Representative Journalism

Doug McGill’s journalism class at Carleton College produced a video about our Representative Journalism project at the Locally Grown blog in Northfield, Minnesota. Rep J reporter Bonnie Obremski and Locally Grown blogger Griff Wigley are highlighted.
McGill’s students have been posting an impressive series of local journalism stories and posting them at Locally Grown. Their [...]

Want the freedom to do high quality, ethically sound journalism in an inviting atmosphere; then this one-year fellowship might be perfect for you. Please spread the word, this will be a dream assignment for the right person.
Help chart the future of local news and community. Apply for a Representative Journalism Fellowship. Leonard [...]

Things are moving forward for our Representative Journalism trial project in Northfield, Minnesota. First big news is a job opening. As you will see, it is a temporary, part-time gig, but could grow into something more permanent — but we can’t make any promises. Here is the job description, spread the word:
Northfield, Minnesota has [...]

Back at Jeff Jarvis’s Networked Journalism Summit as I was networking with Lisa Williams of Placeblogger.com and telling her about Representative Journalism and about a grant I was writing aimed to it. She took a look at my grant proposal and then wrote in it:
 Journalism is becoming a high-tech profession.  And like other high-tech professions such as software [...]

The New York Times has a story about the nonprofit St. Petersburg Times, with this key excerpt:
 “We don’t put out a newspaper to make money,” says Paul C. Tash, the chief executive of the Times Publishing Company, which oversees the paper. “We make money so we can put out a great newspaper.”
Still the St. Petersburg Times [...]

Using Robert Picard as my touchstone, earlier I wrote that too many journalists lack value. They are all but cogs in a machine.  However, my idea of a Representative Journalist is someone who would provide plenty of value for a Representative Journalism community. So much value that rather than hiring a kid right out of college, the [...]

 Saul Friedman, a 1963 Nieman Fellow and  former White House correspondent for Newsday and Knight Ridder newspapers, writes at Neiman Watchdog Blog:  
Why can’t reporters who cover their beats well and who become as expert as possible in that field–the law, courts, medicine, consumerism, politics, the Congress, even the presidency–write for their newspapers as if [...]

So my brother who lives in Bonita Springs, Florida, wanted to know why anyone would pay a $100 to support a reporter, and why would 1,000 people do it? After all, the reporters he sees at his area’s papers are often young, inexperienced, don’t have a clue about life in his town and when they begin to learn [...]