Nearly a year after launching, the team behind the NewsWorks community-driven online news effort from WHYY, the Philadelphia public media organization, shared its lessons. It was the third event from a revived local chapter of the Online News Association. After an hour of beer donated by Boxcar Brewing, sandwiches from the Trolleycar Diner and pretzels [...]

Do news organizations have responsibility for their outcome? That became the final and, I think, as yet unanswered close to a discussion I led during the final session of the third national BarCamp NewsInnovation, held Saturday April 30 at Temple University and rounding out the inaugural Philly Tech Week. [See past BCNI write ups here.] [...]

The annual national Online News Association conference, to be held this fall in Boston, has launched its 2011 panel picker, in which those interested can vote to support their favorites of a couple hundred suggested sessions. I am somewhat involved in three. To vote, users just need to sign up with an email. If you’re [...]

A surprisingly fairly comprehensive take from Net News Check on the Philadelphia media ecosystem, including the William Penn Foundation investment, the WHYY Newsworks initiative, Philly.com and others, like Technically Philly: In addition, journalists set free as the city’s newspapers spiraled into bankruptcy have founded independent Web sites, said Chris Satullo, executive director of news and [...]

The William Penn Foundation board of directors has pledged a three-year $2.4 million grant to Temple University to incubate “a new organization designed to strengthen our region’s capacity for professionally-produced public interest journalism,” as described by strategic consultant Michael Greenle. “This will fund journalism, support other outlets and find and cover gaps in coverage,” said [...]

A lot of legacies over at WHYY are going to be forged with whatever comes out of Newsworks, the online news re-branding and redevelopment initiative from Philadelphia’s NPR affiliate that I first wrote about back in April. In short, NewsWorks, which had its official launch last Monday, Nov. 15, is WHYY’s new online news brand, [...]

Eighteen months ago, I was searching for the best metro columnist in Philadelphia. I felt the Inquirer’s Dan Rubin was the nearest in a legacy of citywide voice boxes, telling the broadest and widest ranging stories. Perhaps that’s true. But it’s been nagging me that outside of some media-focused friends — and even then — [...]

Updated 4/25/10 @ 5:41 p.m. with William Penn Foundation clarification Fewer than four months after its Philadelphia media elite round table to discuss the subject, the William Penn Foundation has released a more detailed outline of its intentions of investing and developing local online journalism in the region. The report, which was released Wednesday, comes [...]

Updated 4/13/10 @ 8:50 a.m.: Regionally-specific hyperlocal is just part of the broader system WHYY, the public media station for the Delaware Valley region, is hoping a $1.2 million hyperlocal news initiative for the northwest region of Philadelphia will be the first successful bold Web-first journalism effort from a legacy media player. Updated: That northwest [...]

A tidy and frail little old man asked me to direct him to the coat rack. To walk him around the corner from the long and elegant main corridor of the nearly 150-year-old Union League of Philadelphia was my first deed. If nothing else, it made for interesting conversation when I made it to the [...]