Courtesy of online.wsj.com

For years, Crovitz wrote, publishers and editors have asked the wrong question: Will people pay to access my newspaper content on the Web? The right question is: What kind of journalism can my staff produce that is different and valuable enough that people will pay for it online?

I’m interested in hearing what folks think of this essay. I’m not sure I agree with everything Mr. Crovitz writes. Haven’t most newspapers always been trying “valuable” content?

If independent writers in Northfield produced content that you valued more than that of a reporter employed by a company, would you be wiling to pay for that independent reporter to keep up his or her news beat?

Photo by Bonnie Obremski Caption: On the left are Brian O'Connell, director of Northfield's Community Development Department (foreground) and Joel Walinski, Northfield's interim city administrator. At center is Edith Nelson, Greenvale Township clerk. On the right are Richard Moore, Greenvale Township supervisor chairman and Bernard Budin, township supervisor. Not shown on the far right is supervisor Robert Winter.

Photo by Bonnie Obremski Caption: Richard Moore, Greenvale Township supervisor chairman signs an annexation agreement with Northfield on Tuesday night at the Township Hall.

]]> http://repjbonnie.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/annexation-agreement-reached/feed/ 2 bonnieandjosh handshake1 signature http://repjbonnie.wordpress.com/2009/02/14/poll-american-recovery-and-reinvestment-act-of-2009/ http://repjbonnie.wordpress.com/2009/02/14/poll-american-recovery-and-reinvestment-act-of-2009/#comments Sat, 14 Feb 2009 15:16:04 +0000 Bonnie and Josh http://repjbonnie.wordpress.com/?p=284 ]]>

FULL SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS FROM SENATE FINANCE, HOUSE WAYS & MEANS COMMITTEES

HOUSING PROVISIONS IN FEDERAL RECOVERY BILL
PRELIMNARY SUMMARY

The basics of Local Government Aid: LGA promotes fair property taxation

AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT PLAN: JOB IMPACT BY CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT: STATE-BY-STATE JOBS IMPACT

Major Low-Income Housing Provisions of House and Senate Recovery Bills

Congressman Jim Oberstar, who represents Minnesota’s eighth district, wrote about what the act could mean for the state on Tuesday in the Duluth News Tribune saying, “I want to see that bill on President Obama’s desk to be signed into law by Monday, Presidents Day. By June, that final stroke of the president’s pen will have men and women going to work building and maintaining roads and bridges, upgrading schools and modernizing public buildings.”

“In Minnesota, the department of transportation has a backlog of 200 shovel-ready road and bridge projects. This legislation will speed $477 million to the state to start work on those projects, creating nearly 17,000 jobs.”

“A recent economic analysis by Moody’s concluded that the recovery bill could put a total of 91,000 Minnesotans to work by 2010, holding the state’s unemployment rate down by nearly 2 percent.”

See Moody’s Report here.

Not everyone in Minnesota seems as optimistic as Oberstar, however. The Austin Post-Bulletin ran a story on Jan. 30 that questioned whether the act could actually lead to less funding for public schools.

“Fourteen area superintendents met with 1st District Rep. Tim Walz on Thursday to talk about the proposed “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” commonly referred to as the stimulus package. The education leaders were aware that the estimates are long from final.

Dover-Eyota Superintendent Bruce Klaehn said several people are worried that the Legislature will decrease education funding once the federal money is awarded.”

On the matter of federal funding of public schools, an article in the Sillwater Gazette offered a different perspective on Feb. 5.

“Buried in the $819 billion stimulus package approved by the U.S. House of Representatives last week is an estimated $2.75 million for special education programs and construction projects in District 834.

If the stimulus package is also approved by the U.S. Senate, local school officials said the additional federal funds would help the district absorb any budget shocks at the state level, where money remains tight.”

The amount of agricultural land in Minnesota dropped by about 600,000 acres between 2002 and 2007, according to state census data. Is that loss something more people should care about?

That question is just one I intend to answer in my next in-depth story for the Representative Journalism Project.

I welcome my readers to help lead me to important information on this topic that will deepen all of our understanding.

” Newspaper readers have never paid for the content (words and photos). What they have paid for is the paper that content is printed on,” author Michael Kinsley wrote.

Courtesy of http://blog.davisfreud.com

This is an open invitation for everyone to join Sam Friedman, a Carleton student, and me at the Goodbye Blue Monday cafe on Division Street tomorrow at 8 a.m. (Tuesday, Feb.9.) for journalism-related discussion.

Sam works at the Carletonian student newspaper. He suggested we form the discussion group after he attended a meeting in January at the Bittersweet Eatery during which a group of people talked about the Representative Journalism Project. We’ll put a sign on our table to identify where we’re sitting. Hope to see you there!

“The [Boston] Post under Mr. [Charles] Greene’s management was a model of typography, good temper, refinement, moderation and independence, a combination of characteristics not too often met with in representative journalism.”

Col. Charles Gordon Greene, who founded the Post and worked as its editor for 44 years, died at age 82 and was a native of Boscawen, N.H. The Post folded in the face of competition in 1956, but won a Pulitzer prize in 1921 and once had a circulation of more than a million, according to an article on Wikipedia.

The obituary does not go on to define representative journalism any further, so it would be hard to say whether the term held the same meaning as it does today. However, it seems the obituary’s author might have been a skeptic as to the quality of most of the news that fell into that category at that time.

About a century later, an article published in Wired magazine titled “Mrs. and Mr. Roberts’ Neighborhood,” contained the term “representative journalism.” The celebrity subjects of the story exhibited much skepticism of the representative journalism notion.

“Cokie Roberts and her husband, Steven Roberts, were alarmed recently to learn that between 250,000 and 350,000 people log on to the Consumer Project on Technology Web site every day to monitor congressional activities in Washington,” Jon Katz wrote on April 16, 1997. “It did not strike the couple – one of Washington’s most influential and visible – as cause to celebrate a new and participatory electronic democracy that could reconnect Americans with their civic lives.”

“Cokie and Steven Roberts are Washington’s first couple of journalism,” Katz wrote. “She is the daughter of two former members of Congress, and is an NPR reporter; she also co-hosts, with Sam Donaldson, ABC’s This Week. He is a former New York Times reporter and writer and editor for US News & World Report.”

Katz went on to say, “People like Cokie and Steven Roberts have long decided what stories would be covered and what information we’d get. The idea that hundreds of thousands of Americans would presume to do the same isn’t a stirring idea to them, as the column demonstrates, but a terror discussed nonstop at Washington cocktail parties.”

Leonard Witt, who coined the term “representative journalism” on August 24, 2007, according to his blog, offered the following definition at that time.

“News operations…will have to join the niche movement. Rather than think in terms of a circulation of, let’s say, 100,000, they should think in terms of 100 niche markets of 1,000 each and form membership communities around those niches.”

“The centerpiece for each membership community will be the news and information tailored to each community’s needs, with a reporter and editing support devoted specifically to each community of 1,000. Online social networking, interactivity, face-to-face events will all be used to build group cohesion.”

“A network weaver will help to bring the groups together. The 100 individual groups can be diverse as a lawyers’ group, wanting local legally related news, to hunters to low level healthcare workers, wanting their information needs met by their own group’s Representative Journalist.”

“Then all these niche membership groups are aggregated under an umbrella news operation, which in turn might be aggregated further with other umbrella operations nationwide or internationally wide.”

Leonard Witt, RepJ founder

“I am extremely pleased to announce that the Harnisch Foundation, thanks to its founder and president, Ruth Ann Harnisch, is providing the Kennesaw State University Foundation with a pledged gift of $1.5 million for me to start The Center for Sustainable Journalism here at the university.”  — Leonard Witt, RepJ founder

Read more here.