Spring Training Recap: New Energies for News21

The 39 fellows and 19 advisers, plus Carnegie's Ambika Kapur (bios here), who gathered at the Cronkite School this weekend return to their campuses with perhaps an unprecedented amount of information intended to help them conceive of innovative projects. To help with assimilation and possible extension of some concepts, here are links to the relevant materials. Certain segments of the video indexed here require the password sent via e-mail to members of the News21 alliance.

Welcoming remarks followed by the scene-setting vision of Cronkite Dean Chris Callahan, explaining the purpose, power and potential of News21 collaboration, innovation and experimentation.

Video of Poynter interactivity editor Ellyn Angellotti's session, "Examples of Excellence in Digital Storytelling" (here is Ellyn's PowerPoint).

Video of Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at ASU: "Tools of the Trade: Enhancing Innovative Approaches to Journalism." Dan's fundamental message: Publish before perfection and iterate! He also noted a trend from hyperlocal to hyperpersonal. Here's a pdf of his presentation.

Video of "10 Tech Trends You Should Know About" by Amy Webb of WebbMedia Group, plus her tipsheet, which includes a pdf of links customized for News21. During the Q&A, amid a crowd perhaps a bit overwhelmed by the amount of technology she toured in a little more than an hour, Amy suggested keeping up on trends by reading via their Netnewswire or GoogleReader the blogs Mashable, LifeHacker, TechCrunch and PaidContent.

Video of Ellyn's Sunday presentation: Deconstructing Best Practices.

Video of Ellyn's interactivity presentation. As you look at her PowerPoint, "10 Tools That Make Your Site Something People Do," look at her notes area for additional links.

What if...? That's the question posed to fellows in their Saturday night brainstorming. On Sunday, the six groups presented ideas still percolating but intended to spark ideas for Big J Journalism, as Knight's Eric Newton exhorts us. That link carries many examples of ways to group content beyond the topics we've established (i.e., underdogs, achievers, the impassioned). Many of teams offered approaches to navigating to our collective material, including maps, mosaic portraits, clickable panoramas, index of collection of 24-hour experiences. But we came up short on a clear question that could be tackled by a few dozen investigative reporters. Let's keep the conversation going. At least one fellow from each incubator will be tapped/assigned by a director to join the newly created Data Gurus & Question Makers Group.

Berkeley's Paul Grabowitcz posts an idea conceived by fellow Kim Geiger that basically is crowd sourcing by journalists of perhaps 20 common sets of demographic data on U.S. communities.

Each school presented a few individual or group ideas under development. They're summarized here -- and deserve ongoing input -- although I was pleased to see Columbia and Carolina have established Ning discussions.

The above Wordle reflects ideas discussed this weekend: As they are more fully formulated, I can begin to help finding outlets for your work. Shortly we can go live with your preview sites, even if that page offers little more than a revised description of your various seminar focuses. I think everyone felt the need for sparking progress, as May approaches. Please know John, Kristi and myself are ready to help. Also, Amy, Ellyn and ASU's gurus, including Dan, are available to offer advice.

Of related interest:
* News21 tweets, worth looking at given how rich it is with links shared during the sessions.
* News21 logo submissions on Crowdspring.
* Photos by ASU photojournalist Deanna Dent of the opening session plus the first break.
* Tips on managing scopecreep -- and keeping your projects under control.
* Early mockups of News21 redesign.
* Video of the Cronkite ticker, showing the names of those in attendance.