"Building the Civic 'Net" Awards Grant to the "Rochester Oral History Archive"

The Building the Civic Net (BCN) philanthropic initiative today announced that it has awarded a $2,000 grant to the Rochester Oral History Archive (ROHA). Sponsored in part by the Village of Rochester Hills, Building the Civic Net supports local social media initiatives that strengthen the community’s civic culture. The announcement was made by Dr. G. Scott Aikens, Vice President of Leasing for the Village of Rochester Hills and Building the Civic 'Net founder.

Funding for ROHA will be supplemented by a matching grant from Oakland University’s Meadow Brook Writing Project (MBWP). MBWP is a local site for the National Writing Project.

The Rochester Oral History (ROHA) Project will begin collecting oral histories of Rochester residents ages 55 and older for archival on a public access website in early 2010. Residents are invited to participate in the project by sharing memories connected to local historical sites, events and communities. Oral history collection dates will be scheduled at numerous locations throughout April 2010.

Patrons will be guided through a series of prompts to capture their stories using digital media tools. Researchers will upload materials to the ROHA website. The project mission includes making technology accessible to seniors while building a resource for citizens of all ages involved in local history projects.

Visit the ROHA Web page hosted by Oakland University. Get involved in the project by joining the ROHA facebook group.

The ROHA project is administered by Cornelia Pokrzywa, Special Lecturer in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at Oakland University. Pokrzywa, who specializes in teaching first-year, technology-intensive writing courses, is a long-time Oakland Township resident, graduate of Rochester Adams High School and Oakland University alum.

“The greater Rochester area is home to many long-standing traditions and institutions, which act as settings for countless personal stories and memories,” said Pokrzywa. “The ROHA project will create a lasting archive of oral histories tied to people, places and groups.”

Dr. Aikens says of the grant, “We're hopeful that ROHA will create community content online that deepens community understanding. By embedding this content in new social media tools such as Facebook, we also hope to spark a lively conversation in the community about personal memories, community memory, and local history.”

Meadow Brook Writing Project leader, Marshall Kitchens added, "The MBWP is committed to supporting and promoting community projects
such as this that preserve the personal narratives of local residents
and make them available to a broader audience through digital
technologies and social networks. We are pleased to partner with
Building the Civic 'Net to make this possible."

Building the Civic 'Net: Now Accepting Grant Applications

Building the Civic 'Net, a philanthropic program committed to support local social media projects in the public interest, is now accepting grant applications. You can learn more about the program from this excellent article recently published in the Oakland Press or from this program introduction.

Two times per year “Building the Civic ‘Net” awards several small grants (anywhere between $1,000 - $2,000) to institutions, organizations and / or individuals that propose a creative way to use social media to improve our civic life in Northern Oakland County, Michigan.

We define social media as a participatory use of the Internet through interactive forums such as a web log (blog), video log (vblog), or online services such as youtube, facebook, flickr, etc. .

In addition to the grant money, recipients will become part of the “Building the Civic ‘Net” community. Through social media tools such as facebook, twitter and youtube, as well as live events, grant recipients will be encouraged to interact with past recipients, program partners and project supporters. As the power is in the network, we believe this participation may be the most valuable prize for grant recipients.

APPLICATION

Submissions are due by October 7th. During the month of October, we will choose finalists, conduct interviews, and announce the new grant recipients.

APPLY HERE

The Oakland Press reports on the "Building the Civic 'Net" philanthropic initiative

The Oakland Press published a terrific article today about the "Building the Civic 'Net" (BCN) philanthropic intiative.

The initiative, sponsored by the Village of Rochester Hills, helps local groups and individuals in northern Oakland County with social media projects in the public interest.

You can learn more about the four recent grant recipients, as well as the program, by reading this recent Village Square blog post.

You can become involved in the program by joining the BCN facebook group, following the BCN blog, and / or following the BCN Twitter feed.

National Contest Offers Funding for Foundation-Backed Local News and Information Projects

Aug. 11, 2009

(Miami) The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is accepting applications from place-based foundations for the second year of a matching grant program seeking to inform and engage residents on pressing issues through news and information projects. The deadline for the Knight Community Information Challenge contest is Sept. 23.

"In a democracy, access to information is essential for a community to function properly. It's a core community need - and one we believe place-based foundations should be addressing at this critical time," Trabian Shorters, Knight Foundation's vice president for communities, said.

More local foundations are doing just that: a Knight-funded report by J-Lab: the Institute for Interactive Journalism, recently found that 180 community, family and other foundations have contributed nearly $128 million in grants to news and information initiatives in the United States since 2005.

Knight Foundation created the $24 million, five-year Challenge to help place-based foundations find creative ways to fund media projects to inform residents about the issues that matter most to them. To help foundations identify opportunities, techniques and technologies that could benefit their communities, Knight provides free consultants who are well-versed on tools and projects from across the country. Also, Knight Foundation will host its third Media Learning Seminar March 1-2, 2010, where place-based foundations can learn more about media trends and the information needs of communities in a democracy.

In the challenge's first year, $5 million was awarded to 21 projects. The ideas included asking donors to fund news beats at a non-profit Internet start-up, launching neighborhood news bureaus run by citizen journalists and creating "digital public squares," or online news hubs where people can view and discuss important local information.

The challenge is part of Knight's Media Innovation Initiative, whose seven projects include an effort to explore national media reform, increase broadband access nationally and transform journalism education, among others.

To apply, or learn more about the challenge, visit www.informationneeds.org.

For more on Knight Foundation's Media Innovation Initiative, visit http://www.mediainnovation.org.

Contact: Marc Fest, Vice President of Communications, 305-908-2677

Meadow Brook Hall Young Writers Camp

The Meadow Brook Writing Project's first week-long camp for young writers at Meadow Brook Hall is now complete. Two more sessions for children between 3rd and 6th grades are set for July 6 - 10 and July 20 - 24.

With the help of their grant from Building the Civic 'Net, project leaders have so far produced two videos available here for your viewing pleasure.

This first video gives an overview of the program:



This second video focuses on a day in the life of camp attendees:

Introduction to "Building the Civic 'Net"

"Building the Civic 'Net" is a philanthropic initiative sponsored by the Village Square blog and the Village of Rochester Hills. We are currently introducing our first group of four grantees at the Village Square blog.

"Building the Civic 'Net" awards grants to institutions, organizations and or individuals in Rochester Hills and the surrounding areas that propose a creative way to use social media to improve our shared public life. We define social media as a participatory use of the Internet through interactive forums such as a web log (blog), or online service such as twitter, facebook, youtube, flickr, etc.

These grants aim to help catalyze a larger opportunity for Northern Oakland County. With the closing of the Rochester Observer and Eccentric, we believe it is more important than ever that communities use new tools to inform themselves and one another in new ways. We call upon a wide variety of civic, cultural, and educational leaders to pioneer the use of social media to support their missions, build community, and deliver important information to their constituents. If this were to happen, this array of institutions could then form multiple inter-connected hubs online. The sum of the parts would inform, strengthen the ties that bind, and enhance the quality of life for local residents. It might also make Northern Oakland County into a vibrant hub for innovation and experimentation in the local use of social media to enhance the standard of living.

Our hope is that current and future “Building the Civic 'Net” grantees will help the communities of Northern Oakland County pursue this goal of innovation.

Participate in the Building the Civic 'Net initiative by joining our facebook group.



You can also follow us on Twitter.

Detroit Public Television & Digital Content Strategy

Given on-going travails in the newspaper business, Detroit Public Television has an opening to step up its game.

Newspapers are sanctioned in the U.S. constitution as a great search light, a critical check in our democracy on government and other powerful local stake-holders. Yet The Detroit Free Press and Detroit News cut home delivery to three days per week. The Observer & Eccentric Newspapers closed five local editions, including Birmingham, Rochester, Troy, West Bloomfield, and Southfield.

With these institutions battered and weakened by the ‘Net, it is imperative that other institutions emerge to ensure the health of local democracy in new ways. Some of these can and must grow organically out of the creative capacities unleashed by the ‘Net. Nimble old institutions intent on reinvention, though, also have tremendous new opportunities to contribute.

It’s not clear in this topsy turvy media landscape that DPTV can emerge free and healthy. Old institutions in the digital age, with all of their legacy assets and liabilities, can struggle to choose a path free and clear to a prosperous future. The newspaper business has learned this. The Detroit automobile companies, with their vast dealer networks, health plans, and pension funds, also understand how burdensome legacies are.

Some of DPTV's assets are favorable, though. First, DPTV has approximately 1.6 mm viewers; a solid foundation built over decades. Second, DPTV is locally connected, in an era when local content and voices are badly needed; yet they can also draw on strong national resources. Third, DPTV is a non-profit institution. The problem for commercial newspapers and broadcasters is that the ‘Net and digital technology have killed their business models. They are increasingly unviable financially. DPTV’s hurdle to cover costs is less because it doesn’t have to answer to profit-seeking shareholders or equity investors. The metric against which DPTV measures success, how well it fulfills its public mission, is cheaper. Some in Congress are exploring non-profit models for the newspaper industry; but DPTV is already there.

To emerge into the future as a strong and vital organization, it is necessary for leaders at DPTV to focus on two specific short term strategies. These must be coupled with a critical medium to long-term strategy.

First, DPTV must protect and nurture its main asset; the broadcast stream and its 1.6 mm person audience. This is the vital anchor. One problem, however, is that a large percentage of these viewers are older. They aren’t well connected to the ‘Net. As the group ages, it will deteriorate through attrition. The people will be replaced by an audience with consumer usage patterns transformed by social media. If DPTV pursues this as a stand alone strategy, the 1.6 mm person audience will slowly evaporate.

Second, DPTV must invest as heavily as possible in a ‘Net infrastructure tilted to social media. The emphasis should be, first, on the exploitation of free applications such as youtube, google, blogger, facebook and twitter; second, on the purchase of low cost production and distribution technologies; and, third, on investment in a broad array of semi-affiliated content creators, as well as user-generated content.

The users of social media are different than the audience for the TV station. It is a younger demographic, and therefore more culturally progressive. For this reason these efforts should, in the near term, be considered a separate venture. It is a major but necessary investment without an immediate and commensurate return. Such an investment is as critical to the future of DPTV as the Volt is to the future of General Motors.

To emerge in the future as a vital service for local communities, DPTV needs to keep a close eye on medium and long-term strategy. Most young professionals using social media will choose a partner, buy a house, have some kids and become the older audience that has long been served so well by DPTV's Channel 56. A re-christened Detroit Public Media must hustle, as soon as this can be made to happen, to square the circle between the powerful broadcast stream and the new social media ventures. If the station leadership and the Board can maintain the discipline to patiently execute this natural but extended process of convergence over a number of years, than Detroit Public Media can emerge into a radically altered media landscape as a valued service provider for local communities across South-East Michigan