Category: Future of News

In so many details. Starting with the red space suit, to the white towel rings in the bathroom and the solo meals with the synthetic vegetables. Just call me Popeye!

Ah but the monolith? The future of media and where I fit in!

This is a great slideshow from Lisa Williams, founder of Placeblogger.

The Web will change everything about journalism and the bottom line will be more effective journalism, in sublime ways that we cannot see now. As Williams says, now “[Perpetrators of waste and corruption] will deny everything until you go away, but with the internet you can do better. ”

That’s because with the Web and tools that are being developed now, the story never goes away. It sticks. It grows. And it builds. This iterative quality and the technology that is being developed now can ‘effectively” make “the story” happen.

For me, it is time to read Susan Sontag’s “On Photography” again.

Hooray! This is just one of an excellent series of presentations that community foundation execs are being treated to at hashtag #infoneeds.

I’ve been listening to C-Span comments and following the online debate in the health care bill on this historic night. I’ve extracted some persuasive facts here from John F. Wasik’s book, The Audacity of Help. To learn more, Read Wasik’s columns for Bloomberg. I saw Wasik speak on health care reform last fall.

Also for first rate facts and context on the health care bill, check out the Watch it Live on the Health Care Summit by the Sunlight Foundation.

In early 2009, health expenditures consumed about 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.
Medical insurance claims 20% of media family income [source: New America Foundation.]

The majority of large employers (those with more than 200 employees) offered health care, slightly less than half of the smallest businesses did.

Employees paid an average $3,354 out of their own pockets for medical expenses in 2008.

[In 2008, Americans] were spending $650 billion more more on medical bills than countries with comparable wealth. That’s twice as much as we spent on food in 2006, and more than China’s citizens consumed altogether. [source: McKinsey Global Institute.]

The current patchwork system is unsustainable. Unless the growing bite of health costs is addressed by 2017, health care spending will double from 2007 levels, consuming one out of every five dollars produced in the United States. [Government Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services.]

from The Audacity of Help by John F. Wasik

From the Financial Times:
“Gratton’s varied cv has inspired her distinctive approach. She believes that “boundary spanning”, as she calls it, is vital. Part-academic, part-consultant, part-businesswoman – she draws on her different experiences and networks to make connections that are not visible to everyone.”

More and more of us will have work histories that enable boundary spanning. Individuals who have had one kind of job for decades might not understand the value of boundary spanners and be suspicious about their motives and question their ability to contribute. But, in my opinion, those holding this narrow POV will disappear long before the boundary spanners do.

FT.com / Columnists / Lunch with the FT – Lunch with the FT: Lynda Gratton.

I received this note from colleague and friend Tom Stites, who has been envisioning creating the Banyan Project for some years now as an answer to good community-relevant journalism. He has been nominated as a Community Choice finalist for the 2010 We Media Game Changer Awards.

The winner presents a keynote talk at the We Media Miami conference, March 9-11 in Miami. All of the Community Choice finalists will be honored there, along with award winners selected by the We Media team.

I like Tom’s vision of a mission-based journalism collective to truly serve our Democracy and I intend to vote for him. I hope you will take a look at The Banyan Project and be moved to vote for him, too.

To vote, head on over to We Media.

Dear Friends — I’m always hesitant to ask big favors, but I’ve received news in which so much is at stake that I’m chucking my hesitancy and casting a shameless request far and wide.

First a bit of background: As you may know, I had a long career in major newspapers and ended my formal career as the editor and publisher of a magazine. Since my 2007 retirement I’ve devoted my energy to helping ensure that, despite the crumbling of legacy media, the quality journalism so crucial to democracy can thrive in the digital future.

What started as a hand-wringing conversation among concerned senior journalists has become a serious venture — I’ve just sent the Knight Foundation an expanded version that it requested of our $1.9 million grant request for launching community-level Web journalism pilot sites in three cities. I am honored to be the president of this venture, which has become known as the Banyan Project.

Now the news that inspired this email: Because of my Banyan role I’ve been selected as a candidate for an Ashoka Game Changer Award. It will be presented in March at the WeMedia conference in Miami; the winner will get to present the conference’s keynote address to a hall full of influential journalism people and — most important — foundation executives including the top people from the Knight Foundation. So winning the award would give our not-for-profit startup a huge boost in its search for funding.

The winner will be determined by on-line ballot, so let me start by asking for your vote (it only takes two clicks, see below). That’s just a request. Now, here comes the shameless request:

To win, I not only need to activate every friend I can to cast a vote but also to do everything I can to activate my friends’ friends to vote for me as well. If you can spare some energy to round up more votes from your own networks it could make a huge difference. Families, friends, coworkers — whoever might be a prospect! Please note that this is urgent: Voting ends tomorrow night.

Why should people vote for me, other than because you’d be doing the asking? Simple: At a time when newspapers are dying, the Banyan Project will exemplify democracy:

Banyan’s journalism will be tailored to meet the distinctive needs of the huge public of less-than-affluent Americans, the everyday citizens so ill-served by mainstream news media. It will thus squarely meet a significant but rarely addressed issue: the economic injustice inherent in today’s top-down journalism, which aims almost entirely to serve affluent people with discretionary income to spend in the stories of their upscale advertisers. Overcoming this is a major part of what drives the Banyan Project.

Voting takes only a few seconds: Go to http://wemedia.com/awards/2010-community-choice-finalists/ and click the button next to my name in the ballot on the right side of the page. If possible, as soon as you’ve voted, please forward this to your network. If you or do Facebook or Twitter, or blog, please post something.

Thanks for anything you can do to help Banyan —

Tom

P.S. If you want to know more about the Banyan Project, just click on banyanproject.com.

T

Tom Stites
tom@tomstites.com
http://banyanproject.com
http://tomstites.com