We Media News Recap: Americans are deeply dissatisfied with their journalism; Knight Invests $3 million in Ashoka
More than 300 people from 13 countries gathered last week in Miami for our annual deep dive into the emergence of We Media as a defining force for the connected society. We’re already working on several big ideas we heard to take the conversation forward – through new research, the We Media Community, member working groups and other projects. We hope you’ll get involved – and dive in to the follow-up discussion now. You can review notes, audio (video archives coming soon) and add your own responses in the conference blog.
More to come soon.
First – in case you missed it – here are two big news items announced at We Media Miami that you should review if you missed them last week:
Technorati Tags: journalism, philanthropy, socialentrepreneurs, wemedia
1. iFOCOS Research finding: Two thirds of Americans – 67% – believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news. For the second year in a row we’ve documented a devastating lack of satisfaction with journalism in American – and an opportunity to do something about it. Details here. You can also find commentary on the results in The Guardian (UK), BusinessWeek and TechCrunch (and, of course, throughout the blogosphere). We’ll have more to say on the study and its implications in the coming weeks.
2. Knight Foundation invests $3 million in Ashoka to fund social entrepreneurs in journalism. This is a big deal – a major philanthropy, and one of the few with an interest in journalism, moves further from traditional containers of news to seed innovative and untested new approaches. Ashoka’s global experience with social entrepreneurs in other fields will be applied to support 30 people who “do” journalism. What does that mean and what will this investment yield? Nobody knows – and that’s a daring basis for any investment, and perhaps as good a definition as any of what social entrepreneurship is all about. Knight Foundation President Alberto Ibarguen and Ashoka President Diana Miller announced the investment at We Media Miami last week, and they answered some questions about it. Here are some of our live blogging team’s initial notes from that conversation, further thinking from Susan Mernit and Ogilvy’s John Bell, and here’s the formal press release.
