Monday, August 23, 2010

Journalism That Matters Launches Innovative Civic Intelligence Venture

It's exciting to report on a new local civic intelligence initiative. A group of civic innovators has been meeting regularly since the "Reimagining News and Community in the Pacific Northwest" unconference organized by Journalism That Matters was held in Seattle in January 2010. Ten related initiatives, called "collaboratories" are the product of these meetings and a public meeting devoted to one of the initiatives will be held monthly. The first meeting, to discuss the Civic Communications Commons initiative, will be held on September 24. That initative "plans to launch an online commons that will serve as an information hub and conversation place for news topics." Other collaboratories include Creating Abundant Journalism, Media Mapping, Digital Literacy Initiative, Building on Transparency, Seattle Happiness Index, and Global Health Reporting.

I'm planning to use the civic intelligence lens to examine (and possibly inform) the project and the initiatives as they move forward.


Here is more information from their recent press release:

A calendar with specific dates and locations will be posted as soon as details are available on the JTM website, http://www.journalismthatmatters.org.

For more details on the initiatives please see Matt Rosenberg’s current update on the JTM website at http://journalismthatmatters.org/content/jtm-pacific-northwest-update or Heidi Dietrich’s at http://wanewscouncil.org/2010/08/10/new-journalism-ventures-in-the-works/.

For updates on the initiatives please go to the JTM website or contact JTM Outreach and Information Coordinator, Cate Montana: cate@fairpoint.net; 360-894-1868.