The Knight-Batten Symposium for Innovations in Journalism awarded seven prizes to honor news companies who have found inventive ways to engage readers. The New York Times won the $10,000 Grand Prize, but six other $1000 prizes were also awarded. Although the coolness factor certainly pervaded the demonstrations, each of the winning entries aimed to promote a relationship with readers – by increasing transparency and accessibility in online news.

“Transparency is the new objectivity – transparency can bring us to reliability the way objectivity used to,” said Ellen Miller, co-founder of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization. Miller spoke about the role of technology in improving transparency. “Technology is not a slice of the pie, it’s the pan.”

Technological advances allow news companies to expand and augment their reach on the web, whether collecting or providing data. Online at the New York Times’, for example, readers provide all the content for One Word, while the Document Reader gives readers a chance to explore background documents.

“The data is really only the jumping-off point – you take it and you try to figure out what it all means,” said Dante Chinni, Project Director of Christian Science Monitor’s Patchwork Nation. Patchwork Nation, shared with NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, provides county-level information on communities so readers can analyze data themselves. Reporters from other news organizations also gain a powerful tool for both generating and anchoring stories.

In a collaborative spirit not often associated with journalism, many of the winning ideas are replicable and shareable. ProPublica’s Change Tracker not only provides a tool that captures changes in specified websites, it helps anyone create their own personal tracker, separate from ProPublica. The for-profit company Apture partners with a range of news organizations like washingtonpost.com and Reuters. Their free plugin gives readers a chance to explore outside sources without leaving a news site.

Journalism technology has wholeheartedly embraced the two-way street between reader and content provider. But some attendees at the symposium would like to see technology successfully tackle journalism’s other pressing issues, like sustainability and support of in-depth projects.

“At times we feel like monks in the Middle Ages with our illuminated manuscripts and you all are offering Guttenberg presses,” said David Kaplan, the director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism for the Center for Public Integrity. Kaplan works with a virtual team of international journalists. Although he uses and appreciates the advances in technology, he also voiced concern about how technology could promote investigative journalism.

As journalism grows into its new symbiotic relationship with technology, growing pains are to be expected. Readers and reporters alike are growing accustomed to the look and feel of technophilic journalism. Morning coffee goes just as well with a screen as with a broadsheet.

Among other deficiencies in their reporting on gay issues, TV networks and newspapers routinely give anti-gay extremists the appearance of legitimacy by including their voices in discussions of gay rights. I respect the desire to present stories in a balanced way, but when it comes to other civil rights categories, there’s a line that no major media organizations cross.

Namely, you won’t see Katie Couric interviewing someone from the KKK about how Obama is doing in office. Nor would the Washington Post have sought out an opinion on Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination from a member of the Taliban who believes women shouldn’t work outside the home or go to school.

But spokespeople for groups like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, among other far-right anti-gay religious organizations, are constantly quoted in stories about gay issues and invited to debate those topics on TV news programs. These are groups that spread blatant falsehoods and myths about homosexuality and that have an agenda to derail any progress on issues like marriage equality or job protections for gay people.

At the recent National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) conference in Montreal, Karl Frisch, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog group, addressed this issue during a panel on Obama’s record on gay rights. Frisch said that the American people are too unaware of all the civil rights protections gay people do not have, partially because the media focuses on the political debates over these issues rather than on how they substantively affect gay people’s lives.

During a conversation after the NLGJA panel discussion, Frisch spoke about the media’s habit of giving deference to anti-gay bigots, and compared it to the continued faulty reporting on global warming.

Karl Frisch of Media Matters for America

Listen to Frisch’s comments (edited for length).

I’ve confronted members of the media myself about this tendency to give credence to the anti-gay fringe, including in an e-mail exchange earlier this summer with New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney. In this article about the Obama administration’s lack of action on gay rights initiatives, Nagourney quoted Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, writing that Perkins “said Mr. Obama’s reluctance to push more assertively for gay rights reflected public opinion.”

Perkins’ quote that “the American public isn’t there” in terms of supporting the repeal of the military’s ban on openly gay soldiers could have easily been refuted by citing any number of pieces of evidence. In fact, polls in recent years show that solid majorities of Americans, as many as 75 percent by some measures, support repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and allowing openly gay soldiers to serve in the military.

Yet, the article supplied no direct contradiction to put Perkins’ misguided statement into context. Several paragraphs below — after readers might have moved on to another article — a mention was made that the number of Americans opposing gays serving openly had dropped by several percentage points. Note the continued emphasis on opposition, rather than support.

This article’s biggest problem for me as a journalist and a reader was that Perkins is not a political analyst, but a right-wing activist whose organization is obsessed with denigrating homosexuality and opposing legislation that would grant civil rights protections to gay people. Why have him comment as though he were an expert with a reasoned insight on the matter? This is not an anomaly; examples of reporting that overemphasizes opposition to gay people and gay rights can be found on a regular basis throughout the mainstream media.

One reason blogs have become so popular is because traditional media still stick to this “one side says A, but the other side says B” formula, absent the deeper analysis that often reveals that one of those sides is completely misrepresenting reality.

Jon Barrett and Karl Frisch discuss the Obama adminstration and gay rights issues at a panel held during the 2009 NLGJA conference.

Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office promising hope and change ­– a message that resonated with members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered community.

But eight months into Obama’s presidency, some gay advocates are starting to lose hope, contending change isn’t coming fast enough.

A panel discussion held at the 2009 convention of the National Association of Lesbian and Gay Journalists addressed what many called a lack of progress made in the fight for LGBT rights.

Moderator Jen Christensen of CNN kicked off the discussion by holding up a recent copy of The Advocate. The magazine featured the iconic “Hope” image of Obama with the headline “NOPE?”

“So how did we go from a guy who really gets us, to ‘nope?’” Christensen asked.

Karl Frisch, Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, answered, “There were promises made that haven’t been fulfilled.”

In addition to Frisch, panelists included Washington blogger Mike Rogers, Jon Barrett, editor-in-chief of The Advocate, and Matthew Bajko, assistant editor for the Bay Area News.

During his campaign, Obama championed himself as “a fierce advocate of equality for gay and lesbian Americans.” The panelists said that too much faith was put into that promise. He had promised to repeal discriminatory policies like “Don’t ask, Don’t tell,” and work on legislatively removing the Defense of Marriage act, progress on either issue has yet to be seen.

“It’s somewhat our own fault because we thought he was going to be our fiercest advocate,” said Bajko. “We sort of gave him a pass for awhile and didn’t press him on our issues.”

Frisch said there were warning signs that the media, along with the gay community, chose to ignore – citing the choice of openly homophobic minister Rick Warren to lead the country in prayer at Obama’s inauguration.

But Mike Rogers noted that any conversation surrounding gay issues was a good conversation, and that in some ways the choice of Warren was a “victory.”

“Any moment we are able to get our discussion out there it is a victory,” Rogers said.  He pointed out that Warren was forced to change the language on his website after the heated debates surrounding his homophobia.

Christensen wondered if whether the panelists were being too hard on the President, whose term has been dominated by efforts to turn around the economy and pass his controversial healthcare plan. She also pointed out that Obama was the first president to extend benefits to same sex couples, and has invited gay press and leaders into the White House.

“Our community has a history of accepting crumbs as bigger meals and being satisfied,” Bajko said. Rogers noted that this sort of thing should have been happening all along.

The panelists said Obama’s top priorities should include fighting for LGBT civil rights legislation. They also called on the media to tell stories about gay rights in America, in an effort to spur the President to action.

“As members of the media we are just being lazy,” said Bajko. “We really only have ourselves to blame waiting and praying for something to happen.”

“When we are absent from the media debate, we don’t get a voice,” Frisch added. “Most Americans have no clue that in 29 states you can get fired just for being gay and your job is not protected, or that there is no federal civil rights legislation.”

Complementary duffle bags handed to journalists at the event held flyers from Coca-Cola repudiating reports that the sweeteners in its products are unhealthy. 

The messages were paid for by sponsors of the National Association of Black Journalists convention, held this year in Tampa, Fla. Media giants like The McClatchy Company, Cox Enterprises and Gannett Company have traditionally been the top-tier supporters of the journalism industry’s major annual conferences. But not this year. Increasingly, convention sponsors are outsiders – companies that are not part of the media, but are frequently covered by it. 

McClatchy gave at least $100,000 to NABJ’s 2007 convention, but less than $10,000 this year. Cox disappeared from the sponsorship list altogether.

Now non-media corporations – Rent-A-Center, GMAC Financial Services, NASCAR – get top billing.  Such companies made up 64 percent of the NABJ convention’s listed sponsors this year, up ten percentage points from 2006. (The total number of all sponsors dropped considerably during that time, from 77 to 33.) 

“The media industry has gone through complete upheaval over the past 24 months, so that discretionary income they have to provide sponsorships goes away first thing,” said Barbara Ciara, whose two-year term as NABJ president ended Aug. 9.  “You’ve got your Googles and your Apples and your other non-traditionals that are joining us and picking up where those media companies have left off.” 

Ciara and leaders of other professional journalism organizations insist the change doesn’t create problems. 

“We don’t do it in a way that’s going to make us beholden to any one organization,” she said. 

Still, the growing proportion of non-media sponsors can raise “huge ethical issues,” said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader for The Poynter Institute, a center that provides professional development for journalists. 

The conflict came to light for McBride at a 2008 journalism conference in Chicago, where she joined a panel sponsored by McDonald’s about online media. The panelists were bloggers for the fast-food chain touting the menu’s nutritional value, McBride said. 

“The content of the convention was directly affected by the desires of the advertisers,” said Keith Woods, Poynter’s dean of faculty. “That’s the thing we are always afraid of – losing independence by having it essentially purchased from us.” 

Representatives of UNITY: Journalists of Color, which organized the conference, did not return calls.

McDonald’s USA communications manager Nicole Neal, who oversees the company’s national African-American communications program, said the bloggers were part of McDonald’s Mom Quality Correspondents program, but they were not on the chain’s payroll. She said the session was meant to show journalists how social media allows ordinary people to spread information about companies. 

But like the Coca-Cola flyer at the NABJ convention, it provided a sometimes controversial organization an opportunity to combat negative impressions. 

“Media is a communicator of information about our company. It’s a great opportunity to be a part of the conversation, to facilitate the conversation,” Neal said. “We know the quality of our food. For us it’s an opportunity to give people the information to make a decision.” 

McBride and Woods said taking money from outside companies isn’t an ethical problem itself, but there can be a slippery slope. 

“It’s not a foregone conclusion that if you get corporate sponsorship, you lose independence,” Woods said. “But if you are not careful, you can.” 

The Society of Professional Journalists bans corporations from sponsoring individual programs or panels, said interim co-Executive Director Chris Vachon. 

“That would be a concern for journalists with any special interest group,” Vachon said. “Journalists are looking for unbiased information.” 

But that rule only applies when the request to sponsor a session comes from the corporation, she said. 

At the SPJ convention this month, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly is sponsoring a session on mental health reporting, a networking reception with company leaders and a tour of its facilities. But Vachon said SPJ brought the idea to Lilly, not the other way around. 

“We went to them. It wasn’t a condition of their sponsorship,” she said. “It’s an important distinction.” 

The difference for NABJ leaders isn’t who makes the request, but who delivers the information. Ciara, the outgoing NABJ president, said while the organization does allow corporations to sponsor panels, they can’t decide who the panelists will be. 

“We’re not going to load up the panel with a whole bunch of people representing their company,” Ciara siad. “That would be disingenuous to our membership and it really wouldn’t teach them anything.” 

Just how much say sponsors have in the programming at journalism convention varies.

Eli Lilly, which is a major funder for several journalism conventions, sponsored a panel on health initiatives for this month’s NABJ convention. Carla Cox, manager of corporate communications for Lilly, said the corporation pitched several topic ideas to NABJ but the organization had final say. 

One thing the drug company did want say on was the menu for the early-morning session, titled “Making a Difference for Better Health”. But instead of the fruit-and-grains breakfast Lilly called for, platters of bacon and potatoes were laid out for the audience. 

Panel moderator CBS News Correspondent Michelle Miller said the sponsors were “mortified” by the food and Cox said she should have made a stronger point with the journalism organization about the menu. 

By sponsoring journalism conventions, Lilly hopes to become a regular resource for reporters, Cox said. The drug company offered a folder full of DVDs, news releases and information to journalists who attended the session. 

Debate about who should provide the financial backing for journalism conventions has been going on for years, leaders said. For some, the move toward a less media-heavy list of sponsors is a good thing. Having a diverse group of corporate supporters makes the journalists organizations less beholden to big businesses, not more, they argue. 

“From an ethical standpoint, it’s actually more important to have a wide range of supporters,” said Bryan Monroe, who served as NABJ president from 2005 to 2007. “If all you had supporting NABJ were the big media companies, it would make it more difficult to criticize them when they’re doing wrong.” 

Black Entertainment Television hasn’t been a listed sponsor of the NABJ convention since 2006. In 2007, the organization gave BET its Thumbs Down Award, citing stereotypical and derogatory images of black people in its programming. 

That loss didn’t hurt the convention, Monroe said, because there were other companies unaffiliated with BET that made up for the financial support. 

Former NABJ President Les Payne agreed that cutting back on big media sponsors is a good thing for the group. 

NABJ “came into existence to challenge the major media outlets. My conflict of interest is taking money from the New York Times and from Rupert Murdoch,” Payne said. 

“We have to be smart about it … and not be panicked by some sense of moral outrage and ethics,” he said of taking sponsorships from non-media companies. “The discussion is a healthy one to have.”

Eric Deggans, TV/media critic, St. Petersburg Times

Audio: How I Stopped Using the F-Word

Read the print story here.

Nadine Smith listens to an audience member at NABJ Tampa, August 2009

“The failure to do outreach to black and Hispanic communities was disastrous,” said Smith, executive director of grassroots LGBT advocacy group, Equality Florida. She maintains that black voters, had they been communicated with, could have helped to defeat her state’s version of California’s Proposition 8.

Smith accuses the Florida Red and Blue campaign, Equality Florida’s better-funded coalition partner in 2008’s uphill battle to mobilize Floridians against Amendment 2, of acting on the stereotype that African-Americans are homophobic.

“Utter nonsense,” said Derek Newton of Smith’s post-election analysis.  Newton, who ran Florida Red and Blue, admits, however, that his campaign purposely did not pursue African-American voters.

Roughly $400,000 spent on polling, research and focus groups all concluded, Newton said, that not only did upwards of 70 percent of African-Americans support the amendment but that their positions were “unmovable.”

“I’m hard-pressed to think of what we could’ve done that would’ve been worse [than canvassing black neighborhoods],” he said.  Newton paused before answering his own question.

“I suppose we could’ve run out and asked people to vote yes.”

Newton’s unresolved election year quarrel with Smith over outreach to black voters may be a local affair but it is a peek over the ledge of a much wider, national rift between some African-Americans and the LGBT community.  It led Smith to participate in a recent panel titled, “Are Blacks Really THAT Homophobic?”  The discussion, part of the annual National Association of Black Journalists convention held August 5-9 in Tampa, was an attempt to unpack the pervasive stereotype that African-Americans are irreparably homophobic.

In the weeks leading up to the 2008 election, New York Times headlines like ‘Same-Sex Marriage Ban is Tied to Obama Factor’ predicted a surge in black voters would end gay marriage in California.  When Prop 8 did indeed pass, African-Americans, as a group, received the brunt of the blame.

In fact exit polls showed that even though 70 percent of African-American voters favored Prop 8, no single demographic—much less a small minority of voters within the state—swung the vote.

Still, the sense of betrayal and anger directed towards African-Americans stuck.

“It gave me a glimpse of some of the willingness to accept some pretty ugly stereotypes about the black community,” Smith said by phone.

About 15 minutes into the hour and a half long discussion, Rashad Robinson media director of the prominent national advocacy group, Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation dismissed the premise that any racial group could be generalized as homophobic.  He also took journalists to task for advancing that message.

“Often times what I see in stories [about gay marriage],” he said, “is the ‘why’ is because they’re black and [therefore] homophobic.”

Robinson confirmed that GLAAD’s own internal polling showed African-Americans are least supportive of gay marriage but Smith countered reliance on polls with what she has seen and heard as a community organizer.

“While we had the grassroots infrastructure and people willing to be out in the hot sun talking to voters, the big money went to [Florida Red and Blue, which] would not talk to black voters,” said Smith, who believes in finding the right way to communicate with African-Americans.

After all, her and her new wife’s legal rights are at stake. Smith and Hildebran married this past weekend–in Vermont.

For more on African-Americans and homophobia, listen to how St. Petersburg Times TV/media critic Eric Deggans stopped using the F-word.

Archie Boston, 66, professor emeritus at California State University Long Beach, reads aloud from his newest book, Lil’ Colored Rascals in the Sunshine City.

Archie Boston reads from his book, Lil' Colored Rascals in the Sunshine City

Boston’s book is about a mischievous group of friends nicknamed Flea Parrot, Stitches, and Billy-Billy-Goat-Goat. He recounts the tales of all children, including playing hooky from church and sneaking into movie theaters. But, set in the time period of 1948-1958, the book also chronicles his growing up in a segregated city before the Civil Rights era.

Lil' Colored Rascals in the Sunshine City is Archie Boston's second book, detailing his growing up in a segregated Florida

Boston’s story includes adventures like swimming in the polluted Booker Creek. “It carried the polluted run-off from the large, natural gas tanks, the lumberyard, the crematorium, trash incinerator and the cement mixing company.” Boston explains that the gas plant was located in the middle of “The Neck” in the opening pages of his book. If swimming in the polluted creek wasn’t bad enough, the other option was the beach reserved for African-Americans. “South Mole beach was as polluted as the creek. Raw city sewage flowed into the bay less than a mile from where we were allowed to swim.” A recent resolution passed by the Florida State Senate seeks to apologize for this and all the other inequalities that Boston and his community faced.

The passage of Senate Resolution No. 26 on June 18 brought state Sen.  Anthony Hill of Tallahassee to tears. The resolution apologizes for the enslavement and racial segregation of African-Americans. Florida joins Virginia, New Jersey, Alabama, Maryland, and North Carolina as states that have officially expressed remorse for slavery. However, Archie Boston thinks an apology is not enough.

“Reparations—40 acres and a mule…we were slaves, we helped build the country, so why not? Help the people that helped build the country.” Boston believes that reparations would help ease the pain of the Jim Crow era. Even in the time of America’s first African-American president, Archie Boston doesn’t think President Obama will attempt to address the issue of reparations. “ I don’t think he would touch it with a 10 foot pole.” But, Boston believes that the reparations movement will gain momentum. “…Keep putting pressure on the legislature and things will happen.”

The adoption of a new state anthem and the deletion of offensive words from Florida’s state song, Old Folks at Home, is also a sign of progress. The state song originally contained lyrics such as “darkies,” referring to African-Americans who longed for the days of plantations. Just last year, the Florida legislature adopted Florida (Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky) as the state anthem in addition to excluding words like “darkies” from the state song.

Archie Boston learned to play the harmonica to the tune of Old Folks at Home or Swanee River as some may know it. Boston believes in the old adage of “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me,” and that the adoption of a state anthem will not do anything but appease certain groups.

Archie Boston reads from his book, Lil' Colored Rascals in the Sunshine City

The Florida legislature had also proposed a bill that would have banned the public display of a noose or swastika that has the intention to intimidate another person. However, the bill, supported by the ACLU, died in committee in May 2008.

Boston was constantly reminded to stay in his place as an African-American while growing up. In his book, he recounts a tale of being scolded for attempting to drink from a “Whites Only” water fountain in the segregated south. Boston also battled an inner conflict of whether he should include a picture of a lynching that occurred in his neighborhood. “I was torn between, do I show this lynching or not show the lynching. But this happened in that area, where I grew up, in 1912…And I could’ve left it out but my conscience said show it, because it’s real, it happened, and I was reminded of that lynching as I grew up. So, I thought it was important that we had to deal with that.”

Fly in the Buttermilk is Archie Boston's first book which details his career as a graphic designer and educator

Lil’ Colored Rascals in the Sunshine City is Boston’s second book. His first book, Fly in the buttermilk, recounts his career as a graphic designer and educator. Boston believes that much progress has occurred in the past 60 years in St. Petersburg. He points to the renovated Manhattan Casino, now Arts Center, where entertainers like Little Richard, Cab Calloway, and Louis Armstrong performed; the new James Weldon Johnson Library where Boston says he was first “enlightened”; and the once “Coloreds Only” Mercy Hospital, which is now Mercy Health Center, as signs of progress. Boston believes that there is still a lot to be done when it comes to reversing the wrongs of racism and segregation but he is optimistic about the future and the Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg area.

Every year, thousands of black journalists descend on a major city in the U.S. to build skills, network and have fun.  This year’s NABJ (National Association of Black Journalists) Convention was held in Tampa Florida and emphasized personal and professional reinvention in a rapidly changing industry.  Just over 1900 people were in attendance at this years convention compared to 1700 in 2007*.  Although numbers were up, attendance at the Career Fair were obviously slim.
Robert Naylor, the Director of Career Development for News at the Associated Press, took notice of the slim showing at the Career Fair.

“We usually come away with an excess of 120 or so,” Naylor said referring to the number of resumes that the Associated Press normally collects.    “I think we’re probably on track this year to collect maybe 60 percent of that.”

During the Career Fair, many of the recruiters and attendees gave the same two reasons for the presumed lack of attendance: the tough economy and the massive amounts of layoffs.  According to a survey from the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), 5,900 newsroom jobs were cut last year.  According to ASNE’s 2009 census, over 850 were minorities, 400 of which were black journalists, the largest decline in minority employment since the survey began in 1998.

During the Career Fair, which is one of the most sought after events during NABJ, I spoke to attendees about their thoughts on the minimal showing and how it may be an example of a larger issue facing the journalism industry.  Watch and listen to what they had to say.

*2008 figure unavailable because UNITY replaced the NABJ Convention that year.

For many years, the subject was omitted from the island’s history books. But there’s now a museum in Old San Juan that celebrates Africa’s cultural influence on the island. Paintings, artifacts, documents and photos help tell the story at El Museo de Nuestra Raiz Africana (the Museum of Our African Roots), located in Plaza San Jose on Calle San Sebatian.

The exhibit includes a display drums that deliver the African-derived beats of Bomba and Plena, along with local Afro-Puerto Rican art, such as the masks used in the music festivals of the historically black town of Loiza. These objects are examples of how the roots of  modern festivals, customs and even cuisine can be traced back to Africa. Orlando Abreo, guide of the museum, explains how Puerto Ricans are becoming more conscious and accepting of their African heritage.