Idea Lab

The Fundamental Problem With Political Cookies, Microtargeting

by Andrew Whitacre
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

The MIT Technology Review recently posted an article titled, "Campaigns to Track Voters with 'Political Cookies." It freaks me out for a reason I'll get to below. From Technology Review: The technology involves matching a person's web identity with information gathered about that person offline, including his or her party registration, voting history, charitable donations, address, age, and even hobbies. Companies selling political targeting services say "microtargeting" of campaign advertising will make it less expensive, more up to the minute, and possibly less intrusive. But critics say there's a downside to political ads that combine offline and online data. "These...

• July 30, 2012
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The Importance of NextDrop's Customer Cycle, and How to Improve Service

by Anu Sridharan
2011 Knight News Challenge Winner

In our last post on PBS Idea Lab, NextDrop, which informs residents in India via cell phone about the availability of piped water, was trying to scale up in a very short period of time. How did we fare? Well, I think we discovered the first step to winning: Just get good data about yourself. Period. Even if it's ugly. Because after admitting there's something wrong, the second hardest part is wading through the mess and figuring out what exactly that is! Let me try to lay out everything we discovered about our service. Customer Side Goal: Bill everyone possible...

• July 27, 2012
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How SahelResponse.org Used TileMill, Open Data to Respond to Food Crisis in Africa

by Nate Smith
2010 Knight News Challenge Winner

To bring key aid agencies together and help drive international response, the SahelResponse.org data-sharing initiative maps information about the ongoing food crisis in the Sahel region of West Africa. More than 18 million people across the Sahel are at risk and in need of food assistance in the coming months, according to the United Nations. Recent drought, population movements, and conflict have created a rapidly changing emergency situation. As in any crisis, multiple agencies need to respond and ramp up their coordination, and access to data is critical for effective collaboration. In a large region like the Sahel, the band...

• July 25, 2012
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Why Code in the Newsroom? New York Times, ProPublicans Answer

by Dan Sinker

As the deadline to apply to become a 2013 Knight-Mozilla Fellow approaches, there’s one question often comes up: Why would I want to work as a developer in the newsroom? There are all sorts of reasons—from being in the room when news breaks, to working with a community of people creating the future of an industry, to helping move civic dialogues into new directions. But the most compelling answers come from the very people doing it. So when I was in New York a few weeks ago, I visited our news partners at the New York Times and ProPublica and...

• July 24, 2012
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How Recovers.org Helps Communities Bounce Back After Disasters

by Caitria O’Neill
2012 Knight News Challenge Winner

You don't speak FEMA? That's OK -- you can still help your community bounce back from a disaster. Last June, a tornado tore the roof off my life -- but to my surprise, recovery did not end with a blue tarp patching the holes. Shortly after the EF3 passed through Monson, Mass., I was pulled into the local organizing movement that sprang up organically. People with needs, donations, axes, stories and casseroles began congregating at a church downtown that had sustained some damage in the storm. Unfortunately, no one knew where to send them, how to match needs with offered...

• July 23, 2012
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A Look Back at News Hack Day SF

by Aine McGuire
2011 Knight News Challenge Winner

This is a guest column by ScraperWiki's Thomas Levine, an awesome data scientist who spends his time roaming the globe finding interesting data and doing stuff with it. Blogging about News Hack Day SF, which brought together journalists, developers and designers for several days of creative news coding and data reporting, is so three weeks ago, but indulge me nonetheless as I brag about what I did four weekends ago. Before the weekend I arrived in San Francisco on Tuesday and stayed with a friend in his crazy warehouse in Oakland until Thursday, attending a nerdy talk every night. On...

• July 20, 2012
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How TileMill Is Mapping Support of the International Justice System

by Dave Johnson
2010 Knight News Challenge Winner

Amnesty International's latest campaign features a map front and center. The Campaign for Global Justice, launched this week on International Justice Day, which celebrates the creation of the International Criminal Court 10 years ago, asks people to demand justice for the victims of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The map, integrated on the campaign homepage, tells the story of where these crimes -- and their perpetrators -- are located as well as countries' support of the international justice system and payment toward reparations. Technology Tells Stories Development Seed worked with Amnesty International's team to design the map using...

• July 19, 2012
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SocMap.com Debuts Map App PublicConsultation

by Kristofs Blaus
2010 Knight News Challenge Winner

As we mentioned in a previous post, this spring we at SocMap.com discovered the best path for further development -- namely, by creating small, specialized map apps. The first application of this kind was our HotBills app, which allowed journalists to reach 2% of the population for their investigation and uncover facts which were mere hunches before. Now we've launched the second map app! PublicConsultation, like the name suggests, is a map app that allows one to hold public consultations on a city map online interface. We developed this app together with ManaBalss.lv, one of the most successful civic initiative...

• July 18, 2012
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DocumentCloud Hiring a Developer to Work on Its Open-Source Software Platform

by Ted Han
2011 Knight News Challenge Winner

We have a lot of projects going on at DocumentCloud, and to serve those goals, we're looking for others to join us! For those who may be unfamiliar with our project, we've included the full details below. DocumentCloud is a web-based platform allowing journalists to upload, analyze, annotate, and publish primary source documents. We want give journalists the tools to show their audience their source material, not just tell them about it. In addition to the newsrooms worldwide that use DocumentCloud, our open-source software projects, such as Backbone.js, Underscore.js, Docsplit, and Jammit, are relied upon by companies such as LinkedIn,...

• July 18, 2012
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Watchup's 'Lasagna Design' Creates a Newsreel on the iPad

by Adriano Farano
2012 Knight News Challenge Winner

It's 7 a.m. You want to catch up with the news on your iPad, but you don't want to jump from one app to another -- tap here, tap there. You just want to discover the best and latest news videos in a snap. Meet Watchup. Available in Apple's App Store, Watchup lets you create your newscast in seconds with a unique tap-and-play interface. We pull up a lineup of your favorite news channels, and all you have to do is tap the clips you want to watch. They get all queued up in a beautiful playlist column, you get...

• July 17, 2012
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