KUWS‘s Final Edition is a valuable local resource — a place where media professionals can reflect on the work they do and the impact they have on the community.
(more…)

David Wong addresses 40 people at UMD

So, Architect, Author or Urban Ecologist David Wong of Vancouver BC extended his stay through Monday. (more…)

Mitch Ogden had arranged for an army of undergrads from UW-Stout’s Journalism and Digital Humanities programs to attend the UMD Conference on Publishing. At 6 a.m. we called the bus dispatcher to tell them to turn around. But the dispatcher crossed wires with the bus, and so three hours later, the students were here.
(more…)

Yesterday, were the weather to have cooperated more, there would have been a Publishing Conference at UMD. But it all started badly. It ended amazingly, though, and it’s worth some reflection. Parts of it (including an awesome talk or two by Roy Booth and by David Wong) are still to come, if you can join us. (more…)

I was reading through this list of things Minnesotans are [allegedly] too nice to brag about and I saw this picture, figured it was from Duluth, and it is.

Minnesotans do brag about all of this stuff all the time, but it’s fun to see it on Buzzfeed. Click the pic to see the entire post, several items have a Duluth connection.

I teach journalism at UMD and one of the things I’m interested in is learning how information flows through a community. I’m writing to ask for your help with a project.

Here’s the background: Lots of smart people agree that one of the assets of a community is its storytelling networks: Strong, healthy communities have lots of ways for people to share their stories. The term media ecosystem has been used to describe the increasingly complex ways that people in a community exchange information. This can include third places, where people meet and talk to their neighbors about things that are going on in their community; community bulletin boards where information about everything from lost cats to upcoming events are posted. Obviously, it also includes more and more online channels such as this very website.

So, here’s what we’re going to do. One of my journalism classes is going to try to catalog all the forms of “media” we can find and think of in Duluth. So, this will obviously include all the professional media outlets that reach this community, but I’d like your help in finding the lesser-known channels. It could be a small neighborhood newsletter, like The Hillsider, for example, or maybe it’s a local blogger who writes about issues — say Astro Bob’s excellent blog as an example. It might also include community-based groups, CHUM for example, that put out issues relevant to their work.

We’re eventually going to try to take this information and create some kind of directory of the information. Now it’s your turn. Got any you think should be on our list? Hit reply and add it. Thanks.

From the book Wild by Cheryl Strayed:

Who were those doctors in Duluth anyway? What was Duluth? Duluth! Duluth was a freezing hick town where doctors who didn’t know what the hell they were talking about told forty-five-year old vegetarian-ish, garlic eating, natural-remedy-using nonsmokers that they had late stage lung cancer, that’s what.

Cheryl Strayed on Amazon

I’m happy to say that I’ve been given the chance to share some Duluth music with a much wider audience than can hear my current radio program on KUWS. (And by “Duluth music” I mean everything from the Iron Range to the South Shore.)

The show will air on the Local Current stream on Wednesdays (starting tomorrow, March 27) at noon and will be rebroadcast on Thursdays at 11 p.m. and Saturdays at 6 p.m.

In order to put on the best local show I can – I’m gonna need your music if you’re in a band. We’ve got some 180+ acts playing Homegrown this year alone and I can tell you that I don’t have recordings from more than half of them. This is a call to bands from the region to send me your CDs/vinyls and/or high-quality digital downloads for me to potentially play on the Duluth Local Show.
(more…)

KUMD’s student-run programming, the Basement, will be featured on mtvU’s College Radio Countdown beginning tomorrow. We’ll celebrate our national television debut with a premiere party on Tuesday, March 26 at 7:30-9:00 pm in the UMD Lake Superior Hall Lobby.

KUMD students produced a fun one-minute video to introduce the mtvU audience to KUMD and Duluth; it starts with a broadcast from a local ice fishing house. The video will introduce our ten video picks of songs that represent the sound of the Basement, including two Minnesota artists, Trampled by Turtles and Polica.

In addition, KUMD’s Music Directors picked five local videos to be featured on mtvU’s tumblr; our first pick, Brian Barber’s brilliant video for the Black-eyed Snakes’ “Rise Up,” has already been posted and more will follow each day this week.

In the Duluth area mtvU is available on digital cable channel 327 and the show will also be available online at www.mtvu.com.

(more…)

Best Adventure Hub Runner-Up: Duluth, Minnesota

Note: The stat “81 miles of running and hiking trails” seems like an underestimate to me. Perhaps we should tally them up in the comments.

At risk of setting off an avalanche of flaming comments here on PDD I am going to post this interview that I worked on today.

The City of Duluth’s request for an appeal of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals full panel has been denied. Karen Diver came in to the WGZS studios today to discuss her take on that decision and the way forward. In addition to all of the legal wrangling and tribal sovereignty issues that she takes up in this interview, I also thought it was interesting when (toward the end) she addressed a desire to cooperate with Duluth businesses and establishments including the NorShor which is much beloved by many a PDDer. I have divided interests in this matter personally and even if I did have a fully formed opinion about what would be “right” I am not really in a position to express it here. And anyway, I don’t have a fully formed opinion. And that’s where you come in PDD:

What do you think the FDL Band should do going forward? What do you think Duluth should do?

(Please note that the video may provide some context, but really this is a radio interview, not television, the lines are blurred on social media).

Ok, I had written this a week or so ago, then didn’t publish, but now with the next film showing up … I have to say something …. is Duluth the epicenter of icky?

With several filmmakers coming to Duluth and making films which extol the … er … um grittier nature of our fair city, I’ve come to wonder if we aren’t letting others define how others see us with their films. Firstly, hats off to anyone who can herd all the cats and get a film or video made, I know because I’ve done it.  I’m not decrying the fact that these director/producers are here and making us look “horrible” or licentious or evil cultish. Truly, thanks for shooting your show here! But come on! Isn’t Duluth worthy of something cute, quirky, poignant, beautiful or at least just mundane? You are correct to say, “STFU Baci and just make a film yourself!” and you’d be spot on to say so. I wish nothing more than I had the time to put toward making a film, set in Duluth, that showcased how perfect our days here are.

Here is something that I have been working on. A one-hour radio documentary collection of sounds and voices from the Jan. 11 Idle No More Jingle Dress Dance demonstration through the streets of Duluth. It airs at 11 a.m. today on 89.1 FM WGZS in Cloquet. In case you are like the other 100 million people who will be instead listening to and viewing the inauguration of President Obama at that time on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday I have posted it online for people to listen to anytime in the form of a YouTube video.

I am still unhappy with some of the mix, the narration and my writing, but I am happy with being able to share these voices talking about this remarkable, historic event.

Former Northland’s NewsCenter reporter Tiffany Tarrolly’s new project is called “Pageant Police.” Apparently the concept is to say mean things about the physical appearance of women who are in pageants.

So now there is something more annoying than women who are in pageants: women who say mean things about women who are in pageants.

The only thing more annoying would be me, for posting this, but I’ll soon be eclipsed in the annoying rankings by everyone who watches this video and then comments on it.

But maybe we need this to get the seasonal affective disorder out of our systems.

(Hopefully this video isn’t a parody of something and I was too dim to pick up on it.)

Close readers of the Duluth News Tribune’s online edition may have noticed that the site no longer allows commenting under any stories, and I think that’s been the case for several days. I’m not privy to the reasons behind the decision, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the comments they were getting didn’t add any value to the site. Quite the opposite, in my opinion.

The DNT isn’t alone in this struggle. Personally, I’ve never seen intelligent comments on a news organization’s website. I think it’s probably better for them to just stick to content creation and allow people to link to the content via Facebook or some other social site, and discuss the content there.

What do you think? Do you miss the comments or do you applaud the decision?

from today’s DNT:

“Other retired UMD faculty members have been identified as emeritus when writing opinion pieces in the pages of the News Tribune. . .”

“emeriti” = referring to the people in question

“‘emeritus’” = implying a quote from the opinion pieces in question

“emeritus” = cognitive dissonance

Can’t see it any other way. Sticks in my craw.

From the DNT — “Local view: Video-gaming convention not a good idea for Duluth”:

“Bringing a scaled-down version of Indiana’s Gen Con convention to Duluth would only increase the amount of violence to which Duluth is exposed. Is increased violence something we really want to willingly welcome into Duluth?”

• Don’t mix my 7 Wonders or Talisman or Pathfinder in with your Skyrim, or whatever.
• Go watch Mazes and Monsters.

Your opinion piece is maddeningly uninformed and you should feel bad.

A group of journalism students at UMD have created their own online journalism projects. The assignment asked them to conceive of a website that focused on a specific media “niche” and to produce content that appealed to that group by drawing on as many online media tools as possible.

The projects range from a Duluth-area beer-review page to a site that links volunteers with community needs in the Twin Ports.

Tomorrow we will have a very informal awards ceremony in which the page that has the most “likes” on our Facebook page will receive the Giant Foam Finger of Greatness Award (it’s a long story).

So, visit the page, check out a few of the projects, vote for your favorite and give the student journalists some feedback. Who knows, perhaps the best of them will actually develop into permanent pieces of the Duluth media landscape.

Norway?! Heck man, they don’t know cold!