Preview: Humboldt Park Launches Its Portal

It's still a work in progress, according to the team that made it happen, but the Humboldt Park Portal, a day after its "soft" launch, looks pretty good to me. It features a nice selection of stories from various contributors and organizations, a packed calendar (Movies in the Park, Jens Jensen birthday bus tour, CeaseFire Late Night Run), and plenty of photos, directory listings and links to community information sources.

The portal is an early step in Humboldt Park's rollout as one of five Chicago Smart Communities, and it will be a key tool in building digital skills among local residents. Give it a look, and if you're from the neighborhood, submit some news or directory listings of your own.

Marquette Students Tour the "Information Neighborhood"

Tomorrow afternoon, Trib columnist Clarence Page will visit Marquette Elementary to talk with middle schoolers about the news business and why news is important. About 150 6th-graders have been gearing up for the visit by studying a curriculum developed by the News Literacy Project. Last week Chicago coordinator Peter Adams told me about one of their activities--exploring the "information neighborhoods" in a newspaper--page one, metro, sports, advertising inserts. "We go through and talk about who produced this, what its goal is, things like that," to better understand the relationship between advertisers, reporters and the paper as a whole.

Last Friday students examined digital and viral media hoaxes to learn more about what a reliable source is. I know firsthand the worth of activities like this. Back in 2006, my neighbor Daniel, then 12 years old, stopped me on the street and said, "Mark Ecko tagged Air Force One."

"What?" I responded, shocked.

"Yeah, he tagged it. It's on You Tube," Daniel told me. So we went in my house and watched the video. (You can see it here.) It was so well done it had me going for a minute. Then we looked for reliable news stories about his feat and quickly discovered it was a very clever fake--he rented a Boeing jet and painted it to look like Air Force One. According to Ecko's own website, the fake was so good it had the military double-checking whether anyone had been on the runway to shoot it.

If people like me, who've worked in news, and even the Pentagon are doing double-takes at a video hoax, how is a 12-year-old supposed to know it's not true? That's what the News Literacy Project hopes to teach--the skills to separate the fact from the fiction, opinion and advertising that dominate the media landscape, especially in new media. It's great work, and more Chicago schools are looking to get on board in 2010. For more about the News LIteracy Project and tomorrow's event, check out this article on the LISC/Chicago website.

New reporters at Chi-Town Daily News

One of the secrets to getting media coverage of your work, whatever it might be, is 1) to know which reporters work that beat and 2) keep track of what they're covering, so that when your story is ready, you'll know how to pitch it in a way that will interest that reporter.

The other secret is to know that writers (and editors) always need ideas and stories, to fill their news hole.

So you might find it of interest that Geoff Dougherty, the managing editor at Chi-Town Daily News, has just brought on four full-time reporters to supplement the free-lancers and citizen journalists covering urban issues at that web-only news outlet.

Megan Cottrell, covering housing, was a radio reporter at WCMU public radio in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, and her work was featured on National Public Radio's Weekend All Things Considered. 773-362-5002, ext. 12, or megan(at)chitowndailynews(dot)org

Fernando Diaz, labor and unions reporter, was a staff writer at the Chicago Reporter, where he specialized in investigative reporting on immigration. Fernando previously worked for the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., and the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago. 773-362-5002, ext. 14, or fernando(at)chitowndailynews(dot)org.

Alex Parker, public health reporter, previously covered education for the Lawrence (KS) Journal-World, and covered youth and politics in Kansas for MTV News during the 2008 presidential campaign. 773-362-5002, ext. 17, or alex(at)chitowndailynews(dot)org.

Peter Sachs, covering higher education including City Colleges of Chicago, worked at The Bulletin, the daily newspaper in Bend, Oregon. His coverage of the city hall beat there, including reporting on Bend's purchase of broken-down used buses, led to changes in how the city purchased equipment and contributed to the ouster of two city officials. 773-362-5002, ext. 18, or peter(at)chitowndailynews(dot)org.

Chi-Town Daily News is one of 20 web sites whose stories are updated continuously on the Chicago Neighborhood News page, a one-stop way to keep up with the news.

Needed for youth writers: Used laptop, camera

I talked to Chicago writer Richard Muhammad this morning and he is excited about the work of the half-dozen young people he is mentoring in the Youth Speak South Shore media literacy program (see post below). They're working across a range of media from TV and radio to print and the web. He's already impressed with the talent and enthusiasm of the students – "and we're just getting started," he says.

Okay, here's the pitch. Richard says some of the participants don't have day-to-day access to computers and that there's a lot of interest in photography and video -- but no equipment to feed that interest.

So if you've recently upgraded from your old laptop or digital or video camera, and would be willing to donate it (rather than have it become obsolete sitting in your closet), Richard could immediately put it into the hands of a young person interested in communications and media. Related software would be a plus. If you want a tax-deduction letter, Richard can probably arrange it through his fiscal agent, Metropolitan Area Group to Ignite Civilization.

Got something? Know someone who does? Drop Richard a line at straightwords4@yahoo.com

Low-barrier entry points for web visibility

We had a lot of good discussion at the LISC Learning Forum in Detroit last week about how to raise the web visibility of your community or organization. Carlos Nelson of Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation showed off his group's website, at gagdc.org, and participants were wowed by the regular news updates, the generous use of photos, the business directory with its extended listings, and the traffic that all this information has attracted: more than 1,500 visits per month. This is for a community that four years ago had virtually no web presence whatsoever and was "Chicago's Best Kept Secret."

A dynamic, often-updated web site is great, but what if you don't have the time or money to put one together, or want to dip into the web with something less elaborate, to gain some experience? Good idea.

Turns out there are quite a few easy entry points on the web that let you get into the game without spending months gnashing your teeth and formulating a "web strategy." Using these tools, you can just start, and see where it takes you.

1. Blogs. These things are absolutely free and they're tracked closely by the search engines (Google owns Blogger/blogspot) so if you start one and begin posting about what's going on, you've got an instant web presence. A blog is limited to a linear, chronological presentation of your information – it doesn't allow different sections or offer calendars – but you can put up news items, little slide shows, video (via YouTube) and photos, so it's a solid place to start. The blog for Milwaukee's Harambee neighborhood is updated several times a month (usually by LISC/Milwaukee's Kathryn Berger) with useful information for both residents and outsiders. Plenty of full-blown web sites don't do nearly as well.

2. YouTube. Don't laugh. Someone in your neighborhood or city is already shooting videos and some of them, with a bit of editing or some conversation ahead of time, could be just right for documenting a community event or activity. Put some creative young people on the job and you might be surprised at the quality. Here's an example put together by the Violence Prevention Collaborative in Chicago's Little Village, combining music, locally produced artwork and a very real discussion about gangs and police. Notice how the YouTube video is "embedded" in the web site? That's easy to do on most blogs and web sites; once uploaded to YouTube, you can copy the "embed code" into your web site and the video shows up, just like magic. Of course you can email out the link, also. Cost? Free.

3. Photo sharing. You've already got the photos, probably, sitting on your hard drives or on a CD, but no one can see them. If you set up a photo sharing site at Flickr, Picasa or PhotoBucket, you can upload collections of photos so that the neighbors or corporate partners can see themselves and the results of their work. The learning curve here is minor, a few hours to get the account set up and your first photo sets uploaded and organized. After that, you can make it a routine to upload a dozen or three dozen photos after big events, and then send an e-mail out with the link. We started a Flickr page a few months ago at LISC/Chicago to show photos from the Getting It Done conference and are spreading it to other uses. Cost? $25 per year for a pro account that allows virtually unlimited sets and photos.

4. E-newsletters. This I haven't done myself but several Chicago lead agencies or partners did a three-part training with Community Media Workshop and a few weeks later I started receiving their email blasts, via Constant Contact or Vertical Response. Those companies make it pretty easy to get started with templates (and free trial periods) and they'll even manage your mailing lists for you, all for modest costs based on the size of your distribution. Once you've got an e-newsletter, you can point people to your photo sites, videos and blog. And your web site, too, but since that's a larger undertaking, we'll leave that for a future post.