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December 14, 2004
micro-local news
Free advice ... Today I met with the Washington Center for Internships to discuss possible ways to evaluate their program, and then went to Streetlaw, Inc. for their winter Board meeting. (Streetlaw provides a textbook, training, institutes, and other support for teaching about law and politics in schools.) Finally, I joined my colleagues on the Advisory Board of the J-Lab New Voices Project . Thanks to the Knight Foundation, New Voices will be able to fund "20 micro-local news projects" in which citizens generate information, commentary, and discussion for their communities. J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism, will also collect or create software and other support that anyone will be able to use for interactive or community news.
We discussed some existing projects and products that exemplify community news on the Web. Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine was the source for most of these references. (On his blog, he says that he was in DC to meet with his CIA handlers, but they must have got to him later in the day.)
(See also Leslie Walker's recent Washington Post story on Bakersfield and GoSkokie.)
Posted by peterlevine at December 14, 2004 04:57 PM
Comments
Sheesh, Peter. Thanks! Just info I need for our local Dem. effort -- which includes collaborative online work.
Posted by: PW at December 14, 2004 09:47 PM
Excellent! So they have some knowledgeable bloggers on board.
Who else besides you and Jeff Jarvis is on the Advisory Board? How often will the group be 'meeting'?
Is J-Lab going to be blogging the direction-forming and decisionmaking process, or will that be your bailiwick?
(personally I'd prefer to see the blogging be done by a blogger, otherwise it's likely to be a PR outlet)
To what degree will they be soliciting input from the public? What does the timeline look like (including the points along it)?
I posted some suggestions for things to fund in a PressThink comment ( http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2004/12/01/glaser_co.html#comment14553 ) - an addition to which would be "support for setting up/publicizing/seeding a Wikipedia for the community's local history"
Posted by: Anna at December 15, 2004 04:07 PM
I don't think that J-Lab plans to describe their decision-making process in an official blog. I may not go into too much detail, either, since it's not for me to decide what discussions and decisions should be publicized and when. I am confident, however, that the J-Lab people will welcome advice. Email Jan Shaffer or any of the good folks there. Or email me (plevine@umd.edu) and I'll circulate your message to the staff and board. I love your suggestions on PressThink.
Posted by: Peter Levine at December 15, 2004 09:15 PM
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This blog is under attack from comment spammers, who are causing a problem for the server. I believe I can block them by upgrading to a recent version of MoveableType. However, I do not have time to do that until late December. Therefore, I have temporarily disabled comments. Please feel free to email me feedback at plevine@umd.edu.