the smedley log - suburban scrawl

After the unconference

Having spent a day in the confines of the Annenberg School with forty or so other folks discussing the future of norgs, I’m impressed by the thought that there may be hope for organized journalism after all.

Industry types mixed suprisingly well with non-industry types. Ideologies were varied. The room was swarming with ideas from not only veteran journalists and editors, but also from bloggers, students and people simply passionate about the future of news delivery. It was pretty exciting.

I looked up early on in the give and take and realized Jeff Jarvis was going to have the jump on all of us, as he live-blogged the event. Meanwhile, the ubiquitously blogging Atrios went surprisingly low-tech for the day. And Dan Rubin, who was also present, has a post on the experience titled Blue Sky on a Gray Day.

You can read their posts for more of a “who” and “what” account of the day, but I wanted to share some of my thoughts too. The thread I took from most of the discussions was the need to make the news relevant to its audience. While some might argue for more flashy, entertaining content, what about stressing relevance not by compromising substance for style, but by giving it depth and context?

That’s how I’d describe what one breakout group of us spent the better part of an hour discussing: context. Whether it be background information in an ongoing story (and possible ways to provide that without excess verbal clutter) or simple disclosure about who’s doing the writing in the Op-Ed section (i.e. – ditching anonymous group editorials, clarifying credentials for guest opinions from members of think tanks). Context allows a news consumer to figure out what’s going on without having to be spoon fed. It’s something that’s sorely missing from a lot of modern media outlets (and probably also from this post, given the hour and my current state of weariness).

And there was much more that came of the day’s events. Some answers, but there were many questions too. Which is why we broke the meeting agreeing that this was merely a beginning, but certainly one with potential.

UPDATE: Chris Anderson added a lot to the conversation from the NY Indymedia perspective. The West End was also represented. Albert Yee has photos, including a shot of the founding four.

Will Bunch, one of the founding four behind the event (and the man who penned the idea behind it) weighs in on his blog. And there’s also the new Norgs website, where some of the raw data that led to the initial results can be found.

[…] : LATER: Here’s Dan Rubin’s rendition. Here’s Sedley Log’s. […]

I am in deep envy – it sounds like a very intellectually invigorating time was had by all.

Momentous day. Cool.

It was cool. Intellectually invigorating is also a good word for the day.

But what impressed me most about the experience was having established journalism “experts” in the room with those who historically haven’t gotten a lot of respect from the establishment. People had ideas that went beyond patting each other on the back or breaking down into verbal combat.

I think one popular term for the day was the “blue sky moment”—allowing people to float idealistic notions and trying to figure out how to make them work (rather than sneering at them). It goes with one of my favorite quotes:

“To achieve the impossible one must attempt the absurd.”

-or something like that…

The sense of true brainstorming is what made it sound cool – no immediate dismissing of ideas.

The work project that ate my year has been like that. Part of what made it cool was we were frequently going from “Gosh – can’t happen” (en masse) after hearing a new business requirement, then someone would just turn and go “Unless…” and it would go from there. It truly felt like we spent the year hurdling obstacles we would’ve thought we’d never entertain even trying to hurdle.

Trying to remember the Douglas Adams quote and can’t to save my life…

found it (it was bugging me):
“If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?”

Hey there – Interesting discussions you are having here.
I’m curious – would you consider a site like Visual Editors a norg?
It started out two years agoa as a peer-to-peer educational community for student and professional journalists. But it has evolved to include most of your norg definitions.

Just curious if can serve as a model for your studies.

Whiteboard definitions:
Continuous; 24/7 hour
Credible
Risky. Composed of risk-takers. Stretching the limits of technology, content and money.
Willing to embrace and seek failure.
Willing to see the union as a partner.
Interactive. Gives voice to the readers.
Realizes that journalism is not always a story. It might be a database.
Multiplatform, including a free print edition. Multimedia; offering different platorms for different audiences.
Not a one-way street. Not print into multimedia—both ways
Ethical
Transparent.
Allows reporters to express what they think and feel.
A watchdog of the eternal spin machine. Please, of state government.
Committed to freedom of information.
Financially viable And generous with the money it makes.
Supports the acts of journalism.
PERSONAL. Facilitates actual human interaction.
Distributed widely – transit
Devoted to Media literacy – not how to use the media, how to BE the media.
Should empower its users to be citizens
Has a voice. Have a personality.
Enables the community to inform each other.
May offer layers of journalism: Old-school, trained journalism; community journalism
Uses a new metric for measuring success. Should enjoy first-amendment protection

Robb,

Your site is interesting, and someone like you would probably have very good ideas to add to the discussion. If you’d like, send a message introducing yourself to:

norgs(at)yahoogroups.com

[…] even unwittingly echoed something I heard at the Norgs unconference last year – it may have even come out of Will’s mouth (though I can’t recall well […]