A number of journalism educators and administrators traveled to Mexico City this past spring to assess the state of journalism in our bordering nation. Unfortunately, more journalists there are being killed than in any other country in the world as they report on drug cartels. While some journalists have had illegal drug dealings to supplement salaries, officials assume all are guilty and do little to solve or protect them. This situation has worsened over the past five years, especially since the free trade agreement has forced many smaller businesses out of business, and the drug cartels have gained a stronghold....
more »Angela Powers
Idea Lab is a group blog by innovators who are reinventing community news for the Digital Age.
Each Idea Lab blogger is a winner of the Knight News Challenge grant to reshape community news.
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The A.Q. Miller School of Journalism hosted an informational meeting with local elected public officials on Wednesday, November 19, to showcase VoxPop, an interactive tool for civic engagement, developed by journalism students through the Knight News Challenge grant. The school is collaborating with the Manhattan Mercury to launch and research VoxPop. The software innovation allows area citizens to contact elected officials regarding local issues in the news. The AQ Miller School of Journalism at Kansas State University was among a consortium of universities awarded a $235,000 grant by the Knight Foundation to develop new ways and technologies that can help...
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Trying to Solve the Civic Media Participation Gap
Knight News Challenge winners are meeting at MIT to discuss the future of civic media. The focus has been on PARTICIPATORY culture and the skills that the youth and others need. Problems that have been identified include the following: Transparency problem: people are swimming in media Participation gap: resources growing in the life of young vs. those who are alienated from the resources. While more information and laptops are available in public spaces, usage and time are limited. Also, users can't store information, etc. Ethics challenge: norms and standards of the journalism profession are still stressed, High school students are...
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Journalism Education and Social Networks
Citizen journalism, the blogosphere, YouTube, Facebook and more...what do these social networks and new media forms have to do with journalism and mass communications? Often they refer to individuals, rather than traditional media organizations, playing an active role in collecting, reporting and disseminating news. * For example, students at Northern Illinois University took to the streets writing, shooting photos and blogging during the hours and days that followed the Valentines Day shooting. Kyle Yataes posted a video on UTube, providing more moving coverage of the events than the local news. Journalism as we know it today is becoming less confined...
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In the end, there's no real trick or black magic to making news valuable: it's about providing readers with what they want to read, as opposed to what publishers think they should be reading.
— Joe Franscella
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