Are you an independent media outlet / journalism maker who reports on Chicago issues? If so, this message is for you.
The Chicago Community Trust is using its May 10 On the Table 2016 event to better get to know Chicago’s independent media outlets and start-ups. The intelligence gained from your OTT discussions will be a critical asset in June, when the Trust is planning a collaborative ecosystem design session for Chicago’s independent media.
Why? A new crop of media activists are stepping up. Acts of journalism are proliferating. Fresh approaches to journalism are taking hold. The goal is to reach as many independent media voices as possible on May 10 and collect some information through a special survey that will inform a special strategic session in June.
What happens on May 10? You invite some media friends to a meal, drinks or coffee to talk about what’s important to you. You and your guests — publishers, information gatherers, media friends and community members — are united in caring about the issues, policy, and action that activate Chicagoans, our neighborhoods and our leaders to make Chicago a better place.
The Trust will foot the bill with a $100 gift card (Supplies are limited to those who need it.) We’re looking for independent media outlets whose focus is civic, government and community life. Here’s our beginning criteria.
On May 11 …. You’ll be emailed a survey to share what you discussed and that will include several questions tailored to independent media. The Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement (IPCE) at University of Illinois is helping us develop the survey.
When you record your conversation and take the survey, you’ll share how you work with your audience and colleagues as well as which services you’d find most valuable and least valuable for your operations and sustainability. In addition, the Chicago Community Trust wants to hear your ideas for sustaining independent media.
The outcome The intelligence gained from your OTT discussions will be a critical asset in June, when the Trust is planning a collaborative ecosystem design session for Chicago’s independent media. Take good notes and share them in the survey!
How does it work? — Go to On The Table and sign up to host.
— Fill out the simple online form.
— Choose “Independent Media” as your partner organization.
— You’ve joined the custom network for Independent Media OTT 2016!
— Complete registration by inviting your guests via the email interface.
NOTE: If you are hosting a conversation about your outlet, you can still choose “Independent Media” as your partner.
For nearly two decades, my passion has been reducing noise, increasing credible sources of information and adding value to our professional and community lives through digital newsrooms.
Here’s how I found that mission.
I left business journalism in the 90s to go into Chicago city government — my reasoning was mission-based: why write about good government when I could have a role in creating it? But it’s not surprising that mission turned out to be more complex than I’d anticipated.
After serving in the offices of Mayor Richard M. Daley and CPS CEO Paul Vallas, I left public service with a hard-won understanding of the difficulties of culture change — and a front-row view of how the rapid shrinkage of newspaper newsrooms was already undermining the public’s access to vital information.
Along the way, through several projects I had worked on – including establishing the Children First Fund: the Chicago Public Schools Foundation – I had also developed a top-level perspective on philanthropy, the way foundations operate and how they carry out their commitments to their missions and social change. And I was deeply passionate about developing new tools on the Web.
That path led me into mission-based community engagement and development, and it left me genuinely uncertain whether journalists were cut out for the non-profit world and its relentless cycles of fundraising.
That question was weighing heavily when the Sun-Times laid me off in 2008. For years I had worked with web entrepreneurs and mission-based businesses and nonprofits to build the social web. My journalism background seemed a good fit for the crusade to save it.
When I learned about the L3C — an investment vehicle designed to encourage foundations to make program-related investments in mission-based businesses — I connected the dots between news and mission and found a cause I could fully get behind. I plugged into a colleague running HuffPost Chicago, who gave me a column, then a far scarcer platform than it sounds today.
I began writing about what I called the L3C Newsroom and regularly delivering information on this and other emerging ideas to foundation executives and others working in the digital newsroom space. I built a robust social media presence on the topic of emerging business models for news and was among the first journalists on LinkedIn to actively work that professional network on the business of civic and local digital news.
In 2010, I recorded this video on the idea of an L3C Newsroom — similar to a crowdfunded newsroom, with a community foundation leading the way for smaller family foundations to provide core investment for local independent newsrooms.
A video I recorded in 2010 on the idea of an L3C Newsroom, similar to the idea of a crowdfunded newsroom with a community foundation leading the way for smaller family foundations to provide core investments for local independent newsrooms.
I started to write about the L3C Newsroom and began regularly delivering information about this idea and other emerging ideas to foundation executives and others in the digital newsroom space. Ten years later, I have a backlog of information on the forward direction of newsrooms in the digital age.
During this time, I also consulted with clients such as the Better Government Association, as an organizational development and fundraising consultant, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for its new team and operations. Understanding the vast news and information deserts in Chicago — from my time working in newsrooms and in Chicago city government — I took on multimedia consulting and project management with LISC Chicago, bringing neighborhood voices into the mix through a series of mobile neighborhood tours. As a community service, I produced a companion Twitter feed and Facebook page. Other clients from those years include the Chicago Tribune, the BlockbyBlockCommunityNewsNetwork and Knight Digital Media Center.
I carved out a small but passionate niche. In 2016, I conducted a research project on Chicagos Independent News ecosystem. Sadly, that project was cut short when I experienced a family emergency when my father fell Ill and died as did my life partner.
Solutions will emerge from this current darkness, and among them will be new ideas for slowing the pace of viral misinformation and creating sustainability for newsrooms. I look forward to being part of those solutions.
Here’s a great video from Neil DeGrasse Tyson on information literacy. Today we are awash in both disinformation and misinformation. I agree that our ability to fully process information and discern truth from lies is tied to our ability to understand context and learn how to ask good questions about whatever we are researching.
Chicago Community Showcase for LISC Chicago. This playlist is a series of audio slide shows I produced with community leaders to be delivered through an early Smartphone app. It is the core content of the Chicago Community Showcase YouTube and Facebook channels and continues as the ChiNeighbors twitter feed, which I still run as a community service.
