IRE Freelance Fellowships – Deadline April 30

April 19, 2010 MiaLobel Leave a comment

Investigative Reporters and Editors freelance fellowship deadline is approaching. One of our members was awarded this fellowship last year so shoot me an email if you want more info and I’ll try to put you in touch. Best, Mia

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Deadline Approaches for IRE’s Fellowship Awards for Freelance Investigative Journalists

If you are a freelance journalist working on an investigative project, apply today for one of Investigative Reporters and Editors’ Freelance Fellowships. Awards average $1,000 and may be applied toward travel, research and other costs of your investigation. The postmark deadline is April 30, 2010.

The application process is fairly streamlined: applicants fill out a one-page form, submit samples of their work, write a narrative of 200 to 1,000 words and answer a series of related questions. Entries will be scrutinized by a committee of three experienced freelance journalists; they are ineligible for the award while serving on the committee.

Proposals will be judged in part on the breadth, significance and potential impact of the investigative project. Proposals dealing with whistleblowers, business ethics and/or privacy issues will receive priority; projects involving other topics will also be given serious consideration by the committee. The projects must be published or aired primarily in U.S. outlets.

IRE distributed three $1,000 fellowship awards last year to:

· Jonathan Jones and Anna Sussman, founders of backpackjournalist.org, a collaborative international professional reporting project.

· Jim Walls, proprietor of Atlanta Unfiltered, LLC, a Monday-Friday news site, and former investigations editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Eligible journalists may download the application form from the IRE Web site (http://www.ire.org/training/fellowships/) or request the form from IRE staff member John Green via telephone (573-882-2772) or email (jgreen@ire.org). Three copies of the completed form and attachments must be sent in hard copy to: Freelance Journalism Award, IRE, 141 Neff Annex, Columbia, MO 65211.

IRE is a nonprofit educational and professional organization of more than 3,500 journalists working to foster excellence in investigative journalism. IRE provides extensive training and resources through seminars, publications and its Web site: www.ire.org.

Audio/Radio, Awards/Fellowships

Book Odds

April 19, 2010 MiaLobel Leave a comment

Hey all. This is a fun competition for you audio folks. Win a free trip to the Third Coast Festival happening Oct 28-30. Good luck! -Mia

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We’re so very excited to announce that after a year of hibernation, the Third Coast ShortDocs Challenge is BACK! www.thirdcoastfestival.org/competitions/shortdocs/2010

This year’s Challenge – “Book Odds” – is a happy collaboration with one of our favorite bands, the Books. Any/everyone is invited to produce a short audio story (up to 3 minutes) inspired by song titles from their upcoming record “The Way Out” and including a couple samples from their vast library of musical bits, strange phrases and sonic doodads.

Read more about Book Odds, the Books, incentives (like winning a trip to this year’s Conference), and all the fine print/submission details, PLUS check out the song titles/download the audio samples at: www.thirdcoastfestival.org/competitions/shortdocs/2010

Submission deadline is July 5th.

Special tidbit for educators: Teachers! We hope you’ll consider introducing or even assigning the Challenge to your students. Book Odds are for everyone.

Happy to answer questions, if you’ve got ’em. Please help us spread the word, and hope you’ll consider participating…

Yrs, TCF

Events, Freelance Cafe West

Unconference on online media, May 2, 1-6pm, SF

April 19, 2010 MiaLobel Leave a comment

Hey folks. One of our newest FC members is scheduling an unconference to discuss the future of online media. It’s a unique format for a conference, appropriate for this time of change. Check it out: http://remakecamp.eventbrite.com

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RemakeCamp is an unconference about online media. We welcome editors, journalists, engineers, designers and managers of online media as well as service providers for them.

Topics we cover:

* Content creation. Crowdsourcing, citizen journalism, freelance journalism, content farming, user contributed content, expert contributed content, collaborative publishing, the future of investigative journalism. * The role of editor. Curation, link journalism, news filtering, tastemaking and trendsetting, social news filtering, freelance and crowdsouring management, reputation systems for contributors, community management. * Tools. Apps and plugins for publishers, tools for reporters and writers, analytics for online media. * User experience. Optimizing content consumption for mobile devices, personalized news, attention profiles, reader interfaces, interactive articles, data visualization, social media integration. * Business. Monetization models, attracting traffic, partner programs, content exchange, creating job boards and marketplaces, paid content and paywalls.

We organize RemakeCamp to achieve several goals: (1) give everyone a good overview of what’s going on in the space of online media and evolution of journalism; (2) extract and share the knowledge, learned lessons, best practices and open challenges from people’s heads; (3) connect tech, editorial, and journalism communities.

We are looking for speakers (5, 10 or 20 minutes talks). Distant speakers (skype video call) are also accepted. Email Yury (yury@yury.name ) if you want to present.

During RemakeCamp we organize collaborative publishing experiment. Using tools like Etherpad, PBWorks and Google Wave we will create in real time a document representing our knowledge, future forecast and important challenges of media innovation.

Preliminary program:

* 1pm-3pm – Talks * 3pm-5pm – Networking * 5pm-6pm – Collaborative publishing experiment

Preliminary list of speakers

– David Weekly (PBWorks) – Michael Stoll (SF Public Press) – Alexey Maykov (Facebook) – Jason Shen (Stanford Daily) – Siobhan Quinn (Blogger / Google) – Michele Gates (SFGate.com / Examiner.com) – Drake Martinet (AllThingsD / Stanford) – Yury Lifshits (Yahoo!) – Edward Ortiz (Sacramento Bee) – Maxim Grinev / Maria Grineva (TwitterTim.es) // skype-in talk – Mark Albertson (Tech Closeup TV / Examiner.com) – Nicholas Aster (TriplePundit.com) – Alex Gronke (OakBook.com) – Anu (Anirag) Nigam (Buzzbox.com) – Mia Lobel (B-Side Radio, Freelance Cafe) // skyp-in talk – Andrew Stelzer (National Radio Project) – Mark Burdett (Indybay.org) – Jeff Pester (SocialMedia411 / Uniquevisitor) – Xavier Damman (Publitweet) – Anna Hennings (Bitchbuzz.com) – Devin Banerjee (Stanford Daily) – Josh Sprague (Mediactive.com) – Brian Pobuda (Brian Pobuda Photography) – Paul Biggar (NewsLabs/NewsTilt) // skype-in talk – Matt Baume (SF Appeal, Stop8.org) – Chia Hwu (TheSubtleInfluence.com) – Crystal C. Yan (Torque Media Group) – Victor Grishchenko (TU Delft) – Your name here 🙂

Audio/Radio, Events, Freelance Cafe West

Grassroots Radio Conference – workshops, scholarships, May 13th-16th

April 19, 2010 MiaLobel Leave a comment

Details below on the 2010 Grassroots Radio Conference happening in Arcata, CA 5/13-16. There may be an opportunity to carpool with some folks from Making Contact and Freedom Archives. Contact Claude Marks < claude@freedomarchives.org> -mia

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OPPORTUNITY! Each year the *Grassroots Radio Conference* is held in different cities across the U.S. In May it’ll be just up the road from the bay area in Arcata, California (4 hrs by car from Oakland)

Reg is $125 and includes 3 days of meals — single day reg avail too and Special registration for under 21 is $50

Financial assistance requests still being accepted. There is the Solidarity Fund for People of Color and the scholarship Fund for low-income folks.

Lot’s of hands on skills to learn and housing/crashing with friends of community radio there’s camping and the motels are $60 per night

Special Media Bus will be rolling through and Prometheus LP-FM micro radio building on site, plus more more more…. * SEE THE LINK FOR MORE DETAILS AND WORKSHOPS *(workshps soon to be posted) http://kmud.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=459&Itemid=184

MORE DETAILS:

KMUD’s Grassroots Radio Conference 2010, May 13th-16th in the Redwoods, is taking shape!

Laura Flanders has agreed to be a keynote speaker on Friday evening, May 14.

We’ll be showing on Friday evening the film: Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad (A Little Bit of So Much Truth) by Jill Freidberg. This documentary film highlights the key role of media in the Oaxaca uprising.

An initial list of workshops and events has just been posted to grc.kmud.org and includes a basic news training course.

Financial assistance requests received by April 1 receive maximum consideration. Donations are so welcome!

Workshop proposals are still very welcome.

Please register early if you’re coming! It would really help us.

Also, please help us spread the word.

Info on the conference is at grc.kmud.org

thanks, behr KMUD GRC Committee

Events, Freelance Cafe West

Spring Training for Journalists, April 24

April 18, 2010 MiaLobel Leave a comment

Hey folks. This *very* affordable “Spring Training” event sponsored by the CA Media Workers Guild promises to be a good one. Details below!

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California Media Workers is sponsoring “Spring Training: Reinventing Your Journalism Career” on Saturday, April 24 at the Ocean campus of City College of San Francisco.

Guild members get in free, including members of our freelance unit. Others pay $20 in advance, or $25 at the door.

Sessions are designed to help journalists — including newsroom staffers, freelancers and students — gain the skills they need to survive in this changing industry.

Highlights include: * Tips on audio storytelling by Davia Nelson of NPR’s Kitchen Sisters * Welcoming remarks by Steve Fainaru, managing editor of The Bay Citizen (formerly known as the Bay Area News Project) * Sessions on new media skills by instructors from the Knight Digital Media Center * A multimedia workshop by Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Kim Komenich * Help from a career coach experienced in the needs of journalists and other media workers * Sessions on freelancing, foreign reporting, writing nonfiction books and more

For details, download the attached PDFs or visit the Facebook page for this event: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=112507132096601&ref=ts

To sign up, just e-mail register@mediaworkers.org

pdf icon springtraining-schedule.pdf springtraining-presenterbios.pdf

Audio/Radio, Musings

seeking volunteer readers for Radio Reading Project

April 18, 2010 MiaLobel Leave a comment

Hey folks. I don’t normally pass on this sort of thing but it seems like a very worthy project for folks with audio skills/equipment. Contact glrothman-“at”-verizon.netfor details. Best, Mia

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A long-established nationally distributed radio reading service serving the visually impaired is seeking volunteers with good reading voices who have their own digital recording equipment, to record magazine and newspaper articles. The Radio Reading Project was known as In Touch Networks until budget cuts forced the closure of its studios at New York ’s Jewish Guild for the Blind. It continues to be heard, over special receivers, via more than 50 radio stations across the country and in hospital rooms around the New York City area.

Volunteers are asked to record at least one one-hour program a week, as two half-hour mp3 files, which would be FTP’d to a server.

If you’re interested, please contact Gordon at glrothman-“at”-verizon.net

Events

Knight Fellowships Freelance Conference at Stanford

April 15, 2010 MiaLobel Leave a comment

Could there BE a more appropriate conference for FC? Check it out! -mia

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Dear Journalist, I’m writing because I think you may be interested in attending a special workshop at Stanford on June 18-19. It’s a two day conference called The Future of Freelancing: Redefining Journalism, Reinventing Yourself, produced by the John S. Knight Fellowships program.

General registration opens this Friday, April 16. This is a one-of-a-kind conference, open to just 100 experienced journalists. Editors from the New Yorker, the Washington Post, Esquire, Mother Jones, AOL, the Bay Area News Project and many other traditional and online outlets will talk about their publications, freelance opportunities and the evolution of the craft. The first 40 writers to register will have the chance to meet one-on-one with an editor.

I’ve organized this as part of my Knight Fellowship and am happy to answer any questions you may have. I’ve put more information below.

Thanks so much for your time.

Christine Larson Knight Fellow 2009-2010 Conference Director, The Future of Freelancing Email: freelance@lists.stanford.edu Twitter: LarsonWrites

The Future of Freelancing: Redefining Journalism. Reinventing Yourself. June 18-19, 2010 Stanford University

Independent journalists are taking on a more vital and visible role in informing the public and reinvigorating the profession. The Future of Freelancing conference helps experienced journalists explore their evolving careers and stay inspired to do their best work. Registration Opens

April 9: Members of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, or the Society for Professional Journalists.

April 16: Other experienced journalists To register, visit http://freelance.stanford.edu/

Keynote speaker David Granger will discuss the future of magazines, the media and what it means for writers.

Other speakers include: Daniel Zalewski, features editor, The New Yorker Sydney Trent, editor, Washington Post Mark Robinson, senior editor, Wired Clara Jeffery, editor, Mother Jones Jonathan Weber, editor-in-chief, Bay Area News Project Marcia Parker, West Coast Director, AOL’s Patch.com

The first 40 writers to register will qualify for a one-on-one meeting with an editor, assigned on a first-come, first-serve basis. Registration opens April 9 for ASJA members, SPJ Northern California members, and current or former Knight fellows; April 16 for the general public.

Sponsored by the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists, the American Society for Journalists and Authors (ASJA), ASJA Northern California, and The Society for Professional Journalists Northern California Chapter.

For more information, visit http://freelance.stanford.edu/ or e-mail freelance@lists.stanford.edu.

Musings

A Wonderful Outing

April 14, 2010 MiaLobel Leave a comment

Thanks to everyone who showed up to give Freelance Café Founder, Mia Lobel a great Bay Area welcome back. It was a real blast. We had everything happening; engag

The Cafe Crowd enjoying conversations and drinks.

ing conversations, funny stories, and freelancers giving each other cool, useful tips.

I loved the fact that we had many media sections represented, including documentary film, radio, graphic design, and print.

One of the cool things about our monthly Café social outings is how it brings together so many friendly people from diverse backgrounds. We are all freelancers, but we’re also Bay Area residents engaged in enriching, interesting crafts.

At last Thursday’s get together, we all agreed that it was fantastic having Mia back, even for a quick visit. It was like she never left, and that’s a good feeling.

Anyhoo, we’ll keep you updated on our upcoming activities. Spring has been a great success, so far.

Keep up the good work freelancers!

Freelance Café

Mia enjoying her time with the Freelance Cafe Group

Events, Freelance Cafe East

next Hudson Valley freelancer gathering Thursday, 4/29, 8pm

April 13, 2010 Mia Lobel Leave a comment

Hey all. Mark your calendars and schedule a sitter – the next Hudson Valley freelancer gathering is in a few weeks:

Thursday, April 29 8pm The Black Swan, Tivoli

Let’s get a good crowd out for this one, and maybe discuss an early summer freelancer softball game/BBQ?

No official RSVP necessary, but I’d love to know if you plan on coming so I can keep an eye out for you. Looking forward to seeing you all! Best, Mia 845-444-4034

Awards/Fellowships

USC Annenberg/National Health Journalism Fellowships

April 13, 2010 MiaLobel Leave a comment

Deadlines approaching for this one. Go for it! -mia

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USC Annenberg/National Health Journalism Fellowships April 13, 2010

Call for Applications!

All-Expenses-Paid Professional Development Opportunity At USC Annenberg With $2,000-$10,000 Reporting Grants

When: July 11-16, 2010

Where: Los Angeles

Deadlines to Apply: May 5, 2010 and May 12, 2010

Whether you write an occasional health story or cover health full time, we invite you to spend a week in Los Angeles exploring the intersection between community health, health policy and the nation’s growing ethnic diversity. You’ll come away with a multitude of story ideas and sources, plus a thorough understanding of the role that factors such as race, ethnicity, pollution, violence, and transportation, land-use and food policy play in prospects for good health.

Based at USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism, The National Health Journalism Fellowships (deadline: May 12) and the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism (deadine: May 5) are open to print, broadcast, and online journalists from around the country. National Fellows receive meals, travel, and lodging plus a $2,000 stipend upon publication or broadcast of a major fellowship project on a domestic health issue. Dennis Hunt Fund grantees attend the National Fellowship seminars and receive reporting grants of $2,500 to $10,000 instead of the $2,000 stipend. The Hunt Fund will support projects that examine the effects of a specific factor or confluence of factors on a community’s health, such as poverty, health disparities, pollution, violence, land use, urban development, access to health care, and access to healthy food. The fund honors the legacy of Dennis A. Hunt, a visionary communications leader at The California Endowment. The fund is administered by the USC Annenberg/California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships program, which was co- founded by Hunt.

Click here to help you decide which option is right for you: http://www.reportingonhealth.org/which-fellowship-program-right-me

Competition for the National Fellowship and the Dennis A. Hunt Fund Grants is open to both newsroom staffers and freelancers. The stipends and grants can be used to defray reporting and publishing-related costs such as travel, Web development, database acquisition, translation services, and a journalist’s otherwise uncompensated time.

Applicants must join ReportingonHealth .org, a Web 2.0 community for health journalism and the official Web site for the Fellowships. To encourage collaboration between mainstream and ethnic media, preference will be given to applicants who propose a joint project for use by both media outlets.

For more information, visit Reportingon Health.org or e- mail Martha Shirk at Cahealth@usc.edu. (To improve your prospects for success, we recommend that you discuss your project idea with us in advance.)

Visit Our Website: http://www.reportingonhealth.org/

email: cahealth@usc.edu web: http://www.reportingonhealth.org