Melinda Wittstock on Web 2.0, populism, and professional journalism at the Ethos Roundtable

Please join us for our next Ethos Roundtable session:

Tuesday, May 19th
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Featured guest: Melinda Wittstock, founder of Ask Your Lawmaker, Capitol News Connection, and Pundit Productions

Melinda Wittstock is an award-winning broadcast and print journalist with 20 years of experience in New York, Washington, and London. Her writing and hosting work spans BBC Radio and TV News, ABC News, National Public Radio (NPR), MSNBC/CNBC, as well as London's Times, Guardian, and Observer newspapers.

Melinda founded Capitol News Connection (CNC), which covers Congress from a local perspective for more than 200 public radio stations nationwide, reaching three million listeners. She also created "Power Breakfast", which airs daily on WAMU 88.5 FM in Washington.

She conceived and launched the Ask Your Lawmaker web site and widget, which lets citizens directly question their lawmakers. Users ask questions and vote on the ones they most want CNC journalists to pose to lawmakers. Audio answers are uploaded for users to listen to, comment and share.

Melinda will be sharing her vision of collaboration between citizens and professional journalists to foster accountability and transparency in government. She calls this "truth-squadding," and will be leading a discussion about how Web 2.0 makes this possible.

Although we don't often carry over an Ethos Roundtable theme from one month to the next, we do have an opportunity to do this in May. During our April session with Susan Labandibar, we brainstormed about ways to call Congress to account about the hazards of recycling e-waste overseas, and one of the strategies I suggested was posting a question about this to Ask Your Lawmaker. I posted a question on this topic, which you are welcome to vote up. You're also welcome to post a question of your own (on any topic whatsoever) to Ask Your Lawmaker - it only take about three minutes.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, food, and drink at the 501 Tech Club that is so generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food and drink, it's courteous to let them know how much to order.

See you on the 19th!


Full disclosure of financial relationship: I serve as a paid consultant to Capitol News Connection and Ask Your Lawmaker.