RTDNA honors outstanding achievements in the coverage of diversity with the RTDNA/UNITY Award. The award is part of the covenant the association has adopted with UNITY: Journalists of Color, to achieve diversity in the newsroom through developing news content and editorial staffs that reflect the changing face of communities. The purpose of the award is to encourage and showcase journalistic excellence in covering issues of race and ethnicity. It is presented annually to news organizations that show an ongoing commitment to covering the diversity of the communities they serve.
Journalists’ ability to perform their role as government watchdog
suffered a blow this week that should not go unnoticed. On Monday, the
U.S. Supreme Court decided against taking a case involving a death row
inmate who claimed a federal policy enacted in 2000 that prohibits
face-to-face interviews violated his constitutional rights. RTDNA
joined numerous media outlets in a friend-of-the-court brief urging the court to hear the appeal
of a 7th Circuit decision upholding the ban. As a result of the
Supreme Court’s action, the Special Confinement Unit Media Policy,
which prevented Hammer from having any uncensored contact with the news
media, stands...
For Sunshine week, RTDNF has produced public service announcements for your station to air the week of March 14-20, 2010, and throughout the year. The PSAs are :15 or :30 in English and Spanish.
Audio versions are available in English and Spanish at :30 and can
be downloaded here. Scripts for the PSA's are available here as well.
RTDNF’s Sunshine Week PSAs were produced in 2009 with the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Here's is a look at the 30-second English version PSA:
WASHINGTON – The Board of Directors of the Ethics and
Excellence in Journalism Foundation has awarded a $105,000 grant to the
Radio Television Digital News Foundation to support ethics training for
professional journalists and the 2010 Oklahoma Multimedia Workshop for
Oklahoma high school teachers.
For professionals, RTDNF will conduct Ethical Decision-Making
Workshops for news managers and journalists. These workshops will
reinforce core journalistic principles, decision-making skills and
ethical values among news professionals.
“Journalists are eager for this kind of training,” said RTDNF
Executive Director Kathleen Graham. “EEJF’s generous support allows
electronic news managers and journalists to step back from daily
newsroom pressures and to think more broadly about the news they
deliver, as well as the people they cover.”
Spring break! No class for a week, and time to reflect on both the
semester and the new direction in my life. As I hit the halfway mark in
the class I’m currently teaching, I think the students finally
understand the topic. Really! Before class last week, three students
told me the light is shining through and how great it is to have a
teacher who is able to communicate. Turns out that is a common student
complaint—teachers who may know the material but who can’t transmit the
knowledge in a clear and comprehensible manner. But the compliment
still made me happy, in fact as happy as I was the last time my
newscast topped the February book!...
I’ll close out the coverage of last week’s First Amendment Awards
dinner with a few thoughts I collected from my vantage point looking
out over the event. I was on the rear left of the platform party, as
viewed from the audience. Check out the videos from the event and
you’ll see me there behind Leon Harris in the front row. My role on
the dais was, as I joked to Bill Roswell, just to be a pretty face.
The RTDNA chairman has no official role at the First Amendment dinner.
For me, that will come next year when I take over the position of RTDNF
chairman. I was the only one on the platform without a speaking role,
which left me free to look and listen all night.
What I saw and heard from my perch pleased me. The room was electric that night...
There's another social networking site out there now. That may be a
ho-hum way to begin an essay, but stay with me for a moment because the
new site does many things well. "Glue" works because it takes a new approach to sharing - that is, the sharing of things you like, in large lists.
While there are "plugins" that can do this on Facebook, Glue
masters the concept as its main feature.
Think of Glue as Facebook-meets Foursquare - meets Amazon
recommendations. You start by telling the site different things you
like - movies, TV shows, books, music, etc. It then generates
recommendations based upon those choices. So far, no biggie. But your
friends can see and share those choices, and that's where things get
interesting. I'm more likely to take the recommendation of a friend
than I am of some website's "bot." You can subscribe to other people's
Glue, so you can see what a particular friend likes or recommends.
It’s a place that every broadcaster thinks about, that institution
in Washington, DC that’s always watching, always listening. Seemingly
a contradiction in many ways to the First Amendment is a government
agency that regulates what broadcasters do. Yet the Federal
Communications Commission has been a reality for broadcasters for
nearly 76 years—starting long before anyone knew there would be such a
thing as a “digital era.”
But that era is upon us and the commission is calling on experts in
both traditional broadcasting and new media to come share the current
state of the media and what changes have been brought on by the shift
to digital. First Amendment attorney Kathy Kirby of Wiley Rein LLP,
along with her associate from the firm, Matthew Gibson, and I were
lucky enough to get to accompany RTDNA President Emeritus Barbara
Cochran as she appeared as a key witness in the commission’s workshop
entitled “Serving the Public Interest in the Digital Era.”
"Thank you for inviting me to speak at this workshop on behalf of the
journalists working in local radio and television stations across the
country. These journalists are members of the Radio Television Digital
News Association (RTDNA), the world’s largest organization of
journalists working in electronic media.
Broadcast news plays a critical role in keeping Americans informed.
Local television news holds the top spot as the number one source of
news for Americans. Just this week, Tom Rosenstiel and his colleagues
at the Pew Research Center reported that Americans say local television
news is their top source of news, cited by 78 percent as a news source
they use regularly...
RTDNA honors outstanding achievements in the coverage of diversity with the RTDNA/UNITY Award. The award is part of the covenant the association has adopted with UNITY: Journalists of Color, to achieve diversity in the newsroom through developing news content and editorial staffs that reflect the changing face of communities. The purpose of the award is to encourage and showcase journalistic excellence in covering issues of race and ethnicity. It is presented annually to news organizations that show an ongoing commitment to covering the diversity of the communities they serve. 
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By Kathleen A. Kirby, Partner, Wiley Rein LLP
For Sunshine week, RTDNF has produced public service announcements for your station to air the week of March 14-20, 2010, and throughout the year. 
By Lydia Reeves Timmins, Temple University 
By Stacey Woelfel, RTDNA Chairman 
There's another social networking site out there now. That may be a
ho-hum way to begin an essay, but stay with me for a moment because the
new site does many things well. "
20th Anniversary Video
It’s a place that every broadcaster thinks about, that institution
in Washington, DC that’s always watching, always listening. Seemingly
a contradiction in many ways to the First Amendment is a government
agency that regulates what broadcasters do. Yet the Federal
Communications Commission has been a reality for broadcasters for
nearly 76 years—starting long before anyone knew there would be such a
thing as a “digital era.”
"Thank you for inviting me to speak at this workshop on behalf of the
journalists working in local radio and television stations across the
country. These journalists are members of the Radio Television Digital
News Association (RTDNA), the world’s largest organization of
journalists working in electronic media.
