A few days ago the NewsWrights United’s Managing Producer, Jim Jewell, sent out a kick-off press release to all sorts of fancy media folks about NewsWrights United and our upcoming production The New New News: A Living Newspaper. In it he made a few key announcements:
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NewsWrights United will be producing a second edition of our Living Newspaper called The New New News, on the heels of the frankly astounding success of our first edition It’s Not In the P-I: A Living Newspaper about a Dying Newspaper. The New New News will provide a theatrical examination of the rise of new media and how we know what we know… or not.
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NewsWrights United will be tossing this Living Newspaper up onto your theatrical doorstep in February of 2011 (and by “theatrical doorstep” I mean a Seattle stage or stages to be named later.)
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NewsWrights United just launched our blog, conveniently located at http://newswrightsunited.blogspot.com/. On this blog my fellow writer/producers and I will do our best to keep up-to-date on our progress developing The New New News for production. As much as we can, we keep you apprised of our hopes, our fears, our failures, and ideally, our ultimate triumph. See? That’s what’s exciting about locally grown, intensely fresh new work. The outcome is not a foregone conclusion. Following us is like rooting for a local sports team, whereas supporting our more museumified colleagues is more like, well, supporting a museum. (Tantamount-to-dead things don’t readily engender lively metaphors.)
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NewsWrights United just launched a “wiki-scene” here, where anyone who wants to can help us write a section of the upcoming show.
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We have a web page: http://www.newswrightsunited.org it ain’t super fancy yet, but it will be. (And any support you can offer us in that regard would be most welcome.)
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We will be hosting an awareness-building/fund-raising event on the evening of Monday, November 15, tentatively titled Journalism: a.WAKE.ning? in the Upstairs Gallery above Theatre Off Jackson, from 7:30 – 9:30 PM. The event will include art installations examining new media, a preview of The New New News, a panel discussion on coverage of the November elections and, of course, a reception, in which guests will be offered their choice of a flute of champagne or a shot of rye, depending on whether they think journalism is ready for a new baptism or last rites. So HOLD THAT DATE!
A couple of things Jim did not mention but that I wanted you to know as my special Just Wrought readers:
- NewsWrights United has a Face Book page. Go there by clicking http://www.facebook.com/NewsWrightsUnited and then “like” us. That’s one the quickest easiest ways to stay on top of our mercurial movements.
- NewsWrights United has a twitter profile: “NewsWrights” Follow us. (We have been, admittedly, Twitter-resistant in the past, but since half our stories involve the tool, and most actual journalists appear to be addicted to it, we figure we would look like idiots if we did not tweet. (And possibly still look like idiots when we do.)
Now rest assured, we’re going to be asking you for money to support this production. And not just for the obvious reasons, like we like ourselves, think you will too, and need money to put on a show. We also have some not so obvious reasons for asking for you support, such as:
- Every performance of our Living Newspapers is offered on a suggested donation basis. We do this because we believe information and art should be as accessible as possible, and not just for those lucky few—and ever fewer—folks that can afford the enormous sum demanded for a theatre ticket these days.
- Journalism costs money. To gather the news and to disseminate it. NewsWrights United is no different, except we have actors and production designers and staff to pay to help display and distribute our news instead of printers and truck drivers. We want you to participate directly in the financially supporting the journalism we provide, because such participation is the fair price of democracy.
- We are covering YOU! We aren’t just staging Titus Andronicus or Glenngary Glen Ross because we want to, and then making tortured arguments about how these plays are somehow relevant to your own stories today. We are telling your own stories today! We believe that ought to be worth something to you.
So here’s our hat. You can start filling it by clicking on it. It’ll take you to our Shunpike donation page.
Early support is always deeply appreciated support. So thanks.
We have hit the ground. We have spread out and chased down stories from sources all over this town and beyond. We have begun to stitch them together into a script. From this moment we will not stop until we give you the freshest, hardest-hitting local news-based theatre you have ever seen.
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