We create the stories of the connected society

When Suzanne Turner begins the discussion at next week’s We Media Miami conference about the game-changing journalism nonprofits are doing, the spotlight will be on four groups who’ve found some creative ways to navigate the ever-changing media landscape.

Last week Apple banished a bunch of raunchy pictures from its iPhone App Store. As Apple rolls out the iPad later this month, and media companies support the frenzy with iPad apps and subscription services for it, that leave us all to wonder what other content, speech or ideas might be kicked out next.

The decline of US news companies has led to a call for expanded public media. But in the UK the BBC is blamed for stifling the news market – and it’s shrinking.

Richard Sambrook, director of BBC Global News since 2004, is saying goodbye to one of the world’s most influential jobs in journalism, and hello to, what should I say – the murky, spin-meisterly, lucrative? – world of public relations. Or should that be creative, innovative and transformational?

Amra Tareen, the savvy and ebullient founder of AllVoices, has
just closed a $3 million funding round for the innovative, citizen journalism site. That brings funding to $9 million for the two-year-old start-up. Not bad. TechCrunch has a good take on the AllVoices funding.
How does she do it? Amra returns to We Media [...]

The biggest surprise from yesterday’s unveiling of Apple’s iPad was that print publishers and journos weren’t terribly excited. “Waiting to be surprised. That hasn’t happened yet,” said Jim Roberts, the only New York Times wonk who didn’t confuse Steve Jobs with Moses. Valleywag has a good take on Print Media’s Big Tablet Letdown.
Our [...]

A few months after three, young software architects launched an obscure social networking and microblogging service, students at a rural Virginia university sent short messages to their friends from their PCs and cell phones as they hid from a gunman who opened fire in classrooms and a dorm.
“Everything you thought you knew about media has [...]

The future of the world’s news and knowledge system is on full display in and around the stories from the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

We couldn’t get to Hyderabad for this year’s group hug of the world’s newspaper publishers, but it sounds like the old boys are getting feisty in their dotage. Forced once to postpone because of bad economics and waning interest, the reconvened World Newspaper Congress, organized by the merged World Association of Newspapers and IFRA, launched [...]

Fifty-six million stories. Where’s the one about transparent government?

Dear Mr. Murdoch:
We’re so fortunate that we can entrust you with the future of the news business in the U.S. Such a shrewd business leader, too. Can you help a confused citizen understand your plan to save the news?

1. You’re going to charge people to read a story online that they won’t read, and [...]

This is a true testimony to the magic of a system that allows for open communication and collaborative problem solving around public concerns. You can really see how media, industry, government and private citizens can work together to improve their communities:

Stories float, diffuse, wash over us.

I don’t recall where I was when Buddy Holly died. But I’ll recall where I was when Michael Jackson died. I was on Twitter.
– One Twitterer by the name of toomarvelous
I will remember where I was when I heard the news about Michael Jackson because it came for me in an unexpected place in [...]

Worth a read at Forbes.com: Knight Foundation Head Alberto Ibargüen is bankrolling dozens of experiments to save the news business. Can he rescue newspapers?
You may recall Knight was one of the winners of our We Media Game Changer Awards earlier this year, for reasons cited by Forbes: the foundation has pledged to invest $100 [...]