Real News, Fake News, No News: Reviving Local Journalism in Somerville
Saturday, November 2, 12-2pm
ONCE Somerville
156 Highland Ave, Somerville, MA 02143
SAVE THE DATE for the follow-up event to February’s successful Somerville Community Summit! In that first meeting, over 130 Somerville residents representing over 20 civic organizations talked to 15 journalists about events and happenings that they felt weren’t getting enough coverage in area news outlets.
In July, the summit organizer Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism launched a new grassroots network, the Somerville News Garden with 25 volunteers from all walks of life. Its mandate? To help stop Somerville from becoming a news desert—a municipality without professionally-produced journalism. Three months of regular meetings later, we’re ready to get more people involved.
In this second citywide event, Real News, Fake News, No News: Reviving Local Journalism in Somerville, news garden volunteers Lynne Doncaster and Prof. Gino Canella of Emerson College will give presentations on the challenges facing journalism from a local and national perspective. Then attendees will break into small groups to discuss “Headlines We’ve Never Seen” and think about ways to make sure that important news gets covered in Somerville going forward. At the conclusion of the discussion, attendees will be invited to be the first to take a survey on how residents get news about our city… and, of course, to join this new initiative and work with us to make sure that everyone in Somerville has the news they need to be informed participants in local affairs!