We were back. Audience was great, I enjoyed my lunchtime keynote interview with Wired editor Steven Levy.
Below are a few notes from the daylong unconference on the future of news for my own memory.
Continue reading A few lessons from the 15th annual Klein News Innovation Camp(This is an expansion of this thread)
When is a news organization being fair to a range of good-faith perspectives, and when is that newsroom retreating from a moral responsibility? When is a reporter taking a partisan stance and when is it a stance for justice?
With the rise of the social web in the last 20 years, this reevaluation of journalistic principle has been frequently described through the lens of newsroom objectivity. It reached a fever pitch in 2020, resulting in an important dialogue on objectivity and “moral clarity” in newsrooms.
This concept was the topic of a session in November 2020 during the virtual 12th annual Klein News Innovation Camp unconference I help organize. I’ve revisited the conversation, and I want to share what I took away.
Continue reading What is newsroom objectivity?(This is adapted from a Twitter thread)
No, newsrooms don’t need to throw out “objectivity’ as a principle. Yes “moral clarity” should mean something for news organizations.
This thread comes from my own experiences, plus this helpful conversation I had during Klein News Innovation Camp with Alexis Johnson, Tom Rosenstiel and Wes Lowery.
Continue reading Newsroom objectivity and “moral clarity” are not in oppositionFor the 11th annual Klein News Innovation Camp, an unconference on the future of news organized by my company, I interviewed our lunchtime keynote: Michael Smerconish, the radio personality and CNN host, Saturday. (Read coverage from Cover.This)
Continue reading Klein News Innovation Camp keynote interview with Michael SmerconishJournalism is the process of helping a community near its truth, as I defined it at a conference last year.
Though it’s common among media innovators to talk about newsrooms not being in competition with each other, the central reasons why aren’t as readily addressed. Legacy business models are running on fumes. Those leading them just might close enough to retirement that they don’t feel the need to adapt. The rest of us must.
Earlier this fall at a small gathering of newsrooms from across the country and then again last month at Klein News Innovation Camp, I gave presentations that again hit upon this theme. I took a new approach to the theme.
Journalism is a set of values, not an industry of competitors.
The business model that developed over a couple centuries was so successful that we ended up with a monoculture but that was no inevitability. We must understand that what journalism practitioners share is a belief in how the world should operate. We believe journalistic standards and its related approaches are effective at building a kind of community that has power. That’s a worldview; it’s a philosophy that could be brought into many different circumstances, organizations and campaigns.
My slides can be found here
The 8th annual Barcamp News Innovation was the best attended yet. This annual unconference on the future of news welcomed more than 175 journalists, editors and other media makers interested in trends and best practices.
We at Technically Media have always produced it at and with Temple University’s School of Media Communications. For the first time, this year we hosted the day-long event in the fall, rather than late in the spring, which allowed perhaps nearly two dozen students to attend. Despite being free for students (just $15 for professionals), we’ve never had much turnout for those about to begin their careers. This year worked.
I wanted to share a few lessons and notes that stuck with me below.
Later this week, I’ll help organize the fourth-annual BarCamp NewsInnovation.
It will again be, in my biased opinion, among the most meaningful media un-conferences in the country. We’ll have an open news hackathon again, ProPublica social media editor Daniel Victor will talk strategy and representatives will talk shop from legacy media powerhouses and independent news startups from throughout the eastern seaboard and beyond. That rocks.
Beyond all that, the biggest change in format is that, for the first time, we’ll be charging $5 for admission for the day-long event, which includes breakfast, lunch, happy hour and appetizers, in addition to concepts and conversations of note.
Continue reading Hosting free events: why charging a small sum can add more value
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.]
Overall I felt this BCNI, with some 150 attendees from startup shops and some serious brands, featured more sessions that embodied that unconference spirit in being less presentation and more dialogue, something I don’t think I felt in the past. I was also interested to see the true step forward past social media and other tools and into sustainability, which I find to be a far more important place to be.
To that end and coming off Philly Tech Week, without preparation, I proposed a session in the day’s final hour: “A conversation on news as a convener.”
PHILADELPHIA — Regional technology news site Technically Philly has announced today that it is organizing the first ever Philly Tech Week to be held across the Philadelphia area April 25-30, 2011.
Philly Tech Week will be a week-long celebration of technology and innovation in Philadelphia. The annual week of events is intended to grow the impact of this innovative region through programming focused on technology, collaboration and improving Philadelphia
Continue reading Philly Tech Week: introducing event series growing innovation impact
The second annual BarCamp NewsInnovation was held last month at Temple University — see my notes here.
In addition to sharing all the failures we’ve had at Technically Philly, I spoke with founder and editor Shannon McDonald about the progress we’ve had with Northeast Philadelphia hyperlocal NEast Philly, including most prominently the breakdown of where our content was coming from.
See here the notes from our 2009 BarCamp presentation on being an online news startup in a print-heavy community.
Below find the notes and slides from this year’s BarCamp presentation entitled: Twitter is stupid…and other foundations of our content strategy.
