Jen McClure's Ruminations

Our Story: An Important Reminder

My cousin Leslie just sent me this via email and I thought I'd share. Let's never forget how valuable and important it is to speak our mind and have our say.

This is the story ......

of our Mothers and Grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago.

 Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

 The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

 And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

 

(Lucy Burns)

They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

 (Dora Lewis)
 They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cell mate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

 

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

 (Alice Paul)
 When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh MY memory. Some women won't vote this year because - Why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?
  
 
  

 Mrs Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a 60 day sentence.

"Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."

Speaking at San Francisco East Bay Social Media Breakfast - Tuesday, March 23rd

I was honored to be invited by my pals and Social Media East Bay Breakfast event organizers Shel Holtz, Kenny Lauer, and JD Lasica to speak at the March breakfast. Here's all the info., so if you happen to be around Oakland, CA next Tuesday morning, I hope you'll join us. It should be a fun morning. 

Date: Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Hours: 8:30-10:30 am

Location: Buttercup Grill and Bar in Oakland, 1000 Cotton St., Oakland, CA 94606

Cost: $13.50

Event tag: #SMBEB4  (yes hash browns and has tags!)

I'll be sharing some of the research recently conducted by SNCR's Fellows and some of the studies being undertaken by this year's Fellows.

Here's the agenda:

* 8:30-9:15 am Breakfast

* 9:15-9:45 am Presentation and discussion

* 9:45-10:30 am Networking

Find out more and register here.

Download the presentation here

Are You Measuring the Success of Your Social Media Initiatives?

I was recently invited to take part in a consortium comprised of business leaders, academics and representatives from various communications associations focused on exploring the idea of creating a common lexicon for the use and measurement of social media. As one of our first activities, we’ve formed an open, online working group on Facebook called SMUG – Social Media Understanding Group. You can check it out and join here

In the coming weeks, the consortium will be issuing a survey to explore how business people are measuring their social media initiatives. So, let’s get the conversation started here:

Are you measuring your social media programs?

If so, what do you find to be the greatest challenges in doing so?

If not, why not?

Interview with Nick Shin of Marketwire

I was recently interviewed by Nick Shin for an Ask the Expert feature for Marketwire's blog regarding SNCR's recent Middleberg/SNCR Survey of Media in the Wired World, which I conducted with fellow SNCR Fellow Don Middleberg. Nick asked several incisive questions, including:

Based on the 2009 Middleberg/SNCR Survey for Media in the Wired World, what trend do you predict will rise, fall or change in 2010?

I think we’ll continue to see Twitter grow in importance both as a listening channel as well as a distribution channel for journalists and media. In terms of distribution, it’s almost like a news ticker — a great new way to share headlines and link to more detailed stories. I think we’ll also continue to see an increase in the use of online video, especially citizen-generated video. As news continues to become more collaborative, I think we’ll see more traditional media organizations incorporating online community elements into their online properties.

Nick also asked me for suggestions for PR professionals who want to use social media as part of their media relations work, tips for journalists who are new to social media, the "are bloggers journalists?" issue, and other questions about the study.

The full interview is available here.

Exploring Trends in Media & Journalism with Tom Foremski & Tom Abate

Next Monday evening, March 15th, I'll have the pleasure of talking with friends and fellow SNCR Fellows Tom Abate of the San Francisco Chronicle and Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher about the future of media and journalism at SNCR's Meetup event at SAP in Palo Alto.

We'll discuss the findings of the recent Middleberg/SNCR Survey of Media in the Wired World and what the study results tell us about what's happening today and how journalism and media are evolving.

I always love talking to "the Toms." :-) I always learn something new from our conversations and always come away thinking about something in a new way. In fact, Tom Foremski wrote a great piece on the Middleberg/SNCR study recently, which looked at the results in a completely different way than I had analysed them for the report.  

While I was focusing on the fact that nearly 70% of journalists are now using social networking tools to assist them with their reporting, Tom was shocked that more than 30% do not.

"This is extraordinary," commented Tom. "I can’t imagine not using social media and social networks, blogs, Twitter, etc. My job would be ten times more difficult. Why are so many journalists refusing to use these valuable research tools? It’s mind boggling. You’d think it was 2005. This is a luddite mentality. Do they think it will all go away? It won’t, but they will."

So, please join us for what promises to be a fun and interesting evening. You can still RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/sncrfoundation/calendar/

Hope to see you there!

Chatting with Shel Holtz on FIR

I was delighted to chat with Shel Holtz recently about the upcoming NewComm Forum on the For Immediate Release (FIR) podcast.

You can take a listen here. Thanks, Shel!

And, if you're interested in joining me at NewComm Forum next month, register by March 12th with discount code NCFSNCR to save up to $500 ($200 Early Bird + $100 with this code + $100 on each 1/2-day workshop).

The Media as Peace Broker?

Jon Stewart interviewed Abderrahim Foukara of Al Jeezera on The Daily Show earlier this week regarding the conflict in Gaza and asked him if it is the media's role to broker peace when governments fail to try to do so. An interesting question about the role of the media. Thoughts?

Recounting the Long History of the Collaborative Media Proposal

The terms “collaborative media and collaborative journalism" are beginning to emerge as a way to describe a new approach to journalism and a new media model.  (Caveat: It also happens to be the name of the new company I am working to help develop.)  But what is “collaborative media” really and what is the history of this media model?

Over the past two decades, the Internet has increasingly allowed people to inform themselves through new channels and to communicate with each other more easily and widely. Web 2.0 tools have fueled the current citizen journalism phenomenon, allowing citizens to have a louder voice, to begin their own editorial pages, and in some cases viable news organizations, and to engage in genuine and unlimited discourse and debate. Individuals, nonprofit and political groups, educational institutions, religious organizations, and civic groups alike are immersing themselves in this world of new media and citizen journalism, in many cases independent of and parallel to mainstream media. Today the reader truly has become the writer – and now also has the tools to play the role of editor and publisher as well. More people than ever before in history have the ability to insert themselves into the journalistic process through blogs, podcasts, online videos and photos, comments, news ranking and rating systems and citizen media sites.

But the notion of a collaboration-based model is hardly new. In the 1920s – long before the Internet or Web 2.0 were even imaginable – American social theorist, educator and philosopher John Dewey suggested that the traditional conception of journalism (i.e., “publication”) is only one part of the journalistic process. News or journalism, according to Dewey, cannot realize its full value until the public participates in a dynamic conversation about the published information.

He wrote:

Publication is partial and the public which results is partially informed and formed until the meanings it purveys pass from mouth to mouth. There is no limit to the liberal expansion and confirmation of limited personal intellectual endowment which may proceed from the flow of social intelligence when that circulates by word of mouth from one to another in the communications of the local community.
(The Public and Its Problems, 219)

A thing is fully known only when it is published, shared, socially accessible. Record and communication are indispensible to knowledge. Knowledge cooped up in private consciousness is a myth… (176)

Dewey also asserted that journalism should not just be a static report of what has already happened, but rather that it should always be in a constant state of evolution as the community adds value by generating knowledge. His vision of the ideal relationship between the public and the press was based on his strong belief that the public should be involved and that this active participation should extend to the public’s role in the evolution of news stories. He believed that news was more than just printed words on a page, but rather an evolving, multi-dimensional story in which the public should be allowed to fully participate.

He rejected the ‘spectator theory’ of knowledge, instead advocating knowledge acquired by a collaborative inquiry and problem solving.  The ideal journalistic model, according to Dewey, was not based on a passive audience, but rather engaged citizens actively collaborating and interacting with the journalistic process – helping to create a dynamic and changing news story, rather than simply the receptors of information.  Dewey believed that communication and collaboration is foundational to the creation of the “Great Community,” and that citizens who actively participate in public life contribute to the formation of that community.

Dewey’s collaboration model has been closely tied to the public journalism movement  of the 19080s and 90s, but it seems to more closely reflect a vision of today’s blogosphere, citizen journalism and citizen-generated media (CGM), and Twitter-based journalism, which rely on knowledge-sharing, collaboration, debate, multiple perspectives, and a constantly updated, dynamic approach to addressing a news story or issue.

Dewey wrote:

The winged words of conversation in immediate intercourse have a vital import lacking in the fixed and frozen words of written speech. Systematic and continuous inquiry into all the conditions which affect association and their dissemination in print is a precondition of the creation of a true public…Ideas which are not communicated, shared and reborn in expression are but soliloquy, and soliloquy is but broken and imperfect thought. (Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 218)

When he wrote the phrase “the winged words of conversation,” John Dewey could not possibly have imagined how that notion would come to life through the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies, for the Internet enables written speech to rise about the constraints of the printed word and Web 2.0 allows for user participation, openness, and collaboration.

Over the past two decades – more than 80 years after Dewey wrote The Public and Its Problems – new media and communications technologies have allowed people to inform themselves through online channels and enabled them to communicate with each other more easily, immediately, widely, and interactively than has ever before been possible or even imaginable. These new tools have fueled the current citizen journalism phenomenon, or what Dewey called, the creation of a “true public,” not based on geography, but on communities of interest – not reliant on mainstream media to meet its information or community-building requirements, but on a free-flowing, open, and dynamic exchange of ideas representing a multitude of perspectives.

At Redwood Collaborative Media we honor the rich history of the collaborative media model and believe that a collaboration model is the media model of the future. Stay tuned for more as we continue to learn and grow.

Note: Much of this post was excerpted from my master’s thesis, Realizing John Dewey’s Vision: From Public Journalism to Citizen Journalism to the Next Newsroom. I’ll be sharing more of my research for that work in future posts.