THE MEDIA GIRAFFE PROJECT
AT THE UNIVERSITY
OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST
STANDARD INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
FOR MEDIA GIRAFFE
PROSPECTIVE NOMINEES
(Revised Feb. 6, 2006)
As
you prepare for a Media Giraffe Project interview, we ask that you answer the questions below for inclusion in our
public database. You'll do so by
posting your answers to a web form. The questions are provided below so that, if you wish, you may prepare your
answers
offline and then cut and paste them to the web form. We will provide you with a one-time password to post your
answers so that they are secure and cannot be altered by others after you've posted them. You MAY embed simple HTML
within your answers, if you wish to provide hypertext links to relevant information.
Thank you for helping with our research. Your answers will be publicly available online from http://www.mediagiraffe.org/profiles/questions.php.
-------------------------------------
Bill
Densmore, director/editor / The Media Giraffe Project
Journalism
Program / Department of Communication /
108 Bartlett Hall
Univ.
of Massachusetts-Amherst / Amherst MA 01003
OFF:
413-577-4370 / densmore@journ.umass.edu / http://www.mediagiraffe.org
- Provide your name,
title, affiliation, address/location, email and website contact, phone.
- Please briefly describe
your professional and educational background, including where you spent your early years --
and any early influences that have motivated you personally or professionally.
- Provide information
about your group or project, such as who owns it or funds it, how long it's existed,
its purpose and intended audience or user base. Provide some metrics of
usage, a sense of scale. Is it all web? Is there a print, broadcast or
other-media component?
- Is the project mostly
about DOING something directly (a direct service for the public), or about
HELPING others to do something, or about TEACHING or LOBBYING in an
educational or political sense? Describe as appropriate.
- What
are you doing and why are you doing it? We are especially interested in
your PERSONAL MOTIVATION and sense of MISSION, as well as the overall
project motivation. We would like to really focus on understanding
motivation. How do you convey a sense of mission to others around
you? Can you describe examples?
- Technology is rapidly changing the economic underpinnings
of commercial, non-profit and public-policy media groups. Help us understand how you keep the doors open. What is the
business model? Is your revenue from sales, donations, or a combination? Does your project rely upon
volunteers? Is the business model sustainable long term? Is it changing? How do you forsee the financing of
information changing in a connected world?
- Please talk about your sense
of innovation and entrepreneurship -- especially in comparison to other things you have done or other
competitors/collaborators. Who or what is similar to what you are doing?
- Tell us how you are
teaching others to do what you are doing. We want to know if your project
is REPLICABLE. Is it usable by the general public? How are others able to contribute? In what ways might your
efforts be useful in teaching high-school or college students to become smarter media consumers and creators?
- What aspects of personal, professional or financial
RISK are there to what you are doing? Please be specific. How do you cope
with those risks? Will it get easier?
- In what sense is what
you are doing fostering participatory democracy or community? What do those words ad ideas mean to you? What
specifically do you achieve in this arena? Is that important to you, and/or to your project?
- Do you have views about
what is right -- or wrong -- with our media, our democracy, our journalism? How do we preserve the best and fix
the worst? Who is best-positioned -- or most responsible -- for taking action?
- Do you have any suggestions for how to merge and act
upon
the collective wisdom of media, education, public-policy and technical innovators to foster participatory democracy and
community? Who else do you recommend we look at as
examples of above-the-crowd behavior or efforts which foster participatory democracy or community in new or
innovative ways? Feel free to provide HTML links to relevant websites.