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watch for various comments, audio feeds, photos, Town Hall archives and more here on Ken’s Chicago. Coming soon.

Musings from an erstwhile Town Hall moderator

from Ken Davis

It’s been two weeks since the Town Hall as I write this. Lots of people have expressed lots of opinions about the future of journalism in Chicago.  I thought I’d offer a few observations of my own, in the hope that it might help keep the discussion going.  A word of warning, though. It’s almost as long as a Reader cover story circa 1981. 

Here goes…

Town Hall links, photos, audio, video

Here’s where you can find interesting links to conversations sparked by the Town Hall

Here’s where to find Town Hall video, audio, and pictures

Jon Stewart saves newspaper industry (in 6 minutes)

You’ve read Walter Isaacson’s Time Magazine cover story. Here’s the interview with the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart. 

The Wire’s David Simon: “new media” not so great

Remember The Wire?   Executive Producer and creator David Simon has written a provocative Washington Post  piece about the breakdown of beat-level journalism Baltimore. And he’s not buying the notion that citizen journalism will fill the void:

“There is a lot of talk nowadays about what will replace the dinosaur that is the daily newspaper. So-called citizen journalists and bloggers and media pundits have lined up to tell us that newspapers are dying but that the news business will endure, that this moment is less tragic than it is transformational. Well, sorry, but I didn’t trip over any blogger trying to find out McKissick’s identity and performance history. Nor were any citizen journalists at the City Council hearing in January when police officials inflated the nature and severity of the threats against officers. And there wasn’t anyone working sources in the police department to counterbalance all of the spin or omission. I didn’t trip over a herd of hungry Sun reporters either, but that’s the point. In an American city, a police officer with the authority to take human life can now do so in the shadows, while his higher-ups can claim that this is necessary not to avoid public accountability, but to mitigate against a nonexistent wave of threats. And the last remaining daily newspaper in town no longer has the manpower, the expertise or the institutional memory to challenge any of it.”

Read Simon’s piece here.

NYT: Mother Jones Magazine going not-for-profit

Mother Jones Magazine is going not-for-profit, according to this story in the New York Times.

Town Hall photos available here

Here’s a batch of photos from the Town Hall, courtesy of  Jason Reblando. If you’d like to link your own photos, connect to us in comments.

See the pictures

See Karen Kring’s photos on Facebook

A Vermonter explains the importance of local news

The thing that will save America’s broadcasters and newspapers is getting back to their local roots, blogger Bill Schubart says. Thanks, Barb Popovic, for this link.

What? Give your stuff away for free?

Whet Moser posts a fascinating “retro manifesto” in his  Reader blog about the earliest days of the Reader. Free papers, free classified, advertising supported. What were they thinking?

Sally Duros: Newsrooms must die, Long live Newsrooms!

Some very creative ideas are emerging for funding newsrooms. They may be similar to today’s existing on-line shops, they may be more traditional-looking, but free-standing newsrooms apart from newspapers, or they may be hybrids nobody’s thought through yet. But the limited profit corporation Sally Duros discusses in her Chicago Huffington Post piece is worth investigation.

Read it here, and tell us what you think.