Archive for September, 2007

Kate Marymont and Mackenzie Warren – Fort Myers

Posted on 28. Sep, 2007 by .

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Introduction and Narrative: When Gannett announced its transformation from traditional newsrooms to information centers (see Jennifer Carroll writeup) The News-Press in Fort Myers, FLA. was one of the first and most successful papers to adopt the changes. The paper regularly engages in experiments to engage and partner with citizens using traditional media resources in pro-am […]

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Dan Pacheco – Bakersfield.com

Posted on 28. Sep, 2007 by .

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Introduction and Narrative: In 2004 Dan Pacheco was hired as part of the new Digital Products team at The Californian. Their job was to “look out in the future 5-10 years and see trends,” says Pacheco. He came to the position with experience at the Washingtonpost.com and America Online where he worked on community products […]

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Jane Hamsher – FireDogLake

Posted on 28. Sep, 2007 by .

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Introduction and Narrative: FireDogLake is an unabashed liberal blog that started in the wake of the 2004 election. Jane Hamsher, a movie producer, created a simple blogspot blog to collect the posts she had written on her personal Daily Kos blog. “That was all it was supposed to be,” says Hamsher. Today, however, her blog […]

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Merrill Brown – NowPublic

Posted on 27. Sep, 2007 by .

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Introduction and Narrative: Inspired by user–generated sites like Flickr, NowPublic is a citizen journalism news network with contributors from across the world. As other legendary startups, it was founded in a garage by Michael Tippett, Leonard Brody and Michael Meyers in 2005. At the time the group believed there was no space on the net […]

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Lisa Williams – H2OTown, Placeblogger

Posted on 27. Sep, 2007 by .

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Introduction and Narrative: In February of 2005 Lisa Willaims started H2OTown (www.h2otown.info). She had recently left her job and wanted to get to know Watertown Massachusetts better, but decided to do her learning process in public. H2OTown also allowed others in the area to blog, creating a townhall atmosphere. It is what Williams calls a […]

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Jonathan Weber — NewWest.Net

Posted on 26. Sep, 2007 by .

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Introduction and Narrative: Jonathan Weber came to the University of Montana as a visiting professor after the bankruptcy of the Industry Standard where he was editor in chief. While there he became interested in the ongoing story of the Rocky Mountain region’s booming development. Local papers were covering specific stories and towns, but Weber thought […]

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Paul Bass – New Haven Independent

Posted on 25. Sep, 2007 by .

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NOTE: As of September 24th, Bass is no longer able to attend the conference. The New Haven Independent’s managing editor, Melissa Bailey, will take his place. Introduction and Narrative: Paul Bass was a reporter at the New Haven Advocate for 15 years when he took a year off to write a book. Upon finishing Bass […]

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Rick Waghorn – MyFootballWriter

Posted on 25. Sep, 2007 by .

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Introduction and Narrative: My Football Writer started when Rick Waghorn read a piece in MediaGuardian on his 40th birthday (16/01/06) quoting Clay Shirky. Shirky drew an analogy between journalism and the music industry; people still want to listen to good music, just not on CDs. By the same token, people still want to read good […]

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Mark Potts – Backfence

Posted on 19. Sep, 2007 by .

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Introduction and Narrative: Mark Potts began sketching the idea for Backfence while working for Washingtonpost.com. Potts was trying to imagine what a local newspaper product would look like on the web. “Newspapers have trouble doing news down to the town level or below that, they are too big, and it is too expensive to staff,” […]

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Jarah Euston – Fresno Famous

Posted on 18. Sep, 2007 by .

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Introduction and Narrative: Fresno Famous launched April 1st, 2004 when Jarah Euston moved back to Fresno from New York. In her early 20’s and feeling alienated from her home town Euston had no idea what Fresno had to offer in terms of night life or a music scene. That was the imputes of Fresno Famous, […]

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