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Thom Clark, Workshop president, talks with journalist Ken Davis on his show “Chicago Newsroom” to discuss  the Workshop’s NEW News 2010 Report.

Listen to his commentary about recent Chicago Tribune setbacks on an October 7 edition of “Chicago Tonight”.

Online news providers from Chicago and around the country converged in Chicago last week to discuss the ever-evolving trade of providing news and information via the web. The main event was Friday’s “Block by Block: Community News Summit 2010” hosted by online news experts Michele McLellan, Reynolds fellow, and Jay Rosen, pressthink.org. The Chicago Community Trust kicked off the two-day affair with a half-day conference on Thursday, “Advancing Chicago’s News Ecosystem.”

The Community Media Workshop presented two reports at Thursday’s conference–our NEW News 2010 report that we released in August, and our new report “Realizing Potential: What Chicago’s Online Innovators Need.” (Michael Miner blogged about the reports last week as well.) “Realizing Potential” is a look at what online news producers need to be sustainable in the long term. We spent most of August and September conducting focus groups and surveying Chicago’s online news providers about what type of assistance funders could offer to help them succeed. It’s obvious that cold hard cash is what most people need right now as they try to find economic models that work, but it’s also clear that foundations can only give so many general operating grants before they’re looking for other ways to help online news providers thrive.

Read More on the NP Communicator Blog

From mainstream to multimedia, Ray Hanania works “both sides of the wall”

Growing up on the Southside of Chicago prepared journalist Ray Hanania to wear many labels. His schoolyard detractors wouldn’t take “I’m American” for an answer. So, Hanania sought out his father’s advice.

“Well, geesh, you know, don’t tell them your Palestinian. Tell ‘em you’re Syrian or Lebanese,” said his father. Imagine a time when it was okay to be Syrian or Lebanese, says Hanania.

Hanania returned to school, fearful of being beat up by taunting classmates, and offered the bullies this answer:

“Well, my dad said I’m cereal. But I think my mother is lesbian. I don’t know.”

Closing out this year’s Making Media Connections 2010, Hanania admitted he’s technically not a journalist, but he is “the face of the future.” As an award-winning freelance journalist who writes for 18 blogs, pens a column for several Arab news outlets, hosts a radio show, does comedy, and serves as the spokesperson for Cicero, Hanania said he has no desire to go back to working in mainstream media. Read the rest of this entry »

Who are the people in your neighborhood? Well, if you’re on the North side of Chicago chances are Lorraine Swanson knows the what, when, where, why and how about them.

Swanson is editor and publisher of the Lake Effect News, an online community news publication, which recently celebrated its first anniversary.  Swanson says the current media shifts are offering new opportunities for gaining new audiences.
Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever considered the arsenal of sources you have in your rolodex when you pitch? Monifa Thomas, health reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times says offering a good menu of sources that can illustrate your story is what she seeks.

“You don’t want to interview a different name but the same story told over and over again,” says Thomas. “You want a range of experiences and voices for a story.”

The best way to reach Thomas is via e-mail. She says emails should be succinct with the main points in your subject line and initial parts of your email. Emails should also give her a sense of what you are offering- a personal antidote, a contact and/or data. “It helps to know so I can streamline for the story. At least give me a sense of whom I need to call and where I need to go,” she says. Read the rest of this entry »

Partnerships, project-based reporting and community service are among the competitive advantages public-radio news operations offer at the local level, news and program directors noted in our recent webinar on Changing Public Radio.

The combination of local news staff and D.C.-based National Public Radio foreign correspondents (who now outnumber those of CNN) makes for among the best news staff in the country. But that combination has challenges of its own, such as figuring out how the national and local organizations can work together.

“NPR gives us such a journalistic firepower that it is hard to match,” said Jerome Vaughn, news director of Detroit Public Radio. “Before, our competitors were basically the other stations here in Detroit. But with the Web, now we’ve got to think of NPR in some ways as a partial competitor for funding. There’s been a lot of discussion about that and hopefully that’ll come to some completely beneficial conclusion.”

Tamar Charney of Michigan Public Radio pointed out that national and local news staffs are finding new ways to work together: “NPR has been changing its attitude a little bit. It used to be they did their own thing in Washington and we did our own thing but with new management in the past year they have a new attitude.… Just yesterday with the asian carp summit we were going to send somebody in but with the weather we couldn’t possibly get there. NPR actually sent somebody to the White House to make sure we got the tape.”

Pitching public radio makes good sense because of the emphasis on local news and connections to the community at public radio, said Vaughn, Charney, and the other two participants, Steve Edwards of Chicago Public Radio and Bill Wheelhouse of WUIS in Springfield, Ill. (Thom Clark of the Workshop moderated). Read the rest of this entry »

The panelists for “How Weblogs are Transforming the Media Landscape,” at the Community Media Workshop’s Making Media Connections conference: (left to right) Andrew Huff (Gaper’s Block), Barbara Iverson (moderator, Columbia College Chicago) and Eric Zorn (Chicago Tribune). (Photo by Jason Pettus on Flickr.com)

The web has made it easier for us to get our stories out, but what about our events? Most journalists will admit that covering a nonprofit event such as a fundraiser won’t make the headlines unless you have some untouchable “newsworthy” guest or if you are savvy enough to bridge the event to current breaking news features.

But what most people don’t know is that news sites often have “community calendars” where users can submit their own events or tips to be published on their site and in some cases featured in the day’s news broadcast or news publication. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s many ways to contact news outlets about news they can use. One way is through news outlets’ websites. Submit press releases and media alerts to Chicago and other Midwest news outlets using the links below. A word of advice: Be selective when choosing news outlets to send your news too. Consider the geographic area the outlets cover and the readership/viewers they serve. Consider publications’ frequency. Will your news be timely by the time it might be published?

Chicago-area Outlets

• ABC Television
WLS-TV (ABC7-Chicago) does not accept press releases via email. All documents should be faxed to (312) 899-8019. For a directory of links for ABC New’s various national programs click here.

• American Bar Association Journal
All press releases should be emailed to releases@abanet.org.

• CBS Television
WBBM-FM (CBS2-Chicago) accepts press releases on its Web site. This page should be used to contact all national programs. Read the rest of this entry »