Funded by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation
Hosted by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism

Opening Remarks
Jan Schaffer, J-Lab Executive Director

Welcome. As many of you know, J-Lab is a new center at the University of Maryland s College of Journalism. It is a spin-off of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism. Its mission is to explore what the potential is for new technologies to help engage people in public issues.

We tend to think in terms of news experiences  rather than news stories. To help ferret out what those innovations might be, the Knight Foundation has funded us to launch a new Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism in honor of Jim Batten, a former Knight Ridder CEO who was a pioneer in connecting with communities. I want to thank the Knight Foundation.

I also want to especially thank the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, which supported this luncheon through a grant to J-Lab.

Today, we have a wonderfully innovative panel of journalists and, I tell you, I did not know this when I invited them, but they were all finalists or semifinalists for this year s Batten Awards. The winners will be announced Sept. 15 at an interactive journalism symposium at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Eric Pryne is a long time reporter for the Seattle Times. I first knew him when he spearheaded The Front Porch Forum, which is a very long running civic journalism initiative there. He really has devoted his career to reporting on public policy issues, things like growth and transportation. For three years he was the watch bureau chief for The Times, he has won numerous regional and national journalism awards. He was recently a Stanford Journalism fellow. He will be talking to you about a project to deal with the overwhelming gridlock in the Seattle area right now. It s called You Build It. 

After that Mike Skoler will take the stand to talk to you about a whole new initiative that Minnesota Public Radio is starting to do. Mike has had a very interesting career. He left the French wine business to join journalism after reading a book called How to be a freelance writer.  And he s now managing director of Minnesota Public Radio. His charge is to develop a whole new model of news  hopefully they can take it NPR wide  one that consistently taps the smarts of the public to inform the journalism. He is formerly a science writer, a foreign correspondent for NPR, and a Nieman fellow. He ll be talking to you about a Budget Balancer exercise that was a Batten Awards finalist and he ll also discuss what MPR is trying to do overall in its interactive initiative.

Angela Clark tell you about what she thinks is the most sophisticated project MSNBC.com has done to date, called The Big Picture.  She s been, and I love her title, journalist/technologist for 16 years, she s the director of interactive content for MSNBC.com. She previously worked with WashPost/Newsweek Interactive in Rosslyn, VA. Before that she was a copy editor, news editor and wire editor. She s charged with leading the interactive producer team at MSNBC.
I want to be sure to leave time for questions at the end so I d really like to get moving quickly and start with Eric. Thank you.

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