2012 Hillman Prize Nominations

December 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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From the Sidney Hillman Foundation website – 

The Sidney Hillman Foundation is now accepting nominations and submissions for the 2012 Hillman Prizes that honor investigative journalism and commentary in service of the common good. The 2012 prizes will be given for work produced, published, broadcast, or exhibited in 2011.

This year’s categories are as follows:

1. Book (bound volumes and ebooks)

2. Newspaper Journalism (story or series/in print or online) 


3. Magazine Journalism (story or series/in print or online) 


4. Broadcast Journalism (story or series/at least 40 minutes in total length) Open to television, web TV, radio, podcast, and documentary film.

5. Web Journalism (publication/story or series/multimedia media project) Open to blogs, computer-assisted reporting, new investigative tools, mapping, crowd sourcing, and other multimedia media projects. Entries should feature a substantial text component.

6. Photojournalism (for a series of still photos, no single images) Entries in this category must include still photos, either alone, or as part of a multimedia package. For example, the winning entry of the 2011 Hillman Prize for Photojournalism featured still photos and web video.

7. Opinion Journalism (any medium) Includes all types of advocacy, opinion, and analysis, normally short-form and/or frequent, regardless of medium. Open to newspaper and magazine columnists, TV and radio presenters, podcasters, blogs, and bloggers.

If you are unsure about which category your work fits into, just go ahead and submit, and the foundation will determine the best category for it.

Winners will be announced in April 2012. Each winner is awarded travel to New York City to receive a $5,000 prize and a certificate designed by New Yorker cartoonist, Edward Sorel, at our awards ceremony and cocktail reception to be held Tuesday May 1, 2012.

Find out more information on the Hillman Foundation website.

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Teaching Journalism to Specialists, Instead of the Other Way Around

December 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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By Robert Steiner on MediaShift, Dec. 15, 2011 – 

“After 25 years in and around journalism, my understanding of media changed with one table in the “2009 State of the News Media Report” by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. Time Magazine and Newsweek each saw ad pages drop 19 percent in 2008, it said, while Motortrend gained 24 percent and Car and Driver increased 4 percent. If two auto magazines could grow their business in the very year that Chrysler and GM were headed towards bankruptcy, then specialized coverage had to be the most exciting place for a career in journalism.”

Read the full post on MediaShift

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Classroom Guide to The First Amendment in a Digital Age

December 16, 2011 By 1 Comment
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Photo Credit: Valley Library

Social Media, the Classroom and the First Amendment, written by Melissa Wantz, and published by the First Amendment Center and Knight Foundation, takes a fresh look at how America’s schools can enhance learning through the use of emerging and interactive media.

This guide is designed to give teachers the tools and ideas they need to engage students using social media and existing curricula. The guide was inspired by the recent Knight Foundation study “Future of the First Amendment 2011” written by Dr. Kenneth Dautrich. The Knight study – based on a survey of 12,090 high school students and 900 high school teachers — indicates that students who are most active in social media also have the best sense of First Amendment principles. That suggests that Twitter, Facebook and other social media can play an important supplemental role in the classroom.

We are indebted to Knight Foundation for its support and the funding of this teachers guide. Knight Foundation, along with the First Amendment Center, Newseum, American Society of News Editors and McCormick Foundation are also the core founders of 1 for All, an unprecedented national campaign on behalf of the First Amendment (http://1forAll.us).

1 for All is the collaborative effort of educators, artists, journalists, lawyers, librarians and many more who believe that the American public would benefit from a greater understanding of the First Amendment and the need to protect all voices, views and faiths.

Read the full post and get the PDF

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Tweet About First Amendment Win $5K Scholarship

December 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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By Meranda Watling on 10,000 Words, Dec. 14 – 

“Student journalists should know by now, you likely won’t start out earning an enormous salary. And that money will seem even scarcer if you’ve got student loans to pay back. So Thursday is your chance to both support the First Amendment — that’s the one with freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which I really hope you already knew — and to potentially earn a $5,000 scholarship. It’s as easy as exercising your right to tweet — by tweeting about why you love that right (or any of the others in that near sacred amendment). For those who’ve gone through other scholarship competitions, that’s a scholarship essay of 140 characters instead of 1,400 words or so. And with 22 available awards, your odds may be better than many national winner-take-all competitions.”

Read the full post on 10,000 Words for more information about the scholarship

 

 

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Newspaper Digital Audience is Younger, Wealthier, Better Educated

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Creative Commons: Jon S

Press Release by Pulse Research, Dec. 13, 2011 – 

“The assumption has been that the newspaper’s digital audience is younger, more affluent and better educated than print. Now, a recent Pulse Research national survey shows just how distinct and compelling newspaper’s digital audience is.

Demographics: The average age of a digital audience member is 44, seven years younger than the average age of 51 for a print household. In the 30 and under segment, there are 60% more digital households than print. The average household income of a digital household is $65,480, which is 21% higher than a print average household income of $53,776. Even more significant, 82% more digital households earn over $100,000 per year. Digital households are better educated; 22% more digital households have a college or post degree education. In addition, 50% more digital households have children at home; 48% compared to 32% of print households having children at home.

Purchasing plans: In the key real estate and automotive categories, the digital household has much higher planned purchases over the next 12 months. Personal home: 46% more digital households plan to purchase a personal residence in the next 12 months; 7.6% compared to 5.2% of print households.

Digital household purchasing plans for new cars in the next 12 months is 24% higher than print households; 8.4% to 6.8%. The same upward purchasing trends hold true for furniture stores. The planned purchasing by a digital household at a furniture store in the next 12 months is 51% higher than a print household; 24.4% compared to 16.2%.

The digital audience is defined as a household that has visited the local newspaper website in the last 30 days and owns a smart phone.”

Read the full press release on Editor & Publisher or visit the Pulse Research page

 

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Nieman Journalism Lab: Taking stock of the state of web journalism

December 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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By  on Nieman Journalism Labs, Dec. 9, 2011 – 

“It’s stocktaking time — five years since the Big March to the digital journalism future stepped off in 2006, strutting toward what was widely trumpeted as inevitable triumph. Auspicious events amplified the cheering:

  • The City University of New York launched its Graduate School of Journalism with an innovative curriculum and hired the outspoken citizen-journalism advocate Jeff Jarvis to direct a new interactive media program and teach entrepreneurship.
  • Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society widened its interest in the growing edges of news by adding to its roster of fellows Dan Gillmor, author of the seminal 2004 participatory journalism book We the Media, and the protoblogger Doc Searls.
  • In his widely followed PressThink blog, New York University journalism Prof. Jay Rosen headlined an item The People Formerly Known as the Audience; it immediately became a defining meme for journalism on the web, which empowers everyone to participate.
  • The Knight Foundation, the premier funder of journalism projects, kicked off its $5-million-a-year News Challenge grants program.

So, five years later, how’s the Big March working out for journalism — and for the democracy that’s so dependent on it?

Read the full post and Stite’s perspectives on the Nieman Journalism Lab website

 

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KDMC report: New practices shape transformative news leadership in the digital age

December 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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By Michele McLellan, posted on the Knight Digital Media Center website Dec. 5, 2011 – 

“Since 2007, Knight-McCormick leadership programs at KDMC have given me a front row seat at the transformation of news leadership to meet the demands of the digital age. The more than 100 news leaders who have participated in the programs faced a dizzying array of choices about how to best shape a digital strategy, how to navigate tricky organizational sandpits as they implement it, and how to adjust and reset their tactics each time a new innovation or a new cutback hits.

In the face of these challenges, news leaders bring to the task remarkable energy, creativity and determination, born of their passion for news. In the process, the more effective ones have developed new skills and practices – some of them hard skills like understanding digital tools and metrics; others soft skills like knowing when to step up and when to pull back.

Based on dozens of conversations and interviews, the report, ”New practices shape transformative news leadership in the digital age” highlights key practices:

1. Focus the mission - “The toughest choices are about resources today, and you have to pick the things that go to your core mission. Part of the answer is as much what you don’t do as what you do.” – Sherry Chisenhall, The Wichita Eagle

2. Adapt the structure - “You have to first think about your goals: What are you trying to achieve? Then you start talking about roles, then procedure and processes.” – Julia D. Wallace, Cox Media Group Ohio

3. Overcommunicate - “Your message begins to resonate more clearly when you have training. You begin to get feedback from staff that they’re confused, so you work to explain it and the staff ultimately gets it.” – Carlos Sanchez, formerly Waco Tribune-Herald

4. Get comfortable with not having all the answers - “To be at the front of a room and not have an answer is difficult. ‘I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out together’ is an acceptable answer. It took me awhile to figure that out.” – Jon Cooper, Digital First Media and Journal Register Co.

5. Be a catalyst - “I had to figure out a way to get everyone to think about it … This stuff isn’t just something nerdy people do in some corner.” – Melanie Sill, formerly The Sacramento Bee

6. Get out of the way - “You have to have leaders who understand that they don’t understand the new world and be willing to hire people who are steeped in the new world, and they need to then trust them to lead.” – Michael Skoler, Public Radio International

7. Use the tools - “Using an iPad, using an iPhone, using apps, location-based tools, mapping, etc., if you’re not using these things, you can’t understand the readers’ expectations.” – Carolyn Washburn, The Cincinnati Enquirer

8. Own the numbers - “We did extensive audience research where we tried to really drill down on our audience. Understanding what their interests are is important.” – John Yemma, Christian Science Monitor

9. Make time for the future - “Now it’s much more about staying on task for this five-year plan in order to enable the organization to continue producing superior content and also earn revenue around those efforts.” – Nicole Hollway, St. Louis Beacon

Read the full post on the Knight Digital Media Center website

 

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The Ongoing Digital Divide

December 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Photo Credit: Valley Library

Susan Crawford recently wrote in the New York Times about the ongoing and increasing digital divide in America. She says that Internet access for Americans will be a major factor in our economic competitiveness in the future.

She says,

“Increasingly, we are a country in which only the urban and suburban well-off have truly high-speed Internet access, while the rest — the poor and the working class — either cannot afford access or use restricted wireless access as their only connection to the Internet. As our jobs, entertainment, politics and even health care move online, millions are at risk of being left behind.”

Read the full article on the New York Times website.

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Mobile traffic to newspaper websites increases 65 percent in past year

December 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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The Newspaper Association of America posted a press release yesterday about the increase in mobile traffic to newspaper websites. The NAA had this to say in their release:

“Newspaper publishers increased page views to their mobile content by 65 percent on average in September compared to the same month one year ago, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Many newspapers reported triple-digit page view increases to their mobile sites and apps, demonstrating that newspaper content remains a leading choice for consumers across their multiplatform offerings.

“NAA’s analysis is based on traffic figures for more than 20 newspaper media companies – large and small, public and private – that supplied year-over-year internal measurements of mobile page view traffic and unique visitors from September 2010 and September 2011. Unique visitor count increases ranged as high as 200 percent, with an average increase of about 70 percent for the publishers reporting.

You can read the full press release on the NAA website here

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