What's Michele McLellan Thinking About?

Headlines and Big Moments of the Past Year

• This year I became involved in a new project, the Knight Foundation's Community Information Challenge. I am a coach to community news organizations that are starting up in partnership with local community foundations. I'm excited about the possibilities for these organizations to help serve community information needs and to engage citizens with community information and issues in new ways on the Web. Sad as I am about the decline of newspapers, I feel optimism about a new ecosystem for news that includes some traditional models and new models we have yet to imagine.

• I have been awarded a Reynolds Journalism Fellowship at the University of Missouri for eight months starting in the fall. My research topic is citizen-journalist partnerships, best practices for community news. I am trying to figure out exactly what that project will look like.

The Question I'm Grappling With

On a more personal level, I am struggling with the anger of many of my colleagues and friends in journalism. They are in the early stages of grief, which I went through a few years ago. Now I struggle to help them. My optimism about the future of news seems to make them more angry.

Contact Michele by email or phone (937) 238-5930 (w). 

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