From jazzmandel at earthlink.net Mon Aug 17 10:16:24 2009 From: jazzmandel at earthlink.net (howard Mandel) Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:16:24 -0400 Subject: [jja-announce] membership help! Message-ID: <77E4112C-348C-4611-B446-CD395D241536@earthlink.net> Hi JJA members -- Our organization is in need of help in regards to its membership committee. We need someone who can interface with both new and old members regarding passwords, dues and other issues, and who is interested in improving and maintaining the membership database. Please email me if you want further details about this situation. thanks, Howard Howard Mandel jazzmandel at earthlink.net phone 212 533 9495 mobile 212 533 4952 see my blog: www.HowardMandel.com www.ArtsJournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz From jazzmandel at earthlink.net Tue Aug 18 11:03:18 2009 From: jazzmandel at earthlink.net (howard Mandel) Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:03:18 -0400 Subject: [jja-announce] meeting Aug 27, New School (NYC) Message-ID: Hi JJA members and friends, For a while I"ve been touting a proposed conference on jazz journalism. The JJA has organized an afternoon-long meeting to hash out specific plans for this conferencee; it will take place Thursday, Aug. 27, from 1 pm to 5 or thereabouts, at the New School jazz performance space, fifth floor, 55 W. 13th St. NYC. You are, of course, invited, and if you know someone not getting this email who might be interested, they're invited too. But please rsvp if you intend to come. I'm attaching a file that excerpts a grant application description of the conference -- titled "Jazz Journalism in Transition: Audiences and Outlets in the 21st Century" -- so that you can get a handle on what we're trying to do, and decide whether or not you're interested and in what way. The intention is to gather a large number of arts/music/jazz journalists, 150 to 250, for 4 days of workshops, panel discussions, plenary sessions and keynote speakers to discuss the way forward for those of us who cover jazz and related art forms from the media past of staff positions on newspapers and magazines and sustaining freelance assignments into the new landscape involving multi-media and digital distribution with unclear financial support or business models. We're looking for practical advise from the jazz journalists (and purveyors of journalism LIKE jazz journalism, including perhaps our friends at Rap & Rock Confidential and the Music Critics Assn of North America) who are succeeding now through innovative uses of new media. We're looking to demonstrate how jazz journalists are indeed at the forefront of meeting the challenges of the present. We want to find alternative revenue streams to what we've lost, or if not find them, imagine them and begin to create the conditions in which they could exist and we could prosper. We want to invite people who are smart and far-seeing about how things are changing to share their perspectives with us (who seems to you one of those people? Nominate them as potential keynoters. Think big; we intend to compensate speakers and panelists). We want to reach out to include people just coming into arts journalism/jazz journalism as well as veterans; we want to reach potential arts journalists who for demographic or geographic reasons have felt uninvited to participate. We want energy and we want to follow through on proposals that come out of the conference so that it's a starting point, not an end in itself. We hope to make the conference itself a laboratory for new media practices. We hope it will be productive of new ways of thinking and working for all of us. We intend to make the conference accessible for people who can't be there in person by using the internet's potentials of webcasting and interactive long-distance discussion. This will be a costly conference, and the JJA has already filed applications for funding with the NEA (which will stage its Jazz Masters induction ceremony and concert in New York two days after the conference) and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. We're seeking further grants that might be appropriate, and will proceed this fall with further fundraising towards making this a great weekend. The APAP (Association of Performing Arts Presenters) conference is taking place during the same weekend in New York (January 7 - 10) and I'm looking into potential synergies with that group. We've currently planned the conference to take place at the facilities of Jazz At Lincoln Center. We're trying to organize hotel and transporation discounts for registrants, and even registration discounts. We will dedicate the JJA website JazzJournalists.org to this project as it comes together. Please take a look at the attached file. It ought to give you some concrete sense of what we want to accomplish as well as how we're posing the topic. We will probably have 16 to 24 separate sessions at the conference, many of them running concurrently though with staggered times so that attendees can get to more than one discussion/ workshop. We hope to have social time and to hear music in NYC after the conference-day ends. If you come to the New School meeting, expect to brainstorm AND deal with the nitty gritty. If you can't come but are interested, please send ideas, questions or just notes indicating your interest (as specifically as possible please). We haven't been assured of receiving the grants we've applied for, but have to plan the conference in considerable detail with the idea that we WILL have the budget we need. If this thing comes off, it could be quite good for everybody. I'm hoping we'll work together towards that goal. -------------- next part -------------- Howard Mandel jazzmandel at earthlink.net phone 212 533 9495 mobile 212 533 4952 see my blog: www.HowardMandel.com www.ArtsJournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz From jazzmandel at earthlink.net Fri Aug 21 19:41:56 2009 From: jazzmandel at earthlink.net (howard Mandel) Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:41:56 -0400 Subject: [jja-announce] going online w/JJA journalism conference meeting Message-ID: <95140F2B-8518-4233-9301-A9700145AEF0@earthlink.net> Dear Jazz Journalists Association members and friends -- Response to the call for a meeting about the JJA's proposed conference on jazz journalism has been strong -- but from so many people from far away that instead of doing this meeting at the New School Jazz and Contemporary Music program in New York City, we're taking it online. Rather than in person in a room in the Village, we'll meet on the net at Jazzhouse.org-- stiill on Thursday August 27 but now starting 8 pm New York City time (EDT). Using unique software we -- you reading this email and anybody else on the internet, anywhere -- will be able to brainstorm about the programming of the JJA's proposed conference on "Jazz Journalism in Transition: Audiences and Outlets in the 21st Century," contributing in real time to a freewheeling (but moderated) multithread discussion following from a posted agenda (though not limited by it). You don't have to download anything -- the necessary software operates at Jazzhouse (it's developed and trademarked by JJA webmaster Whit Blauvelt). Administrator/moderators (me and a couple others) and panelists (you and I will be in touch) need login passwords which I will supply, but everyone with web-access and good ideas how topics, formats, programs, guest speakers for a three day conference about the future hands-on professional operations of freelance and/or staff jazz journalists (writers including bloggers, photographers, broadcasters, new media producers ) is invited to pitch in with suggestions, read all the typed "conversation" being as it unfolds in real-time, lurk or join in. To those NOT IN NORTH AMERICAN TIME ZONES -- the online discussion will be go to sleep New York-time Thursday night, but resume at 9 am New York-time Friday morning, for your convenience. The JJA's Western and Eastern European, Asian, Australian and African members and colleagues are specifically invited to be part of this online chat -- ALSO: this online will be fully archived, but password protected for later access by participants and JJA members only. I will send login instructions to those of you who will be panelists. We will post instructions at Jazzhouse on how to use Interactiview (which is fairly self-explanatory, but nonetheless can be opaque at first). An abstract of the JJA's conference, which as proposed is scheduled for January 7 through 10 at facilities at Jazz at Lincoln Center, is also there. That document has the jazz journalism conference basics as per our grant applications. Please email back with any questions. Doing this meeting online makes a lot of sense -- it's much more relevant to the future-of-journalism culture we're trying to propagate. I hope you'll join in, and since this interactive format can accommodate large numbers, please spread the word to jazz and music journalists and stakeholders who might not hear about it directly from the JJA. -- thanks, Howard Mandel president, JJA Howard Mandel jazzmandel at earthlink.net phone 212 533 9495 mobile 212 533 4952 see my blog: www.HowardMandel.com www.ArtsJournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz From jazzmandel at earthlink.net Mon Aug 24 12:39:47 2009 From: jazzmandel at earthlink.net (howard Mandel) Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:39:47 -0400 Subject: [jja-announce] JJA mentoring of Urban Assemble 11th, 12th graders Message-ID: Yvonne Ervin, JJA Vice-President, is organizing a group of mentors from the JJA for The Urban Assembly?s School for Music and Art?s 11th and 12th graders interested in writing about music. Although a half dozen members did respond that they were interested in becoming mentors when we announced the program last month, Yvonne and the staff at Urban Assembly have decided to change the parameters so more journalists might be able to participate. Contact will be, primarily, via email with gatherings of all the mentors and mentees at an evening music event in October, January (around the JJA conference), March and June. The mentees will write reviews with the help of their mentors and we?ll have a special section on jazzhouse.org to post their work. An informational meeting will be held at 6 p.m. on Thursday, September 17th at a place TBA. Please contact Yvonne if you are interested at yervin at urbanassembly.org or 646-278-4383. From jazzmandel at earthlink.net Wed Aug 26 22:20:56 2009 From: jazzmandel at earthlink.net (howard Mandel) Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:20:56 -0400 Subject: [jja-announce] interactive discussion, brainstorming a jazz journalism conference, tomorrow night Message-ID: <321D69F0-87CF-44BB-9127-5F8F4322D244@earthlink.net> Hi all -- don't forget that the JJA is having an open, multi-thread realtime discussion of programs, workshops, panels, keynote speakers we want to have at a proposed 3 day jazz journalism conference on Thurs., Aug 27 at 8 pm EDT and Friday, Aug 28 at 8 am (principally for people in European and Asian time zones) at www.Jazzhouse.org. A draft of the proposed conference is posted there already, as are instructions on how to use interactiview (which may be just as easy to simply go to and learn while doing -- but it won't be active 'til Thurs night). Please invite stakeholders in jazz journalism to look in on this discussion -- thanks, Howard Howard Mandel jazzmandel at earthlink.net phone 212 533 9495 mobile 212 533 4952 see my blog: www.HowardMandel.com www.ArtsJournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz From jazzmandel at earthlink.net Thu Aug 27 08:53:17 2009 From: jazzmandel at earthlink.net (howard Mandel) Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:53:17 -0400 Subject: [jja-announce] a Twitter campaign promoting live jazz Message-ID: Hi all -- A campaign has been launched on Twitter to prove there IS a large, vigorous audience for live jazz. It's not a promotional effort for upcoming events, but rather a shout-out about jazz people have just heard, WHO and WHERE with the hashtag #jazzlives (all within Twitter's 140 character limit). This is somewhat in response to the NEA's 2008 data about diminishing and aging audiences at live jazz events (and all other arts events), which I believe undercounted a significant segment of the populace, probably including those who use social networking media to stay in touch and energize each other around their entertainment preferences. It's also an experiment about the use of Twitter for jazz, whether such a campaign can go viral, maybe move to other social networking platforms, and whatever else may result. So: If you Tweet (and Twitter accounts are free), please send a message that jazz lives! Tell the world WHO you heard, WHERE, and include #jazzlives in the message. We ought to be able to work up a new metric (though it won't be a certifiable statistic) demonstrating the energy and breadth of jazz listeners, especially in the US over the weeks starting with the Charlie Parker Jazz Fest in NYC this weekend, including Labor Day weekend's jazz fests at Tanglewood, in Detroit, Chicago, LA (both the Angel City and Sweet & Hot Music Fest), Philly (Tony Williams Scholarship fest), Jazz Aspen Snowmass, Vail Jazz Party, Bumbershoot in Seattle, Getdown fest and campout, leading to the Monterey and Beantown (Boston) fests. It's not ONLY about audiences at fests, though -- Tweet about jazz heard in stand-alone concerts, in clubs, in the streets and subways, anywhere jazz lives. Jazz heard in live-broadcast on the radio or online counts! The hashtag, by the way, is essential -- it's what enables us to see all the campaign's Tweets together, to count them up. A widget has been created to show the Tweets scrolling as they come out in real time -- you can see this widget on my website www.HowardMandel.com , and I hope soon at Jazzhouse.org -- you can also embed this widget on your own website -- get the code from Darcy James Argue's Secret Society vkif, http://secretsociety.typepad.com/ If you aren't on Twitter, you can advance this effort by mentioning it in blog postings, on broadcasts, to friends, through email. I wonder if there are as many listeners who will tweet they've heard live jazz in the next few weeks as there were people at Woodstock. Write to tweetjazzlives at gmail.com for further info -- best, Howard Howard Mandel jazzmandel at earthlink.net phone 212 533 9495 mobile 212 533 4952 see my blog: www.HowardMandel.com www.ArtsJournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz