Copyright Law

J-Lab: Exploring a Networked Journalism Collaborative in Philadelphia

By David Ardia

Our friends at J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism just released a report analyzing the media landscape in Philadelphia. The William Penn Foundation commissioned J-Lab to conduct the study of Philadelphia's media landscape and the state of public affairs reporting and make recommendations for a possible media investment strategy. It is well worth a read.

Some of the key findings:

• The available news about Philadelphia public affairs issues has dramatically diminished over the last three years by many measures: news hole, air time, story count, key word measurements.
• People in Philadelphia want more public affairs news than they are now able to get.
• They don't think their daily newspapers are as good as the newspapers used to be.
• They want news that is more connected to their city.
• People from both the Old Philadelphia, anchored by the city's union and blue-collar workers, and the New Philadelphia, representing tech-savvy, up-and-coming neighborhoods, want to be involved in helping to generate that news.
• The city is awash in media and technological assets that can pioneer a new Golden Era of Journalism.
• There is strong, but guarded, interest in exploring a collaborative journalism venture.
• A significant number of Philadelphia's new media outlets have expressed interest in pursuing a collaborative media initiative.
• Any collaborative news effort must validate and support the fiercely independent mindsets of the city's new media makers.

The entire report is available here.

Full post as published by Citizen Media Law Project on April 21, 2010 (boomark / email).