The Community Media Workshop surveyed online news providers to inform the 2nd annual NEW News report, released earlier this month. We encouraged online outlets across the Chicago area to participate, and in an effort to boost the response rate, we offered a $100 visa gift card.
More than 120 outlets responded to the survey, and we randomly selected one participant to win the $100 prize. Congratulations to Residents’ Journal! And thanks again to all the online news providers who gave us valuable information and insights about the changing media landscape and the challenges facing the new news.
It’s not news that the Great Recession has taken its toll on nonprofits and those they serve. The mom on food stamps for the first time, the widow who lost her home to foreclosure, the shuttered community counseling center–these are all important stories that put a face on the economic downturn. But how do nonprofits move beyond these personal stories to spur systemic change?
Our free Brown Bag forum happening next week on Tuesday, Reframing Stories of the Great Recession, looks at how agencies can reshape their communications strategies to move to a narrative that engages policy makers in the midst of city and state budget crunches and ongoing belt tightening in the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors.
“Demand outweighs the supply because budgets are being slashed across the board. I think this narrative is tired” says Thom Clark, president, Community Media Workshop. “Nonprofits need a media strategy that goes beyond recounting the human impact of an agency’s financial dilemma. The media is hungry for new angles to tell the ongoing recession story. Nonprofits should be at the center of this news frame.”
The panel discussion with some of Chicago’s top journalists and policy makers includes Laura Washington, Woods Fund; Mark Brown, Chicago Sun-Times; Chip Mitchell, WBEZ; Sarah Karp, Catalyst Chicago; Ralph Martire, Center for Tax and Budget Accountability; Amisha Patel, Grassroots Collaborative; Amy Rynell, Heartland Alliance; and the Workshop’s Thom Clark.
When/where: Tuesday, August 24, 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Columbia College Chicago, 33 East Congress, Room 219
Visit the Workshop’s website or call us at 312-369-6400 to sign up today.
Years ago, through smart reporting and good sleuthing, it came to light that Jon Burge and his men were torturing suspects on the South Side of Chicago to obtain confessions. One of the biggest stories in Chicago’s recent history, the Burge torture scandal and the news stories that exposed it serve as a reminder that investigative journalism is vital to the health of our communities. After all, someone needs to keep those in power honest.
In 1990, Chicago Reader reporter John Conroy wrote the story “House of Screams,” the piece that would introduce torture in Area 2 to Chicago and eventually lead to thousands of local and national stories about the subject. But this one story wasn’t enough. Conroy followed the Burge torture scandal for 20 years, and eventually other reporters and outlets began digging as well.
Tonight, freelance writer John Conroy (also a Studs Terkel award winner for his Burge coverage), and Michael Miner, Chicago Reader editor and columnist, will talk about police torture in Chicago, the wrongful convictions that happened as a result, and the role of journalism in exposing the atrocities. The first of a two-part series airs this evening on WFMT radio.
Part One: Monday, August 2nd — 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. CDT on 98.7WFMT Radio Chicago and via free streaming at wfmt.com
The second part in the series airs next week.
Part Two: Monday, August 9th — 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. CDT on 98.7WFMT Radio Chicago and via free streaming at wfmt.com
After airing, each part will be available indefinitely for free download, streaming, and podcast at WFMT.
I was fortunate enough to handle communications for MacArthur Justice Center for a number of years while Locke Bowman, legal director at the Justice Center, represented some of the Burge torture victims. It was some of the most rewarding work I have had the opportunity to be involved in. So many people like Conroy and Bowman have spent countless hours and days over the years working on the Burge torture scandal. The guilty verdict last month was a long time coming, and the reporters who followed this story for years, unraveling the pieces and bringing us the news, are a reminder of why good journalism is not just necessary, but a critical piece of a healthy society.
I had the pleasure of kicking off my new job with Community Media Workshop by attending the entire Making Media Connections conference. In my new role as Workshop VP, there’s no doubt that I observed the conference through a different lens than in years past. The conference marked my first day of work so I was truly an observer, with few preconceived notions. I hadn’t been embroiled in months of planning and knew nothing of the struggles to pull the event off so seamlessly. I saw no chinks in the armor, no tarnish in the shine that was MMC10. From my perspective, the conference was refreshing–a break from the hectic move back to Chicago and a chance to visit with old friends and colleagues. I simply got to show up, listen and learn.
And I wish I had done that one of the many times I attended over the years! Rather than just attending one session or moderating a panel or dropping in for lunch, making it to the whole show left a bigger mark. It left me feeling energized and mulling over how we, as nonprofit communicators and leaders, can seize the Great Recession and the changing media landscape as a new opportunity to tell our stories.
Despite Twitter and Tribune bankruptcy, slashed budgets and iPhone apps, there is one thing that has not changed: the importance of telling a good story, one that resonates with people and makes them sit up and listen. Over and over, presenters and panelists and participants came back to this basic rule. Even as former Sun-Times reporter Ray Hanania had the audience in stitches over his own confessed confusion and exhaustion with all the hats he now wears, he also reminded attendees, “You need to write good stories…That’s where the key is.”
Or Deanna Zandt, social media guru and avid Tweeter/blogger/writer, who said during her keynote that the reason so many people became interested in her new book “Share This!” was because she used Twitter and online tools to “tell a story” about her personal process and struggles to bring the book to fruition. A story that people found interesting, funny and compelling.
That’s what this is all about–human connection. You could be the most clever tweeter or the most prolific blogger, but without the story, those tools aren’t helping your organizations engage audiences. And so it goes–the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Sure, some of the tactics we use to get those stories told have changed, but us nonprofit folks are smart, we adapt! And that’s what resonated with me after the Making Media Connections conference: what people want to hear, what reporters want to write, what makes someone scroll to the bottom–it hasn’t changed. We just have to change the way we get those stories in front of our audiences. We have to use more tools, be more nimble, work harder to stay on top of an ever-changing industry.
And the Workshop, whether it’s at the Conference or through our annual trainings, is here to help nonprofits identify those tools, adapt their strategies, and tell those stories.
So I think we can all breathe a little easier. The news world may seem upside down, but the fundamentals remain the same. Sure, we all have a lot to learn and practice, and we have to be more creative and persistent than ever. But nonprofits are good at adapting and doing more with less. So, kick back, sign up for Twitter and put a human face on the hard work you’re doing every day. We want to hear your story.
Raymond Guyton, right, of Hold Up the Light, showed off his unique light bulbs as he pitched a story on National Prayer Day to WBEZ culture reporter Lynette Kalsnes during the Workshop's Professional Media Relations training in February.
Been meaning to post this list for about a month now, ever since the final session of Professional Media Relations, our core annual “soup-to-nuts” training for nonprofit communicators. After five weeks of the class, the participants have found an idea, honed it, practiced it,and in the final session, they pitch it to journalists from around the area.
For years now area reporters have been gracious enough to join us for three hours on a Friday morning to share some thoughts about what kinds of stories they are looking for and how they like to get information. When it works well, they get good story ideas from the session.
This actually seemed like our best year yet in terms of folks in the session finding the best stories coming out of their organizations and getting to tell them to journalists, then journalists finding stories that worked out for them. Another highlight from this year’s session was a list of tips that WBEZ Reporter Lynette Kalsnes offered. Here they are:
What is the news element? A newspeg [can you believe there's no Wikipedia entry for news peg? We'll get to work on that, meanwhile hit the link for a decent definition--essentially the peg is what makes this story news, now] makes it more likely your story will get covered.
What is unique about the story? If there’s something new or interesting, that makes coverage more likely. Spell it out. Read the rest of this entry »
Wouldn’t you love to see Mayor Daley squirm as John Callaway asked him about Olympic budget cost guarantees he never shared with the voters? Or what about a one-on-one with Oprah? Or an unscripted half-hour with our latest political celebrity Patti Blagojevich (”What advice did your dad, Ald. Dick Mell, give you on which defense attorney to hire?”)?
Photo by Karen Kring. John Callaway, Thom Clark & Geoff Dougherty at 2/22/09 “Future of Journalism” Town Hall Meeting
Master interviewer John Callaway died Tuesday evening of a heart attack at 72. I find myself already missing some of the interviews I wish he’d completed. The long-time host of WTTW Channel 11’s “Chicago Tonight,” Callaway gained a deserved reputation as one of the region’s premier interviewers. Like Workshop mentor Studs Terkel, Callaway could push his subjects beyond their prepared sound bites to probe a celebrity’s motives, question a politician’s manevuers, or help illuminate an author’s tome. Ironically, Callaway was the only nominee to ever turn down a Studs Terkel Community Media Award, believing a younger person should fill the slot.
John was always well-read and well-prepared for his interviews, but his intellectual prowess didn’t overwhelm or overtake his subjects. His wonderment and curiosity informed so much of his work, as displayed in a one-man show of his life produced for a week or two at Pegasus Theatre in 2001. My last encounter with him was sharing the panel at last February’s Town Hall Meeting on the future of journalism, a somewhat bleak afternoon for traditional journalism, where John was typically inciteful about a city without daily newspapers and bloggers who steal content.
Now I don’t how public television’s digital signal will pick this up, but I understand John’s next interview will be with St. Peter to explore who paid for the pearly gates.
Interesting day at the office with the unveiling of our NEW News report on Chicago online news.
I wished I was interviewing Phil Rosenthal instead of the other way around this afternoon, since he came up with the best soundbite so far:”It’s about the value, not the cost of local news.” Wish he’d said that in his column! ah, well.
It was nice to get a call from Alexander Russo of the District 299 blog covering Chicago Public Schools. It’s now appearing at Chicago Now and includes a brief mention of the report (good move, Tribune!)
One reason there has not been much posted here over the past 10 weeks or so is that we’ve been busy pulling together a report on the state of local online news in Chicago, The NEW News: Journalism We Want and Need for The Chicago Community Trust. It’s not about how to pay for local news, but why we pay for it–and about who’s doing what online in Chicago.
It’s the first time anyone we know of has tried to assemble a report quite like it, that combines a directory of who’s doing what, some thoughts about where local print and online news is actually at in terms of coverage, and some thoughts on the kind of news we want. Some key thoughts:
There’s less local news in the newspaper, these days, but no guarantee that online news publications will do any better.
Online news publications will need to adopt some of the characteristics of local news—include news vetted by editors, copy editors, etc., select stories that both entertain and inform their audiences, and perhaps most importantly that they create a forum for one conversation, a universal feature that is hard to arrive at on the Internet, which drives us toward so many unique, small, even idiosyncratic news sources.
Assembling such a report in such a short period of time (we surveyed producers of more than 80 online news publications, looked for trends in local news coverage in the Tribune and Sun-Times over 20 years—mostly, it’s declined, and conducted focus groups with nonprofit community leaders) was a job of work.
Our main goal was to add a different note to the conversation about how to save news… for audiences that are able to hear it. It will be too bad if the folks we respect and admire in metropolitan newsrooms are unable to take it in or get much benefit from the research.
One columnist’s take
Shame on me for not living up to my own spokesperson training rules: I spent two hours explaining all this to Phil Rosenthal, Tribune media columnist, explaining what we did and did not find about local online news in Chicago, to wind up reading a column this morning in which he says he thinks the whole project was waste of time. Now why am I surprised?
Obviously you can read his column here, and draw your own conclusions, but he seems to have wound up feeling that everything is fine in the news business so why don’t we just keep things the way they are. Hello? Shouldn’t have to explain to the media columnist, why the status quo is unworkable (our study does not focus on the news business’ money problems but they are obviously a sign that things need to change).
Find out for yourself… download your own copy here.
As struggling local newspapers continue to abandon the printed page, foundations, entrepreneurs and journalists are launching “hyperlocal” and watchdog news Web sites.
Where and who are they? What do they tell us about the new media landscape?
We’ve pinpointed significant news Web sites emerging around the United States and beyond by creating this custom Google Map for the Community Media Workshop.
Sorry… time to get back on the blogging horse! Just a quick note for Chicago nonprofit communicators — many of you have called and emailed to learn more details of the Chicago Local News Service, pooling news coverage by area television news programs to cut costs.
If you’re just tuning in to this, as Chicago television stations continue to search for ways to cut costs, they have for the first time ever set up pooled camera crews to cover non-exclusive news events through an independently run, local news service. (Phil Rosenthal reported this in the Tribune May 4).
To be known as the Local News Service (LNS), the cooperative will be based at WBBM-Channel 2’s headquarters at 22 W. Washington Street but operated entirely separate from “CBS-2’s” news operation. It will be funded by its four members: WBBM-Ch. 2, WMAQ-Ch. 5, WGN-Ch. 9 and WFLD-Ch. 32. WLS-Ch. 7, the market’s top-rated television newsgathering operation, will continue to send its own camera crews to every news event. PBS affiliate WTTW-Ch. 11 also will not participate in the cooperative.
Bob Goldsborough has a full report at the media guide user group including contact info for the service’s new editor.
A coalition of community and civil rights groups recently looked at issues ranging from crime to transportation and gave the city an overall grade of D. […]
Ten Questions You Should Ask Before Doing Any Election Reporting You want to focus on the election issues critical for black and immigrant communities, here’s good resource. Come to our ethnic news media election briefing on Friday, Oct. 1. Experts will offer details and up to date insights on issues critical to the Chicago area’s [...] […]
Studs Terkel’s community-driven stories and natural ability to give a voice to us all, no matter what side of the tracks we lived on, made him one of Chicago’s most iconic journalists. An eclectic disk jockey he was, as any listener to his weekday morning program on WFMT could attest. A man of many hats, [...] […]
Recorded May, 2009 Children in Chicago’s North Lawndale community are at a higher risk of getting asthma. According to the Sinai Urban Health Institute, one in four children in that neighborhood have asthma. That’s almost double city-wide and national averages.So what is it about North Lawndale that puts children at an increased risk? Who – [...] […]
The Residents’ Journal!
I had the pleasure of kicking off my new job with Community Media Workshop by attending the entire 
Recent Comments