Here is the link to it all.

I will try to get it translated soon.

McGill’s students have been posting an impressive series of local journalism stories and posting them at Locally Grown. Their work is worth watching, hearing and reading.

Here is a description of McGill’s class:

272. Truth vs. Power: A Journey in Journalism

Journalism is in turmoil today. Bold experimentation is needed to meet such dramatic new challenges to journalism as the Internet, the decline of newspapers, multilingual readerships, and global crises requiring activism more than “objectivity.” The class will move between a theoretical focus — exploring journalism’s basic theories and often-contradictory methods, purposes and aims –and a practical focus inviting students to strive towards their highest journalistic ideals. Students will be challenged to blend journalism’s indispensable norms of factual accuracy, fairness and quality writing with new technologies such as blogging, podcasting, videocasting, social networking and RSS feeds. 6 credits, AL.
Fall — D. McGill

Mizzou “Lunchstorm” discussion on Dec. 5, 2008 from Bonnie Obremski on Vimeo.

Hello Romenesko readers, to learn more about Representative Journalism go here and to see our Rep J experimental project in Northfield, MN go here.

Welcome Current.org readers too. You might want to read the attached comment about the possibility of PBS and NPR forming a partnership.

When the magazine Radar announced it was shutting down last Friday, its Washington editor Ana Marie Cox was left with a seat on John McCain’s plane but no one to pay for it.

So Cox reached out for public support via her blog and Twitter. She has a running commentary at her blog on her personal fundraising. As of this post, it seems she is up to about $10,000. I have emailed her to check her interest in the Representative Journalism concept. We would love to help her build a Rep J community around the work she does. More later.

New York Times media columnist David Carr chronicles recent newspaper gloom writing:

It’s been an especially rotten few days for people who type on deadline. On Tuesday, The Christian Science Monitor announced that, after a century, it would cease publishing a weekday paper. Time Inc., the Olympian home of Time magazine, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated, announced that it was cutting 600 jobs and reorganizing its staff. And Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, compounded the grimness by announcing it was laying off 10 percent of its work force — up to 3,000 people.

After writing about other moribund news operations he writes:

At the recent American Magazine Conference, one of the speakers worried that if the great brands of journalism — the trusted news sources readers have relied on — were to vanish, then the Web itself would quickly become a “cesspool” of useless information. That kind of hand-wringing is a staple of industry gatherings.

But in this case, it wasn’t an old journalism hack lamenting his industry. It was Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google.

I think all of us in the industry have to say and believe:

• High quality journalism has value.
• If it has value, consumers should be willing to pay for it –just like they pay for a haircut or cable TV.
• We must make consumers aware that the coming cesspool of useless information is figuratively about to backup at their electronic doorsteps
• And without journalism, their city sewers are literally apt to back up in their front and back yards.
• We must provide the high quality journalism and market it extensively, while building high quality information communities with our audiences, who will spread the message virally and ensure it is heard, understood and championed.

I am the person behind the Representative Journalism project that is taking place in Northfield, Minnesota via the Locally Grown blog. As many of you know, Bonnie Obremski, thanks to Harnisch Foundation funding, is now Northfield’s very own Rep J reporter.

Today in Northfield we are asking her to put all of her energies toward helping the folks of Northfield understand how the economic crisis is affecting their town. Griff Wigley, who along with Tracy Davis and Ross Currier runs Locally Grown, first posted about the economic meltdown in mid-September. Since then almost 200 comments have been added to that post.

In that post Griff wrote in part:

Looks like a real meltdown. Let’s try to make sense of it… especially how it might impact things locally.

Here was my comment today at Locally Grown addressed to the good folks of Northfield:

So why not add some evidence-based reporting by Bonnie Obremski to this discussion? Who are key people with whom she should be speaking? What stories could she do to answer your questions on how this economic crisis might affect Northfield? What effects are already taking place that should be reported in greater detail?

I have asked her to concentrate on what we are calling Spotlight on the Economy — she needs your help, your ideas.

The idea is for her to provide evidence based reporting and for all of you at Locally Grown to put the stories into a greater context, build upon what she finds, provide story ideas, tell your personal stories and when appropriate suggest ways to act on those stories.

I do believe with that combination of her reporting and your contextualizing we will have a greater understanding of what all this means to your private lives and to the public life of Northfield.

Then in a later comment at Locally Grown I wrote about the biggest challenge for any local reporter:

There is no way that Bonnie is going to do the international banking aspects of this story. She will do the local story. How is the fiscal crisis affecting Main Street and your neighbors right in Northfield?

Of course, the international banking story affects the local economy in profound ways. The Rep J/Locally Grown community’s challenge is to make sense of something which is driven by forces far from home.

We’ll keep you posted on developments as this phase of our Representative Journalism experiment in Northfield moves forward.