By John Bebow - October 24, 2007
Traditional newspaper newsrooms continue to shrivel. In Michigan this year, the Booth papers closed their Lansing bureau, Gannett papers in cities ranging from Battle Creek to Detroit are cutting staffs with buyouts and, in some cases, layoffs. And Detroit News Business Editor Mark Truby, widely respected as one of the very best journalists in the state, left for a corporate job at Ford and, in the process, became the latest in a long line of veteran journalists (including your newsletter author) to leave newsrooms for other opportunities.
In the face of these declines in traditional media, new kinds of journalism -- funded by philanthropy -- are cropping up all over the place. Michigan is ripe with great stories waiting to be told and meaty issues deverving of in-depth coverage. Journalism funded by philanthropy is a great hope for the future of public discourse in Michigan
Consider these recent examples from Michigan and elsewhere...
MINNPOST.COM: A new daily online newspaper in Minnesota funded by individual philanthropists and foundations will soon offer "news stories of interest to Minnesotans, an analysis of a national or global story, numerous informal posts by experienced reporters, a commentary by someone in the community, and a number of other features."
PRO PUBLICA: An indpendent, non-profit newsroom founded this fall to produce independent investigative journalism in the public interset. It's funded by foundations.
CIRCLE OF BLUE: A Traverse City-based band of journalists probing the depths of the world's fresh water crisis with support from
THE CENTER FOR CITIZEN MEDIA: A group of inventive formerly ink-stained newspaper journalists look for new ways of committing journalism online.
MICHIGAN LAND USE INSTITUTE: Some of the best environmental and land use journalism anywhere comes out of MLUI's online newsroom in Traverse City. Funding comes from foundations.
3 Comments
Edit: "...in the public interest."
Sincerely, a copy editor.
It is noteworthy that the majority of this year's national Knight-Batten Awards for innovative journalism went to publications associated with non-profits. That includes such experiments as GreatLakesWiki.org here in Michigan, The Council on Foreign Relations' crisis guides at CFR.org and TechPresident.com. It is a trend noted with some surprise and perhaps consternation by Gannett Newspaper Division President Sue Clark-Johnson, who gave the Knight-Batten Symposium keynote address.
Leaders in making government transparent are not traditional media companies but operations that include OpenCongress.org, FollowTheMoney.org and MAPLight.org. These are all supported by non-profit foundations. And far ahead of MinnPost.com in leveraging philanthropy into good journlaism is VoiceOfSanDiego.org.
That's not to say profitable media outlets can't innovate when pushed against the wall. But it looks like experiments like these are not only leading the way, but may actually become the tools that mainstream media uses to help survive.
Gaetano Porcasi, a painter Antimafia said painter, a cultured "singers" with a paradox, an old soul naife with a taste consapevle from pop art, but also with a sense of èngagè that is certainly an heir to Guttuso. ' an original painter and great technique that copies the miracle of synthesizing realism with the informal economy.www.gaetanoporcasi.it
Post a Comment