Introduction
Jan Schaffer, J-Lab Executive Director
I want to thank our partners in crime here today, the AEJMC Council of Affiliates and the Civic Journalism and Citizen Journalism Interest Group, and I also want to thank the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation whose funding made all of this possible.
One of the most animated discussions in our interest group this year is what the intersection is between civic journalism and citizen journalism, and there’s going to be a full panel discussion on that later today at 3:00. But in my view, civic journalism is about engaging people in public affairs – in civic life in their community. Citizen journalism is about engaging them in the media.
Now sometimes that participation in the media will lead to participation in public life, but not always. Now I don’t have a comfort level with the term “citizen journalism”; I prefer “citizen media.” Why? Because much of what happens in the realm of citizen media is content, it’s not journalism. But content can build connections in community, too, and it can build community.
Here today we’re going to hear from four projects that I think skew more toward journalism. They all have some element of journalism instruction; three of the projects were born right out of journalism schools.
Two of them started up in our first year of New Voices funding, which is funded by the Knight Foundation and seeds citizen media startups with grants of up to $17,000. Our next deadline is Feb. 12, 2007. These two projects are very well launched.
The two other projects received funding in the second year of New Voices, and right now they are in their “concept and vision” phase, if you will.
They made it to the top of 428 applications for funding that we received in the first 15 months of the New Voices program. There’s a lot of passion in this arena among citizens, a lot of sensibility that no one is covering their community, a lot of motivation that says, “We’re going to rectify that problem. We’re going to try to do it ourselves.”
Twenty-five percent of our applications this year came from journalism schools. The only bigger category was something I would call youth development initiatives. We tended to fund the J-School proposals more than the youth development proposals simply because we felt there was more of a promise of sustainability.
From what I see this is a very important onramp for innovation in journalism education. It’s a rich laboratory for new product development, it’s a very rich stew for research in the intersection of civic engagement, journalism and democracy. So let’s hear what our panelists have to say today.
We’ve got Jeremy Iggers, who is a food columnist at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He was very active in civic journalism early in the ’90s, and he’s also a journalism ethicist. He’s the author of the book “Good News, Bad News,” and launched a venture called the Twin Cities Daily Planet that he will tell you about.
Lew Friedland sort of combined sociology with journalism. He is one of the nation’s foremost experts on social networks and civic mapping as well as civic journalism, and he has written many books, including one on civic innovations in America.
Keith Graham comes from the San Jose Mercury News and is now at the University of Montana, where he brings more of a visual and photography realm to his thinking.
And David Poulson is now at Michigan State University. He comes from the Booth Newspapers and he is now very involved in the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism and is proposing to engage students and citizens in a Wiki news project.
We’re going to start with Jeremy first. Thank you.
