NewsU has launched a new course called Leading an Online Newsroom: What You Need to Know. The course is taught by Susan Karol, executive director of the Suburban Newspapers of America Foundation, and funded by Knight Foundation.

The course consists of five “classes”, each with tips and commentary from editors on best practices for online newsrooms. There are also interactive activities that simulate running an online publication and respond to news events: class participants choose which staff members to send to cover a story, and learn how to adjust their workflow for breaking news.

It also features a “Case Study Showcase” of seven online news organizations’ successes and challenges. Participants can also add their own newsroom to use as an example.

The NewsU team is working on its third course, which will be on innovation in community news, and will hold two webinars this month. Check out a list of NewsU courses (.pdf), which are free for everyone who registers on the web site.

Brant Houston holds the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Journalists from 25 nonprofit journalism organizations formed the first-ever investigative news network at a three-day gathering at the Pocantico Conference Center this week.

Pledging collaboration on both editorial efforts and business operations, the network created a steering committee to immediately pursue funding for a grant to develop plans for shared operational resources and for collaborations on major investigative projects.

The group also issued a declaration outlining the need for the network in a time of diminishing resources for investigations by the mainstream media.

Jose Zamora is a journalism program associate at Knight Foundation

Report from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Convention, where my panel discussed business models… The most popular new models were niche advertisements, paid content, public contributions and foundation support.

The panel was moderated by Frances Robles, foreign correspondent for The Miami Herald. Among the panelists were Patricio G. Espinoza, an Emmy Award winning journalist who runs espiMedia.com; Eduardo Hauser, CEO of DailyMe.com; and Calvin Sims, Program Officer at The Ford Foundation.

Patricio Espinoza talked about niche digital media as a new business model. He caters to niche audiences in specific neighborhoods and finds local merchants who want to reach them. Bartering is also a good way to enter local advertising markets, he says. Content is vital, but so is a great sales person.

Eduardo Hauser explained the importance of knowing who is interested in the content you want to produce and figuring out who is willing to pay for it.

Calvin Sims explained that Ford Foundation is interested in projects that fill a void in reporting and have impact. As an example he talked about Ford’s efforts in supporting foreign reporting.

I explained how Knight Foundation is experimenting with different models through the journalism program and the Knight News Challenge to find out which models works best. Knight is experimenting with nonprofit models, like voiceofsandiego.com and ProPublica.Other models include niche publications, hyper-local blog aggregators and reverse publishing like EveryBlock.com, Placeblogger, Printcasting and VillageSoup.com. And there are hybrid models between journalism schools and media organizations like the New England Center for Investigative Reporting and with crowd-funding through Spot.US.

If you have a project that combines new models with news and information for specific geographic communities, please apply to the Knight News Challenge. The contest opens again Sept. 1, 2009. And if you are interested in learning more about these and other projects keep tuned to Knight Blog.

Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation

Ford and Knight Foundation partnered to support the participation of 76 journalists and students at The National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) convention.

Recognizing that the media landscape is in flux, the theme of the 27th annual NAHJ conference was: “Evolve.  Embrace. Reinvent.” And the focus was on multimedia and digital journalism.

The program was designed to help journalists acquire the multimedia and technological skills they need to keep their jobs, find new ones or grow professionally.

There were thirty-three sessions offering multimedia skills that ranged from how to Blog and use Twitter to how to Podcast, stream live video and create Mashups.

The Knight Digital Media Center held a Multimedia Bootcamp, where conference attendees could learn the basic skills needed for multimedia storytelling and get hands-on training on how to record audio, take photos and shoot videos for the Web.

David Ardia, the director of the Citizen Media Law Project, moderated a panel on online media law and ethics that focused on legal issues that might arise from the daily practice of online journalism to legal and ethical issues related to user generated content and the bloggosphere.

If you are interested in learning digital media skills and on getting hands-on training, please start by visiting:

Knight Digital Media Center

J-Lab – The Institute for Interactive Journalism

Knight Citizen News Network

Citizen Media Law Project

Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas

Julia Scott, who left her job at the Los Angeles Daily News to start BargainBabe.com, recommends being obsessed with your new business as a key to being a good news entrepreneur. That, and paying attention to social media as well as your advertisers.

Scott was a Fellow for the News Entrepreneur Boot Camp, the Knight Digital Media Center’s week-long program held in May in partnership with the Online Journalism Review and the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, and Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

The boot camp taught 12 digital entrepreneurs selected by Knight such topics as developing a sustainable business plan and marketing and audience development.

The Knight Digital Media Center will hold a Multimedia Reporting and Convergence Workshop from July 12-17 at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The next boot camp for news entrepreneurs will be announced by the Knight Center when a date is set. Express interest through the center’s web site.

On Tuesday, June 23 Knight Foundation staff members and summer interns attended a performance of FUERZABRUTA at the Adrienne Arsht Performing Arts Center as guests of Dennis Scholl, the Communities Program Director for Miami. 

FUERZABRUTA is an interactive visual spectacle that packs six to eight hundred people into a dark room for an hour. Eight cast members manipulate the dynamic set pieces with their bodies and engage the audience with disposable props and pumping music. A giant treadmill and a plastic pool suspended over the heads of the audience make up most of the set. 

It’s easy to get swept up in the sensory show; audience members touch, throw, dance and move from place to place like the actors do. In a recent performance, one audience member got carried away and was kicked out for repeatedly punching the plastic pool.

The show has been touring for three years, debuting in Argentina and traveling across the U.S. as well as to countries like the U.K., Brazil and Mexico. One cast member noted contrasting energies between audiences in New York and in Miami. Another performer said that in Argentina the show is considered more a theatre piece than a work of conceptual art. Apparently the experience changes from city to city and from night to night, but everyone agrees the real party happens on the weekends.

Dan Pacheco explains how the new Printcasting model will be tested in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Printcasting lets people become their own publishers by creating a way to package stories and generate advertising revenue. Anyone can create a “printcast” about their interests or community.

Printcasting will be beta tested with the MediaNews Group, which owns 54 daily newspapers.

Pacheco, a 2008 Knight News Challenge winner, is currently expanding his project to such cities as Denver and Los Angeles.

Knight Foundation awarded the Bakersfield Californian a Knight News Challenge grant to develop Printcasting, which ties online content to publication templates.

Printcasts update themselves when the selected web sites and blogs are updated, and can be printed or sent to a mobile device. People who make printcasts can also make money from targeted ads by local businesses.

The Knight News Challenge hopes to speed adoption of digital innovations in community news.

Printcasting is one of several Knight News Challenge platforms that, once completed, will be released to everyone as open-source software.

At several of the BarCamp sessions at the Future of Civic Media conference Knight held with M.I.T., attendees spoke about using mobile technology and video and audio communication to bridge the digital divide.

The Web was thought to be the great leveler, but how about for people who don’t have a computer, or can’t read web site text?

In one BarCamp session on media and information in the developing world, 2007 Knight News Challenge Winner Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices said the developing world is better wired for mobile technology than it is for Internet use on computers. His smart phone works faster in Ghana than it does in the U.S.

Knight News Challenge grants have supported such programs as Mobile Media Toolkit and News on Cell Phones. Knight Foundation Director of IT George Martinez and his team are also working on universal digital access in U.S. communities.

Below, 2008 Knight News Challenge winner Jessica Mayberry of Video Volunteers explains how illiteracy contributes to the digital divide.