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FOI Day: Can Free Information and Economic Development Co-Exist?

Guest speaker Attorney General George Jepsen. Photo by Mitchell Pearlman

By Don Stacom

One of the biggest crowds in recent memory for an annual Connecticut FOI Conference turned out April 3 to hear spirited debates about how — or if — free information and economic development can co-exist.

Panels and workshops also provided news about recent FOI precedents and interpretations, along with insights into the latest issues surrounding public access to information.

The key debate featured Andrew. J. McDonald, the governor’s chief legal counsel, and Preston First Selectman Robert Congon arguing for why government wants — and corporations demand — temporary secrecy during sensitive bargaining about economic development.

Taxpayers aren’t well served if detailed news reports in mid-negotiation scare off companies that might have brought jobs and tax dollars to the state, they said.

On the other side, Connecticut Mirror reporter Keith M. Phaneuf joined Agility Resources Group President Vincent M. Valvo, a former Hartford Courant reporter, in giving the case for faster and more extensive transparency.

“Ever since the first bill was passed, we’ve done nothing to expand it. What comes out every year at the Legislature are attempts to restrain it and pull it back,” Valvo said. “We ought to be embracing a culture of openness.”

Phaneuf offered a series of examples of state bureaucrats illegally withholding information for reasons as petty as personal convenience. For years, one state agency refused to give out financial documents until two days after distributing them to legislators, defending the policy as merely “being sure that everyone is comfortable” with the numbers, he said.

“There is no comfort clause in the FOI law,” Phaneuf pointed out.

But he also acknowledged that years of cost-cutting are responsible for many of the media’s failings as a watchdog. Too few young reporters understand FOI law or how to use it effectively, he said.

“The media today is shrinking, inexperienced and borderline irresponsible — I’m tempted to take the ‘borderline’ out,” Phaneuf said. “We’re lucky if the (Capitol) press corps is one-quarter the size of what it was in 1988, and probably has one-quarter of the experience level.”

The conference was sponsored by the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, the Connecticut Foundation for Open Government and the Connecticut Council of Freedom of Information.

College Contest Opens April 1

The Connecticut SPJ college journalism contest will open for entries on April 1. The deadline to enter will be May 1.

You can access the website to enter by clicking this link.

The college contest is open for stories and photos published in college media in Connecticut between April 22, 2011 and April 1, 2012.

This year, the contest will accept all media types — television, radio, online and print. A full list of categories is posted below.

Entries are limited to three per person per category. Each story, editorial, photo, etc. is a separate entry.

Entry Fees:

• $5 for active SPJ members
• $10 for non-members and colleges or universities paying for entries

NOTE: You must choose “College Contest” as the main category for entry in the contest system, or your entries will be disqualified.

If you have questions or problems, contact contest coordinator Jodie Mozdzer at jmozdzer@ctspj.org.

CATEGORIES:

Audio > Feature
Audio > General Reporting
Audio > Commentary
Audio > General Column
Audio > Sports Feature Story
Audio > Sports News Story
Audio > Spot News

Video > General Reporting
Video > Commentary
Video > General Column
Video > Sports Feature Story
Video > Sports News Story
Video > Spot News
Video > Feature

Print/Online > General Reporting
Print/Online > Editorial/Op-ed
Print/Online > General Column
Print/Online > Page 1 Layout
Print/Online > Non-Page 1 Layout
Print/Online > News Photo
Print/Online > Feature Photo
Print/Online > Sports Photo
Print/Online > Sports Feature Story
Print/Online > Sports News Story
Print/Online > Spot News
Print/Online > Feature

CTSPJ Board Seeking New Members

The Nominations Committee of CTSPJ is currently seeking nominations for the 2012-13 Officers and Board of Directors. All officer positions are one-year terms and there are three Board of Director positions open for two-year terms.

Officers:
President
Vice President
Vice President/Communications
Treasurer
Secretary

Three board positions (terms July 1, 2012-June 30, 2014).

All officers and board members must be paid members of CTSPJ and SPJ national.

If you are interested in running, please send President Cindy Simoneau a note at csimoneau@ctspj.org, and attach a recent resume. The committee may ask to meet with you for a follow-up interview.

Nominations close: Tuesday, March 27. Please consider serving your chapter.

Nominations Committee:
Cindy Simoneau, Chairwoman
Liz Glagowski
Cara Baruzzi

Shine The Light On Local Government

by Ricky Campbell

There is no more opportune time than now to educate newsrooms and the public on the Freedom of Information Act and public records in Connecticut.

The past year has been a roller coaster of public record proposed legislation and department mergers, from “a disaster for FOI in Connecticut” to “attempts to strike a balance” between the public’s right to know. As a journalist, watching lawmakers attempt what they believe are correct measures, it’s important to watch, analyze – and scrutinize – their every move.

The impact and importance public records are to us, as journalists, is no mystery. However, our communities need continuous education on the significance of the FOI law, reminding them of its initial mission: government oversight.

Sunshine Week commences Monday, and I encourage every newsroom, blogger, veteran, student, or interested community member to educate their contacts with the importance of our right-to-know. While some projects might take time and preparation from weeks ago, there is still time to do your part.

Simple experiments, rigorous investigations, edgy editorials -– whatever. Sunshine Week is a great time to remind news consumers of what is truly important, and any assault on a lack of free information should be on the forefront.

As a beat reporter in a town with questionable transparency, it encourages my competitiveness to kick in, looking for even more opportunities to exercise public information. This week, residents of the northwest corner can expect a school district comparison and Litchfield community members can prepare for some otherwise-hidden emails on a growing political topic in town. Also, with every twist in the current Torrington Police debacle, I can encourage our readership that, well, “We’ve only just begun.”

So, as a journalist, what are you doing this week? Are you going to just shrug it off and go about everyday news life? Or will you take some more steps to educate your readership, going that extra mile to remind them why they buy newspapers or click on your links?

I suggest the latter. It’s your duty. In a state with a unique outlet and a country with laws like FOI at our fingertips, we better take advantage of it all.

Happy Sunshinin’!

Don’t be shy and share your stories with us. Here are some great starting points:

Sunshine Week Idea Bank
SPJ FOI activities
IRE’s Extra Extra
Connecticut FOI resources from NFOIC
Tips and Tales – New Haven Register’s Alexandra Sanders’ blog
Cool Justice – journalist Andy Thibault’s blog
The Scoop – Hartford Courant blog

Connecticut Sunshine Week projects — CTSPJ blog

Ricky Campbell is a CT SPJ board member and reporter for the Torrington Register Citizen. You can reach him by email at rcampbell@ctspj.org, on Facebook, or Twitter

Sunshine Week Is Here

Public information belongs to the public.

It’s a simple premise that can be overlooked by the gatekeepers of that information.

That’s why each spring, the American Society of News Editors joins up with other open government groups to host Sunshine Week.

It’s a national project to get people talking about government transparency, and inform everyone about their right to public information.

This week Sunshine Week runs from March 11 – 17.

We’d like to highlight the efforts around Connecticut this week as newspapers and other organizations take part in Sunshine Week.

Please e-mail Ricky Campbell at rcampbell@ctspj.org if you’d like us to highlight your project here. (List of projects will be posted below graphic.)

For more information, and for resources to participate in Sunshine Week (like the graphic posted here) visit www.SunshineWeek.org.

Connecticut Sunshine Week

Let sun shine on government, elections — The Day editorial

Shine The Light On Local Government — CTSPJ blog

Citizen Journalism Recap

CTSPJ and the Register Citizen of Torrington held a discussion on citizen journalism on Feb. 4.

Speakers included Andy Sellars, a staff attorney for the Citizen Medial Law Project, Ed McKeon, past editor for the Middletown Eye and Matt DeRienzo, group editor for JRC.

If you missed the program, you can watch it again here:

Live video for mobile from Ustream

Or read the live chat, moderated by CTSPJ board member and Register Citizen reporter Ricky Campbell.

As part of the larger discussion on citizen journalism, CTSPJ plans to post future blog posts on the topic, to help those involved in acts of journalism come up with common best practices for collaboration.

Participants also suggested creating a “reporting 101” document to help citizens understand some of their rights and responsibilities in publishing news stories.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the panel discussion.

Click the links below to read to blog posts leading up to the discussion.

Traditional Media And Citizen Journalism: Time To Curate, Collaborate

Citizen Journalism: Don’t We All Want The Same Thing?

Lessons From Citizen Journalists

Traditional media and citizen journalism: Time to curate, collaborate

By Matt DeRienzo
Group editor of Journal Register Company’s publications in Connecticut 

Think of how this sounds to reporters who are bracing for the next round of newsroom layoffs, reporters who’ve gone years in many cases since their last cost of living raise.

“Citizen journalists” – are you kidding me?

When newspaper executives talk about enlisting readers to cover the news, it can feel pretty insulting to the beat reporter who is over-worked, under-paid and under-appreciated. Reporters who can recite the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics verbatim. Reporters who have a masochistic sense of duty to singlehandedly cover everything that a much larger newsroom used to cover.

That “nails on the chalkboard” sound could have something to do with the term “citizen journalist” itself. Connecticut SPJ’s Jodie Mozdzer has done an excellent job establishing the problems with the term itself.

While “citizen journalist” might be impossible to define, there are “acts of citizen journalism” all around us. That’s the disruptive force in news that has both accelerated the financial problems of newspapers and other traditional media and is providing one of the biggest opportunities in generations to expand the breadth and quality of our journalism.

Newspapers and broadcast TV and radio were built on a business model of scarcity.

Millions of people tuned in to Walter Cronkite each evening in the 1960s, and household penetration of daily newspapers was still at a now-unthinkable rate of more than 100 percent (meaning that on average, every household in the country purchased more than one copy).

Today, the scarcity model is dead.

There is no Walter Cronkite equivalent.

And daily newspaper household penetration dropped to 55 percent in 2001, to 44 percent in 2006 to 34 percent in 2011.

Since 2005, print advertising revenue in the United States has dropped by more than 50 percent.

A big part of why is that there are now millions of news and information sources. And they are instantly and multi-directionally connected in “a web” that is the Web.

The people “formerly known as our audience” don’t turn to Walter Cronkite anymore. They don’t turn to the daily newspaper. They turn to each other, and “if the news is important enough, it will find me.”

So we turn to the question of what role traditional media organizations play in this disrupted world of news and information.

What is our relationship with our audience, if they no longer need us, at least in the way they did under that old scarcity model?

Connecticut SPJ’s discussion of “Citizen Journalism” on Saturday will take place at The Register Citizen Newsroom Cafe in Torrington, and the venue itself is part of our company’s answer to that question.

It is all about relationships now, and partnering with the audience at every step of the process of local journalism. That starts with openness and transparency, the building blocks of our “open newsroom” experiment.

It also means recognizing that the audience will organize itself around common interests without you because it doesn’t need you to do that.

That’s why we refer to “partnering” instead of “enlisting” or “involving” the audience.

John Paton, the CEO of our company, has said he envisions a day when our mix of content includes one-third original work produced by our professional staff, one-third produced by our audience, and one-third produced by professional partners such as The Associated Press and TheStreet.Com on a national level and CT Mirror and Connecticut Health Investigation Team on a state level.

Does that mean we’ll be enlisting readers to go and cover the city council meeting that used to be covered by the reporter we laid off?

No. But the staff reporter who is covering it will tell readers ahead of time that he’s planning to cover it, and what issues he expects to arise. He or she might use social media, blogging and in-person engagement to enlist the expertise of the audience to find the best angles, to ask the right questions and to put the story in a greater context than “official sources” can or are willing to provide.

It means there will be more jobs like the full-time “curator” position that we created in Torrington last year.

With millions of sources of information out there (including every audience member with a quality camera and Twitter app on their smart phone), there is a huge need and opportunity for traditional media to verify and curate that content and put it into context.

Think back to the last time there was a major community emergency – Hurricane Irene and the Halloween snowstorm in Connecticut come to mind – and you’ll find an excellent example of how media curation of reader reports on social media provided information about closed roads, downed power lines and flooding faster than police and fire crews knew about it.

Almost every media outlet in Connecticut was asking readers to “send in their photos,” but the fact is, they were already sharing that stuff with their own personal networks on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

“It may be a mistake for news organisations to keep begging people to send them stuff,” CUNY journalism professor Jeff Jarvis wrote in The Guardian. “That’s the way they think – centralised, controlling, exclusive. But the better structure may be for journalists to curate the best of what is out on the web. Rather than playing wack-a-mole on the occasional mistake/rumour/lie sent it, editors would better serve if they found the best content anywhere, not just among that which was sent to them.”

It’s not about swapping out professional journalists for “citizen journalists,” but rather, professional journalists tuning in to the acts of citizen journalism that are happening all around them as they combine curation and collaboration with ethical standards, shoe leather and news judgment to do a better job overall in “getting the story.”

At his blog Buzz Machine, Jarvis wrote that “… journalists must redefine their roles and relationships as more than reporters, editors, and producers — which, yes, they must still be — but also…. Moderators. Entrepreneurs. Teachers. Students. Helpers. Enablers. Networkers. Filters. Partners. Community members. Citizens.”

Matt DeRienzo is group editor of Journal Register Company’s publications in Connecticut, which include the New Haven Register, Middletown Press, Register Citizen and Connecticut Magazine.

Lessons From Citizen Journalists

While we’re talking about about raising standards for both citizens and journalists reporting the news, I don’t want the assumption to be that only citizens can improve.

There’s a lot practiced, professional journalists can learn from citizen journalists as well.

One of the most important lessons was featured in a Nieman Journalism Lab blog post this week: Report news how you’d like to consume news.

It’s a simple premise, but often overlooked during the grind of reporting stories — especially breaking news stories.

And it’s one that citizen journalists, by nature, are better at doing.

Gina Chen, in her post on Nieman Lab, gives tips for how journalists can improve their breaking news reporting. It includes the simple notion that some AP Style guidelines don’t make sense in a digital world.

Read her whole post here.

Another tip: Use social media like the rest of the world uses social media.

(Full disclosure — This premise was learned from Eugene Driscoll, the author’s editor. Read his direct words in his article in Street Fight Magazine.)

Most citizens don’t sign up for Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic to their personal blogs. They do it to be part of a community, learn about other people and find interesting stories through links.

There has to be a balance — even for journalists.

Facebook and Twitter shouldn’t be dumping grounds for RSS feeds. They should be places where journalists can engage with their readers and learn about their communities.

So what other lessons can journalists learn from citizen journalists? Weigh in on Facebook or in the comments field here.

2012 Bob Eddy College Scholarship Program

The Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists Foundation Inc. presents the
Bob Eddy Scholarship Program To Foster Journalism Careers

One award each for $2,500, $1,500, $1,000, $500, and $500 *
DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES IS APRIL 7, 2012

The awards recognize Bob Eddy, the late publisher of The Hartford Courant, and founder of the Connecticut SPJ chapter; the late Richard Peck, a veteran news reporter and city editor of The Connecticut Post, and the late James Clark, a veteran reporter for The Connecticut Post, a longtime member of the Connecticut SPJ Scholarship Committee, and a former president of Connecticut SPJ. A new scholarship recognizes the late Pat Child, former WTNH-TV videographer.

To apply for a scholarship students must start their junior or senior year in Fall 2012 and be enrolled at an accredited 4-year college in Connecticut or be a Connecticut resident enrolled in an accredited 4-year college in any state or country.

DOWNLOAD THE FORM:

CT SPJ 2012 Scholarship Application

*Other scholarships may also be available

2011 Excellence In Journalism Contest

The 2011 Excellence in Journalism contest is now open for submissions.

The entry fees are the same as last year:

• $10 for active Connecticut SPJ members

• $25 for non-members and news organizations

• $50 for the three top awards

Click here to enter the contest.

CONTEST CATEGORIES

• Stephen A. Collins Public Service Award: This is a special award open to all media for a story or stories having a significant impact in the public interest. Entries must include supporting documentation such as letters, editorials, evidence of a change in public policy, etc. showing how the entry had an impact.
• Theodore Driscoll Award for Investigative Reporting: A single story or formal series containing information, obtained through reporter initiative, not readily available to the news media or public.
• First Amendment Award: A single story, column, or series which increases understanding of the public of the role of the press in a free society.