Constitutional Law

Case Study in Collaboration: Spot.us, Public Press, and McSweeney's

Posted on December 08, 2009
I spend a lot of time talking about the notion of "collaboration." So whenever I have a good example of the value of collaboration, I try to highlight it. Only one month after a Spot.Us-funded project was also published in the New York Times, we have another great example of what happens when various partners come together...

Democratizing the Geography of Information

Posted on December 05, 2009
As little as a year ago Google Maps had no geographic information about San Javier La Loma, a small working class neighborhood on the outskirts of Medellín where the ConVerGentes group of the HiperBarrio citizen journalism project is based. Some progress has been made, but as you can see from the satellite imagery, most of the streets are still not mapped, much less the parks, buildings and footpaths...

FTC's Hearings on Journalism: Why?

Posted on December 03, 2009
As everyone knows, the nation's scam artists, monopolists and market-riggers have all gone into hibernation during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. This has given the Federal Trade Commission the breathing room it needs to intercede in an arena where its role is, at best, unclear...

How Gotham Gazette Used Games as Storytelling Devices

Posted on December 02, 2009
With the launch of its energy game Switch, Gotham Gazette this fall completed a two-year Knight Foundation-funded project to create several news games about New York City policy issues. We think we produced some good games (to view and play them go here...

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2008 Knight News Challenge Winner Launches Open Media Foundation

Posted on December 01, 2009
Deproduction, a Denver-based nonprofit media and technology organization and Knight News Challenge winner, has reorganized as the Open Media Foundation. The nonprofit media and technology organization was founded in 2003, offering media and technology training and services to nonprofits and individuals in the Denver area...

The Challenge for Non-Profit News Organizations

Posted on December 01, 2009
Non-profit status is often cited as an exciting new option for struggling local news outlets. ProPublica, MinnPost, and the Voice of San Diego are inspiring examples of non-profit startups, while the Christian Science Monitor, NPR and other organizations are all long-standing examples...

Virtual Street Corners Aims to Engage Public, Connect Neighbors

Posted on November 30, 2009
One of the primary challenges of any community art project is how to engage the audience. If no one is lured to participate, the dynamism of the piece is lost. Virtual Street Corners, my Knight-funded community art project, benefits from the fact that there is an element of symbolism due to the respective histories of the two neighborhoods we are trying to connect...

Freedom Fone Comes to Dar es Salaam

Posted on November 26, 2009
Amanda and I have just returned from Dar es Salaam. We were on the road with Freedom Fone. Last Tuesday it was 9 degrees at 9am in orderly Johannesburg and 28 degrees with sweat inducing humidity at 7pm in chaotic Dar. After negotiating the jam-packed arrivals hall we smiled in relief when we discovered John holding up a torn piece of cardboard with Freedom Fone scribbled on it...

The New Journalist in the Age of Social Media

Posted on November 24, 2009
The New Journalist in the Age of Social MediaView more documents from JD Lasica. I'm at Day 2 of a remarkable two-day conference that is bringing nonprofits, citizen journalism and social media together in ways I've never seen before. I'm jazzed, hopeful and intrigued by the challenges ahead...

Journalism, Technology Starting to Add Up

Posted on November 24, 2009
Back in early 2008, as I headed off to a conference at Georgia Tech, I wrote a post for Idealab headlined "Computation + Technology = ?" Two recent developments suggest that we're starting to find answers to that question -- and more importantly, that there's a growing number of people trying to find these answers...

SochiReporter Launches with Time Machine, Wiki Guidebook

Posted on November 20, 2009
I'm glad to say that SochiReporter, my Knight-funded project, launched on October 27. This was a very important day for me, and for our team. We tested SochiReporter for about two months before the public launch, inviting both web experts and users to comment on various aspects of the site...

Citizen Media Law Project Gives Free Legal Help to Online Publishers

Posted on November 19, 2009
I am delighted to announce the public launch of the Berkman Center's Online Media Legal Network (OMLN), a new pro bono initiative that connects lawyers and law school clinics from across the country with online journalists and digital media creators who need legal help...

4th Programmer-Journalist Scholarship Winner Learns to 'Think Like a Journalist'

Posted on November 18, 2009
Manya Gupta, a software engineer for telecommunications companies in her native India, is the fourth winner of a Knight News Challenge "programmer-journalist" scholarship. She's now in her second quarter studying journalism at the Medill School at Northwestern University...

Why it Matters that Pierre Omidyar is Launching a News Startup

Posted on November 18, 2009
Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, is launching a for-profit news startup in Hawaii, where he and his family live. This is important news, and not just because he's involved. A few months ago Pierre and Randy Ching founded Peer News. Their first project was a Twitter-related experiment called Ginx, which didn't get critical mass and is being closed...

Gearing up Citizen Journalism in Grahamstown, South Africa

Posted on November 16, 2009
Low literacy environments, and multi-lingual areas, like Grahamstown, South Africa, face particular challenges when it comes to encouraging citizen journalism. More than 80 percent of the population speaks English as a second language. While most people are able to speak and understand English, writing is not always a comfortable experience (and some are unable to read or write)...

Changes in Media Over the Past 550 Years

Posted on November 14, 2009
Sergii Danylenko and Anna Prymakova asked me to speak about "changes in media over the past five years" at MediaCamp Kyiv last week. It's a pretty standard topic of discussion for me, but I felt that it would be more interesting and more useful to look at changes in media over the past 550 years...

Reporting with Mobile Phones: The Experience of Voices of Africa

Posted on November 13, 2009
(This story was written by Anne-Ryan Heatwole of MobileActive.org.) Mobile phones are the tool of choice for a new group of young reporters in Africa. Voices of Africa Media Foundation, a Netherlands-based non-profit, trains young journalists in Africa to create news videos for the web using mobiles...

Introducing Switch, A News Game About New York City's Energy Gap

Posted on September 30, 2009
Our latest (and last, for now) news game, Switch, is live. It is no Energyville but we think it is pretty awesome. Not only is it live, the source code and installation instructions are already available. With gadgets guzzling evermore energy, New York City faces a looming energy gap...

What Both Sides Are Missing in the Pay Wall Debate

Posted on September 25, 2009
Arguments about paywalls around news content are becoming increasingly dogmatic and ideological. As a result, lots of sensible ideas about how to make money from new models of journalism are being obscured. Not least, how to add value to existing content so it becomes more identifiable, more searchable, and helps lead people "back home" (that's where the Hansel and Gretel theory comes in)...

Citizen Journalism newroom and NIKA CMS launched in Grahamstown

Posted on September 24, 2009
During the massive Highway Africa conference, two Knight Foundation funded projects, the Iindaba Ziyafika ('the news is coming') Citizen Journalism newsroom, and the NIKA Content Management System were launched. The CJ newsroom has 10 computers, the ability to download photos and content from any cellphone (both wireless and through the most amazing collection of cables!) allowing anyone to walk in, write a story, download a photo and get it published on the Grocott's website, or in the twice weekly print edition of Grocott's Mail...

New Citizen Journalism Newsroom Launched in South Africa

Posted on September 24, 2009
During the massive Highway Africa conference, two Knight Foundation funded projects, the Iindaba Ziyafika ('the news is coming') Citizen Journalism newsroom and the Nika content management system, were launched. The Iindaba Ziyafika newsroom has 10 computers and the ability to download photos and content from any cellphone (both wirelessly and through the most amazing collection of cables!)...

Spot.Us Expands to L.A. with USC Annenberg

Posted on September 22, 2009
First: The big news. Spot.Us is expanding to Los Angeles and we are doing so with USC's Annenberg School of Journalism. Needless to say, we are very excited about the opportunities and possibilities. The main Spot.Us homepage will aggregate pitches from both the SF Bay Area and Los Angeles regions...

Journalism teachers get mobil-ised

Posted on September 21, 2009
Online computers, Africans do not have. Cellphones are a different story. So why aren't journalism schools around the continent integrating the use of mobile devices fully and squarely into their courses? It's a question that could also apply in many other places - even in media dense environments...

AP News Registry aims at most flagrant infringers

Posted on September 21, 2009
I left the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association Summit of newspaper publishers and ad managers Thursday just as two executives from the Associated Press were winding up their presentation on the new AP News Registry. The new initiative, announced in July, contains two key components: ? All AP stories will be released online wrapped in a new microsoformat that includes rights info, who created it, etc...

Overcoming Drupal Challenges as SochiReporter Nears Launch

Posted on September 18, 2009
SochiReporter is getting ready to launch on the web and for mobile users. We spent the last three weeks fixing linguistic, technical and design bugs, all with the goal of maximizing ease of use. So far we have drawn a fabulous group of people from both local and virtual communities: garage tech geeks and web schizophrenics, coffee-shop amateurs, and folks who want to use the site and offer feedback...

New Tools For Journalists From TechCrunch 50

Posted on September 17, 2009
Earlier this week, I spent two days at the TechCrunch 50 conference in San Francisco. The conference organizers pick 50 web companies who officially launch at the conference. The overall group was pretty mixed, but a few start-ups offer interesting services or ideas that might be of interest to folks thinking about the future of news and information...

Digital Space - Environmentalism

Posted on September 15, 2009
Looks like digital is the official media platform for all things hip and green. Besides its obvious environmental benefits - digital provides an open space for all breeds of environmentalism to share their message. Below you'll find Beanstockd's compilation and summary of our favorite new green sites - taking a new approach to using digital as a mode to drive awareness and action...

For News Organizations, Transparency is the New Objectivity

Posted on September 15, 2009
Back in the spring, I made an analogy about journalism being a game of chess. On the chess  board of journalism, content is King (the most important piece) but collaboration is Queen (the most powerful piece). To extend the analogy further: transparency is the board itself...

Mobile Projects Shouldn't Overlook 'Dumbphones'

Posted on September 14, 2009
This week, CityCircles (formerly Daily Phoenix) attended a lunch event at Arizona State University that allowed us to have one-on-one conversations with college seniors who were interested in our project. (The event is summarized here.) This was a crucial event...

Look Beyond Data When Considering New Models for News

Posted on September 10, 2009
My post last month -- Future of Local News About More Than Paid Content -- generated some thoughtful discussion and comments. But there was one thread that I want to highlight in order to elaborate on an important concept for news innovators. Before I dive into the details of the conversation, let me summarize my overall point...

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