megheckman

April 7, 2013April 7, 2013

Building civic engagement online

Nicest conference room I've ever used. Photo/Meg Heckman — Nicest conference room I’ve ever used.

I spent the weekend at a lovely hotel in Saratoga Springs where the New York Press Association held its annual convention. Hundreds of staffers from papers all over the Empire State were there to receive awards, eat great food and listen to speakers like me.

My lecture explored how local newspapers can use digital tools to foster civic engagement. It’s a talk I’ve given before and was happy to repeat because it allows me to challenge something I hear too often from newspaper journalists. The web, they say, is best suited for fluffy features and photos of kittens, not the kind of stories that support democracy.

That’s just not true. This handout includes some examples of meaningful online journalism, as does the presentation below:

The crowd that attended my lecture was full of young, smart journalists starting their careers at New York’s many weekly papers. They asked great questions and shared how they had used digital tools to engage readers in civic life. Like this election night blog from the Riverhead News-Review. Using CoverItLive, the staff mixed strong reporting and a bit of humor with fantastic results.

Another example of online civic engagement came from the Home Reporter, a Brooklyn paper with a very active Facebook account. The staff told me how they routinely receive news tips and reader questions through the page.

What other ways are local papers using the web to foster civic engagement? Tell me in the comment section below.

April 3, 2013

Sex, rockets and Stroganoff

Beef stroganoff is suddenly the epicenter of a debate over gender, science and journalism. Photo/WikiMedia Commons. — Beef Stroganoff is suddenly the epicenter of a debate over gender, science and journalism. Photo/WikiMedia Commons.

At first, I was outraged by the way the New York Times started its obituary of rocket scientist Yvonne Brill by describing her cooking skills. I calmed down, though, when I remembered that I once built an entire obituary around a much-loved (male) minister’s talent for pie crust. Then I got mad again when I thought of how hard it is for female scientists to be recognized for anything besides their gender or how rare it is for women to rate staff-written obituaries.

On Monday, New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan weighed in with a column that distills why Brill’s gender should not have been the central theme of the obituary:

The way (Brill) handled her role as a wife and mother certainly had a place, given the era in which she did her work. Cultural context is important. But if Yvonne Brill’s life was worth writing about because of her achievements, and all agree that it was, then the glories of her beef stroganoff should have been little more than a footnote. The emphasis on her domesticity — and, more important, the obituary’s overall framing as a story about gender — had the effect of undervaluing what really landed Mrs. Brill on the Times obituaries page: her groundbreaking scientific work.

I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about Brill’s obit, although I’m fairly certain I would not have included the words “beef Stroganoff” anywhere in the first three grafs of that particular story. It is, however, heartening that a major news organization like the Times heeded criticisms and rewrote the lede.