Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation
The free PDF version of the book Journalism 2.0 passed the 100,000 download mark today.
The book was written by Mark Briggs, assistant managing editor for interactive news at The News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington.
Journalism 2.0 is a great resource. It is a useful guide that helps professional and amateur news producers understand and implement digital tools to enhance their reporting.
Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation
Stanford University announced today the 2009-2010 U.S. Knight Fellows. In response to the demands of the media landscape, the 44 year old fellowship program established a new focus for the program that seeks journalism innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership. The Knight Fellowships Program Committee selected 12 journalists out of 166 applicants. The new fellows will develop projects that seek to speed media innovation through the use of news, information, new business models and technology.
What do you think journalism programs should be focusing on?
Fox is the Emmy Award-winning video producer for WashingtonPost.com. He was explaining that in contrast to the past, when online news sites used video to generate interest in their sites and to get extra revenue from video ads, in the future, video will be used to generate multiple revenue streams, because video/multimedia material can be used for any medium.
Fox explained how the script and stills from his video can be used for an article in the newspaper and the online edition of the daily, while the sound file can supply radio content, and the video itself can be used for a television story.
This was part of the discussion at a panel I moderated about multimedia storytelling and the future of online journalism at this year’s symposium, which gathered 298 journalists and new media experts from around the world.
Development Seed received a $195,000 grant to add a mapping tool to Drupal. With it, people will be able to geo-tag stories and see their location on a map. The developers are also creating a news monitor that allows people to aggregate multiple local news sources based on topic or issue to the open and free Drupal platform.
Knight Foundation’s grant to Development Seed is one of a package of six grants that made up the Knight Drupal Initiative, a contest that tapped into a massive network of computer programmers to get their recommendations for speeding media innovation. In separate posts I will talk about each of the grants.
The Drupal community is a group of more than 350,000 members, mostly computer programmers who write free software together, collaboratively, on the web and the individuals and organizations that use the software to publish content online. You can learn more about Drupal at: www.Drupal.org.
A video on how this new piece of software works is available on Planet Drupal TV.
Do you have innovative ideas on how to use this mapping tool to improve the way you receive, share and understand news about your community?
1. The use of Drupal open-source software as the base for many projects that intended to bring digital journalism to local communities; and
2. The need for local online news sites.
Out of the Drupal trend, Knight created in partnership with a massive community of programmers, the Knight Drupal Initiative. This initiative led to the funding of six projects that aim to speed media innovation and lower the barriers to online publishing.
The Knight News Challenge projects are designed to be replicable in any community. If there isn’t one in yours, please contact us to determine how we can help you bring one of these projects to your community.
The main focus of the session was to discuss why they thought structuring projects as a 501(c)(3) was the best choice for anyone doing online publishing. The main reason for DOM was that a nonprofit organization is organized to achieve a purpose other than generating profit.
That is one good reason for structuring your enterprise as a nonprofit, but there are many more considerations that have to be made when deciding how to incorporate your online publishing project. The legal structure chosen will have an impact on the organization’s liability for defamation and other legal claims. It will also have an impact on the organization’s tax obligations, its assets and its management.
Choosing a legal structure for your online publishing site is important. You can learn more about how to set-up the legal framework for your organization on the Creating a Business page on the Citizen Media Law Project Web site.
If you prefer one business structure over another, please tell us why and comment below.
The graphic below is a visualization of this post. It was created using a program called many eyes.
How do you think news entrepreneurs should be supported? USC Annenberg thinks a new boot camp is one way (deadline to apply: February 16).
There are a few days left to apply for the upcoming News Entrepreneur Boot Camp May 16-21, 2009 in Los Angeles, CA at USC Annenberg; independent entrepreneur Susan Mernit asks USC Annenberg’s Vikki Porter about their upcoming News Entrepreneur Boot Camp.
Editor’s note: Scott Piepho is an Akron blogger; below, he walks us through the new Akron headquarters of the Knight Center of Digital Excellence. The video was shot by Knight V.P. of Communications Marc Fest and edited by webmaster Robertson Adams.
High tech gear and a fruit salad of furniture colors meet turn-of-last-century architecture as the staff of the Knight Center of Digital Excellence settle in to their Akron headquarters. Three weeks ago the center took over the seventh floor of renovated downtown office building, hosting a grand opening event that brought together Knight Foundation program officers from around the country.
The Knight Center offices serve as work space for the staff of the online Resource Center and as a home base for the members of the Connected Communities Team (CCT). Two of the CCT Program Managers – Todd Adams and Jim Nice — work out of Akron. Team director Karen Archer Perry works from her home in New Jersey and Lynda Goff, the newest member of the team, works out of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The center headquarters gives the team space to meet and collaborate. This week all four were in town to touch base and share ideas.
“We are doing something new; we are trying to create a new model,” explains Ms. Perry. In each community the team is trying to encourage connectivity projects developed and ultimately owned by the community. Team members take time to compare notes on how that model works in different communities with different needs, assets and cultures.
In any organization with a strong field staff, calling them home can be a challenge. The new Knight Center offers an appealing place to come home to. The building retains much of its classic interior. The elevator opens into a hallway wainscoted in marble – complete with a built-in drinking fountain. Original wood-grained doors (metal as it turns out – first of their kind in Akron) include textured glass and still-functioning transoms.
But beyond a hallway which could double as an Eddie Capra movie set, the office space is funky modern. Two-drawer filing cabinets on casters double as ottomans topped with brightly upholstered pads. Meeting room chairs and cabinet tops were ordered in each color offered – a first, which prompted the manufacturer to visit and take pictures of the prismatic cheeriness.
Most of all, the office is full of light, with gaping window offering views of northern downtown and beyond, across the Cuyahoga River valley. “It’s a big difference being in this building,” notes Perry. “We had no windows in the Cleveland offices.”
The center continues settling in and melding the old and the new. The latest delivery is a state-of-the-art smart board that staff are now learning to use. The next should be a map cabinet – Program Manager Jim Nice still likes paper maps.
RSS 2.0