20 June 2009 with 3 comments
I now live in the library ghetto. This means that, because of where I live within the City of Tualatin, I can reserve or check out books only from the Tualatin Public Library, and not any of the 13 other libraries that are a part of Washington County Cooperative Library Services. Thankfully, my local newspaper is all over it. Oh wait, they only publish once a week on the same day that the letter came out.
Later: I’ve started generating a list of questions I think it would be useful to have answered. Weigh in with your own by using the tip form.
Tagged: Clackamas County, library ghetto, public policy, Tualatin, Tualatin Public Library, usage fees, Washington County Cooperative Library Services
14 June 2009 with no comments
Both, however, are highly complementary projects to increase media fluency that will be able to build off each other in many ways.
On Friday afternoon, I had the chance to connect with Susan Mernit of Many Hats, Inc. for the very first time and Cornelius Swart of the Portland Sentinel and Portland Media Lab. I’ve been invited to work with Cornelius on the Portland Media Lab; our very first meeting is tomorrow, Monday the 15th, and I thought it would be worthwhile to talk with Susan about what they’ve learned in the several months the Public Media Collaborative has been developing in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The goal of the Public Media Collaborative is to educate local communities, non-profits, and grassroots movements on how to use a lot of the social media and publishing tools that are now available to empower people and build democracy. In Susan’s opinion, this is a bit different than the mission of the Portland Media Lab, but both Cornelius and I agree that tools training is at least a half of what we’d like the media incubator to be.
Our conversation with Susan about both projects is the first thirty minutes or so of the audio. We cover the origins of the Public Media Collaborative, what type of training it has accomplished thus far, and Susan’s community news startup of the very new future, Oakland Local. After she leaves, Cornelius and I talk a bit about ideas for the Portland Media Lab and what the future of journalism might hold in general.
As a note, I started editing the first fifteen minutes of audio before I realised how much I want to be a production engineer. If you find any major kerfuffles, let me know and I’ll update the production value.
Standard Podcast [62:38m]:
Play Now |
Play in Popup |
Download (57)
Tagged: community engagement, Cornelius Swart, interviews, journalism, Oakland Local, podcasts, Portland Media Lab, Public Media Collaborative, Susan Mernit
12 June 2009 with 23 comments
David Cohn pegs a newsroom as a cafe where people can hang out and, through food and drink purchase, provide an alternate source of revenue for reporting. Twenty percent of every coffee you bought might go to reporting in your local community, or something like that. For Steve Outing, the newsroom as a cafe is a place for your people to connect so that you can have greater access to your community. Both of these are pieces of a bigger picture that’s been stewing in me for a couple of months; dessert and beer at the Pied Cow on Belmont last night provided a photograph to illustrate my idea.
It’s not just about using a different industry to add to reporting revenue, but rather repositioning the news organization as the information hub for the community. The newsroom as a cafe should be an 18th century salon, or space for the leading discussions of the day to take place, ferment, and spawn action.
Mark this idea as incomplete until I can start working on it. At the moment, I think it would include:
Read more →
Tagged: business models, community engagement, ideas, journalism, newspapers, newsroom as a cafe
8 June 2009 with 2 comments
Every so often, I have one of those runs where I listen to a super inspirational podcast and come back with more ideas than I have the time to write them down. Tonight was one of those nights.
Dave Winer and Jay Rosen in the 12th edition of Rebooting the News explore a concept Dave refers to as a “coral reef” for local information. The importance of a coral reef in the sea is that it is a habitat for many other species to prosper. His argument for starting In Berkeley, what he thinks is the first local blog for Berkley, is that it might provide a coral reef for a lot of tremendous local data to grow from. Given the right formats for information storage, it can become a repository for community knowledge that everyone within the community can both contribute to and benefit from. What got me thinking, though, was what these formats might be.
Read more →
Tagged: CoPress, Dave Winer, Edit Flow Project, hyperlocal, In Berkeley, Jay Rosen, journalism, NY Times, podcasts, Rebooting the News
4 June 2009 with 6 comments
The future of journalism is a bright one. It’s time to take the incredible opportunity that the internet presents for improving the entire process of news and capitalize on it. When the internet is the default platform of choice, however, the barrier to invent and reinvent drops to the floor. This is why newspaper companies should’ve applied more resources to innovating ten years ago and will need to work double-time now to remain relevant. Many won’t make it. It strikes me as ironic that, in an age where many people working online complain about “filter failure”, or having access to too much information, we can have a parallel conversation about the supposed “death of journalism.” While many newspaper companies are in various stages of financial viability, I’d like to offer four required mindsets for creating the future of journalism.
Note: this memo is open in the sense than anyone can read it, but also in the sense that you damn well better steal these ideas.
Value experimentation with new business models
As Ryan Sholin says, the business model is the elephant in the room. Let’s take this one step further: the value proposition is the elephant in the room. A basic rule of economics is that if you create something of value, you can monetize it. To paraphrase Douglas Rushkoff, money doesn’t make good journalism, good journalism makes money. Let’s take a look at the past. In the era of the print product, it was acceptable for a reporter to rewrite an article off the wire because their audience generally had access to that content in one place: the paper. In the era of an increasingly ubiquitous internet, these duplication efforts can actually diminish a news brand. Link to it instead of rewriting it. Add value first.
Read more →
Tagged: business models, ideas, innovation, journalism, memos, newspapers, open source
4 June 2009 with no comments
After a few weeks and a couple hundred dollars, I’ve finally transferred all of my domains to Namecheap and web projects to Web Faction. Previously, I was with 1&1 but intermittently ran into frustrations, including a limitation on the length of a CNAME and not being able to add SPF records, that pushed me to switch. I’m already having a lot of fun; Web Faction is wickedly quick (relatively, I suppose) and has one click installers for a number of content management systems and frameworks. This means that I’ll get to hack together a Django-powered blog in the near future without having to figure out how to configure Django on a server (although I suppose that would be the logical next step). Before a full transition to Django, because it’s going to take a lot of building to get to my desired feature set, I’m looking forward to experimenting with and integrating Laconi.ca and MediaWiki into my personal web presence.
If you’re thinking about moving to Web Faction and are feeling generous, add “?affiliate=dbachhuber” to the end of the signup URL. It’s guaranteed to help a starving innovator out.
Tagged: 1&1, Namecheap, updates, Web Faction, web hosting
