Northeastern region Azbee winners were announced last night. See who won (60K Word doc).

Labels: Awards Programs, Azbee Awards

If you want to expand your multimedia skills, consider signing up for the Aug. 12 evening workshop Creating a News Package at Somerville Community Access Television (SCAT). You don't have to be a Somerville resident — or even a Massachusetts resident — to take the class. It's reasonably priced at $45 ($25 for SCAT members). It’s taught by Bill Barrell, a TV news veteran (he was a news editor at Boston's WHDH Channel 7). The workshop will cover writing and production.

Other relevant classes coming up at SCAT:

• Basic Editing using Final Cut Express. Starts Aug. 4. Meets for four sessions, from 7:00 - 9:30 p.m.; $40 members ($20 for SCAT members)
  
  
• Basic Portable Equipment. Meets Saturday, Aug. 8, starting at 10:00 a.m.; cost is $40 ($20 for SCAT members)
  
  
• Introduction to Photoshop. Starts Sept. 9. Meets for three sessions, starting at 7:00 p.m.; cost is $100 ($50 for SCAT members)

If Somerville isn’t convenient for you, try contacting your local cable access station to see what training it might offer.

• Wikipedia list of cable access stations nationwide
• list of cable access stations worldwide from communitymedia.se

July 22, 2009, 5:02 p.m.: Here’s an article on getting access to video equipment through your local cable access station. It also talks a little bit about getting training through your local station. It’s aimed at filmmakers, is relevant to others, too.

Labels: Career Development, Non-ASBPE Educational Programs, Technology, Web

ASBPE's 2009 Northeastern Region Awards of Excellence will be presented on Wednesday, July 22. You'll get a chance to see the winning entries, cheer on your colleagues, and hear the story behind the story about two award-winning articles (speakers to be announced).

Meeting Details

When: Wednesday, July 22nd, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Where:

Trattoria Dopo Teatro
125 West 44th Street (off 6th Avenue)
New York, NY 10036
info@dopoteatro.com
(212) 869-2849
Map/directions

How to attend: To reserve your place, send payment (credit card or check payable to ASBPE) by July 14 with a completed reservation form (72K Word doc) to the contact listed on the form.

• If paid by July 14: $59.00 for ASBPE members; $69.00 for nonmembers. Groups of 5 or more receive a $5 discount per person.
  
  
• If paid after July 14: $69.00 for ASBPE members and journalism students (w/ current ID); $79.00 for nonmembers.

Labels: Azbee Awards

"[Pulitzer's Gold] is a must read for those who want an inside look at journalism at its best. There is no higher calling among American newspapers than public service journalism, and Roy Harris delves into it with flair and expertise. He tells us why and how extraordinary stories were done."

On June 9, ASBPE past president Roy Harris will be at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Mass., to talk about the art and craft of journalism and the Pulitzer-winning news organizations detailed in his book Pulitzer's Gold.

From the book's jacket copy:

No journalism awards are awaited with as much anticipation as the Pulitzers. And among those Pulitzers, none is more revered than the Joseph Pulitzer Gold Medal.

Pulitzer's Gold is the first book to trace the ninety-year history of the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Exploring this service-journalism legacy, Roy Harris recalls dozens of "stories behind the stories," often allowing the journalists involved to share their own accounts. Included are a vivid description of the Boston Globe's uncovering of sexual misconduct by Catholic priests; an analysis of how the New York Times helped the community cope with the 9/11 attacks; and tales of the brilliant coverage of Hurricane Katrina by two wounded papers, the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and the Sun Herald in Gulfport, Miss.

Readers will recognize some of the stories, like the New York Times's Pentagon Papers exclusive and the Watergate scandal that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein dug up for the Washington Post. But Harris takes his Gold Medal saga through two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights struggle, and the Vietnam era before bringing public-service journalism into today's age of environmental and corporate exposes. Among the hidden treasures that come alive: how the Boston Post exposed the original Roaring Twenties Ponzi schemer — dapper, silver-tongued Charles Ponzi himself — and how northern California's tiny, remote Point Reyes Light, thirty years ago, discovered that the Synanon antidrug program had become a dangerous armed cult. (As the Light investigated, one Synanon critic was attacked by arattlesnake that had been stuffed into his mailbox by group operatives, taking the story, and the Light's fame, national.)

Through these and other Gold Medal accounts, newspaper teamwork gets its due as a driving factor in great journalism, and Harris acknowledges reporters and editors who may have received little personal attention when their papers received the awards. He also examines the evolution of the judging process since the first Pulitzers in 1917, addressing controversies arising over the public-service selections.

At a time when newspaper journalism is severely challenged, story after story illustrates how public-service reporting has been a point of pride for the American press, whether by small-town papers or metropolitan dailies. Pulitzer's Gold offers a new way of looking at journalism history and practice and a new lens through which to view America's own story.

Roy was most recently senior editor of the Economist Group's CFO magazine. He served from 1971 to 1994 as a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, including six years as deputy chief of its fourteen-member Los Angeles bureau. Early in his career he reported at the Los Angeles Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He now lives in Hingham, Massachusetts.

Time: Tuesday, June 9, 2009, 7:00 p.m.

Location:

Porter Square Books
Porter Square Shopping Center
25 White Street
Cambridge, MA 02140
(617) 491-2220
map/directions
Purchase a copy of Pulitzer's Gold from Porter Square Books.

Labels: Books, Events, Journalism

• What the metrics are for figuring out where to concentrate your efforts.
• Whose province social networking is. Is it a function of marketing, editorial, or both?
• How you can best complement, not cannibalize or duplicate, the efforts on your main site.
• How to make sure any information you present is perceived as helpful, and not purely self-promotional.
• Ways to automate your participation – and when not to automate.
• What free or low-cost tools are out there to help you disseminate video, podcasts, discussion, slide shows, etc.

Panelists will be:

Erin Erickson, ASBPE Chicago board member and senior web editor at Putman Media in Itasca, Ill. She created UBrandMedia.com, a how-to website that aims to teach nontechnical people how to create, use and manage social media. In addition to consulting with small businesses on social media strategy, Erin has created several social networks of her own.

You can connect with Erin on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Lorna Li, an online marketer with expertise in social media, search engine marketing, and online reputation management. She is the founder of Search Marketing Salon, a growing LinkedIn network of over 5,000 search engine marketers. Lorna is currently part of the SEO Team at Salesforce.com. Her blog is Green Marketing 2.0.

Connect with Lorna on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, or subscribe to her FriendFeed.

Webinar Details

Date: Friday, May 29

Time: 1:00–2:00 p.m. Eastern time

Where: Your computer. You will need a dial-in number, URL and access codes to participate.

Charge: This webinar is $10.00 for all ASBPE members and $35.00 for nonmembers.

How to register: To reserve your place, you must complete two steps:

1) submit payment; and
2) visit the web page where you will actually register.

Fill out our registration form (76K Word doc), submitting payment (credit card or check payable to ASBPE) to the contact listed on the form. Upon receipt of payment, you will receive an e-mail with the online registration link. A second e-mail will follow identifying the dial-in number, URL and access codes needed to join the webinar.

Labels: Social Networking, Technology, Web, Webinars

At a recent ASBPE Cleveland panel, B2B media industry veteran Joe Pulizzi suggested attendees should think of their customers as competitors. He said that customers are already creating content that competes with trade magazines, and more of them will do so in the future. From a recap of the discussion:

“Fifty percent of the advertising dollars they’re pulling back on are going into creating their own content,” Pulizzi said. “Right now 30 percent of customers’ marketing budgets are going to their own content and 70 percent is spent on paid placement. Over the next decade, that will flip.”

The full recap of the panel discussion is on the ASBPE National Blog.

Labels: State of the Industry

Last month we recapped some opinions about where our industry is going. This month, three B2B executives gave their views at an ASBPE Kansas City chapter panel. Two were pessimistic about the dearth of print advertising; the third saw opportunity in the present and “lots of fun ahead!”

Read more about the execs’ outlook for B2B media.

Labels: State of the Industry