Community Media Workshop

One of the most popular custom workshops that organizations ask us to present to their staff is the Elevator Pitch, so we decided to see how our staff sees the Workshop itself. We used a worksheet created by Sue O’Halloran, where you make your elevator pitch follow this format...

The line is from Romeo and Juliet...

Interesting program, cute video, cool combination of players involved! (Nice to see volunteers who do not take themselves too seriously)...

Wouldn’t you love to see Mayor Daley squirm as John Callaway asked him about Olympic budget cost guarantees he never shared with the voters? Or what about a one-on-one with Oprah? Or an unscripted half-hour with our latest political celebrity Patti Blagojevich (”What advice did your dad, Ald...

As friends at social service agencies are getting set to layoff staff in the coming weeks and organizing rallies in the hope that they can stop it, we get the sense of the limits of the power of effective communication...

Just picking up on the theme of new news, in the “truth is stranger than fiction” categor

Lovette Ajayi of CMW responded to comments about the NEW News report during the Making Media Connections conference while holding down the registration table Wednesday and Thursday (photo by Jonathan Werve) We’re getting emails, other folks are getting emails, phone calls… a lot of questions...

One reason there has not been much posted here over the past 10 weeks or so is that we’ve been busy pulling together a report on the state of local online news in Chicago, The NEW News: Journalism We Want and Need for The Chicago Community Trust...

CMW's Steve Franklin (in blue shirt) and others learned about a new multilingual emergency warning system this morning at NAM conference (you know it’s bad when your computer no longer remembers the exact address of your Wordpress login page...

As struggling local newspapers continue to abandon the printed page, foundations, entrepreneurs and journalists are launching “hyperlocal” and watchdog news Web sites. Where and who are they? What do they tell us about the new media landscape...

Sorry… time to get back on the blogging horse! Just a quick note for Chicago nonprofit communicators — many of you have called and emailed to learn more details of the Chicago Local News Service, pooling news coverage by area television news programs to cut costs...

We thought you’d like to know the newest and biggest update in the changing media landscape. The Chicago Tribune made sweeping layoffs to its newsroom staff yesterday that some have called “devastating,” and 53 Tribune staff members were let go yesterday, reducing their count by over 10%...

I cross posted this at the Making Media Connections conference site Pulling together a list of books for the bookseller’s table at Making Media Connections...

Urbana Champaign Indy Media Center is in a former post office There is no news here, no hot communication tips…. Just two really interesting and unique spaces — just two hours away from each other and a world apart...

Today, at the first of four planned focus groups to dicuss what nonprofits at least view as the kind of news they want and need, there was some sentimental attachment to the news… but not much...

A friend, Sharon Carney of the Michigan Suburbs Alliance, writes of what I suspect is a common, more advanced communications dilemma: I’ve been struggling with some messaging issues lately for a project I’m working on and thought CMW might have some tools available for help...

The blizzard of discussion about how the news is to survive leaves aside a question that, in a crisis, may seem a side issue and to many may seem a non-issue. Specifically, not how the news is to survive, but why...

""As you can see, opportunity abounds." from Xark, a group blog with primary authors in Charleston, SC, and Nashville, TN less drama than Brenda Starr, but more to the point. yeah, i heard about it on twitter-via Cynthia Scheiderer of Brotherton Strategies...

A CNN crew interviewed Studs at the last benefit he was able to attend, two years ago. … for our benefit tomorrow. Wait–you’re not on the list...

Adding to their transparency (always good for a user-oriented service such as theirs, right?) the low power FM/livestreaming/use your cellphone as your microphone radio station Vocalo (aka the ‘hood-oriented arm of Chicago Public Radio) has started a new blog...

Sure, you know what you need to make you feel better in an economic crisis: capacity building. Well, maybe or maybe not, but this morning Chicago’s Donor’s Forum organized a panel with Thom Clark from the Workshop and other local capacity builders offering some insights on how to stay afloat...

I was working at the Alternative Schools Network around 2003 when I first heard the phrase “case statement”– you know what that is, right? like an annual report only more so–more stories, more pictures...

I hope Ken Davis is happy. Something really has come out of Sunday’s Journalism Town Hall thang. Maybe not what he imagined (a shot in the arm for old-school newsies?). Instead, I predict quickening of the pace for new news practitioners. Be careful what you wish for, right...

The panelists at this afternoon’s town hall panel on the future of local news in Chicago, organized by Ken Davis, were funny, charming, engaging. Sort of like at, uh, a wake. Maybe I was overly influenced talking to some of the online news folks at the end, like Steve Rhodes of Beechwood Reporter...

Just saw this interview posted on storytelling through podcasting with one of our favorite workshop leaders, Britt Bravo. I haven’t listened yet, but if you’re thinking podcast, it’s probably worth a l

Curtis Black (from left), Natalie Moore, and Mark Brown shared thoughts on the best way to reach them with story ideas at CMW today...

The Funding Exchange is coordinating support of media justice projects around the country, including a number here in Chicago. Today was a show-and-tell by a bunch of groups on what they’re up to. Chicago Independent Radio Project Planning to start their own web-based radio service this year...

Facebook turned 5 years old a couple of weeks ago, so it has now began kindergarten. I’ve been on it since July 2004, when the Facebook was barely sitting up, a mere toddler with no big hoopla attached to it...

Don Hayner takes Michael Cooke’s job running the Sun-Times, and I know it’s provincial to say it but damn it’s good to have a Chicagoan at the top over there. Andrew Herrman, who will take Hayner’s managing editor job, is another longtime Sun-Times guy...

Where do those stories you’re always urged to tell come from...