[Imc] Batten Award
nancy dietrich
nancydietrich at juno.com
Thu Nov 29 03:18:38 UTC 2001
John,
Good idea with giving them a call, and it's great that you took the time
to do it!
> Thanks for the most generous offer, Mike. But before anyone gets
> their
> shorts in too much of a twist over this, know that I phoned the good
> folks
> at the Pew Center for Civic Journalism in Washington DC today, just
> for the
> hell of it. I spoke to a woman named Dana Felty about the James K.
> Batten
> Awards for Excellence in Civic Journalism (which, by the way, are in
> their
> final year).
>
> I explained to Ms. Felty who we are - that we of the
> Urbana-Champaign IMC
> are the very ESSENCE of civic journalism, that we exist by virtue of
> voluntary contributions and volunteer labor, that our mission is to
> empower
> ordinary citizens to present perspectives that may be different from
> those
> of the corporately-owned media, etc., etc. She was familiar, she
> said, with
> the concept of indymedia.
>
> I mainly just wanted to find out whether we could submit a body of
> work that
> would incorporate everything we do: the web site, the radio news
> hour, and
> the newspaper. But here's the exquisite irony:
>
> Ms. Felty told me that we don't qualify for the award at all! Mr.
> Batten
> created the award to "reward news organizations that are pressured
> by daily
> deadlines" - I wrote it down - to go beyond those pressures and do
> something
> extraordinary in terms of civic journalism. In other words, the
> purpose of
> the award, she said, was to "light a fire" under the corporate media
> to do
> outstanding civic journalism.
>
> So since we're not corporate media and we're not under the "pressure
> of
> daily deadlines", it appears that we don't qualify for the civic
> journalism
> award as defined. Apparently the corporations need the monetary
> incentives
> more than we do.
>
> In fairness, Mr. Batten probably didn't envision the indymedia
> phenomenon
> when he created the award, though I would think the board of
> directors could
> take it into consideration. Ms. Felty - who was a nice person, I
> should add
> - did say that we in the indymedia movement "perform a valuable
> function in
> challenging the corporate media to do a better job." I thanked her
> profusely for the vote of confidence, as you might imagine, which
> was easily
> worth $25,000. She also mentioned that there are "other sources of
> funding"
> out there in GrantLand, though she didn't suggest any specific ones
> for
> which we might qualify.
>
> I'm not making any of this up. But if anyone wants to double-check
> the
> information I'm presenting here, feel free to phone the Pew Center
> at (202)
> 331-3200 and ask for Dana Felty. You won't find this stuff I'm
> telling you
> spelled out on the Pew Center's web site, and had I not called we
> might have
> done a whole ton of work for absolutely nothing.
>
> Disgustedly,
>
> John
>
> P.S. As an aside, I've been unable to locate photos of the Ladies
> and
> Laddies Against War ANYWHERE to date. It seems that the Powers on
> High
> don't want those folks' pitchers took for some reason. :) If
> anyone wants
> to take their photos, or knows where some might be located, it would
> be most
> helpful.
>
> _______________________________________________
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> IMC at urbana.indymedia.org
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Nancy :-)
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