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.

Welcome to Our Neighborhoods!

How do you convey the excitement and hard work that goes into making neighborhoods stronger?

We've tried a lot of different ways over the seven years of the New Communities Program, and probably the closest we've come is in the new video below by Sarahmaria Gomez and Alex Fledderjohn of TuMultimedia.

This is the first half of a longer piece they created as a "thank you" tribute to Jonathan Fanton, the president of the MacArthur Foundation. It captures the voices of neighborhood residents talking about:

• a community garden on Maypole Avenue in East Garfield Park;
• the South Chicago Art Center;
• a mural in North Lawndale;
• the La Estancia development in Humboldt Park;
• a mariachi band at Cooper School in Pilsen;
• the Oakwood Shores mixed-income development in Quad Communities;
• the West Haven Giants baseball team;
  
• the Little Village Boxing Gym; and
• the foreclosure prevention efforts in Chicago Lawn.

All that in five minutes! I think the reason it works so well is because the work it represents is so genuine and real.

Are Volunteers Enough to Cover the 'Hoods?

Community Beat got some good press today from Mike Doyle at ChicagoSphere, the new blog-about-blogs at the Trib's just-launched Chicago Now web site. "Community Beat has covered topics you might not find on other community news sites or local blogs," Doyle said, calling it a "great effort." Well, thanks.

Doyle then offers a spirited defense of citizen journalism, which I had "rejected" as "unsustainable and unprofessional" in an email exchange with him. I didn't mean any offense. I just don't think volunteerism is an adequate replacement for professional news gathering, editing and distribution, and it certainly isn't happening on the scale needed to keep communities and cities (and nations) healthy.

Case in point: The CTA on Wednesday released its Screen 3 report on the Red Line Extension Alternatives Analysis Study, which has been analyzing options for high-capacity transit service south of 95th Street. Guess what? After much public input, the CTA recommends a rail extension that snakes west on I-57 and then south along the Union Pacific Railroad through Roseland and all the way to Altgeld Gardens at 130th Street.

You didn't see that in the newspapers? Neither did I. With their staffs gutted, there aren't enough reporters to send to meetings, and I guess those who are left don't have time to check the CTA web site, which is where I found a detailed presentation about the route selection. All I found when searching Google News was a short Sun-Times story saying that a meeting was taking place again tonight (but not telling the news), and a WBEZ piece that at least mentioned the preferred route.

We can't depend on volunteers to provide this type of information, though it would be nice. But community organizations can play a big role here: keeping track of what's happening and sharing it with their residents and neighbors. We've seen it working very well among different New Communities Program lead agencies (LSNA, GAGDC, NWSCDC, TRP) and there's no reason that many more can't get into the game.

And Now, Audio Tours by High School Seniors

There's hope for the journalism business, I'd say, after listening to the latest work of seniors in the Curie Youth Radio class at Curie Metro High School on the Southwest Side. Teacher Sarah Levine asked students to find and describe something interesting in their neighborhoods. After lots of editing and re-recording, they delivered unique and compelling pieces.

Here are the first four. Turn up your volume and take a listen. We'll publish more soon.



Joining the Marines
Saying Goodbye on 56th and Fairfield, by Miguel Lopez.



Family Dollar Burns Down
Kurt Swan recounts the fire at Family Dollar, 79th and California.



World's Finest Chocolate Outlet Store
Come taste the deliciousness at this strip mall on Pulaski, by Steven Gallardo.



Chicago Comics
A visit to Belmont, for the Hulk in all of us, by Mariah Steward.

Aldi Syndrome: The Mixed-Income Conundrum

It's not often that one gets to comment on mixed-income neighborhoods and the future of journalism in the same breath, but this is one of those days so I'm taking advantage of it.

One of the final editions of the News-Star newspaper came through my Rogers Park mail slot today and I got a big kick out of the story about the Aldi grocery chain trying to "sneak one of its stores" into a new development in Edgewater. It seems that some neighbors and 49th Ward Ald. Joe Moore would prefer something more upscale.

I laughed out loud because the same scenario has played out in West Haven, where the Near West Side Community Development Corp. has taken heat for trying to bring Aldi into the planned shopping center at Madison and Western. Some vocal neighbors there would prefer a Whole Foods, but even in well-off neighborhoods that store is known as "Whole Paycheck" because of its high prices. In Edgewater, the preferred alternative was Trader Joes, but the developer just couldn't swing that deal.

News-Star knows a good editorial topic when it falls into its lap.

In an editorial titled "Give Aldi's a chance," the editors wrote that "Our lakefront neighborhoods are changing, and with these changes come a delicate balancing act. Residents often cite racial and socioeconomic diversity as what they love most about living in Rogers Park, Edgewater and Uptown. . . . So let's stop being snobs and paying lip service to economic diversity, and give Aldi's a chance to thrive in Edgewater."

Now that's good journalism: first the story, which provided well-reported, timely information about the community; then the editorial, which offered a reasoned analysis about the tradeoffs that come with diversity.

The pity of it is that the News-Star won't be the same after March 19. Its most recent owner, Chicago Journal, is laying off its staff and selling the name to Inside Publications, which will fold it into its free paper serving Lincoln Square. That means the already-meager flow of news about neighborhoods will be reduced even further.

The only bright side is that there's plenty of room for new approaches to collecting and distributing news, and we'll keep doing our share with this blog and tools like the Chicago Neighborhood News Bureau.

This Online Networking Thing? I'm Liking It

I've been a skeptic for years about social networking sites as tools for getting actual work done. I've peeked into MySpace and Facebook to see what all the excitement is about, but I just haven't seen any value there, at least for my work in community development and communications.

But I'm coming around to sites with tight niches that draw together people with similar interests or expertise. Two that I'm now visiting regularly:

Adventures in Nonprofit Communicating, "brought to you by Community Media Workshop," uses the ning.com template to offer cross-pollination among several hundred people involved in communications. Members post events, create discussions, put up videos and, of course, promote their causes. I learn things just by browsing around, and I've posted some videos that I think others would enjoy viewing.

Community Collab is still in beta form but already it offers two things that have kept me reading for five-minute stretches, which is a long time on a web site. There's a Work Update function that let's you see what some of the other 400 community-development-oriented members are up to, and there's a News section that aggregates lots of different web sites and blogs, nicely grouped in categories to lure me in. Collab was created by Webitects, Inc., for the national LISC organization, with Macarthur funding. A new "groups" function will be added soon, says Webitects' president Paul Baker, to encourage discussion and sharing of materials.

You have to become a member to get in on the action, of course, but I got over that hump and I've even gotten to know a few new people -- or know about them -- through the networking sites. For me, the sites are working well enough that I'll keep logging in.

Any suggestions on other sites worth visiting?

More Neighborhood News, All in One Place

It's indisputable that Chicago newspapers aren't doing the job they once did covering neighborhoods. But we're lucky to have a long tradition of alternative journalism here, from the long-running Chicago Reporter and Community Media Workshop's News Tips to web-only vehicles like the Chi-Town Daily News. In the last couple years we've also seen the emergence of "hyper-local" sites by neighborhood development corporations.

It's hard to keep up, even if you use a "feed reader" like Google Reader. That's why the scribe team at LISC/Chicago is developing the Chicago Neighborhood News Bureau, to help collect, edit and distribute news from under-served communities.

We're seeking funding to ramp up the news bureau but to get warmed up we created a Chicago Neighborhood News page that aggregates the feeds from 11 neighborhood sites and eight special-interest or news sites, including, among others, the education journal Catalyst Chicago and Chicago Talks, a news site put out by Columbia College's student journalists.

Please check it out and let us know if it works for you -- or not. And please suggest other sites that might fit our mix of neighborhood types and urban-issues wonks.

http://www.newcommunities.org/news/cnnb.asp

Coverage of neighborhood news? Not so bad

Trainee Larry Smith leads a tour at Growing Home's open house on June 28. Photo by Patrick Barry.

Was a time, when I was a boy delivering the afternoon daily Chicago American, that our fair city had four big daily newspapers and half a dozen smaller ones covering ethnic groups and suburban regions. On top of that were dozens of weeklies covering the neighborhoods, or in the case of the Lerner papers, twice weekly. So it's no wonder that today's lament about weak coverage of the neighborhoods is so often heard.

But wait. From what I've been seeing lately, the growth of new-media outlets is changing the game, and since they can be updated often at much lower cost than print vehicles, we might even be seeing more news than before. Some of the grist comes from community groups, some from journalism students, but even the old media are in on the act.

All that's by way of prelude to this little roundup:

At Chicago Talks, Columbia College journalism student Brian Patrick Roach tells how students on the Southeast Side interviewed retired steelworkers to capture their stories from the mills. On the same site, Bryce Wolfe provides an update on the Bloomingdale Trail, which when built will provide a three-mile elevated bike and pedestrian path bisecting the Humboldt Park and Logan Square neighborhoods. Land is being acquired alongside the trail to provide mini-parks and access ramps.

At a new site called windycitizen.com, formerly the Chicago Methods Reporter put out by students at Medill, there's an in-depth piece by Elizabeth Riley featuring the defense of a certain block in Auburn Gresham. Riley has done a few stories down there, according to local host Ernie Sanders, carving out something like a beat.

Not bad, but stick with me. At Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation's site, you can learn how three South Side restaurants, BJ's Market, Lagniappe and Soul Vegetarian, made out at the Taste of Chicago. You'll get hungry just reading the story. Go east to the NCP Woodlawn site and find out about a planned health fair and kidney screening, "another example of how a small but determined group leverages relationships to promote health education and provide access to health services."

While the new media are definitely adding depth to our reading choices, the old is still in the game. This morning's Tribune had a good piece about how Oji Eggleston and Earnest Gates organized a basketball league at Crane High School, offering mentoring alongside ball-handling tips.

And in today's Crain's Chicago Business? There's a short piece on Growing Home's executive director Harry Rhodes. That's the group that runs the Wood Street Urban Farm in Englewood, which is adding two more mini-farms nearby and constructing a small building for training, office space and a produce stand.

In my book, that's a pretty solid list of stories about action in the neighborhoods.

Shrinking the food desert

There's a new farmers market on 61st and Dorchester in Woodlawn. It bustled with shoppers, the beets were fresh and going fast and the nine vendors nearly sold out of everything. This is one great step toward building healthier communities, especially because of the scarcity of fresh produce in this area. We can't wait to see how this market grows. Enjoy the sights and sounds!

Click here to view it full size.

New (media) tools for communities

Ernest Sanders records a radio blog with his phone.
Photo by Eric Young Smith.

Communications was a hot topic last week at the Getting It Done: New Tools for Communities conference, and the clear direction was toward digital "new-media" tools. A few observations:

- Ernest Sanders of Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corp. showed how his organization has used web sites, video, audio slideshows and even the Vocalo.org radio/web site to promote its work. Oh, and old-fashioned printed newsletters and giant posters on CTA buses, too, because digital doesn't reach everyone, at least not yet.

- The web services firm that has built 10 NCP-related web sites, Webitects, Inc., introduced its "Community Collab" networking site, now in development, that is intended to provide a knowledge-transfer function for people in the community development field. Paul Baker, Billy Belchev and others from Webitects signed up 200 participants from all over the country as potential beta users. The site will be ready for testing by the end of 2008.

- Alberto Ibarguen, president of the Knight Foundation and former publisher of the Miami Herald, tore up his planned speech for the closing luncheon because he wanted to talk about his favorite subject: the need for communities to take up the communications role that newspapers once served. Ibarguen stopped in on the Digital Media and Youth discussion group and liked what he saw. But his pitch was that we all must push aggressively and quickly into the digitized world.

The conference gave the New Communities Program scribe team a good workout, with five writers and two photographers working the action. John McCarron is merging scribe reports into a conference overview that will be available soon. In the meantime, we sorted through some 3,500 digital photos, picked out the best, and learned how to post them in sets on Flickr. We even created a nifty "badge" (in the right-hand column of this blog) to urge people to click through to the galleries.

Thoughts? What are you seeing in the new-media area, or where do you see opportunities in this fast-changing world?