The Alexandria Times describes itself as a “hyper-local” newspaper. And yet Denise Dunbar, executive editor and publisher of the paper has been able to find ways to bring global events to the doorsteps of the papers’ readers.
Join the International Community and the Washington DC Pro chapter in a discussion with Dunbar and learn how and why local news organizations can make the connection between local and global events. And stay within budget!
January 23, 2024
6:00 PM
Register for the webinar HERE.
The D.C. Open Government Coalition, the Society of Professional Journalists-D.C. Professional Chapter, and the D.C. Office of Open Government, invite you to
OPEN GOVERNMENT 2024 SUMMIT
WHEN: 5:30 – 8:00 p.m., Wednesday, March 13, 2024 American Bar Association Conference Center
WHERE: 1050 Connecticut Ave. NW, 10th Floor, Washington, DC (Metrorail: Farragut North Station)
This year’s event focuses on the intersection of public safety and transparency, accountability, and trust. Speakers include:
- Niquelle Allen, , Director of the D.C. Office of Open Government
- Marcus Ellis, Executive Director, Peace For C.
- Chris Magnus, Deputy Auditor for Public Safety
- Alex Koma, Washington City Paper
Join us for light fare beginning at 5:30 p.m.
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required at this link: https://dcopengovsummit24.eventbrite.com.
Deadline for registering is 11:59 p.m. Monday March 11.
To learn more, email info@dcogc.org, or visit www.dcogc.org.
The annual Summit takes place during national Sunshine Week—March 10-16, which celebrates the birthday of James Madison, considered the founding father of government transparency and an architect of the U.S. Constitution.
Welcome to the Knight Center’s new MOOC, “A Better Way to Cover Elections: Campaign Reporting that Centers Communities and Solutions,“ organized by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas in partnership with The Solutions Journalism Network. During this four-week massive open online course, which will be held from March 25th- April 21st, 2024, students will learn how to reinvent elections and campaign coverage to better serve communities and strengthen democracy.
Register HERE
Objectives
Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:
– Craft a strong mission statement that clearly articulates how you and/or your newsroom approaches coverage of elections and democracy.
– Engage deeply with your audiences to learn what they want politicians to be talking about, in a way that’s reciprocal, not extractive.
– Identify and report strong solutions stories that help communities solve problems and also hold politicians accountable for addressing them.
– Produce campaign stories in ways that build trust and reduce polarization rather than increase distrust and divides.
GOALS:
Over the next four weeks, you will learn an effective and innovative alternative to the traditional horse-race approach to elections reporting, which will help you better serve your communities and strengthen democracy. This course will provide materials and examples predominantly based on the context of US elections, with a commitment to ensuring their global relevance.
WHO CAN ENROLL:
Reporters, editors, students, and aspiring journalists around the world. It’s for anyone who is dissatisfied with traditional coverage of politics, elections and democracy and wants tools and strategies to increase trust and engagement, reduce polarization, and employ solutions journalism to help communities address problems and hold politicians to account.
Covering the 2024 election when the future of democracy is on the ballot:
A conversation with Margaret Sullivan and Barton Gellman
SPJ Webinar 2 p.m. EDT, Monday, April 8
Register for the free webinar HERE
This November, the U.S. will hold one of the most consequential elections in its history. One candidate challenged the results of the 2020 election, helped gin up support for the January 6 insurrection, and has no qualms about what he’d do if re-elected in 2024. He’s suggested using the Justice Department to go after his political enemies, weakening protections for a nonpartisan civil service, and using an 1807 law to send in U.S. troops to police unrest in cities. This year, writes journalism professor Jay Rosen, the election must be about “not the odds, but the stakes.”
This election and its potential consequences cannot be left to big media outlets. Despite extensive coverage of what’s at stake by the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR and network news outlets, surveys in some key swing states reveal that two-thirds of voters are not aware of these threats. That’s not surprising, since polls show that Americans tend to trust local media more.
That means it will be up to hundreds of reporters, freelancers, and college journalists across the country to cover the 2024 presidential contest, as well as down-ballot races, in a way that informs the public and keeps faith with the SPJ code of ethics, which advises: “Search for and report the truth,” and “Minimize harm.”
Our two panelists embody the best in our profession. 
Media critic and author Margaret Sullivan, formerly executive editor of The Buffalo News, was public editor at The New York Times and a columnist for The Washington Post. She now writes a weekly column for the Guardian US, and is executive director of Columbia Journalism School’s Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security.
Barton Gellman, a three-time Pulitzer-prize-winner, and author, reported for The Washington Post for more than two decades, was a staff writer for The Atlantic, and is now senior advisor to the Brennan Center for Justice.
They will discuss how journalists can address these unprecedented challenges to their craft in a conversation you won’t want to miss.
Moderated by DC SPJ Chapter Board Member and Author, Celia Wexler.
Mexico’s Elections and What It Means to Press Freedom and Journalists’ Safety
Mexico goes to the polls in June. What will the election of a new president and legislative assembly mean for the safety of journalists in Mexico and for press freedom?
Join former Associate Press Bureau Chief Katherine Corcoran and founder and editor-in-chief of Tijuana Press Vicente Calderón and they ponder this question and look at what the upcoming election means.
Register HERE.
Drop a note to Stephenie Overman at soverman@spj.org
The SPJ Freelance Community is hosting a free webinar Thursday, July 11 at 7 p.m. ET on how journalists can and should use Artificial Intelligence. Our guest speaker on the topic is the formidable Sree Sreenivasan. We’re quite proud of organizing this and we’d love to see you there.
Sreenivasan has been teaching generative AI workshops worldwide for the past year. He was a full-time journalism professor at Columbia University for 20+ years and served as the chief digital officer at Columbia. He is the 2024 president of the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), which he co-founded in 1994.
If you’d like to attend (it’s for all SPJ members, not just freelancers), the Zoom details are below.
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89294784013?pwd=bTltbTJGQUhtRzhXQ1hPLzZMK1M2dz09
Passcode: 063800
Or One tap mobile :
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Or Telephone:
Dial(for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location):
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Webinar ID: 892 9478 4013
Passcode: 063800
International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdjdLpH023
With a dwindling number of days until the general election, it can be easy to get caught up in the day-by-day minutiae of campaign theatrics, mudslinging and insider politicking — even if that doesn’t help voters understand what candidates stand for, let alone how they plan to accomplish it.
Research shows that episodic, horse-race coverage is driving Americans to disengage with news, and creating gaps in civic understanding at all levels. How to fix it? Shift from the odds to the stakes. Led by Beatrice Forman and Jaisal Noor — two organizers with U.S. Democracy Day — this training will help journalists have working understanding of pro-democracy journalism and its impact, develop reporting plans for thematic election stories, and pull from a set of quick tips to immediately elevate their coverage beyond the horse race.
Beatrice Forman is the project coordinator for U.S Democracy Day, where she oversees programming and operations for a collaborative of 160+ newsrooms across the U.S. committed to producing high impact journalism that spurs civic engagement. She is also a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, covering breaking news and Philly’s unique internet culture. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Beatrice has reported on the creator economy for Vox and built engagement strategies for nonprofit newsrooms in Philadelphia.
Jaisal Noor is the Democracy Cohort Manager for the Solutions Journalism Network. He leads the Advancing Democracy Fellowship, helping newsrooms reinvent the way they cover politics, including deepening their election coverage beyond the horse race. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park. Over the past decade, Jaisal has reported for Democracy Now!, The Atlantic, Bolts Magazine, The Real News Network and Baltimore Beat.
The session will be hosted by chapter president Celia Wexler.
REGISTER HERE.
John Maxwell Hamilton, journalist, author and journalism professor, has agreed to talk about the history of American foreign reporting, local/global story possibilities and his assessment of the current way US media outlets cover international events. We will also get to his book about the cocktail, The French 75.
Register for this event sponsored by the SPJ International Community HERE.
John Maxwell Hamilton, a longtime journalist, author and public servant, is the Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor of Journalism at the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication and a global scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C.
As a journalist, Hamilton reported for the Milwaukee Journal, The Christian Science Monitor and ABC radio. He was a longtime commentator for MarketPlace, broadcast nationally by Public Radio International. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs and The Nation, among other publications.
In the course of his career, Hamilton has had assignments in more than 50 countries. In addition to covering foreign news, Hamilton has written extensively on foreign correspondence and sought to improve it. In the mid-1980s, he created and directed a Society of Professional Journalists project to develop techniques for local reporting of foreign news, especially on relations with developing countries. He later contributed to a similar project for the American Society of Newspaper Editors. In the 1980s, National Journal said Hamilton has shaped public opinion about the complexity of U. S.-Third World relations “more than any other single journalist.”
Hamilton is author or co-author of seven books and editor of many more. “Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting.” won the Goldsmith Prize from the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy and the Book of the Year Award from the American Journalism Historians Association/
SPJ INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY GLOBAL FACT-CHECKING WEBINAR: While all good journalists know to fact-check their stories, independent fact-checking organizations have sprung up around the world to address the increased misinformation being promoted in social media and by many political figures. Join the IC for its “Fact-Checking — A Global Update” webinar at 7 p.m. EST Tuesday. Speakers will include Angie Holan, director of the International Fact Checking Network, and Dulamkhorloo Baatar, founder of NEST Mongolia, the Mongolian affiliate with the IFCN. Retired journalist and educator Jeff South will moderate the session. Registration is required.