I’m so very sad that I won’t be home for this upcoming conference. But I wanted to make sure that word spread so I’m sharing the whole press release.
Meeting to Explore Journalism, Democracy, Place and Blogs
MINNEAPOLIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Entrepreneurs, editors and operators of local online news and community websites — placebloggers — will gather June 4-5 in one of the first convenings of its kind, to share the trials and tribulations of a news source growing without paper or printing press.
“New Pamphleteers/New Reporters: Convening Entrepreneurs Who Combine Journalism, Democracy, Place and Blogs,” will take place at the McNamara Alumni Center at the University of Minnesota, immediately before the fourth National Conference on Media Reform, also in Minneapolis on June 6-8.
“America’s new online citizen-journalists are inventing a new business and a new passion — the business of building local, literate, digital domains on the web where community and commerce flourish,” said Bill Densmore, director of the Media Giraffe Project at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “But efforts
— and structure — to share best practices are only just emerging.”
The program will pull together experts for discussions on the business, marketing, legal, advertising, journalistic, technical and fund-raising skills that are needed in order for local online news and community-building websites to approach success.
Websites focused on sharing news, discussion, politics and passion about specific places barely existed a half dozen years ago, said Densmore, who is helping the Journalism That Matters collaborative to organize the event. “Now estimates are that there are thousands operating largely under the national radar. We want to help them move from experimentation to sustained service.”
The conference will serve as “an incubator/think-and-do tank” for those who are considering starting their own civic engagement/citizen journalism projects in urban/rural Minnesota and nationally, said Densmore.
Densmore says the event may also be the launching pad for the American Society of News and Community Forums (ASNCF), a professional/trade group for “placebloggers” — part pamphleteers, part reporters and part entrepreneurs.
Event co-convenors include the Journalism That Matters collaborative, the Minnesota Journalism Center and the Minnesota News Council. Other collaborators include The Center for Citizen Media at Arizona State University, the Berkman Center and Citzen Media Law Project at Harvard Law School, Placeblogger.com, J-Lab at the University of Maryland, the Blandin Foundation and the C.S.
Mott Foundation.
Registration, including meals, is $139.