The Info Needs Blog

To arrive in Miami on the day Fidel Castro resigned is to witness a community confronting its conversation with history.

“What Next?” asked The Miami Herald in its print edition, a full day after Miami, Cuba and the world heard the news.

But in the virtual communities of web sites and blogs, as well as in the physical neighborhoods in and around Miami’s Little Havana district, that question has long been discussed in ways that transcend the printed pages of The Herald and its sister publication, the Spanish language El Neuvo Herald.

The letter from an independent Cuban journalist that was handed to me from [Miami blogger] Val Prieto.

Eric [Newton] has created tech envy. By showing his Small Wonder digital camcorder that connects instantly to the web, he initiated a rush among conference participants to get one.

Everyone is a journalist. Capture random acts of journalism.

Check it out for yourself here:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/07/rca-announces-small-wonder-ez201-mpeg...

If your foundation has a great idea to share, or a link worth promoting, send it to me at dale_peskin@yahoo.com and we'll share it with other attendees at the conference.

We’ll call these INs, shorthand for Information Needs. They are nuggets or Aha! moments from the dialogue. When applicable, we’ll include a link. Also, you’ve got additional data on the flash drive/tool kit in that little white box at your table.

Eric showed The Kindle, the device that is reinventing the book. Want to know more? Read Newsweek tech reporter Steve Levy's stunning review of Amazon's new device. Gotta get one.

Here's a taste of Levy's tory and link to it:

Just tried that flash drive with the fashionable leather strap. Plug it in to your computer. You can download the presentations, URL, and good stuff from this morning's sessions.

Jan Schaffer said that every community has Rob Goodspeed. Goodspeed is the grad student in urban planning who edits the definitive site for growth and development in College Park, Maryland.

Good work with good speed. If only all our citizen experts had names this good. See Goodspeed's work at http://goodspeedupdate.com/

A number of participants have asked about the Deerfield Forum, the community site that stimulated citizenship and civic engagement in Deerfield, New Hampshire. The editor is retired school teacher who has since been elected to the state legislature.

See it here: http://www.forumhome.org/

Knight Foundation reported about New Voices and the Deerfield citizen journalists in its 2006 Annual Report. You can see the multimedia piece and read about it here:

My not-so-shameless plug: Next week, about 300 movers-and-shakers creating new forms and expressions of what we we call "We Media" will meet back in Miami at the University of Miami here in Coral Gables.

You can learn more about the conference of jump on to the blog at http://www.ifocos.org/we-media-miami-2008

The conference, which was supported last year by Knight, is conducted by the media think tank and futures lab iFOCOS. Eric Newton and Gary Kebbel will be there to talk about Knight's News Challenge projects.

One of the simply brilliant ideas I heard while touring today's breakout sessions: a web site from the Gulf Coast Community Foundation that is "owned by the community."

Judy Woodruff stirred our civic imagination with a portrait of an engaged electorate powered by the young, the diverse, and the informed. Our job: "Give them the best that we can."

Video from her remarks is available at uVu, the video portal of WPBT Channel 2.

This is how Andrea Bazan, president of the Triangle Community Foundation, characterized a day of challenges and discovery:

"Interesting seminar so far. Alberto's words framed this well: we have some challenges in the community foundation field to truly be an information innovator. Do we have the capacity, knowledge, funding? But I agree that if we are truly community leaders, this is an area where we need to focus on."

We heard a lot about blogs yesterday and why they can't or shouldn't be fully trusted. Blogs are popularly characterized -- mostly by traditional news organizations -- as unreliable commentary or opinion that has not been fact-checked or subjected to the tradtional processes of standards and practices that news organizations use.

True, but missing the point. Most of the criticism, as well as the fear, stems from misunderstanding how blogs work -- and how they are edited and filtered.

Scott Rourke is talking about the pervasive use of technology and its impact on daily life.

Three big ideas from Scott Rourke:

Connecting
OneCommunity will soon connect more than 1,500 sites in 22 counties, including schools, libraries, higher education institutions, hospitals, governments, and arts & cultural organizations.

Enabling
OneCommunity is providing a shared community platform to cost-effectively enhance and improve access to educational & workforce development programs.

Transforming

From the publishers of Jay Hamilton's book, more than the 5 economic "Ws"

"That market forces drive the news is not news. Whether a story appears in print, on television, or on the Internet depends on who is interested, its value to advertisers, the costs of assembling the details, and competitors' products. But in All the News That's Fit to Sell, economist James Hamilton shows just how this happens. Furthermore, many complaints about journalism--media bias, soft news, and pundits as celebrities--arise from the impact of this economic logic on news judgments.

Eric Klinenberg is talking about the power of stories. Here's a powerful one= he wrote for Mother Jones last year:

It's not the Internet that's killing newspapers. It's the equity-chasing investors and their friends at the FCC who have put outsize profits before a free press.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/03/breaking_the_news.html

Eric Klinenberg suggests that much of the news on the Internet is derivative, that it is published first by a newspaper then is distributed on the web where it spirals through the mediascape.

Uh, not really. The folks at Technorati, which tracks news and information on the Internet, have found that less than 1 percent of news on the net comes from a newspaper, newspaper web site or MSM (that's Mainstream Media) organizations.

Bob Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures-- and how we may reconnect. He warns that our stock of social capital - the very fabric of our connections with each other, has plummeted, impoverishing our lives and communities. And his latest research shows ethnic diversity reduces social solidarity, trust and happiness.

So why is he so optimistic we can all get along?

Eric [Newton] provided a brilliantly cogent and concise look at a complex and often esoteric subject: the changing news ecosystem. He explained the physics and gravitational forces of change in understandable terms. The big ideas bear repeating:

1. Media usage is expanding, not contracting
2. the daily newspaper may not be the best source of information about a community
3. Alternative media are growing
4. In general, people are wary of institutions including traditional intermediaries of news and information

Link: http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2007/narrative_overview_intro.asp

With fundamentals shifting, we sense the news business entering a new phase heading into 2007—a phase of more limited ambition. Rather than try to manage decline, many news organizations have taken the next step of starting to redefine their appeal and their purpose based on diminished capacity. Increasingly outlets are looking for “brand” or “franchise” areas of coverage to build audience around.