MURL Building Blocks
Linn Washington, Co-director, MURL Program,
Temple University Journalism Department
• Philadelphia
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MURL Building Blocks
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CONTACT INFO
Linn Washington
MURL Building Blocks
Annenberg Hall Room 333
2020 N. 13th St.
Philadelphia, PA 19122
(215) 204-2033
To partner Temple journalism students with public broadcaster, WHYY-TV, to push hyperlocal newcasts to the city’s largely Hispanic 5th Street Corridor between Lehigh and Hunting Park Avenues via WHYY’s experimental datacasting technology. The datacasts will use a discrete portion of WHYY’s digital broadcast signal to transmit information to desktop computers using small rooftop antennas. Neighborhood residents will also receive disposable digital still and video cameras and low-end audio recorders to produce multimedia content and service news. All the content will also appear on the websites of Temple’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab (MURL) and WHYY.
Check back for future news and updates.
• July 2009
• End of Year Two: October 2008
• End of Year One: November 2007
• Spring 2007
• November 2006
• August 2006
July 2009
Linn Washington Jr., co-director of the Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab (MURL) of Temple University’s Department of Journalism reports that its 2006 New Voices grant helped MURL substantially grow its on-campus and off-campus missions. MURL is now regularly involved in using its resources of students, technical expertise and multimedia equipment to assist community based media in Philadelphia, including the training of citizen journalists.
This expansion of its mission constitutes a significant development for MURL. “While MURL was conceived and executed to provide hyperlocal news coverage in underserved communities of inner-city Philadelphia, focusing on community news media and training citizen journalists was not a part of its mission prior to participation in the New Voices program,” says Washington.
Since 2006, MURL has expanded its dual missions of being a portfolio-caliber production class with an emphasis on multimedia skills and a fully functioning news service. MURL has its own, recently redesigned website for its community news coverage: PhiladelphiaNeighborhoods.com. Content generated by MURL student journalists and posted to PhiladelphiaNeighborhoods.com is also used by a number of collaborating Philadelphia broadcast and print (community/ethnic/mainstream) news media.
MURL maintains regular coverage in Philadelphia’s largely Hispanic 5th Street Corridor between Lehigh and Hunting Park Avenues - an area specifically targeted in its grant application. Additionally, MURL reports on over a dozen other communities comprised of African-American, Hispanic, recent immigrant and white ethnic populations, according to Washington.
Working in the 5th Street Corridor area gave MURL students the opportunity to learn about more than creating content. A core purpose of MURL is preparing journalists who are sensitive to the needs of urban communities. This element of the MURL mission is consistent with the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists which states in part that journalists should examine their own cultural values and avoid imposing those values on others.
“Exposure to these underserved communities allows MURL students to better see the humanity of people living in those neighborhoods,” says Washington. “MURL students sharing their skills with, and helping to train, community news media and citizen journalists contributes to their sensitization and sense of community service.” Additionally, having this kind of multi-leveled contact in communities helps students gain sources, thus improving the depth of their reporting.
While Washington says that MURL succeeded in most areas, the program fell short in a few others.
“MURL students sharing their skills with, and helping to train, community news media and citizen journalists contributes to their sensitization and sense of community service.”
One shortfall was the inability to implement the datacasting component presented in its original proposal. The original recipient of this grant, then MURL Director Tom Petner, wanted to use the experimental datacasting technology of Philadelphia’s PBS outlet, WHYY, to bring neighborhood-based news coverage and information to the targeted area via desktop computers housed in selected community centers. After two years of vigorous efforts by Petner and WHYY, technical glitches and personnel changes at WHYY continued to undermine this initiative.
But MURL continues to examine other new technologies that can be used to get news and information to underserved communities. One promising area is cell phones, which are widely available - particularly among younger people just entering the pool of news consumers. Washington says that in the future MURL may write a funding proposal to pursue this idea.
But, in a back-to-the-future initiative for improving the delivery of information at community levels, MURL is partnering with community based news outlets. These partnerships involve building and maintaining websites for these outlets as well as having MURL students provide content. For example, the nearly century-old Olney Times newspaper went out of business late last year, replaced by a print product titled Your Community Voice. MURL partnered with YCV a few months ago, initially providing journalists to produce content. MURL is now building, and will maintain, a website for YCV. In the past two months, other community based news entities have approached MURL for help in similar ways.
Washington says MURL has also learned a few things about working with citizen journalists. For instance, initial enthusiasm shown by many trainees is not sustained over long periods of time. This dynamic loomed large in MURL’s efforts to work with the ex-offender community this year. It led staff to think that training would work better with individuals who have some commitment to providing content to an already existing media outlet. MURL is now in the process of establishing a training component for YCV and will do the same with other community entities it partners with.
As per the intent of the New Voices grant, MURL is seeking funding for its initiatives from other sources. Recently, for example, MURL successfully obtained a seed grant from Temple University for its YCV initiative. The expectations of this small grant and the intent of MURL is to apply for a larger grant to cover training citizen journalists, building websites and producing community based news content
—Tom Regan
End of Year Two: October 2008
The New Voices project at Temple University’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab (MURL) has new leadership and a new focus. Community journalism veteran and professor Linn Washington is now at the helm and his vision for the project is to reach out to Philadelphia’s growing ex-offender community and give them the tools to commit random acts of journalism.
“Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter has said that something needs to be done to address recidivism,” says Washington, and the journalism department is very excited about this idea.” Washington is reaching out to the Pennsylvania Prison Society to help identify ex-offenders to participate. He hopes to involve students enrolled in his multimedia reporting classes in the project which will train former prisoners to produce stories about their lives and their communities. The project will wrap up in May, 2009.
End of Year One: November 2007
Over the past year, MURL students have produced more than a hundred pieces of journalism - from brief vignettes to extensive multimedia packages - covering nearly two dozen neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
”Our students have amassed an impressive list of stories, ” says Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab (MURL) director Tom Petner of the Temple University Journalism Department. “We’ve been telling stories that would otherwise go untouched and untold. Upbeat. Positive ... stories of people who are trying to make their neighborhoods more livable.”
MURL students have immersed themselves in the largely Latino and African American neighborhoods in North Philadelphia where they’ve met and reported on community leaders, residents and institutions making a difference.
Petner says the project is helping journalism students deepen their understanding of diverse communities. “Our coverage benefits not only the residents, but has an impact on the student themselves.” That cross-cultural experience is being documented by a Ph.D. candidate Dianne Garyantes whose research focuses on cultural competency and journalism education.
Petner says he had two students come into the MURL who were less than thrilled about working in the lower-income neighborhoods. But by the end of the semester, one student’s attitude had changed, as he explained in a letter to his teacher, “Hello Prof Petner, I just wanted to say it was a good semester ... I definitely got stories and relationships out of these assignments I was never expecting.”
As of November 2007, engineers from public broadcasting partner WHYY-TV were finally successful in creating a datacast-enabled connection between MURL and the TV station, a technological feat. With antennae and computers installed at two Congreso de Latinos Unidos community centers, the project will be able to feed its hyperlocal content directly to the neighborhoods.
“With datacasting, you have the ability to deliver broadcast quality video directly to a location without worrying about the bandwidth,” explains Petner. “It is always ‘on’ and with the use of the Internet, you can complete the information circle. If you are within the station’s broadcast signal, you can receive the datacasting. This is a cheap and simple way to reach some urban communities with broadcast quality video and directly into their computers.”
Over the summer, the project distributed low-end digital video, audio and camera equipment to Congreso teenagers and gave them training in media skills so they can document the life of their community for distribution on the MURL Website.
“I gave these students small $99 cameras that can hold about 60 minutes of audio and video,” says Petner. “Once you’re done shooting the video, it can be uploaded right into the editing software, something called ‘Final Cut.’ These cameras have a built-in, flip-up USB port that allows the camera to jack directly into any computer. Very cool.”
The first of the neighborhood stories produced by community teenagers have been posted to the MURL website.
There’s even some discussion of launching a neighborhood newspaper including many of the stories covered in the MURL project. And local public radio station WHYY has expressed interest in using some of the audio on its own air.
Spring 2007
Throughout the spring, preparations were underway to set up innovative datacasting sites that will allow community members to both receive and upload their news about communities in Philadelphia’s so-called “golden block.”
Tom Petner, director of Temple University’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab (MURL), has worked with technicians from WHYY public television to get datacast receive sites installed at two Congreso Neighborhood Centers.
Datacasting is a new technology in which information is sent digitally over a broadcast signal to a receiver, in this case a computer, where community members will be able to view the content and participate in the project. MURL installed FAB software so the lab’s computers can communicate with the computers at WHYY.
“Once the datacast system launches, the computers will move the neighborhood content and stories from the MURL computers to those at WHYY,” reported Petner. “In turn, the content will move via a WHYY transmission hub to a point where it’s broadcast to the Congreso Centers.”
In preparation for the system launch, WHYY-TV designers remodeled the opening template and graphic that residents will see at the community centers. The interface will allow people in the community to access:
For now, content is being generated by Temple journalism students. “Every semester seniors have to go out into the neighborhoods and have to own that neighborhood,” Petner told fellow New Voices grantees in March. “Every block in Philadelphia has its own story to tell.”
Some stories, such as “What if more Latinos in Hunting Park Spoke English?” have been produced in both English and Spanish. Petner said this is one of the first steps towards creating a bilingual environment for content that will be sent to communities housing large numbers of Latino residents. However, several community leaders have expressed residents’ eagerness to view material in English so they can strengthen their English-speaking skills.
To encourage contributions from the community, the project has purchased two dozen, low-end $120 video cameras made by Pure Digital Technologies to give out to neighborhood residents. First users will be residents using the E3Power Center, Petner said.
Once content begins to come in from community residents, new buttons will be added to the interface to display their content.
In addition to producing neighborhood stories in places such as Hunting Park or Fairmount, the MURL journalism students are also contributing to a class blog.
November 2006
The Building Blocks project is on the Web. The bulk of the stories and multimedia projects by Temple’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab class hit the site in late November and early December. Installation also has begun of two datacast receivers in Philadelphia’s golden block neighborhoods.
Thomas Petner, director of MURL, writes in his progress report that the initial templates for the site were kept simple to make the launch easier; plus, the graphic design staff is limited. He says those templates may be redesigned or enhanced in the future.
Last semester, students visited both WHYY-TV, the public broadcasting partner in this project, and one of the datacast receiver sites, the Congreso E3 Power Center, to learn more about what each organization does and how they will all work together on Building Blocks. Teen “clients” at the center talked with MURL students about media coverage and neighborhood issues that mattered to them. WHYY and Congreso previously had a relationship, and many teenagers at the E3 center were trained to use cameras and desktop editing equipment in the station’s Learning Lab, so they’re already primed to work on the Building Blocks project.
MURL student groups covered various stories in the golden block neighborhoods including: a Latino music store that serves as an informal community center; a casino gambling proposal and the impact it would have on the quality of life; and an E3 Power Center instructor who was a high school dropout.
With the spring semester, the project more than doubled its student manpower. The MURL class now has 35 students, up from 16. Petner reports that the class has a broader range of abilities as well. “The class will also be much more diverse in their production/storytelling skills with many more students coming from the photo and magazine sequences, offsetting the mix of broadcast and editorial sequence students,” he writes. “That means I expect an even greater array of neighborhood stories.”
In the fall, work on the project was “slow-churned,” he says. For some aspects, there has been a hurry-up-and-wait feeling. But Building Blocks has been moving forward. Staffers at the Congreso centers, the two datacast receiver sites, are eager to participate, which could help substantially in the recruitment of neighborhood citizen journalists, Petner writes. That’s the big challenge for the spring semester.
August 2006
After months of planning, the content stage of Temple University’s “Building Blocks” project is beginning to get off the ground and students were busy compiling stories on designated communities.
The first months of the project were rooted in the building phase, with logistics, accounting and equipment issues taking up the bulk of director Thomas Petner’s time. But with the start of the fall semester came a new crop of students who will be creating the content for the project in Temple’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab.
The MURL class is launching “Building Blocks,” a partnership with public broadcaster WHYY-TV to use datacasting to deliver and develop news for the underserved “golden block” area, a series of largely Latino neighborhoods that run along 5th Street in North Philadelphia. In addition to the student journalists’ newsgathering, the project will use reports from residents of the neighborhoods, who will be given disposable still and video cameras and audio recorders to document their lives.
As Petner, MURL’s director, wrote in his first progress report, “plowing through vacations, schedules and certain bureaucracy processes has proven to [be] a real challenge.” But his persistence has paid off. In the summer, Petner worked closely with WHYY’s Craig Santoro, director of the station’s Learning Lab, and Bill Weber, chief technology officer. At Weber’s suggestion, Petner developed a diagram on how content will be created and delivered. The flow chart is a circle, with materials coming from MURL students and neighborhood residents to the MURL site, to WHYY to datacast on its broadcast signal, to the community and then back to WHYY and MURL websites. Weber used this graphic to figure out how this content flow can be implemented technologically.
With the initial planning under way, Petner ordered equipment, including Panasonic mini-DV camcorders, Canon digital cameras and Olympus digital recorders. There’s enough money left to buy one or two of the computers for the receiver sites and disposable still and video cameras for community members to use.
The project also crossed another major technological hurdle, MURL and WHYY secured sites for the datacast receivers. “Datacasting” means sending information digitally over a broadcast signal to a receiver, often a computer, and “Building Blocks” will use two receiver sites at which the community could view the content - and participate in the project. Stories will also be posted on the MURL and WHYY websites.
Both receivers will be housed in community centers run by Congreso de Latinos Unidos. The organization’s, E3 Power Center, on the border of MURL’s target area, is a youth educational center, offering GED classes, college preparation help and computer training to 14- to 21-year-olds. The bonus with this site: It’s already wired, and it attracts a lot of foot traffic. The second Congreso de Latinos Unidos site serves an older population’s employment and career needs.
In August, a new group of students began the MURL class, their capstone experience as Temple journalism students. At their first class, Petner gave them an introduction to the project. In teams of two, they are covering the “golden block” area, with each team owning a specific neighborhood. Students got a “reality check” on the challenges they would face from news/editorial professor Linn Washington, a former Philadelphia Daily News reporter, who covered many of these neighborhoods.
In yet another interactive move, Petner set up a blog and required students to contribute blog entries about their experiences in the class and in their neighborhoods.
This semester, each student team will report and produce at least six stories, using various media - print, audio, video, still photography—and one, final project, which will contain print, multimedia online and video components. Petner and Washington also hope to publish a small tabloid newspaper for the “golden block” communities.
The next step for Petner is to find neighborhood residents who want to participate.
“All the processes, hoop-jumping and preliminary meetings are suddenly paying off with many of the grant elements coming together quickly, so there’s an enormous sense of satisfaction,” Petner writes. “And, I say that with a very big smile.”
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