Robot Heart Stories

Posted: August 21st, 2011 ˑ Filled under: news ˑ  1 Comment

This fall I’ll be releasing an exciting new participatory storytelling project focused on experiential education, storytelling and creative collaboration.

A robot has crash landed in Montreal and now must make her way to LA in order to find her space craft and return home. Two third grade classes in underprivileged neighborhoods, one in Montreal (French speaking) and the other in LA (English speaking) engage in an experiential learning project that utilizes math, science, history, geography and creative writing to place education directly in the hands of students. By using collaborative problem solving and creative writing the students help the Robot make her way across North America. The project concludes with an actual space launch! That’s right the robot along with copies of the students stories and artwork will board a commercial rocket that is headed to the space station later this fall.

 

 

Much of the PBS system is watching KCET closely to see how it fares without the PBS “icon” series shows to keep an audience. While cutting deals like this one makes headlines, taking a look at the daily program schedule leaves me really underwhelmed with the offerings. Five hours of cooking shows each weekday? Still, I’m hoping for the best.

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KCET-TV in $50-million deal for new local shows

Since KCET-TV Channel 28 left the PBS network in January, one big question was how the newly independent public station could find unique programs to replace network shows like “Charlie Rose” and “Sesame Street.” Now it’s hoping to take a big step toward that goal with an entrepreneurial partnership that could be worth as much as $50 million.

The station announced today that it will team with Dominique Bigle, a former Walt Disney Co. executive and the founder of an Encino-based visual-effects and production company called Eyetronics Media & Studios, to produce and acquire original series about Southern California. KCET says it hopes to start producing the first five shows by the end of the year and will add staff to do so.

Bigle is the son of Armand Bigle, who helped oversee Disney’s expansion into Europe. In an interview, KCET chief Al Jerome said he met Bigle through Steve Unger, an executive recruiter, and the pair had been talking for months about a deal.

The KCET programs will celebrate “the vibrancy of Southern California’s people, places, and culture, as well as its history,” the station said in a release. While not offering titles or specifics, executives said the shows will cover such topics as food, technology and entertainment. Details will be forthcoming in several weeks, they added.

KCET left PBS in January after months of disputes over dues and other issues. Many of the programs the station has aired this year are either reruns, such as the old British crime series “Prime Suspect,” or general-interest news shows from overseas providers, such as Al-Jazeera or Japan’s NHK. 

The deal is KCET’s largest cash infusion for new programming since a $50-million partnership with oil giant BP and other donors led to a “A Place of Our Own,” a nationally distributed series for preschool caregivers.

ALSO:

“We had to learn — and we have to keep reminding ourselves — to start by listening to the community and sometimes leave the camera at home,” said Nashville Public Television President Beth Curley about the station’s Next Door Neighbors project. Pictured: scene from Next Door Neighbors program about the city’s Somali refugees.

Rules of Engagement 1

New mindset requires new habits: listen, earn trust, partner-up

The professionals who work to engage public media groups in their communities are still learning what it takes. In a series of articles, associates of the Wisconsin-based National Center for Media Engagement will lay out what they’ve learned. Executive Director Charles Meyer begins the series. Continued…

 

This short video was created by a first-time producer/shooter/editor who took one of RosenblumTV’s video journalism courses. It’s got story, pacing, music, humor and great cinematography. According to Rosenblum the student had “never touched a camera or an edit before” in her life. A little training, some lightweight equipment and some desire can create great outcomes.

Both sides have claimed early victories in the case of documentarian Joe Berlinger vs. Chevron over access to the raw footage he shot for his expose “Crude” on Amazonian oil exploitation. I’ve blogged about the case and the filmmaking community reaction here.

On Thursday, the appeals judge ruled that Berlinger must turn over Crude footage that does not appear in any public version of the film’s release if it shows the counsel for the plaintiffs in the Lago Agrio class action lawsuit against Chevron or any experts or Ecuadorian government officials involved in that case.

This is bad news for the plaintiffs in that case, and likely good news for Chevron. Thankfully, the court also found that Chevron had to use the footage strictly for legal defense purposes and could not use if for marketing or other PR purposes. But whether this decision means that filmmakers can rest assured that their footage is safe from similar “takings” is still pretty unclear.

As for the case’s potential use as precedence on non-confidential information and journalist’s privilege in the future, Floyd Abrams, the famed First Amendment lawyer representing the media amici, cautioned that a ruling alone is not enough grounds to gauge its future applications. “We have to wait for the opinion of the court to see how they applied the law,” Abrams said. “It’s too early to tell where we’re going in this area.”

Berlinger himself seems both confident that the court will ultimately uphold the narrowing of the original request and the difficulty of any court appeal to prevail:

Most appeals are unsuccessful and the appealing party has a lot to prove. I was very relieved the court seemed to be sympathetic to my primary concerns about the case. Nobody expects the decision to be completely reversed. Having covered the legal process, I know there are times you want journalists to be compelled. But it can’t just be a fishing expedition. If I knew I had any evidence that was exculpatory, I would want the footage to be turned over. But only if the First Amendment standards of true relevancy and exclusive access of information are met.

Look out – here come’s mobile film-making! No excuses – the editing application is in the phone!

This chain of newspapers is boldly striking out into digital territory that no other legacy media has ventured in (switching to free online tools and more), but I’m eager to consider how our station can adopt this idea:

Telling the Stories

A cornerstone of the Ben Franklin Project is the inclusion of everyone in the process. While project observers helped fill the toolshed, our audiences helped fill the websites and printed pages.

The Ben Franklin Project opens the process and allows everyone to participate at whatever level they are comfortable. Adhering to Journal Register’s digital first mission, the Ben Franklin Project will empower the audience – through use of free web-based tools (the list of which is still being finalized) – to determine on what stories our reporting and editing staff should be focusing their efforts. The audience – the news consumer – will no longer simply be the end user. By transforming the process the traditional “end user” will be put at the beginning of the process when she helps shape the newsgathering and participates in the newsgathering.

And the audience wasted no time in participating. The Perkasie News-Herald invited readers to a town hall meeting — a mix of old-school outreach and the new-school crowdsourcing approach. The Q-and-A session of the meeting served as a news meeting where residents requested stories on the local electric rates and the community’s pay-as-you-throw trash collection system. Reporters and editors still did the work but they knew from the time story assignments were conceived that these stories matter to the audience.

The News-Herald in Lake County asked readers to help extend the newsroom’s reach by covering more turf than the reporting team could do alone. Editors, using Facebook, asked followers to help the staff build a list of the most dangerous intersections in the coverage area. By asking the audience to collaborate the staff was able to collect dozens of suggestions within the first few hours of the Facebook post. Reporters cross-referenced the submissions with data obtained from police. The same worked for a series of stories on blighted properties in the area. Readers were asked to report blighted properties and the reporters then investigated.

The crowdsourcing not only ensures the stories are relevant to the readership but also provides greater depth and breadth to the report as the community — collaborating with reporters and editors — can help extend the reach of the newsroom.