October: Arts Reviewing Class / Iraqi Journalist / Last Call for Online Auction

October is going to be a very busy month for the Twin Cities Media Alliance and the Daily Planet – scroll down to read about our upcoming Community Conversations on The New Normal and the Achievement Gap; our Arts Reviewing Class with Daily Planet arts editor Jay Gabler, our Brown Bag event with visiting Iraqi journalist Hiba Qader, our Fall Forum on November 12, and editors’ reports from Jay and Daily Planet editor Mary Turck.

Also, be sure to check out our new program, Theater All Year. Theater All Year ticket vouchers offer you an easy and affordable way to enjoy a huge variety of Twin Cities theater offerings throughout the season – and support the Twin Cities Media Alliance and TC Daily Planet at the same time. The cost is only $99 for six vouchers – a saving of more than 50% off the retail ticket price at some of the participating theaters.

Upcoming Events:

Tomorrow, Sunday, October 2 is the last day of our Daily Planet eBay fundraising auction, with most items closing Sunday evening. (A few late additions will end on Monday). Newest additions include two books and a t-shirt donated by Birchbark Books; two Annual Memberships for Bacchus Minnesota Wine Society contributed by Haskell’s, a photograph by poet and artist Wang Ping, and two tickets to Madame Butterfly at the Minnesota Opera. And there are still a lot of other great deals to be had, with lots of great items, including gift certificates for restaurants, theaters and other top venues  – check it out at http://stores.ebay.com/Twin-Cities-Daily-Planet. Please invite your friends to check it out, too – we have a Facebook event page at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=171402146275409.

Arts Writing: How to Write A Review 

Wednesday, October 5:  More and more people are writing about arts events—plays, movies, art shows, books—on their blogs and in news publications like the Twin Cities Daily Planet. But how to do it well? What do readers need to know? How much should be fact, and how much should be opinion? What’s a writer’s relationship to the artist, and to the audience? Daily Planet arts editor Jay Gabler has published hundreds of reviews and features; in this class, he’ll take you through the review-writing process from choosing a publication to attending a show and finding readers for your review. The class will be held at the Daily Planet offices – 2600 E. Franklin #2, Minneapolis from 7 to 9 p.m. (Just one session). This class is free, but enrollment is limited; to register, e-mail jay@tcdailyplanet.net.

October Community Conversations on The New Normal and the Achievement Gap

The New Normal: Deciding Community Priorities in a Downsized Economy is the Daily Planet’s year-long project of news stories and community conversations, funded by the Bush Foundation, devoted to finding solutions to new economic challenges in our communities.

a)   Increase engagement between schools and communities
b)   Focus on accountability and basic reading and math skills
c)   Focus on intensive intervention after school and in early childhood, or
d)   A different approach?

At the conversations we’ll provide some basic information about the achievement gap in the Twin Cities and education policy. Then we’ll ask participants to weigh in on what they think we should prioritize when closing the achievement gap.  At the end of the month we write an article summarizing what we’ve heard across all of the conversations we held.

Come to one of our October community conversations on the Achievement Gap:

Committee on the Achievement Gap (time and location to be determined). 
Noon, October 14

Henry High School Asian Student Association (Tentative)
October 19 or 26

Wednesday, October 27: Brown Bag with Iraqi Journalist Hiba Qader

Please join us for a Brown Bag program at noon Wednesday, October 26 at the East Lake Public Library, 2727 E. Lake St., Minneapolis featuring visiting journalist Hiba Qader Ahmed Al-Hasnawi. Hiba is an independent journalist in Najaf, Iraq. She has also worked for the Governor of Najaf Province and the Najaf 2012 Capital of the Islamic World Council. Hiba is part of a visiting delegation from Najaf hosted by the Iraqi American Reconciliation Project.

The Twin Cities Media Alliance’s monthly Brown Bag Lunches are your chance for casual conversation with some of the Twin Cities’ most insightful journalists (and journalists from around the world) — about journalism, politics, or whatever is onyour mind.

Daily Planet Editor Mary Turck reports:

Arts Editor Jay Gabler reports:

This month at the arts desk, what initially seemed to be an obscure debate over concert photography contracts exploded into a passionate exchange that attracted national readership, as I responded to a City Pages blog post protesting bands’ increasingly restrictive demands on photographers. Ultimately, Mary Turck also weighed in, helping to draw connections to larger issues of journalists’ rights. In the end, we decided as a staff that we will not cooperate with bands who demand approval of photos as a condition of access—but we remain committed to facilitating the work of non-professional, sometimes unpaid, photographers and writers. Noting that a White House policy of misleadingly staging photo ops was uncontested by professional journalists for decades until a tweet led to the policy’s exposure and reversal, Mary writes, “Like ethics, journalism is too important to be left exclusively to the professionals.”
Save this date:  The Twin Cities Media Alliance’s 7th Annual Fall Media Forum, will be held Saturday, November 12 at the downtown Minneapolis branch of the Hennepin County Library. The topic of this year’s forum is: