Rabu, 18 September 2013

Nieman Journalism Lab

Nieman Journalism Lab

Come be a Nieman Visiting Fellow at Harvard (Application deadline: November 8)

Posted: 17 Sep 2013 07:42 AM PDT

For 75 years, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard (of which Nieman Lab is a part) has been bringing journalists to Cambridge for year-long runs as a Nieman Fellow. But last year, we began a new kind of fellowship — a short-term Visiting Fellowship for “individuals interested in working on special research projects designed to advance journalism.” The foundation just made a call for applications, and I suspect there are some Nieman Lab readers who’d have good ideas to propose.

All the details are available at the Visiting Fellowships page, but here’s an excerpt:

Who should apply? Applicants need not be practicing journalists, but must demonstrate the ways in which their work at Harvard and the Nieman Foundation may improve the prospects for journalism's future. This may be related to research, programming, design, financial strategies or another topic. U.S. and international applicants are welcome.

Those who should consider applying include publishers, programmers, Web designers, media analysts, academics, journalists and others interested in enhancing quality, building new business models or designing programs to improve journalism. The proposed project may be completed during the time spent at Harvard or be part of a larger undertaking. All visiting fellows are expected to be in residence in Cambridge during their study and present their findings to the Nieman community at the end of their research period.

While at Harvard: Successful applicants are invited to the Nieman Foundation for a period ranging from a few weeks to three months, depending on the scope of the project. Nieman Visiting Fellows have access to the extensive intellectual resources at Harvard and throughout Cambridge, including scholars, research centers and libraries. Successful applicants also have the opportunity to work with the Nieman Fellows and the various standing and evolving projects housed at the Nieman Foundation (Nieman Reports, Nieman Journalism Lab, Nieman Storyboard, initiatives related to watchdog journalism and others).

The application process is straightforward — the heart of it is a 500-word proposal explaining what you’d like to do and how it would benefit journalism. If you’ve got an idea, apply!

(One other note: The deadlines aren’t quite as pressing — December 1 for non-U.S. citizens, January 31 for U.S. citizens — but applications are also now open for our traditional, year-long fellowships. More information about those here.)

The Dallas Morning News, looking for critics to boost its arts coverage, turns to local professors

Posted: 17 Sep 2013 07:02 AM PDT

The Dallas Morning News has been without a full-time staff art critic since 2006, so when it was announced last week that a professor from the University of Texas system had been hired to fill that position, people were excited — both because, hey, more critics are better than fewer critics, and because it seemed to point toward a new model for cooperation between academia and news organizations.

According to UT Dallas, Rick Brettell is one of the most popular educators on campus — no small feat at an institution more known for its science and technology strengths. Brettell, a former director of the Dallas Museum of Art, will remain a professor and academic chair in his department at UT Dallas; through the collaboration, he will allot 20 hours a week to work for The Dallas Morning News. “Getting 20 hours of Rick Brettell, in my opinion,” says editor Bob Mong, “is like getting 60 hours from some other people.” Of course, it still means considerable savings for the paper, which Mong says was otherwise planning on hiring a full time critic.

This isn’t the Morning News’ first joint hire with the UT system. In the spring, they reached an agreement with Mark Lamster, a professor at UT Arlington, who is now the paper’s architecture critic. That arrangement, Mong says, is a slightly different one than the deal with Brettell; it was borne out of a relationship with the architecture department at UT Arlington, which the paper had given a donation to in honor of David Dillon, critic for the Morning News from 1984 to 2006.

In both cases, however, the paper strengthened its arts coverage through partnerships with local institutions, saving itself some money by cashing in on available local talent. It’s not a perfect analogy, but Mong compared these hires to the relationships that The New Yorker has with writers like Steve Coll and Nick Lemann, the current and former deans of Columbia’s journalism school, who’ve managed to balance their journalistic and academic lives.

“I think it’s a good deal for our readers, and it’s also a good deal for us,” Mong says.

Mong says the Morning News would be interested in pursuing similar partnerships with local academics and experts in other fields as well; he’d especially like to hire a medical doctor to write on health issues. “In several fields, there are terrific people who don’t get much exposure,” he said, “and if we can encourage them to write for us — this is mostly on a freelance basis, but it could turn into something more.”

The benefits here are obvious: Readers get better coverage — both more of it and higher quality — and the paper saves money by not having to hire a professional journalist. It’s the kind of small-bore savings that media bigwigs are talking about when they say improving the health of the news industry will require a lot of small moves at least as much as a few big ones.

“We have a strong staff. It’s smaller than it was 10 years ago, but it’s a big staff and we can do what we need to do,” says Mong. “The question is, how do you rebuild in some areas where you’re not as strong? We hadn’t had an architecture critic. We had not had somebody doing art full time in an area that has many fine museums and a lot of collectors and interest in the field. It’s important to the creative class that lives here.”

And the idea that local universities — already in the knowledge-spreading business — should take a bigger role in meeting the information needs of communities has been around for years, perhaps most notably put forward by the Downie-Schudson report in 2009. Journalism schools are becoming teaching hospitals and producing news for local communities; in fields like economics and political science, academics are producing news that reaches audiences, whether as independent online publishers or under the rubric traditional news organizations.

But just as clear as the benefits is one big question: If journalism relies more on partnerships with public institutions to subsidize its reporting, are we squeezing out the professional journalists?

While the upsurge in online work from niche experts has been a boon, it’s easy to see why some non-academic critics would worry about their status as independent voices attached only to their news organization.

When I asked Mong if he was worried that this sort of partnership was helping to push out the professional critic, he replied: “I don’t know that we are or not. I just look for the best person I can get.”

Photo of Rick Brettell courtesy UT Dallas.
di