New Chicago News Bureau Will Produce Content for New York Times

A new Chicago News Cooperative (CNC) has been formed to provide high quality, professionally edited news and commentary to the Chicago region on the Web, in print and over the airwaves, according to Poynter Online today.

CNC has a contract with the New York Times in which journalists will provide two pages of CNC branded news and commentary to The New York Times twice a week in its Chicago editions on Friday and Saturday. It will also produce a Web site called Chicago Scoop that will provide news, commentary and investigative reporting. Expected to go live in early 2010, reports will also appear on WTTW. It is in discussions with Chicago Public Radio about providing content as well.

CNC editor is James O'Shea, former editor of the Los Angeles Times and former managing editor of the Tribune. James Warren, former Tribune managing editor will write a regular column for CNC that will appear in the NY Times Chicago pages.

Who Wants One Year of Free Design?

Firebelly Design awards an annual Design + Marketing Grant to nonprofits in need. Recipients chosen receive one year of of design plus strategy plus marketing skills.

Check it out here.

Three Easy Steps For Going Viral

Recently Greenpeace conducted a series of actions at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh.

As a Board member I was asked to let people in my network know about the actions, and Greenpeace made it easy by giving me the tools to spread their news quickly and easily.

Here are three tips for getting your network to pass your news on to friends and colleagues.



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Three Steps To Going Viral

1) Send out a brief paragraph in advance of your event that describes what you will be doing and that motivates people to participate remotely

Example:

“[Organization] will release a report on local food production in Illinois and then visit with legislators in Springfield. Follow us throughout the day and stay up-to-date as we post new images, photos and stories on our landing page.”

2) Provide multiple ways in which interested audiences can follow along.
Be organized and prepare to report on your activities throughout the day in a wide variety of ways

-Website address
-Location where photos are being posted
-Location for video or interviews
-Twitter hashtag

3) Give your audience a way to help pass the information along
Suggest various ways for your audience to stay involved and make it easy to do by giving them tools for doing so.

Example:

“We’ll keep you posted as the day goes along. But, in the meantime, we could use your help spreading the word.”

Facebook Users: Ask people to post a status message and Give people a short paragraph to put up on their Facebook page. Include the url of your landing page.

Urge people to leave a comment on their own status update or to copy the message and post it as their own status

Twitter users: Provide copy and ask people to post it as an update. Urge people to retweet new info as it develops throughout the day.

Email to external listservs and coalition groups: Give your audiences the text for a message and encourage them to send it to all of their networks – listservs, groups, coalitions, etc.

Krugman Nails It On Climate Change (As Usual)

Article is here. Money quote:

But the larger reason we’re ignoring climate change is that Al Gore was right: This truth is just too inconvenient. Responding to climate change with the vigor that the threat deserves would not, contrary to legend, be devastating for the economy as a whole. But it would shuffle the economic deck, hurting some powerful vested interests even as it created new economic opportunities. And the industries of the past have armies of lobbyists in place right now; the industries of the future don’t.

Nor is it just a matter of vested interests. It’s also a matter of vested ideas. For three decades the dominant political ideology in America has extolled private enterprise and denigrated government, but climate change is a problem that can only be addressed through government action. And rather than concede the limits of their philosophy, many on the right have chosen to deny that the problem exists.

Still Trying to Figure Out Twitter?

Twitter has been a hot topic at a number of parties I've been at recently. My peers (the 50 - 70 year old crowd) are a tolerant group, but many shake their heads when it comes to Twitter, perplexed about what the big deal could be. ("who wants to communicate all the time," is a common question.)

I confess, I haven't found a way to work it into my routine much -- I'm still working on learning to blog regularly. Who knows, by the time I get that down, we may have moved on to something else.

Nevertheless, here is a great article in the Wall Street Journal that shows exactly how Twitter works, if you work it.

One-Paper Town?

Chicago is coming dangerously close to becoming a one-paper town. Chicago financier Jim Tyree has made a $25 million offer, but union members say concessions needed to seal the deal are too much.

If things don't change soon, Chicago will become a one-paper town. And that's shame. Lots of good thinking people left the Chicago Sun-Times when Murdoch took over, and they never came back even though that was years ago.

But still the Sun-Times, small, scrappy finds its way to stories that nobody else seems to find. Case in point the recent pension stories or a lovely piece that Dave Roeder did just today on re-development plans in Englewood.

Neither paper is what it used to be, but we still need them both.

Webinars: More Like a Talkshow Than a Workshop

I did one of my first webinar trainings yesterday and, while it wasn't terrible, it was much more difficult than the in-person trainings I am used to doing.

This article expressed my feelings exactly:

What I hadn't bargained for was the deadly quiet, the utter lack of audience interaction. No eye contact. No heads nodding. No "sense of the room"-that vital sixth sense experienced speakers hone to alert them to the audience drifting away. Worse than the sound of one hand clapping, this was the sound of one voice yapping.

A colleague from Community Media Workshop, who was listening in, advised me to think of a webinars as more like hosting a talk radio show than conducting a traditional workshop.

Three quick points that I will definately use the next time after the jump

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Three tips for better webinars:

1) Get all the words off the PowerPoint slide. As my colleague said: Just put up a funny picture and start talking.

2) People used to tell their audience what they were going to tell them and then summarized at the end what they just told them. That doesn't work well in the webinar world. You need to engage and re-engage your audience by telling stories related to the topic.

3) Continually remind and cue people on how they can come into the conversation much like a talk show host does, for example, "people who want to share a similar experience, click the chat button in the lower left or press star six to unmute your phone."

Nonprofits Fail to Adapt to New Media

Seth Godin takes nonprofits to task in a strongly worded essay for their failure to join in the new media revolution. He cites a severe case of risk aversion as the cause. According to Seth, marketing techniques just haven't filtered down from the for-profit world where they are revolutionizing how people communicate. "No excuses," Seth says.

Thanks to Hugh McMullen, former VDC staffer and now with Fenton Communications in New York City, for this tip

Google News Puts "Spotlight" on In-Depth News

Google News has added a new section that highlights “in-depth pieces of lasting value.” Called Spotlight, and like the rest of Google News, the stories are selected by an undisclosed algorithm. The Spotlight seems to shine on longer features that have bounced around blogs for a few days. Lifestyle and opinion pieces seems to appear often, and The New York Times is a frequent source.

In this era of "fast news" - I'm curious to see if readers will flock to the Spotlight.

A New Reporter I'd Love to Work With

Damon Weaver has interviewed politicians and celebrities alike, yet is only 11 years old. Dubbed the "Future of Journalism", Weaver has become a viral superstar for the interviews he conducted for his elementary school's station, KEC-TV. His fame has already landed him a college scholarship and appearances on CNN, FOX and MSNBC.

Recently, he sat down with President Obama. When asked by Time Magazine about his expereince with the President, he remarked:

He was a very nice, tall guy. And he gives very good details. I liked interviewing him. He's just like a normal person.

You can check out the interview in its entirety here.