Sunday, May 30, 2010

Ben Franklin Project to involve readers in news process

The Middletown Press thinks readers should decide what is news, and we’re embarking on a project we think will involve readers in the news process in a way never before considered.

The Ben Franklin Project, named in honor of the inventor-innovator-printer-publisher-newsman-statesman, is a challenge: Can we produce a newspaper using only free web-based tools and involve the community in the process of journalism?

At its heart, the Ben Franklin Project is about independence, according to John Paton, the CEO of Journal Register Company, The Middletown Press’s parent company.

"On July 4 we will declare our independence," Paton said. "We will declare our independence from the kind of thinking that has kept our company and industry from transforming to a multi-platform news company. And we will declare our independence from an industry that ties itself up with expensive proprietary I.T. systems and processes that are outdated almost the day they are installed."

Luckily, we at The Middletown Press are not in completely uncharted waters. Sister newspapers have already successfully completed the challenge. The News-Herald, one of our dailies in Ohio, and Montgomery Media, one of our weekly groups in Pennsylvania, recently completed a 30-day Ben Franklin Project challenge successfully where they created, published and distributed news content on the web and in print, using only free tools available on the Internet.


They used programs like Gimp to edit photos and Scribus to lay out the paper. Free word processing tools were used and Google calendar was utilized to compile events.

Perhaps a more interesting aspect of the Ben Franklin Project is the community involvement. As regular readers will know, we encourage community participation here at The Middletown Press, and the Ben Franklin Project offers us a chance to engage our readership at the very start of the process.

"By using digital tools, we are going to the community to find out what they want covered and, by involving them in that coverage, we can dive more deeply into important subjects than we have been able to do before," Paton said.

The News-Herald, for example, put together a community forum, where readers could share with editors and staff what news they thought should be covered.

"The Perkasie News-Herald invited readers to a town hall meeting — a mix of old-school outreach and the new-school crowdsourcing approach,” said Journal Register Company Vice President of Content Jonathan Cooper. “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 mattered to the audience."

So get ready! In the coming days, we’ll want to hear from you, what you think is important — what we should cover and how we should cover it. This is an unprecedented way for you, the reader, to get involved in the news process, and we want all the help we can get.

For more about the Ben Franklin Project, check out http://jrcbenfranklinproject.wordpress.com, leave a comment below or send an e-mail to me at vsundqvist@middletownpress.com.

Friday, May 28, 2010

21 journalism awards for The Middletown Press!

I promised I'd give you an update on our awards nominations, and here it is:

The Middletown Press took home 21 statewide journalism awards last night at the annual Society of Professional Journalists event in North Haven.

Our sports department swept an entire category, and we won awards for two of our staff editorials (one on the Jeremy Shingleton controversy and another on the increase of water fees in Middletown). We took home several reporting awards as well as awards in layout, photography and headline writing.

READ MORE DETAILS HERE.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Our CEO as keynote speaker

Our CEO John Paton will be the keynote speaker at the Editor & Publisher Interactive Media Conference & Tradeshow in Las Vegas in June.

That's gotta tell you something about where our company is headed.

The conference promises a "forward-thinking, ground-breaking curriculum" that will give "valuable hands-on insight to continuous industry transformation," kind of like Paton himself.

While part of me wishes I could be there - a bit part of me has always wanted to go to Vegas - I also know that it's not necessary. Paton speaks about the transformation in the news industry on a daily basis to us here at The Middletown Press.

Via Twitter, his blog and direct e-mails to everyone at the Journal Register Company, Paton tries to get the idea across that we are now a digital first multi-media company - no longer a newspaper of the past.

Those who get stuck in the past have no chance of survival.

Slowly but surely you will start seeing changes here on the local level. We will work hard to invite the outside world in, and we want to hear your ideas.

At the News Herald in Ohio, a news team just completed a never-before-heard-of Ben Franklin Project where they published a newspaper both online and in print only by using free, web-based tools. Pretty soon, we will do the same here at the Press. And we want you to be a part of this change.

More details to follow soon.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Blumenthal wins Democratic nomination

Despite a quite rough week, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal received his party's nomination Friday for a spot in the U.S. Senate.

Halfway through the roll call at the Democratic convention, opponent Merrick Alpert withdrew, saying the will of the party was clear, according to CT Mirror.

What Merrick Alpert would have said

Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Merrick Alpert, who is running against Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, has been denied the right to speak in front of the delegates at tonight's convention. Here's what he would have said, had he been allowed to address the crowd:

Fellow Democrats,

You deserve a primary!

We need a primary!

And I intend to deliver that to you.

My name is Merrick Alpert.

I was born in Hartford and raised in Colchester by a single mother. My father left when I was a little boy and growing up I never saw him again. We struggled. My mother was a union schoolteacher in Colchester who worked a second job to provide for my brother, sister and me.

I need to thank you. Twenty-five years ago the people of Connecticut loaned me the money to go to UConn. It changed my life. After I graduated I knew I owed you something back, so I enlisted in the US Army National Guard, then transferred to a helicopter unit in the Air National Guard. In 1998 I volunteered as a U.S. Peacekeeper and served on the ground in Bosnia. In that Muslim nation, I learned a lot about what American force can achieve. I also learned that American force has limits.

I returned home and started, along with a friend, a software company. We started from scratch. For the first two years I didn’t get paid. But through hard work, and luck, eventually we succeeded.

I have been involved in Democratic causes my whole life. I worked for Al Gore when he first ran for President and later when he was Vice President, traveling with him both in the States and overseas. During the 2000 election campaign, you remember, the election that Al Gore won, I was in the staff room at a California hotel while the Vice President slept in the next room. Into the staff room walked the most charming, most intelligent, most beautiful woman I have ever seen. And foolishly, I told her so. A few months later we went on a date. And tonight, that woman Alex is my wife; we have 3 little children and live in Mystic……… and I’m probably the only man in America today to look at Al Gore and think romantic thoughts.

I am running for the United States Senate because we need a progressive Democratic to win this seat. I am running because I cannot stand the thought that Linda McMahon from World Wrestling can buy it………and you can’t tolerate that either.

I am here to tell you that, as Democrats, we need a primary. Why?

We’re not ready to win the Senate election. My assessment is if the general election were held this Tuesday, we would lose. After the events of this week, the polls confirm my assessment.

We need a candidate who knows why he is running for the Senate. We need a candidate who is straight with himself and straight with the people of Connecticut. We need a candidate who has fought and earned the nomination, not one who has sat quietly while the crown of coronation has been placed on his head. And, we need a candidate who has been completely vetted so we have no more unpleasant surprises. Think about it in your own life: if you have a son who will play football in the fall, do you keep him in the house over the summer to keep him safe or do you have him running contact drills to toughen him up? And on a national level, remember that the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton primaries left our party energized and strengthened.

We should find our candidate through a vigorous, issues-based primary. A primary will not only fortify our candidate, it will also permit us to share our vision of the type of democratic America we fight for. We want a government focused on private sector job creation. We want a government of the people, not of the special interests. We want a government investing our money in education, infrastructure, and health care at home, not wasting the money on a futile war in Afghanistan. A WAR THAT I OPPOSE. I have been campaigning on these issues for the last year and I can tell you the people of Connecticut care dearly about them. Every election this year has shown that voters are looking for ideas from outside government: I have new, fresh ideas that challenge Washington and the status quo.

If we have our own vigorous primary, we silence the Republican war machine until August 10th. We all know that the highly effective attack in Tuesday’s New York Times was hatched in Linda McMahon’s office. If we settle on our nominee tonight, that exceedingly well-funded and vicious machine, created by Karl Rove but now housed at World Wrestling, will be gifted three additional months to ruin our candidate. Think about what a few days of that enemy fire has done for our cause. Why would we ask for three additional months of it?

My name is Merrick Alpert. I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. And I want to be the best employee you ever have.

Please give me enough votes so we can have the primary that we all need to keep this seat Democratic.

Thank you. God Bless You. And Goodnight.

******
I rarely take a stand on political issues, trying to stay neutral, but I do believe Alpert should have at least been offered a chance to address the delegates - especially after this week's controversy with Richard Blumenthal.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Story on graffiti - we need your help!

The Middletown Press is planning on doing a story/photo spread on graffiti in Middletown. Do you know of any problem areas that we should visit?

Comment below or send me an e-mail at vsundqvist@middletownpress.com

Monday, May 17, 2010

Middletown Press nominated for awards

Next week, the staff of The Middletown Press will attend the Society of Professional Journalists annual awards dinner.

Staff members are finalists in 17 different categories, ranging from photography to page design.

For our staff editorial "First selectman seeks demise of newspaper," we have been nominated in the single editorial category. The Press also submitted a series of articles under the name "Press under investigation," including the above mentioned editorial, for the First Amendment Award, which we are also a finalist for.

Middletown reporter Hannah Vahl, court reporter Walt Gogolya, copy editor Leslie (Parsons) Poster and former reporter Jennifer Sprague are also finalists for their coverage of the Antonio Inglis murder trial.

Vahl was also nominated for her feature of a 91-year-old auxiliary trooper, which also got picked up by the Associated Press.

Sports Editor Jeremie Smith is a finalist for both sports columns and page designs, and reporter Jeff Mill is a finalist in the feature writing category for his piece about a female cop in Cromwell.

Wish us luck! I'll report back after May 27 to let you know what awards we actually won!

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Meeting with the acting chief

Today I met with Acting Police Chief Patrick McMahon and his Public Information Officer Lt. Heather Desmond to discuss some concerns I had with the department's access to records.

McMahon had been up all night because of the shooting late Tuesday, but he agreed to see me anyway.

Due to limitations of the department's current computer system, records are sorted by case number instead of date, which sometimes makes it hard four our reporters to look at arrests from a specific day. We have found that we missed several important arrests recently, and McMahon was able to explain why when I brought up those concerns.

We are now working on a solution so that doesn't happen again.

The chief promised to take some steps to help us get better access to records in a timely manner - on weekends and holidays, for example. And once the new computer system is in place, we should see even better results.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

A tour of Wesleyan University

Last week, Managing Editor Lauren Flaum and I tagged along on an undergraduate admissions office tour of Wesleyan University.

We didn't realize, of course, that it would be the hottest day so far this year, and that the tour would last 2 hours.

It was interesting, though, to hear the story of the secret bell-tower society, find out where the best food is on campus and take a look inside the old library.




SEE WESLEYAN OBSERVATORY HERE.

VIDEO ABOUT STUDENT HOUSING HERE.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

What should we work on this week?

In the past week, a Middletown parent brought up concerns about bullying in the city's schools, residents in Tylerville speoke about contamination and police in Cromwell urged residents to lock up their cars and belongings due to thefts.

What would you like to see us write about this week?

With more budget hearings to come, we intend to dedicate some resources to those to help explain to residents where their money is going. But what would you like to read about?

Please let us know in the comment section below.