Community Innovation News - Christine Sculati's blog » civic participation

The reinvention of news in the Bay Area

christine — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:01:43 +0000

How do you get your daily news?
Today with the explosion of digital news sites, blogs and social media tools, community storytelling and information are more accessible than ever before.

According to new research by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Project for Excellence in Journalism, most Americans (92%) use multiple platforms (online, local and national television, print newspapers, radio, mobile devices) to get their daily news. Yet Pew Research also found that 70% of news consumers feel the amount of news and information available from different sources is “overwhelming.”

How can we discern what news and information are credible? Is there enough coverage of arts, culture, education, the environment and other civic issues in your community? Which distribution models and platforms will deliver rich content while remaining financially sustainable?

What does the future hold?

Amid the staggering losses of traditional news outlets and the layoffs of journalists reporting on local culture and public affairs issues, new nonprofit journalism organizations are emerging rapidly to fill the gaps. They are leveraging new digital technologies and community support to get there.

In an article published in the relatively new Bay Area section of the New York Times (published in print on Fridays and Sundays, online and on some mobile applications), Frances Dinkelspiel calls nonprofit journalism the “Bay Area’s new growth industry.” Yet, as she points out, nonprofit news organizations are not new in the Bay Area.

Well-established Bay Area nonprofit news outlets include KQED public media (founded in the 1950s), Mother Jones magazine (founded in the 1970s), the Center for Investigative Reporting (founded in 1977) and New America Media (founded by the nonprofit Pacific News Service in 1996). The nonprofit Bay Nature magazine, based in Berkeley, debuted in 2001. One of the founders of Bay Nature was Malcom Margolin, a recognized community leader and publisher of Heyday books (founded in 1974) and News from Native California.

While some of the established organizations have covered broader geographical areas, some of the newest nonprofit news organizations emerging in the Bay Area are focusing on community and civic news.

In the Bay Area, new ventures include the San Francisco Public Press and The Bay Citizen, which is set to launch on May 26, 2010 with a celebration at the Great American Music Hall for founding members. Built on a what is called a “crowd-financing model,” Spot.us is replicating its nonprofit model in other metropolitan areas including Seattle and Los Angeles. According to the project’s Web site, Spot.us “allows an individual or group to take control of news by sharing the cost (crowdfunding) to commission freelance journalists.”

Nonprofit sustainability
All of these nonprofit news organizations, old and new, rely on foundation funding, individual donors and diverse revenue streams, the goal of most nonprofit organizations. A few are membership-based organizations, a familiar concept to viewers and listeners of public broadcasting.

You may have already noticed that collaborations for content generation and distribution are becoming ubiquitous among nonprofit and commercial media. Just the other day, the San Francisco Chronicle published an article on gray whale migration by Jane Kay, a former Chronicle staff writer. The article was produced for DailyClimate.org, a nonprofit news service that covers climate change. I also recently read a San Francisco Public Press article published in the New York Times. And California Watch lists over 50 distribution partners on its website.

Community blogs are also rising rapidly. One good resource for finding locally-focused blogs here in the Bay Area is the BayNewsNetwork run by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and its Knight Digital Media Center. The site serves as a directory and aggregator of over 244 blogs and sites focusing on specific communities in the Bay Area region (called “hyperlocal”).

If you want to find out more about new initiatives and local projects working to reinvent journalism and public-interest news, this weekend you can attend the “Journalism Innovations” conference, produced by Independent Arts and Media, The University of San Francisco, G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism and the Society for Professional Journalists. On Twitter, follow the conversations with the #JI3 hashtag.

Census 2010 workers to begin making home visits

christine — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:25:55 +0000

Last Friday was the final day to mail back the census form. Households who did not return their forms should expect a visit by a census worker in the coming weeks, beginning in May.

According to Census.gov, as of April 19, the national participation rate is 69%. The top five participating states are Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and Pennsylvania.

Among the nine counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Clara County, which includes the city of San Jose, has the highest participation rate at 72%. The County of San Francisco has the lowest rate at 65%. All participation rates to date in Bay Area counties are lower than they were in 2000, but that could change after census workers make their rounds.

An undercount in your city or county could translate into a potential loss in millions of dollars for public program funding over the next decade.

According to The New York Times, some of the hardest to count urban neighborhoods might be experiencing higher return rates based on research by the Center for Urban Research. While it is too soon to tell, this could be due to unprecedented efforts to reach hard-to-count populations.

In Los Angeles County, advocates are using real time data to reach undercounted households. Using information provided by the nonprofit research group Healthy City, the California Community Foundation identified Los Angeles’ least-counted areas in the 2010 U.S. Census. “For the first time in census history, we have access to information that can really help us focus our outreach efforts,” said Antonia Hernández, president and CEO at the foundation. “We not only know who’s doing what where but we also now know where the gaps are so it’s a great match, especially given we have limited resources.”

NPR reports on the massive mobilization for Census 2010

christine — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:16:17 +0000

On Monday I wrote a post about how nonprofit organizations, community leaders and foundations are collaborating to reach hard-to-count populations and ensure that their constituents participate in Census 2010. Several important campaigns are taking place in the Bay Area with the financial support of The San Fransisco Foundation, The California Endowment, Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Foundation, James Irvine Foundation and other local foundations. In addition to grant funds, The San Francisco Foundation and The California Endowment are helping grantees to collaborate, strategize and track their efforts.

Yesterday, National Public Radio reported on how major national foundations have also launched intensive campaigns to reach the hard-to-count including the homeless and those who might be uncomfortable participating based on immigration status. National funders of Census 2010 initiatives include The Open Society Institute, Ford Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

As the NPR story reports, Voto Latino came up with innovative ways that link the popularity of the iPhone with young Latinos and incentives for filling out the census form. They developed an iPhone application for Los Angeles County that gives users the opportunity to win music and possibly a free concert if they learn about the census.

Listen to the NPR story:

Why is the Census important to you?

christine — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:23:59 +0000

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Any day you should receive notice in the mail about the 2010 Census. The official questionnaire will follow the initial announcement one week later in mid-March.

The federal government distributes more than $400 billion a year to state, tribal and local governments based on the decennial Census count. And every ten years some states gain seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and some lose, depending on what the Census numbers say about the relative sizes of their populations. The changing numbers require states to redraw Congressional District boundaries.

Yet to the despair of social justice advocates, populations that are most in need of community services, resources and civil rights enforcement have also been the hardest to count. In the Bay Area a number of foundations have helped to mobilize outreach in historically undercounted populations by awarding grants to grassroots organizations with extensive reach in their communities.

When it comes to filling out box #9 with regards to race, advocacy organizations will also play a critical educational role to show how individuals can “self-select” by choosing more than one race or “some other race” to identify as multi-racial or by national origin. For example, some might choose to enter Afghan, Sikh, Maya or Haitian. This widely-syndicated article by the Associated Press describes how some Caribbean-American leaders are urging their communities to write their nationalities on the line under “some other race” on the forms, along with checking the racial categories they feel identify them best.

While the way race is counted is an important evolution in the Census, it remains to be seen how the Census Bureau will tabulate the write-in selections in 2011.

Articles and Resources on Census 2010

Nonprofits Count!: A project of the Nonprofit Voter Engagement Network, this website provides information, including best practices, on how nonprofit organizations and human services agencies can help produce an accurate count of hard-to-count populations.

Mapping Hard-to-Count Communities: Hard-to-Count (HTC) populations are groups that may have a higher non-response rate on the 2010 Census. With support from The California Endowment, Healthy Cities has generated a portal through which Census stakeholders may locate communities at risk for undercounting in California.

Justice Department Confirms Confidentiality of Census Information – March 5, 2010 article by the Washington Post

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Census History: Counting Hispanics – March 3, 2010 article by the Pew Hispanic Center

Census: Battleground for Money and Justice – February 17, 2010 by Blue Avocado

Most View Census Positively, But Some Have Doubts - February 12, 2010 by The Pew Research Center for the People & The Press

California Complete Count Committee

The Census Project Blog: A collaboration of state and local governments, civil rights and labor groups, housing and child advocates, businesses, professional societies, and research organizations interested in a fair and accurate Census 2010

Brookings Institution Census Information

Grantmaker Initiatives

Census 2010 Grants Will Bring Visibility to Hard-to-Count Populations – The San Francisco Foundation
New York Foundations Push to Get Accurate Census Count – Philanthropy News Digest

Private foundations offer millions to ensure accurate census count – Contra Costa Times

The California Endowment has awarded nearly 11,000 grants across California totaling more than $1.9 billion.

Widgets for civic engagment

christine — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:58:38 +0000

Today I read a new post by blogger Amy Gahran on the News Leadership 3.0 blog of the Knight Digital Media Center (a project of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism). Her article reminded me of how easy it is for changemakers to embed third party widgets and gadgets into their blogs and Web pages to promote civic engagement through volunteering.

In addition to the widgets the author describes in the article – SearchLite by VolunteerMatch, Dosomething.org and Volunteering in America by widgetbox – another widget I recently discovered is made by All for Good, a project of Our Good Works. All for Good makes an open source application that allows you to find and share volunteer activities. I initially discovered the All for Good tool on Serve.gov, a site set up in response to President Obama’s call for Americans to get out and serve in their communities. The volunteer database is driven by All for Good.

According to the All for Good Web site, the project is driven by volunteers from Google, Craigslist Foundation, UCLA, YouTube, FanFeedr and Aha! Ink. As a contributor, Google is hosting the All for Good website and products.

After making a few selections for place, colors and time frame – voila! – here is a dynamic listing of volunteer opportunities available for this week in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Obama’s call to service and pledges to the nonprofit sector

christine — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:52:14 +0000

With the historic inauguration of president-elect Barack Obama less than a day away, communities across the country are responding to Obama’s call to service in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the legendary civil rights activist. In 1994, Congress transformed the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday into a national day of community service. This year, the Corporation for National and Community Service and the Presidential Inaugural Committee are using the Internet and social media to spread the word about how people can get involved. USAservice.org now lists over 12,000 projects, double the number from 2008.

As nonprofits nationwide respond to a higher demand for services while weathering an economic downturn, many in the social sector are hoping the national day of service will inspire volunteerism throughout the year. To that effect, nonprofits are working to help Obama expand national service while also holding the new administration to pledges for support. For example, in Obama’s Blueprint for Change, he pledges to create a “Social Investment Fund Network” that will use federal seed money to leverage private sector funding and create an agency dedicated to building the capacity, innovation and effectiveness of the nonprofit sector.

Tomorrow the swearing-in ceremony for the 44th president will begin at 8:30 a.m. Pacific time and will be shown live at venues throughout the Bay Area. Televised coverage also begins at 8:30am.

The San Francisco Chronicle lists broadcast venues, large and small. The largest viewing will be at Oracle Arena in Oakland, with a live broadcast and booths operated by community groups. This event is the culmination of 10 days of community gatherings called “Unity for the Sake of Change,” co-hosted by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.

RESOURCES:

Martin Luther King Jr. Day events in Bay Area by The San Francisco Chronicle.

USAservice.org – Search for volunteer opportunities in your community.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy – How Barack Obama Can Help Charities Become Key Forces in the Economic Recovery

Obama’s Blueprint for Change

San Francisco Bay Area Inauguration Events

Martin Luther King Jr. Biographies

Nobelprize.org

Washington, DC Martin Luther King, Jr.
National Memorial

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