Sally Duros

I have a new article up on Huffington Post Chicago , inspired by outreach from former iGive colleague Nassim Nazemi. She’s organizing a rally to express solidarity with Iran’s Democracy Saturday. Spread the word.

Press Contact:
Nassim Nazemi
nnazemi@gmail.com
For Immediate Release:

CHICAGOANS TO RALLY IN SOLIDARITY WITH IRANIAN PROTESTERS EVENT SCHEDULED FOR SATURDAY JUNE 20, 2009, 4-6PM AT DALEY CENTER PLAZA

CHICAGO, IL – (June 18, 2008) – In the aftermath of Iran’s dramatic presidential election, protesters continue to march en masse through the streets of Iran demanding freedom and recognition of their votes. Half a world away, Iran’s expatriate community here in the U.S. has sprung into action, staging rallies and candlelight vigils to show solidarity and mourn the protesters who have been killed during the Iranian government crackdown. Supporters in Chicago have secured permission to stage a peaceful rally at Daley Plaza, where a crowd of approximately two-hundred is expected to gather. Rally participants will attempt to amplify the stifled voices of Iranian protesters who struggle to be heard amid a media clampdown in Iran.

The rally, which will take place on Saturday, June 20, 2009 from 4-6pm, is organized by a group of young Iranians who have become acutely aware of the power and value of their civil rights as U.S. citizens and residents. They understand that electoral fairness and freedom of assembly are precisely what the Iranian protesters are pursuing in the face of tear gas, police batons, and gunfire. Planned and carried out almost entirely through social networking sites, e-mail, and text messaging, the rally itself seeks to mirror the activities of Iranian protesters whose use of technology in furtherance of democratic ideals has captured the attention of the world.

“Peaceful Rally in Solidarity with the Iranian People” is the name given to this event on the social networking website Facebook®, where users are greeted with the following description:

“Join us in expressing solidarity with the freedom-seeking protesters in Iran. Many of our own friends and relatives are bravely marching on the streets, and we feel a duty to support them by keeping up the momentum and continuing to raise awareness of these important events in Iran.”

And:
“We all have different views on how best to reach the ultimate goal of freedom and democracy in Iran, and while one of us may believe in gradual reform, another may believe in more radical change. Diversity and a chorus of voices are what make a democracy beautiful, and effective. Let’s embrace the many voices rather than silencing them.”

more information on this event, please visit our Facebook page.

Here’s my latest from ChuffPo on Chicago news as an ecosystem and social enterprise. Don’t Chicago’s news blogs have enough skin in the game?

This augments my ChuffPo piece last week State of pay: A Chicago news blog suspense story.

To date, the work I’ve done reporting on the future of Chicago news and its potential as a social enterprise, or L3C, has been pro bono. It’s time folks understand that journalism takes money. All of it — researching, reporting, writing and distributing news takes money. So I am asking the crowd who care to fund my one day trip to Minneapolis to report on the Economic Models for News conference. If I go, I will Twitter live from the event as well as develop at least two article ideas, which I will sell.

I’ve registered this conference as a project with a new website called Kickstarter to see if I can raise $900 to pay for my time and travel expenses. If you check out the site, please let me know if my project is working by making a donation!

Thank you — in advance — for your support.

Date: June 13
Where: Columbia College’s Film Row Cinema (1104 S. Wabash)
When: 1:30pm to 4:45pm.

You can register at the conference site.
I’ll be there and so will just about everybody else who cares about making a living in a Chicago newsroom.

Here’s what the organizers say….

The Conference

It’s probably a little pompous to call something “The Chicago Media Future Conference.” After all, who really can say for certain what the future holds for local print and online news publications? And yet, that’s the name we’ve chosen.

February’s Chicago Journalism Town Hall brought tremendous energy, intellectual curiosity and talent together in one room. The discussion sparked many conversations and ideas, online and offline, about a range of topics. Having been in on many of these discussions, we knew the desire for another event was palpable. So we (Mike Fourcher, Barbara Iverson and Scott Smith) decided to hold our own event focused on one of those discussion topics: How news coverage can successfully migrate to profitable on-line distribution. (See below for bios of all three organizers.)

The Chicago Media Future Conference will be held Saturday, June 13 at Columbia College’s Film Row Cinema (1104 S. Wabash) from 1:30pm to 4:45pm. The FREE event will consist of two 90-minute, moderated, five-person panels, with a 15 minute break in between. Each panel’s topic will be introduced by a 10-minute “scene-setting” informational presentation.

The organizers are Mike Fourcher, founder of Purely Political Consulting; Barbara Iverson, talker, blogger, teacher and analyst of all things citizen journalism and digital technology; and Scott Smith, a Senior Editor at Playboy.com.

June 16
McNamara Alumni Center
University of Minnesota- East Bank
200 Oak Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
8:30-5:00

Conference

Join industry leaders in a discussion about the economics of the news industry in this one-day conference! Speakers and panelists will discuss the mission of newspapers, new ways to structure the newspaper business, new revenue models and many other topics. Co-sponsored by the Newspaper Guild and the Minnesota Journalism Center.

Speakers Include:
Bernie Lunzer, president of the Newspaper Guild
Robert Lang, Mannweiler Foundation and creator of the L3C business model
Jennifer Towery, Peoria Journal Star and president of the Peoria Guild
Joel Kramer, founder and CEO of Minnpost.com
John Sturm, president of the Newspaper Association of America
Steve Yelvington, Morris Digital Works
Ted Venetoulis, Corridor Media Inc., 501c(3) concept
David Shribman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Registration is $25 per person and includes the full conference, breakfast and lunch.
The registration deadline is Tuesday, June 9.
Questions? Please email event coordinator Sarah Saubert
Saube014@umn.edu or call 612-626-1723.

Hotel accommodations are available at the Radisson University Hotel at a discounted rate (including parking) until May 31.
To reserve call 612-379-8888 and ask for the “Economic Models” room block.

Check out this link for a head start on content from the Free Press that will be discussed at the conference.

I found this fascinating quote today:

But in a discussion with a couple of other journalism educators, I heard one of journalism’s dirty little secrets — freelancers are second-class citizens. In a time when it is obvious that most of our students will spend large parts of their careers as freelancers, some mid-career journalists admitted that freelancers were looked down on in the news business. They were paid less. They didn’t command the same respect as “real” reporters who worked full-time. No one used to want to be a freelancer.2009 Chicago Media Future Conference, May 2009

“Freelancers are second-class citizens.” Dirty little secret? Hardly. many freelancers are successful. Many are not. I think the dirty little secret is really that once you are tossed from a news organization it is difficult to find your way back into another one.  And then a journalist takes on that blinking status - is he or isn’t he, really doing journalism? Could there perhaps be some PR clients sneaking into his story ideas?

The real “dirty little secret” that’s not so much a secret anymore is the amount of PR passing for journalism in newspapers and magazines these days, simple rewrite work for the “real” journalists on the payroll. 

I hope, as Barb says, that next newsrooms will hold a place of honor for its hard-working, clear-thinking creative freelancers who have the guts to stick to their calling. And even more than a place of honor, I hope next newsrooms have a big fat budget line for paying them.   

You should read the whole article.

Are legacy newspapers for wealthy, older people? How will the next newsroom emerge from blogs? Here’s a discussion on the epicenter of news innovation. What pieces of legacy journalism will survive in the transition? How will paper continue to be distributed? I advocate a social enterprise NowNewsroom(L3C).

read more | digg story

When the Chicago Sun-Times declared bankruptcy March 31, 2009, I discussed the future of Chicago’s newsrooms on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight with colleagues Chi-Town Daily News Editor Geoff Dougherty and Northwestern Digital Media Professor Owen Youngman. They made some great points about what is to come here and I made a few points about the L3C business model and the Chicago Newsroom of the Future. Here’s the clip.

I also mentioned the L3C and Chicago’s Newsrooms of the Future on a segment on ABC Channel 7 News.

Steven Berlin Johnson over at OutsideIn, which I wrote about in June 2007 for the Chicago Sun-Times, brought wonderful clarity to the situation of legacy news operations yesterday at a presentation at South By Southwest. He envisions an evolving news ecosystem and with clarity places newspapers as a foundational gathering operation. He also cautioned that it is important to move forward to a vision rather than cling to the old.

But in times like these, when all that is solid is melting into air, as Marx said of another equally turbulent era, it’s important that we try to imagine how we’d like the future to turn out and set our sights on that, and not just struggle to keep the past alive for a few more years.

Steve says so well what I have been stumbling around trying to articulate here in Chicago. In evidence of the beauty of the Web, I was able to read his comments and see a video of him presenting the day after he did it - glorious access to information!

At a Poynter Institute event here in Chicago yesterday, the reality Steve describes was coming sharply into focus in the discussion. It is so sad that newspapers and some other legacy media do not see the preciousness of their brands and how important it is to preserve THAT so that they can have a place in the new ecosystem. Could be that they think their brand is a logo and marks, not something organic that emerges from the way that they operate.

Newspapers don’t need to go more deeply into the “swamp” of disinformation or useless eye candy to have a role in the new forest. They need to do a LOT more of what they do well — good local reporting — and spread cooperatively through their value systems to work with partners. Unfortunately, some newspapers like the Sun-Times where I used to work have been sucked dry of their newsroom resources by their business operating model. The Sun-Times is operated by a hedge fund, and all it wants is a dollar return. Hedge funds don’t value one bit the social return that is evident in a well-done newspaper newsroom.

It’s one reason why I am on the soap box for theL3C hybrid for news businesses. It’s great to hear Steve’s vision and here in Chicago, many of us are working to develop a healthy new ecosystem. Below is Steve’s flow chart for news delivery. You can watch a video of the presentation here.

I have a new article on the Huffington Post about the death of newspapers, Newsrooms must die, Long Live newsrooms.

The point is the old ways have been dying, new ways have been emerging, and they will come together in something entirely new. Innovations from the web and old line practices that create credibility must inform each other. The split is perfectly expressed in the contingent ideas of Transparency and Image. Transparency sees a flattened hierarchy, and a community bubble up of ideas. Old line Image Makers see creation of experts from the top down by media giants. The new way recognizes that innovation bubbles up and is recognized. Image follows expert form. Imposition of Image (without the community bubbling up) will inevitably fail or be recognized as false.

I see a hybrid (NPO/For Profit) model of operation that will stabilize the staffing needs of newsrooms and deliver information to intended audiences through myriad distribution channels. Newsrooms will deliver by community-based mission and their staffing will be protected by the essential nature of their mission. Yet unlike mission-based non-profits that beg to sustain themselves, the new L3C newspaper will be self-sustaining through profits earned and investors.