Wigley and Associates

In today’s Wall St. Journal: All I Wanted for Christmas Was a Newspaper; Bloggers are no replacement for real journalists.

Paul Mulshine, opinion columnist for the Newark Star-Ledger, misses the point when he argues that citizens aren’t likely to voluntarily ‘cover,’ for example, city council meetings for their blogs in the same way that a reporter does for a newspaper.

Yes, it’s valuable to have local reporters sitting through public meetings and then reporting on them.

But it’s more valuable for their stories to be published in an eco-system of civic engagement where the media, public officials and citizens are all involved in the effort to inform so that better public outcomes can occur.

Imagine a year from now that a version of the above chart (from last summer’s JTM New Pamphleteers conference) is happening here in Northfield. For example:

• City Hall puts up the digital video of a council meeting, complete with ‘annotated markers’ that allows citizens to view just the segments of the meeting they’re interested in.
• Two citizens post to their blogs about a Council agenda item that they viewed online.
• Locally Grown links to those blog posts and starts an online discussion about the issue.
• Two councilors and one City Hall staffer post to their own blogs about the issue and the pingbacks to Locally Grown add to the discussion. One of the councilors decides to open up comments on her blog and so now, there are two places for citizens to engage in online conversation about it.
• The RepJ reporter does an in-depth story about the issue, interviewing others, linking to the blog posts and discussions, etc.  Councilor bloggers and citizen bloggers link to that story, and further discussion ensues.
• When the City Administrator and staff prepare the Council packet (digital only; printed packets ceased in Feb. 2009) for the next City Council meeting, all of the elements of the issue’s ‘eco-system’ are summarized and linked for the Councilors.
• Citizens and reporters have online access to the Councilor’s agenda packets.  Further discussion about the City Administrator’s summary occurs online prior to the next Council meeting
• Some citizens show up at the Council meeting open mic to voice their opinions about the issue.  Their comments are streamed live online as well as included in the next online video of the Council meeting.
• Repeat as necessary

This eco-system of civic engagement can’t easily exist in a town whose citizens don’t blog or discuss issues online, whose media reporters don’t link, whose public access cable TV station only broadcasts analog video at select times, and whose public officials aren’t regularly making an effort to be more transparent and engaged with citizens.

In Northfield, I think we’re getting closer to a civic engagement model that really works.

• In place: Bonnie Obremski’s RepJ stories, an active civic blogosphere, and vibrant online discussions on Locally Grown, some other blogs, and at times, on Northfield.org and Northfieldnews.com
• On the horizon: a new crop of elected officials who are open to blogging and participating in online discussions
• On the horizon: streamed, archived, and annotated digital video of City Council meetings
• On the horizon: a KYMN radio station that offers more opportunities for citizen-produced shows and which selectively amplifies those participating in the local blogosphere and online discussions

(Not yet on the horizon: a Northfield News newspaper that selectively but consistently links to, excerpts from, and gives credit to local civic bloggers and online discussion participants in both the print and online versions of its stories.)

I don’t quite have the Vision Thing perfected yet but I’m getting closer.

 
Coordinators Julie Bubser and Zach Pruitt are now bloggers at the newly revamped Northfield Healthy Community Initiative (HCI) website.

Right photo: Mary Nelson, Julie Bubser, Zach Pruitt, and Curt Benson at a recent WordPress training session I did for them at the Bittersweet Eatery Tea Room in Northfield.

Katie Nelson did the original design, Northfield web designer Sean Hayford O’Leary implemented it using WordPress, and I concentrated on the coaching.

We’ve created a new blogsite for Cardious, ‘A heart technology company’ based in St. Paul, MN.

Cardious founder and president Jim Pokorney is maintaining a Cardious blog where he’s blogging about the development of their AvA™ Aortic Valve Bypass Graft System.

Northfield web designer Sean Hayford O’Leary worked with Jim on the design and I concentrated on coaching him on how to use the features of WordPress.

The Department for International Development (DFID) is “the part of the UK Government that manages Britain’s aid to poor countries and works to get rid of extreme poverty.”

They’ve contracted with a UK-based colleague of mine, Shane McCracken at Gallomanor, to work with a small group of new DFID staff bloggers who are living and working in five different countries. See Shane’s blog post about the project and the new DFID group blog.

I’m working with Shane to provide the blog coaching, including several how-to screencasts.

Simon Dickson from Puffbox built the DIFD blog site using WordPress. He’s incorporated several unusual — and impressive — features to it. See his explanatory blog post.

Neil Peirce and colleagues at the Citistates Group, a long-time client, recently asked us to create a whole new site for them titled Citiwire.

Northfield web designer Sean Hayford O’Leary figured out how to use WordPress to implement Peirce’s vision for a side-by-side blog on the home page — blog posts displayed on one side or the other, depending on who the author is.

The Citiwire About page says:

Our mission… to reflect a new American narrative.

From a 20th century of cheap energy, endless automobility, burgeoning suburbs, threatened cities. To a challenge-packed 21st century: fast-rising energy costs, perilous carbon emissions, deepening have-have not divisions. But a time of exciting promise, too: rejuvenated cities, new citistate-wide consciousness, more protected lands, the most urban rail starts in a century.

Citiwire.net’s quest: to chronicle struggles, illuminate pathways to more vibrant, equitable, sustainable choices for grassroots America and citistates worldwide.

We’ve created a new blogsite for Wayne Jennings and colleagues at the Brain Compatible Learning Network.

It had previously been hosted as a set of pages on the affiliated ASCD site.

Northfield web designer Sean Hayford O’Leary worked with them on a design and I concentrated on coaching them on how to use the new features of WordPress.

This summer we revamped the websites for both the Contented Cow and Chapati, Northfield eating and drinking establishments owned by Norman Butler.

Working with Northfield web designer Sean Hayford O’Leary, we combined the sites in an usual way: a similar theme, a separate navigation structure, with both sites sitting on the same web server (Tiger Technologies - TigerTech), yet each retaining their own domain names.

Sean converted the Cow’s blog (titled What’s On?)  from Blogger to WordPress. The blog is no longer located on the Cow’s home page. The old Chapati blog was dropped.

We’ve revamped the blog site for Wayne Jennings and colleagues at the International Association for Learning Alternatives (IALA).

Northfield web designer Sean Hayford O’Leary converted it from an old version of Movable Type to WordPress and worked with them on a new design.

I concentrated on coaching them on how to use the new features of WordPress. The site continues to be hosted at Tiger Technologies (TigerTech).

I’ve been working with Pete Shuster, CEO of Neuromics, to help him launch his new blog titled News Behind the Neuroscience News: Backstories That Matter.

Northfield web designer Sean Hayford O’Leary did the blog design.

Pete writes on his blog’s About page:

This Neuromics’ blog is about about important research stories collaboraotors have shared with me. These backstories were chosen by the positive impact I believe they have on furthering basic and applied Neuroscience Research.  They are seasoned with an overview of the featured Researcher’s recent work,  discoveries, research, goals and outcomes.  In the spirit of capturing the news behind the news, I have included methods, tips, and insights on what’s working and what’s not.

Northfield web designer Sean Hayford O’Leary has updated the blog design for my longtime clients, City Administrator Scott Neal and Fire Chief George Esbensen.

Their blogs, built on WordPress and hosted at Tiger Technologies (TigerTech), match the City of Eden Prairie home page.

I’ve been working with Northfield First UCC Pastor Sandy Johnson and staff to help them use their blog and update the WordPress pages on their web site.

My colleague, Northfield web designer Sean Hayford O’Leary, also been helping them make small changes to the design of their site, originally created by Michael Blaha, Organic Arts.

 
Minnesota Public Radio’s Public Insight Journalis (PIJ) project hosted a moderated discussion last Friday night in their UBS Forum. A group of about 20 citizens selected from their PIJ database were invited to discuss the topic: The Press and the Public: What’s the new relationship?

A group of about 10 attendees from the Journalism That Matters conference, New Pamphleteers/New Reporters: Convening Entrepreneurs Who Combine Journalism, Democracy, Place and Blogs, observed the discussion for 45 minutes and then joined in… me among them.

In the PIJ handout that was used to help focus the discussion, Locally Grown (the blog/podcast that I co-host) was cited as an example of Approach 4: the public is the press.

Here’s the text (partial transcription) but click the photos of the doc to see it all:

There is no starker example of the divide between the press and the public than these statistics from a recent survey by Zogby International: Most Americans - 70 percent - say journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities, but almost as many (67 percent) say traditional journalism is out of touch with what they want from their news.

Established news organizations can’t help but notice as newspaper circulation numbers fall and broadcast outlets see fewer people tuning in. The notion of the public as passive consumer of news is passe. What is emerging is a new model of journalism built on partnership.

The question on the table is: What should it look like? Here are four broad approaches that can help get a conversation started.

• Approach 1: the public as critic
  With this approach, the public engages in critiquing news reporting. This can include the creation of the Minnesota News Council - a group of journalists and citizens who rule on complaints with the press, or NewsTrust.net, a website where news stories are rated for quality by the public. It also means that established press organizations become more transparent. Methods include open comments on stories and providing the public with greater understanding of the news-gathering operation (through, for example, chats with reporters online to discuss stories).
• Approach 2: the public as collaborator
  This approach calls for the public to participate in becoming sources for stories. Initiatives like MPR’s Public Insight Journalism reach out to the audience en masse for knowledge, which can then shape coverage.  Other initiatives ask the public to help with investigatory work. This method, called crowdsourcing, sometimes uses the public as a way to compile information on a subject or enlists them to comb through voluminous records (as the Fort Myers News-Press did on a sewer project).
• Approach 3: the public as correspondent
  With this approach, news organizations turn over segments of their space to the public and let them produce content with little interference. It could happen on news pages or on the air, but most times occurs online.
• Approach 4: the public is the press
  This approach avoids established news organizations entirely. The public starts a grassroots journalism effort to provide coverage of issues ignored by the press. It’s typically done online and while there are examples of national Web sites such as Talking Points Memo, most of them work on a local level.  A small scale example is “Locally Grown” - a website dedicated to the news of the Northfield, Minnesota area. This effort is also part of a larger initiative called Representative Journalism that seeks to marry local producers with funding to support them.

Jeff Jarvis, according to the Wikipedia, is an associate professor at City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, directing its new media program. I found his blog post from mid-April, The press becomes the press-sphere, to be helpful in thinking about the changing nature of the press and the public. These images help:

L to R: the way it was; the new press-sphere; the me-sphere.

The new news process

Jarvis: “Stories and topics become molecules that attract atoms: reporters, editors, witnesses, archives, commenters, and so on, all adding different elements to a greater understanding. Who brings that together? It’s not always the reporter or editor anymore. It can just as easily be the reader(s) now.”

Here are the two graphics shown last week at the JTM New Pamphleteers conference:

 
The old news story

An emerging news ecology

Jessica Clark at the Center for Social Media integrates the Jarvis and JTM models (and an LA Times model) with this Visions of the new news blog post. She writes:

The NewsTools2008 map demonstrates that, in the new ecology, community is crucial. It even introduces an unfamiliar term—the “community weaver.” His/her roles include inviting audiences to participate, and filtering reader comments. Meanwhile, in this world, it’s the community’s role to offer editors (now reframed as “sense makers”) tips on coverage, conversation with reporters (now lumped in with “beat bloggers”), content, and, of course, dollars. Are those communities publics? Well, it depends on the issues being addressed.

At Locally Grown, we’re trying to make this vision — or at least a version of it — happen.

The city of Northfield’s civic blogosphere got a boost in the summer of 2004 when a group of government leaders from the U.K. visited Northfield.  It encouraged more local citizens and leaders to try blogging, and it helped me get the first of several contracts to work with local councilors in the UK to learn blogging.

As I blogged here back in Feb., my latest project with the UK involved working with Gallomanor Communications Ltd on the creation of the CivicSurf project video/DVD. From the About page:

CivicSurf aims to inspire and inform civic leaders about the benefits of blogging. We’ve filmed 3 Norfolk County Councillors as they’ve learnt the basics of blogging and used their sites to initiate conversations in and around their communities. The eight minute film also includes the views from expert bloggers such as Tom Watson MP, Steve Webb MP and Cllr Mary Reid. It will be distributed on DVD to 1,000 public bodies including councils, emergency services and NHS Trusts along with copies of a 32pp booklet that informs readers of the basics of blogging.

I coached the three councilors over several months and wrote much of the documentation for the booklet.

A week ago, Shane McCracken of Gallomanor Communications Ltd, premiered the video at a conference in London. Here are two video clips that show Shane presenting it, with a little Q&A afterwards. The third videoclip is the trailer.

 
Presentation Part 1. Click play to watch. 5 min 39 sec.

Presentation Part 1, Q & A. Click play to watch. 6 min 42 sec.

The trailer for the DVD/video. Click play to watch. 1 minute.

I’m working on a project for the MN Sesquicentennial Commission related to its efforts to “… bear witness to the tragic side of Minnesota Statehood in 1858 and acknowledge the pain, loss and suffering of the Native American culture in Minnesota.”

Project activities are guided by the Sesquicentennial Advisory Committee for Native American Partnering (SACNAP) and I’ve set up a blog titled Native American Minnesota: A journey of learning and understanding (nativeamericanminn150.org).

I returned from the Trials Training Center (a client) in Tennessee yesterday, having spent 6 days taking photos, recording videos, and blogging the U.S. round of the World Trials Championship (USGP) , also known as the Wagner Cup. Yep, it’s all about motorcycle trials, a sport that’s been one of my hobbies for the past 30+ years.

I created the blog site for the event back in January  but it wasn’t until I arrived on site a few days prior to the event that things heated up. I posted 70 or so blog entries over the course of the week, focusing more on the staff, volunteers, and activities surrounding the competition than the competition itself.

This is the second time I’ve blogged an event over the course of several days. The first was the 2006 International e-Participation & Local Democracy Symposium in Budapest and Baltimore.