At the WeMedia08 Conference, I had the chance to hear about two different yet very complimentary initiaves to jumpstart community journalism in the face of traditional journalism "shrinkage."
Representative Journalism
The first came from Leonard Witt, Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Communication Department of Communication Kennesaw State University (third largest university in Georgia!). I shared a cab over to the University of Miami this morning with him and heard about a great program they are piloting (small grant) in Minnesota. It is all about creating journalists for hire by communities - any kind of community or affinity group. He calls it representative journalism. It might be a local, region-defined community who feels that there should be more coverage of education issues. It might be a group who share an interest in the fate of manatees (his example) and feel it deserves the coverage of a journalist. Would a 100 people in a community pay $100 a year for the efforts and output of said journalist? How much different is that then parents coming together to fund programs at their local public school?
The James L. Knight Foundation
The second came from Alberto Ibarguen, President, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with anew $3m grant to Ashoka, an organization dedicated to activating and supporting social entrepeneurship. Bill Drayton started Ashoka 25 years ago on the belief that social change can happen via single entrepeneurs.
Alberto Ibarguen saw an opportunity to engage a community organization (vs. a journalism organization) to help define a new form of journalism to help communities get and distribute information that is "hyperlocal" in the sense of hyper-relevant.
I am not sure this is their conscious intent, but it seems that the Knight Foundation is smartly using their philanthropic strength to explore possibilities for how the local news business (i.e. newspaper) can be razed and rebuilt. Think about what is happening in the music business. The old music business model is being rebuilt from the ground up on thousands of MySpace pages and millions of iTunes downloads. The new model won't support the existing infrastucture. Same-same with newspapers. That "business" (actually a collection of businesses - news, marketplace, local information) can't support the established infrastructure (leading to painful, serial, drawn out downsizings of newsrooms et al).
Mr. Ibarguen did outright say that he is seeking to fulfill on the role newspapers played in the 60's and 70's in terms of social bonding. While I absolutely believe in his conviction, it is clear that the Knight Foundation is practicing outside innovation to apply to their businesses. One more way smart people brought together by WeMedia are re-inventing "media."
I am sure your quest for Ebay business has come to an end as you read this article. Yes, gone are those days when we have to search endlessly for Ebay business information or other such information like coin collector auction, house auction, seller's auctions or even furniture auction sites. Even without articles such as this, with the Internet all you have to do is log on and use any of the search engines to find the Ebay business information you need.
Posted by: Deepak auction | August 09, 2008 at 11:01 AM
I am sure your quest for Ebay business has come to an end as you read this article. Yes, gone are those days when we have to search endlessly for Ebay business information or other such information like coin collector auction, house auction, seller's auctions or even furniture auction sites. Even without articles such as this, with the Internet all you have to do is log on and use any of the search engines to find the Ebay business information you need.
Posted by: Deepak auction | August 09, 2008 at 11:02 AM