders from the U.K. visited Northfield.  It encouraged more local citizens and leaders to try blogging, and it helped me get the first of several contracts to work with local councilors in the UK to learn blogging.

As I blogged here back in Feb., my latest project with the UK involved working with Gallomanor Communications Ltd on the creation of the CivicSurf project video/DVD. From the About page:

CivicSurf aims to inspire and inform civic leaders about the benefits of blogging. We’ve filmed 3 Norfolk County Councillors as they’ve learnt the basics of blogging and used their sites to initiate conversations in and around their communities. The eight minute film also includes the views from expert bloggers such as Tom Watson MP, Steve Webb MP and Cllr Mary Reid. It will be distributed on DVD to 1,000 public bodies including councils, emergency services and NHS Trusts along with copies of a 32pp booklet that informs readers of the basics of blogging.

I coached the three councilors over several months and wrote much of the documentation for the booklet.

A week ago, Shane McCracken of Gallomanor Communications Ltd, premiered the video at a conference in London. Here are two video clips that show Shane presenting it, with a little Q&A afterwards. The third videoclip is the trailer.

 
Presentation Part 1. Click play to watch. 5 min 39 sec.

Presentation Part 1, Q & A. Click play to watch. 6 min 42 sec.

The trailer for the DVD/video. Click play to watch. 1 minute.

I’m working on a project for the MN Sesquicentennial Commission related to its efforts to “… bear witness to the tragic side of Minnesota Statehood in 1858 and acknowledge the pain, loss and suffering of the Native American culture in Minnesota.”

Project activities are guided by the Sesquicentennial Advisory Committee for Native American Partnering (SACNAP) and I’ve set up a blog titled Native American Minnesota: A journey of learning and understanding (nativeamericanminn150.org).

I returned from the Trials Training Center (a client) in Tennessee yesterday, having spent 6 days taking photos, recording videos, and blogging the U.S. round of the World Trials Championship (USGP) , also known as the Wagner Cup. Yep, it’s all about motorcycle trials, a sport that’s been one of my hobbies for the past 30+ years.

I created the blog site for the event back in January  but it wasn’t until I arrived on site a few days prior to the event that things heated up. I posted 70 or so blog entries over the course of the week, focusing more on the staff, volunteers, and activities surrounding the competition than the competition itself.

This is the second time I’ve blogged an event over the course of several days. The first was the 2006 International e-Participation & Local Democracy Symposium in Budapest and Baltimore.

We’ve redone the website and weblog for Knecht’s Nurseries and Landscaping, converting it from a NetObjects Fusion / Blogger site to WordPress. Once again, Northfield web designer Sean Hayford O’Leary did the heavy lifting on the design and various technological tasks. I’ve been in charge of teaching Deb Knecht to use WordPress and Windows Live Writer.

A client, Upper Midwest Gourmet (UMG) , asked us to create three new ancillary blog sites for new product lines. Working closely with UMG’s Michael Applen and Jesse Grote, Northfield web designer Sean Hayford O’Leary created the designs and did most of the various technological tasks.

L to R: Quarry Coffee Microroasters, Right Roast, and Flamenco Organic Coffee.

I worked the past few months with Joel West, Senior Planner for Yaggy Colby Associates, to set up and maintain a blog for the Rushford, MN comprehensive plan.

The Representative Journalism (RepJ) team paid a visit to Minnesota yesterday. (See the initial RepJ blog post for details on the project.)

Left: At the offices of the Bush Foundation, L to R: Bill Densmore (RepJ collaborator, Director of the Media Giraffe Project, U of Mass, Amherst), Peter Hutchinson (President of the Bush Foundation), and Leonard Witt (RepJ founder, Communication Chair and Associate Professor, KSU, Atlanta, Georgia)
Left center: Len mugs for a MinnPost.com billboard in a downtown St. Paul skyway
Center: Afternoon coffee break: Len and Bill with Andrew Haeg, director of Minnesota Public Radio’s Public Insight Journalism Network.
Right center/right: Me, Bill and Len, relaxing in MPR’s listening pods

Left: Recording a Locally Grown radio show/podcast at KYMN studios: Bill and Len with (center) Chris Peck, RepJ collaborator and editor of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, TN. (Earlier in the afternoon, Len and Bill also paid a visit to John Schott, Chair of Cinema and Media Studies at Carleton.)
Left center: Present in spirit throughout the day: Ruth Ann Harnisch, President of the Harnisch Family Foundation, which has funded RepJ.
Center: Relaxing at the Contented Cow: Bill, Len, and Chris with Tracy Davis, LG co-host and head honcho of GuildCraft Carpets and Northfield Carpets International. We then dined at Chapati.
Right center/right: Late night RepJ strategy session in the lower level Archer House conference room: Ross Currier, LG co-host and Executive Director of the Northfield Downtown Development Corporation (NDDC) with Bill, Chris, Tracy and Len.

What is twitter?

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Like my colleague Michael Fraase, I tried Twitter a few times when it was first introduced but it didn’t ‘take hold’ for me.

But after reading Howard Rheingold’s reasons for why he’s hooked on Twitter, I’m ready to give it another try, only with a local, Northfield twist. I plan to focus my Twitter posts on Northfield-related ’stuff’ - my whereabouts in my hometown, as well as miscellaneous other Northfield-related musings. I’d like to ‘follow’ (that’s a Twitter term) other Northfield-area citizens doing likewise with their Twitter accounts.

I’ve got my cell phone and Google Talk (IM) account hooked up to my Twitter account so that I can send and receive messages with both.

I’ve added the above Twitter badge to our Locally Grown (LoGroNo) sidebar, about halfway down the page, right after the comments section).

I’ll consider switching that badge to one like this (the above image is recent screenshot, not a live view) that tracks all the people I’m following who’ve likewise committed to focusing their Twitter posts on Northfield-related activities.

The community blog and podcast that I co-host in my hometown, Locally Grown, has been chosen to test an innovative project called Representative Journalism, led by Communication Chair and Associate Professor Leonard Witt and colleagues at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. See Len’s blog post for details, as well as this press release (PDF).

Over half of the $51,000 grant from the Harnisch Family Foundation will flow to Northfield. My co-hosts and I will be paid for our time on the project. The Representative Journalism (RepJ) project will contract with a professional journalist who will be based locally. And money’s allocated to experiment with different ways to make the project financially sustainable.

Project staff will be visiting Northfield in mid-March to conduct interviews and help us get launched.

I’m working with UK colleagues Shane McCracken and Andrew Brown on a project temporarily named Councillor 2.0.

Cllr2.0 is campaign to help inspire councillors and other civic leaders to use the internet to communicate with their constituents, stakeholders and the general public. We are filming a group of Norfolk County Councillors as they learn how to use social media, digital photography, email and blogs to achieve their aims of engaging more effectively with their constituents.

The project is being managed by Gallomanor. Norfolk County Council are providing support for their councillors and filming much of their journey. Training and blogging expertise is provided by Wigley and Associates and Andrew Brown. The film is being produced by Napoleon Creative. OpenEye Communications, ICELE and Involve are providing editorial and promotional support.

We’ve revamped the website and blog for Doug Hughes and Christine Rotthoff at Arise Group LLC (AKA Doug Hughes Properties).

We recently constructed a blogsite (web site with a blog) for Beth Closner and Randy Lutz at Construction Consulting Partners.

I teamed up with the folks from the Sitting Bull College Horizons Project to teach a community blogging class in Minot North Dakota yesterday. We had about a dozen people from both the Spirit Lake Nation and the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation communities (also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes).

That’s Deborah His Horse is Thunder, Wiya & Associates LLC, in the left photo, helping a participant. Lyman Bercier, SBC Horizons project staffer for North Dakota, is in the photo on the far right. Click photos to enlarge.

I teamed up with the folks (David Isham, Susan Beaulieu, Al Nygard, and Deborah His Horse is Thunder) from the Sitting Bull College Horizons Project to teach a community blogging class in Bemidji yesterday. It was my largest class to-date, 15, with people from Red Lake, White Earth and Leech Lake communities. With that large a group, it was hugely helpful to have collegial assistance!

I was a bit of a laggard on taking photos until the end when Horizons Project Director Al Nygard took over. Click photos to enlarge.

A tip-of-the-blogger-hat to the Information Technology Services staff at Bemidji State University for the use of the Mac computer lab.