“I have after a fashion, been celebrated for having celebrated the lives of the uncelebrated among us; for lending voice to the face in the crowd.” – Studs Terkel

Last night we hosted the Studs Terkel Community Media Awards, honoring journalists Megan Cottrell, Fernando Diaz, and Dave Hoekstra, whose body of work exemplifies the celebrated work of Louis “Studs” Terkel.

Earlier this week two of the three 2013 Terkel Award Winners, Cottrell and Diaz,  were on WBEZ’s Afternoon Shift with Rick Kogan. The panel unpacked recent Chicago news surrounding the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, ( and their controversial move to include photos of the remains of unidentified persons on their site), SROs and the Chateau Hotel, and CHA’s plan for transformation. They covered a lot of ground.

You can listen to clips of Cottrell and Diaz on the the show below:

DeAnndra.

A busy week is coming up for nonprofit communicators who want to learn more about accessing public data; the present and future of hyperlocal news; or honoring journalists who are especially good at bringing unofficial sources and community voices into their reporting.

On Wednesday I’ll be moderating a discussion about the growth of hyperlocal news sites at the Publicity Club of Chicago’s monthly luncheon. Featured panelists include: John Lampinen of the Daily Herald, Ronald Roenigk of Inside Publications, Brian Slupski of Patch, Shamus Toomey of DNAinfo, and Peter Kendall of the Chicago Tribune. All at a wonderful family-style luncheon at Maggiano’s on North Clark Street. RSVP here.

The Chicago Headline Club kicks off FOIA Fest, a three-part series exploring the ins and outs of gaining access to government records and public data you can use to bolster your organization’s impact.  Of special note is the Tuesday, March 12 forum featuring Citizen Advocacy Center’s Terry Pastika, the Northwestern University Knight Lab’s Joe Germuska and Smart Chicago Collaborative’s Dan O’Neil. They will discuss efforts to influence policy and legislation and how technology can improve access to public records. Food and refreshments will be served at the event, from 6:45 to 8 p.m. at the auditorium of Columbia College Chicago’s journalism school, 33 E. Congress Pkwy., 2^nd floor.

Finally, please join the Workshop at our annual Studs Terkel Community Media Awards benefit Thursday, March 14, from 5p to 8p at Columbia College’s Film Row Cinema, 1104 S. Wabash. Purchase your tickets here.

The following post and its opinions are that of the author and not of the Community Media Workshop.

New Media Associate Marissa Wasseluk on the streets of Casablanca, Morocco. Picture by Hassan Aaddak.

Casablanca explodes with activity. One after another, motorbikes and bicycles weave through traffic and pass our car with the grace and agility of snakes moving through tall grass. We maneuver our way around several cars straddling the imaginary line that separates the lanes on the highway. “How are you finding Casablanca, Marissa?” asks Noureddine, our interpreter, as he puts his car into another gear. He drives forward and doesn’t flinch as another person pulls in front of us, leaving only a whisper of air between the two cars. “So far so good!” I over-exclaim while reassuringly pushing my seat belt into its lock.

Like any big city, Casablanca is on the move. When I first arrived I felt like I had to hit the ground running, and faster than usual to keep up with its pace. The geographic bridge between Europe and Subsaharan Africa, globalism and multiculturalism define Moroccan society. Walking the streets, I overhear conversations between residents that flow from French to Arabic and sometimes English with ease. I see women in traditional hajibs and kaftans check their cell phones for messages and a stylish young man light a cigarette as he leans against a centuries-old wall. It’s easy to see how the country earned its nickname, the global crossroads.

Some traffic began building on these roads about two years ago.  Civil unrest triggered a social movement that called for reformations in the constitution. Some people call the movement The Arab Spring. Here it’s more often referred to as The Democratic Spring. I, myself, am traveling these roads as a part of a legislative fellows program wherein nonprofit professionals from Chicago meet professionals from NGOs in its sister city, Casablanca. Personally, I’m looking to find out more about the correlation between new media and social movements like The Democratic Spring. I’m also curious about the different ways people here are using technology to fulfill their missions (and perhaps, give them a little advice on how they could).

The changes brought on by this movement are now beginning to take really take root.  Because of passionate people working hard to create a better society, nonprofits across the country are finding it easier to fulfill their missions without breaking laws. After visiting several NGOs in Morocco with missions ranging from empowering women, rights for the disabled, and urban agriculture, I’ve found that these organizations have grown by leaps and bounds in a short amount of time, but there’s still much to be done.

And so, the city and country continue to move – towards cultural and political change.

I’m happy to be along for the ride.

To be continued…

The Professional Fellows Program for Egypt and Morocco is funded by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, and implemented by Citizen Bridges International, a nonprofit in Chicago, and its partner organizations, El Sadat Association in Cairo, Egypt and IDMAJ in Casablanca, Morocco.

When it comes to hyperlocal news, it’s a lot easier to build an audience than it is to build a revenue stream. So says hyperlocal site publisher and blogger Mike Foucher. Foucher and the Workshop’s President Thom Clark recently weighed in on the past and future of neighborhood reporting with Rick Kogan on WBEZ’s Afternoon Shift. Clark also discussed the Workshop’s strategic efforts to define the shifting media landscape.

Listen to the entire segment below:

Fourteen New Local Reporting Awards Approved

for Community News Projects on South and West Sides

CHICAGO – The Chicago Community Trust’s Community News Matters program approved $70,000 in Local Reporting Awards for 14 community news projects focusing on issues affecting the south and west sides of Chicago. The community news projects will highlight various issues, from realities facing the LGBTQ community within the criminal system to the effects of domestic violence and mental health on residents in the Back of the Yards community.

“The Trust is pleased to support innovative approaches to share stories written by and about the south and west side of Chicago,” said Ngoan Le, Vice President of Program at The Chicago Community Trust.  “We can all benefit learning more about issues important to these communities.”

Each project will receive $5,000 to support original reporting or data analysis. This is the second round of Local Reporting Awards, which are funded by The Chicago Community Trust, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.  Winners this year were chosen from among proposals requested from the 31 winners of 2011 awards.

The Community Media Workshop, is administering the Local Reporting Awards program for The Chicago Community Trust and is providing social media trainings for the awardees.

“This highly evaluated project which draws on the expertise of community leaders and organizations brought to public attention a variety of new voices and impactful journalism from often under-reported neighborhoods,” said Workshop president Thom Clark.

Among the recipients of 2012 Local Reporting Awards are Health and Disability Advocates, which will document health care difficulties facing local military veterans; Latinos Progresando, which will document monologues by youth regarding Latino and American cultural perspectives; and the Neighborhood Writing Alliance, which will examine the impact of incarceration among West and South side Chicago residents. View the full list of awardees on the next page or at http://communitynewsproject.org

Here are the recipients of the 2012 Local Reporting Awards:

1. Chicago Reporter, to investigate Chicago’s Section 8 housing program;
2. Windy City Times, to investigate the realties facing the LGBTQ community in the criminal legal system;
3. In These Times, to explore participatory budgeting on Chicago’s 5th ward;
4. Health and Disability Advocates, to document health care difficulties facing local military veterans;
5. Bill Healy, to enhance the content and distribution of projects by fellow award winners;
6. Kari Lydersen, to explore community impact of Southside steel site redevelopment;
7. The Gate, to explore domestic violence and mental health in the Back of the Yards community;
8. Latinos Progresando, to document monologues by youth regarding Latino and American cultural perspectives;
9. Austin Talks, to produce a video documentary about homicides of Chicago youth;
10. Carlos Javier Ortiz, to produce a video documentary of youth violence at Stroger Hospital;
11. Neighborhood Writing Alliance, to document the impact of incarceration among West and South side Chicago residents;
12. Kalyn Belsha, to investigate leadership support for Latina women in Chicago;
13. Amandillo Cuzan, to produce a video documentary on Bronzeville area schools;
14. Westside Writing Alliance, to document the impact of school reform in the Humboldt/Garfield Park area.

The Local Reporting Initiative seeks to address the shifting media landscape including the continued growth of online news sites.  It also focuses on the continued development of new channels to ensure that high-quality, civic-minded information reaches and engages theses communities.

The Local Reporting Awards are a direct response to the findings of a 2010 Community News Matters research report that discovered Chicago area residents do not feel they fully understand the region’s challenges. Residents of low-income south and west side neighborhoods were especially concerned that traditional news outlets do not cover relevant issues in their communities. The Trust’s Community News Matters program seeks to increase the flow of truthful, accurate and insightful local news and information and help the region’s cutting edge innovators develop new models for providing news and information.

guest post by Marissa Wasseluk, originally posted here.

While covering the “Top 5 Social Media Platforms” during a recent social media training, one participant asked me, “Do our organizations really need to be on Pinterest?”

To which I answered yes, and no.

We’ve seen some nonprofits use the platform effectively because they know how to speak to their audience and can pull from a plethora visual content. Some nonprofits create boards centered around a specific fundraising and/or awareness campaign.

Since most website referrals today come from Pinterest, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to be on the platform. But before you add another online to-do to your communications plan, ask yourself a few questions first.

Question #1 –  Is your audience on Pinterest?

The general pinning audience** is:

• Females between the ages of 25 – 54
• Have an income between $25,000 – $75,000
• Are visually stimulated & like “collecting”

Stats collected from ComScore – except for that last one, that last stat was all me and my keen powers of observation.

**It should be noted that these stats reflect American trends. In the UK your average pinner is male.

Question #2 – Is your site or your content ‘pin-able’?

Do you post pictures worth a thousand words on your site? Can you get your point across with a picture? Do you make your content easy to share?

Question #3 – Will you change your current communications plan to accommodate the Pinterest platform? 

The rise of Pinterest definitely changes the digital communication game. Its rapid growth is proof of how visually-driven digital consumers are. Does this mean digital producers should create more visually stimulating content?

*cough*yes*cough* A smart digital marketer or blogger would change the format of their posts to accommodate this pin-nomenon (hehehe). They would make their content graphic-rich and add the Pinterest button to their posts.

So if you’ve answered “yes” to these questions, you may want to add Pinterest to your organization’s social media plan!

Need Pinspiration? Take a look at the Workshop’s Pinterest presence! Or, Take a Look at Nonprofit Pinterest Strategies!

While digital advancement has propelled the media guide into a new online format, Workshop President Thom Clark muses on how he still enjoys the print version of the guide when researching Chicago media…

Call me old-fashioned but when it comes to developing a new campaign for media outreach, I still love turning the pages of our annual media guide.

Oh, I love the convenience and speed of going online to look-up a contact phone number, or Googling a media personality to maybe find an email address or even some beat info.

But I still keep the “phone book” version of Getting On Air, Online and Into Print close at hand, right on my physical desktop near the phone. It’s one of best browsing tools around. If I’m looking up a specific media outlet or contact, I never know when I might stumble across another reporter I hadn’t thought of unless I’d been browsing through the guide’s almost 300 pages of listings.

Plus the front section of the book has all the Workshop’s favorite communication planning worksheets, essays on the ever-shifting media landscape, sample media alerts, twitter handles, and specialty reporter lists by issue––resources you might be able to find with dedicated research, but we’ve already done the heavy lifting for you and put it all in one place!

As someone who always loved the unexpected tome that popped up while researching term papers through the library’s card catalog, I still find browsing the pages of our media guide creatively rewarding if not as efficient as some digital tools certainly are today. I’m always finding some new reporter I didn’t know about or a new media outlet I hadn’t heard of while looking up the cell number of a veteran editor.

And once you send that email or place that call, I still love putting pen or pencil to paper right in the book to write-up the encounter, jot down a new email, or make note of a new beat assignment. The updated info might make it into a spread sheet or database as well, but I still write all over my book, avoiding curled up post-its or a stack of pink message slips.

I may be old fashioned by choosing to use the print version of Getting On Air, Online & Into Print rather than the digital version or other digital tools at our fingertips; but the paper media guide still serves as an affordable and appropriate technology for this nonprofit communicator.

Chicago nonprofit Community Media Workshop stays true to its tradition of connecting the community with the media with the release of the twenty-second edition of its Chicago media guide.

With information on over 900 media outlets, including online news sites, the 2013 edition of “Getting On Air, Online & Into Print” Chicago media guide is the most comprehensive, up-to-date guide to Midwestern media.

“Our shifting media landscape–with avid news consumers now getting most of their news online–is also expanding as legacy print & broadcast outlets put more and more on the web, alongside bloggers and hyperlocal news sites who are beginning to fill in gaps in neighborhood reporting,” said Thom Clark, President, Community Media Workshop. “While the role of traditional media is shifting, the channels of story transmission for nonprofit communicators have proliferated.  Our guide will help you navigate the new, along side the traditional.”

The 2013 Getting on Air, Online & Into Print guide goes beyond listing direct phone numbers, emails, Twitter handles and beat information for reporters. Veteran users of this media guide often find the first 52 pages of advice, communications planning worksheets and the latest in media relations tools as important as the reportorial listings.

CLICK HERE to order the 2013 Getting on Air, Online & Into Print media guide or call the Workshop at 312-369-6400.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE.

Guest post by Marissa Wasseluk (opinions reflect that of the author)

As we anticipate the last American presidential debate of this election season, I look back to the first and the communications crisis that almost came out of it. I just want to be sure to give big kudos and a powerful, slow clap to the communications team at Sesame Workshop.

The nonprofit behind the beloved children’s educational television program Sesame Street unwittingly found itself a central figure of political discourse when during the first U.S. presidential debate of 2012, candidate Mitt Romney declared his plan to cut government funding to PBS in spite of his personal love for one of the show’s mascots, Big Bird.

Almost instantly a wave of Big Bird memes exploded across the Internet – the hashtags #bigbird and #savebigbird trended on Twitter, while pictures of the muppet attached to political propaganda phrases took up web real estate. It seemed everyone in America was googling “Big Bird”.

They needed to make a statement, and quickly. Inaction would mean losing control of the brand they had worked over thirty years to create.

Less than 24 hours since the bird became even more famous, the Sesame Street twitter account sent out this tongue-in-cheek message:

Big Bird: My bed time is usually 7:45, but I was really tired yesterday and fell asleep at 7! Did I miss anything last night?

— Sesame Street (@sesamestreet) October 4, 2012

The Twitter account then retweeted  another tweet from Sesame Workshop (the nonprofit has a separate Twitter account, which makes a lot of sense since the show itself is popular enough to have its own audience and can stand in the social media sphere as its own entity). It stated:

We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. We do not comment on campaigns, but we’re happy we can all agree that everyone likes Big Bird!

— Sesame Workshop (@SesameWorkshop) October 4, 2012

Another tweet followed with a link to the Workshop’s longer-than-140-characters statement, which took end users to their blog. As far as nonprofit crisis communications go, this plan was incredibly executed. Sesame Workshop did not shrink from the spotlight, but instead used it as an opportunity to shed light on the work that they do.

From one Workshop to another, I say, well done.

As the Workshop completed our third NEW News Report on Chicago’s online news ecosystem and our research for the 2013 edition of the Getting On Air, Online, and Into Print media guide, we realize that there have probably been more changes in the media landscape recently than ever before. Taking into account the quantity and variety of online news outlets in the city, we must note that even the media itself is evolving.

One recent notable change in Chicago media – Steve Edwards, long-time host at WBEZ will sign off as the host of Afternoon Shift for the last time this Friday, September 21. Slotted to take his place for the next month or two is long-time WGN radio host Rick Kogan.

Who would have ever thought hat a Tribune Company veteran (and Studs Terkel Community Media Award winner) would end up replacing a public radio announcer?

Though this kind of “station-hopping” may have been unheard of some years ago, but given the talent and reputations of these two local personalities, the direction WBEZ is taking with this shift is logical – even admirable.

You can keep abreast of the ever-changing shifts in the media landscape like this with an up-to-date media guide, or a subscription to the online media guide – which updates itself every week!