The Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation awarded West Virginia University Reed College of Media a grant of $125,000 to help recruit, develop and train a new generation of independent community newspaper owners.
The money will support a partnership between the College of Media and the West Virginia Press Association. These organizations anticipate a wave of small market newspaper owner retirements across West Virginia.
Together they are responding by developing a special three-year program designed to develop community newspaper owners to take over, according to a news release.
Participants will receive training in journalism and business practices with an emphasis on digital know-how and media funding models.
A goal of the program is to cultivate strong local news operations throughout West Virginia, and to help existing news organizations adapt and modernize operations.
The application process and curriculum are still being developed, but the program is expected to launch in fall 2019.
In full disclosure, West Virginia Public Broadcasting is a member of the state Press Association and holds a partnership with the WVU Reed College of Media.
A West Virginia journalist recently received a MacArthur Fellowship, a prestigious award that comes with a stipend of $625,000. Investigative reporter Ken Ward Jr. was one of only 25 people named for this honor that’s often called the “genius” award. The website said Ward was recognized for his work that reveals, “…the human and environmental toll of natural resource extraction in West Virginia…” Ward recently talked about his work with West Virginia Public Broadcasting. Listen to hear part of that conversation.
Ward says he’s still pondering ways to spend the award money but a college fund for his son and a new vehicle seems to be a good place to start.
The West Virginia Humanities Council is presenting the last of its series on journalism and informed citizens next month in Shepherdstown.
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Eric Eyre of The Charleston Gazette-Mail and National Public Radio newscaster Giles Snyder will discuss the importance of pursuing complex stories and creating context for them.
Former West Virginia Public Broadcasting Eastern Panhandle bureau chief Cecelia Mason will moderate the free, public program on Sept. 6.
Eyre received a Pulitzer last year for his series on painkillers. Snyder is a former West Virginia Public Radio employee and an alumnus of Marshall University.
The program is the last of three public presentations produced with funding through the “Democracy and the Informed Citizen” initiative administered by the Federation of State Humanities Councils.
Seven public media stations in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia, including West Virginia Public Broadcasting, have been awarded a $445,000 grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to establish a regional journalism collaboration. The still-to-be-named network will produce hard-hitting, high-quality multimedia journalism that examines the region’s economy, energy, environment, agriculture, infrastructure and health.
“This will help expand the storytelling we already do through regional shows such as ‘Inside Appalachia,'” said Scott Finn, CEO and executive director of West Virginia Public Broadcasting. “We’re excited to work more closely with other stations in our region to report more deeply about the economic transition we face.”
The CPB grant will support the hiring of eight journalists at the seven partner media outlets for two years; with station support continuing in outlying years.
“CPB is pleased to support this historic collaboration among public media stations in Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia,” said Bruce Theriault, CPB senior vice president, journalism and radio. “By working together, these stations can ensure that important stories from this underreported area are told locally, regionally, and nationally. The sum is indeed greater than the parts.”
Louisville Public Media will lead the news operation and house the project’s managing editor and data journalist. Partner radio and television stations inlcude WEKU in Richmond and Lexington, Ky., WKU in Bowling Green, Ky., WMMT/Appalshop in Whitesburg, Ky., WKMS in Murray, Ky., West Virginia Public Broadcasting, and WOUB in Athens, Ohio.
The group will produce journalism for partner stations and collaborate with national programs, including PBS NewsHour, Frontline, Marketplace, Morning Edition, and All Things Considered, and other public media outlets such as WFPL’s Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. The collaboration will produce daily reporting, investigations, long-form narrative pieces, and documentaries.
About the Corporation for Public Broadcasting:
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress in 1967, is the steward of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operations of more than 1,400 locally owned and operated public television and radio stations nationwide, and is the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television and related online services.
Panelists discussing the media coverage of the recent Elk River water crisis say digital media platforms played an important role in how they covered the story. More than 300 people were in attendance Monday night at West Virginia University to hear insights panelists gleaned from reporting on the crisis.
Some of those insights:
Social media allowed the journalists to interact with their audiences in new ways;
Traditional methods of reporting (phone calls, knocking on doors, filing FOIA requests) were absolutely essential to get the job done;
There are both positives and negatives to using social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) to gather information for these stories.
Find out more about the panel by listening to the audio link above.
Google Glass. It’s a new computer right out of a James Bond film or a science fiction novel. You wear it like you would wear glasses, but you peer at the world with technologically reinforced eyes.
Like Iron Man.
…Without the suit.
Maybe the suit will come next, but, in the meantime Google Glass is being tested by thousands of people including students at West Virginia University. Professor Mary Kay McFarland got wind that Google was looking for ‘Glass Explorers’ and now she’s incorporated the technology into her class.
What Iron Man Sees
McFarland explains that basically, you’re wirelessly tethered to your smartphone. So instead of burying your head in your lap, you can walk around—head held high, taking pictures, rolling video, text messaging, calling someone, sharing what you see-live, getting directions-and following them, and of course, you look up whatever you want online—and all with voice commands or with a flick, tap, or nod.
“So it’s really responsive to questions like, ‘Do I need a sweater today?’ It’ll give you the weather. They’ve sort of thought about making mental leaps. You might say, ‘Ok, Glass, I’m hungry.’ And it’ll just list all the restaurants in the area.”
McFarland also points out that the design is fairly intelligent—the screen that you look through which projects whatever you’re looking at on the world in front of you, hovers just above your eyebrow so as not to actually obstruct your vision.
Testing, testing 1, 2, 3, 4… 8,000
McFarland is one of about 8,000 so-called ‘Glass Explorers’ who responded to a call for tweeted proposals to test the device.
Mary Kay McFarland made this proposal: It's not WHAT you said, it's HOW you said it. – Couples get counseling to understand the other's perspective. What if you could see it? I would use Glass to make documentary video about the misunderstandings in relationships resulting from unconscious body language, choice of phrase and tone of voice.
She explains that once chosen, testers had to go to NY, San Francisco, or Los Angeles, to one of the Google offices, to pick the devices up and get an explanation of how to use them. So off she went to New York.
“It was very simple ass I was just playing with them, to take pictures of the people who were sleeping across the airplane aisle or in the waiting area. And I thought, you know, if you had a camera out here it would be very obvious what you were doing, people would shy away or say, ‘I don’t want my picture taken.’ But it just looks like I’m fiddling with my glasses.”
Enter Elephant in the Room
“It just changes the complexion of life on the street if you can be being filmed all the time, without your knowledge, and have pictures taken of you without your knowledge. So I think most people are excited about the Glass, because they think, ‘Oh, it would be like wearing a computer around; I can just ask it questions and get answers.’ And that is absolutely true, but what they haven’t considered all the implications of privacy and that something that records and then uploads directly to Google who has the capacity to do facial recognition… ”
These are ideas that McFarland is introducing along with the device in her journalism classes at West Virginia University.
“This is not a new issue, however the technology makes the invasion of privacy possible on levels that it probably wasn’t before.”
Classy
But McFarland is embracing the technology nonetheless and students are eager to do the same. She’s asking students to come up with journalism and documentary projects where, instead of recording their subjects, they record their subject’s point of view.
“One student in my multimedia reporting class is in the WVU marching band—the Pride of WV—he actually used them to tell the story of Game Day from the band’s perspective as they go out on the field and what they see from the field, how the formations look.”
McFarland also points to examples like a student who wants to explore the effects of sequestration on Head Start, and a student who is interested in the implications of possible marijuana legislation in the state.
“In those stories they’ll have to find the people for whom those issues matter. And then we can talk about the implications of actually seeing life through the eyes of the people who are living through those issues.”
