Chadwick, a New York Times veteran, is helping produce a decade-by-decade look at the major events in technology, unions, advertising and corporatization which has led to the demise of many papers. “Fit to Print – A Documentary Film on the U.S. Newspaper Industry” is currently in production, but you can see a trailer of it here.

I asked Chadwick how the project got started and what are the plans for marketing and distribution. Here is what he told me via email:

I was working at the NYT for over 3 years and began to sit down with various staffers and reporters who were all expressing their concerns regarding two things: A) the trouble facing the industry B) how it is almost impossible for them to speak to anyone outside of the institution in expressing their opinions and concerns. A deep concern wrapped over with red-tape essentially. The NYT staffers still choose to speak out (as well as various reporters from other national newspapers including the Washington Post, Newsday, Baltimore Sun, LA Times, USA Today, Rocky Mountain News, Seattle P.I. and many others). So I began to collect their interviews over the course of the year, and from there it began to escalate and the story of the U.S. newspaper industry took full shape.

I don’t want to give too much away, but we are focusing on the historical perspective of the newspaper industry in turmoil dating back to the decline in the afternoon dailies and transition from hot to cold typesetting. Decade-by-decade, we will detail major events with technology, unions, advertising and corporatization which led to the demise of many papers. We are also embedded with investigative reporters, showing what is taking place out in the field right now in real time.

The marketing and distribution plan is still up in the air. We are still looking for funding and sponsorship to help us complete the film and get it out to the public. Ideally, this film is meant for film festivals and broadcast television. We just hope that an institute or organization will help us complete the travel and editing we need to get this done in order to make this a great film.

I think one of the challenges Chadwick faces is making a film that comes off as something more substantial than a bunch of newspaper journalists lamenting the changes in technology and society that have weakened their industry. I hope he will reflect some of the responsibility that newspaper publishers, editors and yes, journalists, should bear for the current state of the newspaper industry. Many of the wounds have been self-inflicted, after all.

We all know how important newspapers have been in the U.S. and we’d love to see them return to strength. I hope Chadwick gets the funding he needs to finish the film. It is an important story that needs to be told.

Thanks to Richard Dean of Dubai Eye radio station for having me on his show yesterday. We covered a lot of ground – from citizen journalism to jobs to the business prospects for media’s big boys – in less than 20 minutes. If you’re interested, you can listen to the interview here.

During my four days in Baku, the nation’s capital city, I met with dozens of journalists. Some had jobs at newspapers or TV stations, some were writing on their own and many were just starting out as students. But they all had the same passion for journalism that brought you and I to this profession. (Rashad Shirin, right, served as my interpreter for four days in Baku, making it possible for me to discuss journalism with Azeri journalists.)

In Azerbaijan, however, there are far more hurdles to clear. News outlets must receive a special license from the government, which means there is no investigative reporting. (The government doesn’t tolerate criticism.) Independent news sources, mostly online, apparently operate with a single-minded focus on complaining about the government, so the idea of journalistic objectivity and fairness are a “work in progress,” to put it mildly.

Still, many journalists I spoke to are hopeful that the Internet will change the game and bring a diversity of voices and reporting to a nation that sorely needs it. Unfortunately, this nation also sorely needs affordable Internet access and smartphone availability if it is to emulate the thriving new media ecosystem of other countries.

Terry Davidson, public information officer of the U.S. Embassy in Baku, answers questions from reporters about the translation of Journalism 2.0.

There certainly is a lot of interest in journalism for a place that has such struggles with it. At the event where the translated version of Journalism 2.0 was introduced, three TV cameras and a handful of newspaper reporters surrounded me and the public information officer for the U.S. Embassy, Terry Davidson, to ask questions. (Can’t say I’ve received that kind of interest from journalists in the U.S.)

A group of journalists-turned-community coordinators that I met with had recently returned from the U.S. They met with journalists in Washington, D.C. and Dallas, where they met with my friend Mike Orren. The founder of Pegasus News, one of the most successful local independent journalism startups, Orren has survived the entrepreneurial roller coaster for more than five years. Meeting with Azeri journalists gave him a new perspective.

“I came away humbled at how much we take our freedoms for granted,” Orren wrote on his blog. “I’ve bitched and moaned over the years about how hard it was/is to do a start-up. But I can’t imagine how different that would be in a world where I had to fear for every word I typed.”

(You should have seen the Azeris’ faces light up when, while demonstrating Twitter, I showed them a DM from Orren about his meeting with them with the conclusion: “Amazing people.”)

Journalists / community coordinators after our training session at the American Center in Baku.

I agree. I was impressed by the fortitude of those blogging and using social media to spread independent ideas and challenge the status quo (even more impressive when so many of their friends and colleagues had been jailed for similar activities.) And I recognized the optimism of the student journos because it looked just like the idealism and intelligence I frequently see on college campuses in the U.S. While the U.S. students think they are facing adversity – and they are – the Azeri students are facing more yet seemed resolute in their commitment to journalism.

When I asked one group why they are interested in journalism, one young man replied with a somewhat sheepish grin: “To be famous.” Indeed, that’s how many journalists in the U.S. got started. Seeing that byline, hearing your voice on the air or seeing yourself on screen can be a powerful motivator. But this reply came from a student who lives in a country where some of the most well-known journalists are famous for being jailed.

That courage, combined with the tools of new media, will hopefully bring about a new era of journalism in this emerging country. If my book helps this process along even just a little, I’ll be proud to consider myself part of the Azeri journalism evolution.

From the press release:

On May 24th, SAE Institute Dubai will launch its inaugural Digital Journalism program with a Tweet-up and panel at Shelter Dubai, kicking off at 7 pm.

New media has changed how news is reported and experienced. Who are these new journalists? What are their tools? Can the ‘old’ media survive? And what do audiences gain from ‘Journalism 2.0?’

Speakers for the event are:

Mark Briggs–blogger, journalist and author of Journalism 2.0 (2007), Journalism Next (2009) and CEO and co-founder of Serra Media.
Pia Heikkila–documentarian, producer, and backpack journalist filing stories her laptop around the Middle East.
Nabila Usman–writer and journalist, business development executive at Newzglobe.com, an online news portal.
Khaled Khalifa – Head of Office, United Nations – Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) Middle East and Asia Bureau.

The discussion will be moderated by Reg Athwal, Co-Founder and Chairman of online television platform onetvo.com.

Learn more about SAE Dubai’s Digital Journalism program on our website.
Click here to see Shelter Dubai map.
Follow DiJoDubai on twitter to learn more.

Visiting Baku this week and speaking with different groups of journalists and journalism students, the question whether bloggers can be journalists surfaces time and again. In Baku, where newspapers must be granted a media license from the government to publish, blogging is one of the only outlets for truly independent journalism to reach and audience. It’s so important to emerging democracies like Azerbaijan, formerly a part of the Soviet Union, that President Obama signed the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act this week, hoping to promote a free press around the world.

Rashad Shirin translates what I had just said for a group of journalists at the American Center, University of Languages, Baku.

“One important thing you should be teaching them is to check facts and to write balanced pieces, not propaganda which can easily be discredited,” advised Onnik Krikorian, an editor for Global Voices Online in the region, by email. “There needs to be some journalistic skills introduced into their blogging to make it more effective, especially when it comes to checking facts or identifying what is speculation, gossip or rumor and what is fact.”

The debate is different than in the U.S., where access to prominent events like the Winter Olympics seems to be the last battlefield for bloggers. Here, bloggers who would like to produce independent journalism are fearful of being misunderstood and silenced by the government. The mainstream newspapers don’t do any blogging on their websites either, so it remains a this-or-that situation, much like we had in the U.S. before about 2006. (In my presentation, I show the NY Times blog page, which has dozens of blogs, and explain how dismissive most American newsrooms were of blogging just five years ago.)

I’ll be honest: When I received that first email almost a year ago from Terry Davidson at the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan, expressing interest in translating my book and having me visit the country, my first thought was “where the heck is that?” Azerbaijan is a former Soviet Union country near Georgia, just north of Iran, and Baku is the capital city, perched on the western shore of the Caspian sea.

I’m here this week speaking to various groups of journalists and students. And tonight, I’ll be attending a special “book launch” as the embassy begins distributing copies of Journalism 2.0 that were translated into Azerbaijani. (This is the fourth language for Journalism 2.0. Unfortunately I can still only read one.) Yesterday I spent three hours with a group of about 20 student journalists and another 3 hours with a small group of “A-list bloggers” from Baku.

The students are eager, ambitious and idealistic, just like the students I speak to in the U.S. Unlike their American counterparts, however, they have a much harder career path to travel since there really isn’t an economic model for journalism in Azerbaijan. Advertising isn’t really a factor in the media and the newspapers and TV stations here are tightly controlled by the government, which probably explains their tiny reach. In a city of about 2 million people, the largest newspaper has a circulation of about 3,000 7,000 (correction made 5/23/10).

Students work on creating a blog at a workshop at Baku Journalism School.

A few groups opposed to the government have started their own newspapers and websites, but most are nothing more than political hit publications. There is almost a complete dearth of independent journalism in the country, but the students I met with are determined to change that somehow.

To a person, they all said their primary interest in journalism is social issues. In the U.S., student journalists are more focused on sports, music, food and travel journalism. We’re lucky. When I mention this to the Azerbaijani students, they said they would like to do “fun” journalism but there are too many problems in their country to focus on such things.

Bloggers, social media activists after our session at the Azerbaijan Media Centre

The bloggers, meanwhile, are walking the walk. They report on corruption, human rights violations and other injustices in a country that is enjoying incredible economic growth due to a second oil boom. The money is being spent to spruce up downtown Baku (gleaming parks and shopping malls make certain areas of Baku measure up with more cosmopolitan cities in Europe) while basic infrastructure gets ignored, according to the people I’ve met. While we spoke, two of their friends sat in jail. They say it’s because of a parody video they produced, profiled in this New York Times story. Apparently they’re not the only journalists behind bars in this country, either.

So take a deep breath and appreciate your current situation as a journalist, whether you are looking for work or are currently unsatisfied with your position. It’s still a powerful weapon that can affect real change. That’s what the journalists in Baku hope anyway.

… for some — possibly foolhardy — reason, a lot of people still want to work in journalism, and even amid the depths of the recession, there have been stirrings of creativity. A multitude of younger, nimbler enterprises have popped up, unencumbered by the past and ready to try anything. History suggests that few of these ventures will ultimately survive: Web start-ups have a failure rate between 70 and 90 percent. But it’s quite possible that the experiments they’re staging are already producing the kind of innovations that make for new, sustainable business models.

For continuing coverage of independent journalism startups, check out the section we developed on Lost Remote to cover this emerging sector.

The videos are broken up into several parts (even though the talk only lasted 20 minutes). To see the other parts visit here.

Another opportunity for journalists at SXSW to gather will take place on Sunday at 5 p.m. A group of journalists who are speaking at the conference will be getting together for happy hour at a local watering hole and you’re invited to join us if you’re in town.

Sunday, March 14, 5 pm
Opal Divine’s
700 W Sixth St.
http://www.opaldivines.com/

The National Pacemaker Awards are prestigious annual honors recognizing the best student journalism in the nation. This year I have the honor of judging the online entries (with my friend Ken Sands) and we could use some help.

Turns out, there is so much good stuff happening on college news websites, a record number of entries were submitted. So we are looking for a handful of volunteers to help screen the entries. If you volunteer, you’ll be asked to review 10-20 websites and select 2-5 finalists. Piece of cake, right?

So if you want to see some innovative online journalism – while giving back to the profession by recognizing good work – send me a note offering your help: mark@journalism20.com. Thanks in advance.