MediaShift Idea Lab tag:www.pbs.org,2009-04-08:/idealab//31 2012-02-10T02:50:41Z Idea Lab is a group blog by innovators who are reinventing community news for the Digital Age. Movable Type Pro 4.37 Funding and the Future of Video Volunteers tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7755 2012-02-10T14:00:44Z 2012-02-10T02:50:41Z This is the final post in a 4-part series in which Video Volunteers is sharing what we've done over the last year, our experiences, and what we've learned. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here. After five years of doing community media in India, we've come to understand what Video Volunteers is good at. We're great at training -- the people we work with keep doing this for a long time after they're trained. And we're great at getting impact in the villages. We know how to produce the content that people in rural... Jessica Mayberry This is the final post in a 4-part series in which "Video Volunteers":http://www.videovolunteers.org/ is sharing what we've done over the last year, our experiences, and what we've learned. You can read Part 1 "here":http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2012/02/how-video-volunteers-created-a-network-of-community-correspondents-in-india027.html, Part 2 "here":http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2012/02/video-volunteers-makes-an-impact-in-india-with-incentives-for-media-makers027.html and Part 3 "here":http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2012/02/video-volunteers-makes-an-impact-in-india-with-incentives-for-media-makers027.html. After five years of doing community media in India, we've come to understand what Video Volunteers is good at. We're great at training -- the people we work with keep doing this for a long time after they're trained. And we're great at getting "impact":http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2012/02/video-volunteers-makes-an-impact-in-india-with-incentives-for-media-makers027.html in the villages. We know how to produce the content that people in rural India want to see; the evidence for this is that people turn up in large numbers for the screenings and actually take action. DSC_0560.jpg The Indian government has several major programs to bring Internet and information to rural areas -- one is the Common Service Centers, a program to bring fiber optic cables to every 10th village; another amazing one is the "$35 video-enabled tablet":http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/201769/indias_35_pc_is_the_future_of_computing.html computer. We think these new government programs can give a huge boost to community media in India, and they can help us scale, provided we create the right partnerships. We're thinking about things like web channels for content aimed at rural audiences for the tablets, and citizen journalism reporting apps. The public screenings on projectors that the people in our Community Video Units do are immensely powerful, but in time, a similar effect will emerge as people are able to share videos in villages over their cell phones and watch them on computers. So far, these programs are conceived as a way to push information out to the rural areas, so the poor get information on government programs and plans. We come in, because we can reverse the system -- we can bring the knowledge and ideas of the poor to the government. We can enable people to produce content for these new distribution pipelines. No one will use them if there is no locally available content. So when we meet government officials, our message is this: Enabling the poor to produce content, to be heard, and to share their own knowledge is crucial for democracy. h2. Why funding matters In Part 1 of this series, I focused on Video Volunteers' work with "IndiaUnheard":http://indiaunheard.videovolunteers.org/, our flagship rural feature service. But many other projects have kept us busy this year: We did a series of trainings for tribals in Gujarat, India on documenting local culture for a local museum; we provided support to a community radio station called "Sramik Bharti":http://www.shramikbharti.org.in/; and we launched a very exciting program with "UNDP":http://www.beta.undp.org/undp/en/home.html in Eastern UP where 20 rural women are trained to use video to monitor their self-help groups and the use of funds that are earmarked for their investment. We received visits from "Semester at Sea":http://www.semesteratsea.org/, the University of Nebraska Journalism school, and several Indian NGOs (non-governmental organizations). We spoke about our work and showed our videos in numerous places: the "WSSCC":http://www.wsscc.org/ international water conference; the Dalit Solidarity Network Conference in Kathmandu; TEDx Mumbai; the India government's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting conference; and the University of Nebraska where I was an "Innovator in Residence." Funding has continued to be hard, and we haven't been able to take on as many new "community correspondents":http://indiaunheard.videovolunteers.org/community-correspondents/ as we would like, because for the last year we've relied a lot on smaller donations that are harder to come by. We find that the obsession with "something new" is making it hard for us to fund projects that we've been running for more than a year, such as our "Community Video Units":http://www.videovolunteers.org/programmes/cvus program, which is 5 years old. However, I've recently met with several foundations that seem to really see the value in creating a model to bring content out of all rural areas, and so I hope we'll be able to make the leap from a $300,000-a-year organization (where we've been for the last five years) to an organization with twice that budget. As I've "said in the past":http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2012/02/video-volunteers-looks-to-mainstream-media-for-growth027.html, the costs of maintaining rural stringers for all of India are relatively low (around $400,000 a year), and we hope that someone will see the value in being able to make information flow from remote areas in a rational manner. Watch a few of our best videos from the year: ]]> How Poderopedia's Future Users Are Telling It What to Build tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7759 2012-02-09T14:00:46Z 2012-02-09T06:18:06Z Miguel Paz http://poderopedia.com Poderopedia. We settled into a large office space in Ariztía Lab, a building with a cultural heritage in the heart of the immigrant area in downtown Santiago, with our friends from Urbz Chile. We hired Rodrigo Guaiquil and Mónica Ventura, two great and experienced journalists who have been hooked on the Internet since 1996, working on news and data-based projects. And we've outlined the milestones and road map to the first alpha release of Poderopedia, a project that aims to promote greater transparency in Chile by creating an editorial and crowdsourced database that visualizes the relationships among the country's political, civic and business leaders. poderopedia-meet.jpg With all that said, I'd like to share what we've learned from the results of our Future Users Survey (a great idea we shamelessly stole from our friends from PANDA):

Future Users Survey Results (en español)
h2. CONTENT VS. FORM

The survey was conducted November through December and distributed online via Twitter and our Facebook page, and was sent to Chilean journalists and the 904 people who were subscribed to our newsletter at the time; 463 people answered the questionnaire.

A summary of profiles and likes and dislikes showed two type of users very clearly: a) journalists interested in the content and b) developers and designers who are in it for the data visualization and how the site will be built.

In the first group of users who are on-board for the content, we discovered that only 26% work in media and content development. Meanwhile, 43% work on strategic communications agencies and PR agencies that are hired by private companies and do lobbying and monitoring of legislative work and government regulation. This could mean that they want to: 1. See what we publish about their clients. 2. Read what we publish about their clients' competition. 3. Find what information we publish about their agency or their agencies competitor. 4. Check information about elected government officials. 5. All of those combined. (That's gonna be fun). h2. TYPES OF USERS As you can see in the slides above (in Spanish): * 90% of our users are from Chile. * 80% of them are men; 20% are women. They come from two big user segments: 54% are between 30 and 44 years of age, and 38% are between 18 and 29.

* Most are working (83%) and educated: 41% have completed university studies; 20% have a master's degree; 14% have enrolled in graduate studies; and 5% have a Ph.D.

* Most work in communications (24%), followed by technology (14%), consulting and advisory services (14%), education and training (12%), and government (6%). * If you break it down in the communications sector, 43% work in communications & PR, and only 26% work in media and content development. h2. HOW THEY FIND DATA ABOUT PEOPLE, ORGANIZATIONS * Most use Google (99%), followed by Wikipedia (80%), Facebook (69%), and LinkedIn (58%). This is followed by digital archives of news websites (50%), global databases (22%), government databases (20%), and private databases (10%).

* Of those who claim to obtain information from government databases, 37% said they use "Gobierno Transparente," a section in each one of the Chilean government websites which list the names of public officials and their salaries and purchases made by each agency. h2. THEY WANT IT ALL We learned that for most users, all of the features proposed by Poderopedia are important: 97% want faceted search and advanced filters; 97% approve of the idea of having profiles; 96% want to view relationships; 70% say they want to collaborate with crowdsourcing, want more transparency, and to understand social networks and possible conflicts of interest; 63% want an API (application programming interface) for developers. And, here is a nice surprise: 88% want Poderopedia to publish journalistic special investigations. h2. SCHOOL DATA Asked about which kind of data would be the most important to include in a Poderopedia profile of a person, most of the users said everything. But where a person studied was the most important thing for them (81%), followed by income (67%), family (67%), friends (65%) and classmates (54%). Schools are relevant because they impact everything else. According to a 2008 study by La Tercera, 50% of Chile's top CEOs and executives come from five private schools: Verbo Divino, Sagrados Corazones, Saint George, San Ignacio and Tabancura. Three of the 15 richest families in the Forbes ranking studied in Verbo Divino, where Chilean President Sebastián Piñera and many members of his cabinet studied. In total, those five schools represent Chile's 18.5% GNP (gross national product) and 0.04% of total country's schools. Social, business, religious and political membership data is also key to our users: 94% want to know about a person's links to public offices and NGOs (non-governmental organizations); 92% are interested in the data of business partners and companies; 81% about social private clubs; and 80% about think tank relations. All this reflects something that we see every day in countries like Chile and many others in the region: Where you're born, your last name, and where you went to school and with whom, very much define your chances in life and reflect on who becomes part of the 0.1% who call the shots in Chile. h2. PERSONAS The user answers also allowed us to create Poderopedia's first "personas" and to conduct several user observations for more insight (as you can see from our messy white board pictured below) in order to start "paper prototyping":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_prototyping.
desarrollo-de-personas.jpg


In this whole process, good work methodologies have been crucial, especially those involving user-centered design by fellow Knight News Challenger winner "Jesse James Garret":http://www.knightfoundation.org/grants/20110148/, and the agile-development-no-meetings-zero-email workshop we took with the guys at Menlo Innovations, thanks to the Knight Foundation. We'll be at SXSW this year, so if you're there, come see us. Here's the schedule of our presentation on civic media in Latin America (hashtag #sxswlatino). We'll have a few surprises. If you want more information or you're interested in getting involved with Poderopedia, please contact us at info (at) poderopedia.com or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.]]> Video Volunteers Looks to Mainstream Media for Growth tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7754 2012-02-08T21:30:25Z 2012-02-08T07:16:49Z

This is Part 3 in a 4-part series in which Video Volunteers is sharing what we've done over the last year, our experiences, and what we've learned. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here. In August, the Video Volunteers staff attended an amazing program called the Global Social Business Incubator at Santa Clara University, where we developed a new business plan focused on income from the mainstream media. Our idea is to have one rural reporter in each of India's 645 districts, set up like a rural stringers network, to deliver a pipeline of high-quality, low-cost human... Jessica Mayberry This is Part 3 in a 4-part series in which "Video Volunteers":http://www.videovolunteers.org/ is sharing what we've done over the last year, our experiences, and what we've learned. You can read Part 1 "here":http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2012/02/how-video-volunteers-created-a-network-of-community-correspondents-in-india027.html and Part 2 "here":http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2012/02/video-volunteers-makes-an-impact-in-india-with-incentives-for-media-makers027.html. In August, the "Video Volunteers":http://www.videovolunteers.org/ staff attended an amazing program called the "Global Social Business Incubator":http://www.socialedge.org/features/gsbi at Santa Clara University, where we developed a new business plan focused on income from the mainstream media. Our idea is to have one rural reporter in each of India's 645 districts, set up like a rural stringers network, to deliver a pipeline of high-quality, low-cost human interest content to television stations. The maintenance costs of such a network, once it's set up, would be relatively low -- about $300,000 a year for 645 rural correspondents, or about the cost of 20-30 television producers in Delhi.  Ultimately, we feel that the recruitment, training and generation of impact will need to be supported by philanthropy, but that production and distribution should be taken care of by the market. We made significant progress in 2011. In May, NewsX, the Indian network, broadcast our 13-part series called "Speak Out India." We sold them eight stories a week, and they produced a show around it. It was the first time we know of where a mainstream news company has paid for content produced by people living at the so-called base of the pyramid, and the successful run of that show has given us a successful track record with the media. The problem was, they only paid us the stringer rate for the stories, so about 1,500 rupees ($30) when our costs of production are more like 8,000 rupees ($160). Our next goal was to see if an Indian TV channel would sign a contract with us for a similar amount of content each week (about 30 minutes) at our fully loaded cost of production for a 3-minute story. Hence, Video Volunteers' earned income goal for the end of this year was $100,000, or about 40% of our total budget. This would still be significantly lower than the costs of a TV station doing these stories themselves. In the last three months, we've made two trips to Delhi and Mumbai to meet the TV channels, and the response has been very enlightening. So far, we've met about half of the top 20 English or Hindi news channels. They all like the content. They find our "community correspondents":http://indiaunheard.videovolunteers.org/community-correspondents/ full of energy, and feel that our flip cams are generating adequate quality. The fact that India is in the throes of an anti-corruption movement is a really good thing for us, because we have lots of great corruption stories that they want. So far so good, in that they clearly are saying, "We'll run this content." This is a big step from a few years ago, where _everyone_ we spoke to said we were crazy to think TV stations would run stuff produced by poor villagers.  all CVU Photos - 3853.jpg h2. The Rural Newswire As for the idea of a "rural newswire," they also get the concept. One senior person at "CNN IBN":http://ibnlive.in.com/agency/CNN-IBN.html said, "It's a well-known secret in Indian media that abysmal stringers are a huge problem." The chief executive of CNN IBN has talked in media interviews (including when he's been interviewed about Video Volunteers) about the "tyranny of distance," and how the remote areas of the country are often prohibitively expensive to cover. Someone at a government channel even told us that our idea couldn't work with the government channel "because all our stringers are political appointees!" But despite all this, we're not sure they're ready to pay for quality. One producer at a news channel here who was really championing us internally said, "I'm pitching this as a high-quality stringers network. Everyone knows our stringers are awful, but the problem is they are OK with bad quality." Bottom line at the end of our first 10 TV station meetings: Stations will take our stuff for free. They would probably also pay us the stringer rate -- but not necessarily the fully loaded cost. So now we're working with one station that's going to try to find a corporate sponsor, and will probably be the first mainstream media contract to materialize for us next year. h2. Online Distribution Helps Thankfully, the Internet is a space where we can produce and publicize our content without depending on a broadcaster. We are currently publishing one video a day on our site, which is searchable by issue, region and community correspondent. The good news is that we've doubled our viewers over the last six months. The less good news is that the numbers are still low. We're going to start tweaking our format to show the back story and the trials and tribulations of the community producers more. We've set aside one day a week, Wednesday, to publish impact videos -- this will have an impact on us in terms of fundraising! And we hope to start producing our own podcasts where we club together videos on a particular theme and have someone in our office as an anchor. We now have more than 450 edited 3-minute videos on every conceivable issue of human rights, poverty alleviation, and local culture. We're sitting on a gold mine of content, and now the fun starts of repackaging it and seeing what themes emerge and getting others to comment on the content. We're confident this will work, because when our content is on other platforms that get traffic, it does very well. We're now partnered with several online companies, namely MSN, "Rediff":http://www.rediff.com/, "Viewspaper":http://theviewspaper.net/ and "ViewChange.org":http://www.viewchange.org/. The partnership with Rediff is particularly promising; our first video with it got 100,000 views and loads of comments. We also reach greater numbers of people through commissioned film projects. We've been hired this year by several organizations to gather stories or footage, such as: the one day on Earth project; YouTube's Day in a Life project; and the Red Cross, for whom we produced "12 videos on hunger":http://www.videovolunteers.org/projects-2/ifrc-and-vv-the-hunger-videos in rural India that they're using in campaign events around the world. We've also gathered stories of climate change for our partner organization Laya; "stories of development-induced displacement":http://indiaunheard.videovolunteers.org/category/videos/forced-evictions/ for Witness; stories on domestic violence for Breakthrough; and on local farming for the Gene Campaign. Our correspondents gathered "recce" footage on caste for one of India's major production companies, and got answers from dozens of people to the question, "Are You Happy?" for a film project replicating Jean Rouch's seminal 1961 movie "Chronicle of Summer."

Are you happy? - from Jharkhand from Video Volunteers on Vimeo.

Stay tuned for our fourth and last post of the blog series, in which we'll discuss our other activities and programs and our vision for the future.]]> Knight-Mozilla Partnership Morphs into Knight-Mozilla OpenNews tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7762 2012-02-08T14:00:02Z 2012-02-09T17:37:37Z Change is awesome -- it's a necessary component to anything remaining vital and a required ingredient to facilitate organic growth. And so it's with real excitement that today I'm announcing changes to the Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership. Before we get to the changes, some quick background: Conversations around the original partnership began in 2010, with the program launching at the start of 2011. That means that the program design, by necessity, reflected 2010's problem sets. Two years is an eternity on the Internet -- it was time to rethink and retool for today. The community around code in journalism is... Dan Sinker https://drumbeat.org/en-US/journalism/ Before we get to the changes, some quick background: Conversations around the original partnership began in 2010, with the program launching at the start of 2011. That means that the program design, by necessity, reflected 2010's problem sets. Two years is an eternity on the Internet -- it was time to rethink and retool for today. The community around code in journalism is vastly different today than in 2010: There are a number of app teams in some of the world's best news organizations that embrace the "show your work" philosophy of open source; organizations like "Hacks/Hackers":http://hackshackers.com/, "NICAR":http://ire.org/nicar/database-library/, the "Online News Association":http://journalists.org/, and others are embracing the idea of hackfests and code-driven collaboration; and independent developers are starting to become interested in hacking journalism in earnest. These are awesome developments -- this community is vital and growing. The changes to the "Knight-Mozilla Partnership":http://mozillaopennews.org/ for 2012 engage this larger community in meaningful ways: * We're helping to sponsor and organize more than a dozen "hackdays" around the world this year. Hackdays are one of the best ways to get developers from all over to experiment with the idea of coding for journalism, and a great way to get some open-source code back into the community. * We'll be increasing the opportunities for online learning that address the needs of the high-end developers we want to get interested in journalism, as well as a separate track for journalists who want to start becoming webmakers. * We're also developing a stand-alone site, Source, dedicated to shining a spotlight on the vital work going on in the journalism code community through case studies, walkthroughs, tutorials, code snippets, and much more. * Of course, the biggest element of the partnership, our Knight-Mozilla Fellowships, stays a vital center to the program. And in 2012 it grows -- from five year-long fellowships to eight. There are some other changes in store for the fellowships as well -- that'll be a topic for a blog post of its own soon. These aren't small changes -- they alter what we're doing in a lot of exciting ways. In fact, they're big enough that we decided a new name and identity was in order. So the Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership, also known as MoJo, is no longer -- "welcome to Knight-Mozilla OpenNews":http://mozillaopennews.org/. A new year starts right now. A version of this post first appeared "here":http://sinker.tumblr.com/post/17207538743/the-knight-mozilla-partnership-evolves. ]]> A Deep Dive into the Boston Globe Online and the Future of Print tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7760 2012-02-07T14:00:39Z 2012-02-08T19:41:12Z A version of this post first appeared on MIT's Center for Civic Media blog. Updated: Our recent Civic Media lunch at MIT featured the digital team from the Boston Globe, led by Jeff Moriarty, vice president of Digital Products. He was joined by Chris Marstall, Marck Chang, and Grace Woo. They've just launched a new standalone site for the Globe, spinning off from the Boston.com portal and its ubiquitous pop-up ads. It's not a redesign -- they got to design a newspaper site from scratch in the year 2011, and the benefits of having a blank slate are evident in... Matt Stempeck http://civic.mit.edu/ A version of this post first appeared on "MIT's Center for Civic Media blog":http://civic.mit.edu/blog/mstem/freed-from-pop-up-ads-can-the-boston-globe-succeed-online. **Updated:** Our recent "Civic Media lunch at MIT":http://civic.mit.edu/events featured the digital team from the Boston Globe, led by "Jeff Moriarty":https://twitter.com/#%21/jeffmoriarty, vice president of Digital Products. He was joined by "Chris Marstall":https://twitter.com/#%21/marstall, "Marck Chang":https://twitter.com/#%21/mchang, and "Grace Woo":https://twitter.com/#%21/radishpower. They've just launched a new "standalone site for the Globe":http://bostonglobe.com/, spinning off from the "Boston.com":http://boston.com/ portal and its ubiquitous pop-up ads. It's not a redesign -- they got to design a newspaper site from scratch in the year 2011, and the benefits of having a blank slate are evident in their award-winning design. ("Here's more background":http://upstatement.com/blog/2012/01/finding-the-look-feel-of-bostonglobe-com/ on that design from some of its designers.) globe.png Like most things in Boston, the Globe has a rich history with many innovations throughout the years. Moriarty talked about "Charles H. Taylor's":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_H._Taylor_%28publisher%29 prototypical content innovations in 1873, when the Globe added sports coverage, stocks, and many other sections that we now consider essential to a modern, family newspaper (and sections we may not expect today, like a separate section for women). Screen Shot 2012-02-02 at 5.04.05 PM.png "Boston.com":http://boston.com/ launched in 1997, and is one of the largest regional websites in the country. "BostonGlobe.com":http://bostonglobe.com/ launched in 2011 to great accolades for its use of modern code and responsive web design. The new design also came with a new pay wall. The Globe's strategy has been closely watched to see if a regional paper can convince online readers to pay for content (versus The New York Times' success as an international brand). Three months after going live, the newspaper has acquired 16,000 digital subscribers, making it the most successful paid website launch yet in the United States. Traffic on the new Globe site is much higher than anticipated. They're seeing actual usage of more than 1 million users a month, and two distinct audiences have emerged. The newspaper audience skews older, with traffic spikes in the mornings and evenings as people sit down to read at length. Boston.com, meanwhile, is visited primarily by members of Generation X, who check it throughout the day, and is geared towards more page views, with photo galleries split across 10 pages. "John Davidow":http://www.wbur.org/about/administration of WBUR notes that there's currently only one ad on BostonGlobe.com. It turns out that the Globe sold out of all of the available ad positions in their first quarter. Demand and page views have each been higher than anticipated. h2. A Portal or a Newspaper? Before splitting the newspaper from the portal, Moriarty's team researched customers' brand awareness. Boston.com and the Boston Globe are both considered up to date, local, and community-focused. But readers like the Globe to be authoritative and serious, with a traditional journalistic mission, while Boston.com users expect a more dynamic, personal, and entertaining experience. For almost 15 years, one website strained to reach both audiences. Many Boston.com visitors didn't even know the Globe was associated with the site. This led to the development of a two-brand strategy, culminating in a standalone site for the newspaper with its own pay wall, which went up in November of 2011. Sports and other features are still free on Boston.com, but the 300 professional journalists in the Globe newsroom generally publish behind the pay wall. Surveys showed that paying readers wanted curation from editors, not a livestream of endless content. The hierarchy of news is important to paying customers: We pay for newspapers because someone else has done the thinking of what's most important each day, and printed it on the front page in the appropriate size font. But what happens to the portal? Boston.com is also evolving: It's still free and heavily advertised upon. Some Globe content still gets "unlocked" on Boston.com, especially sports news. Boston.com now features a Groupon-style Deals section and more e-commerce. Since the newspaper split off, they've expanded their selection of content to 50 additional sources other than the Globe. But Boston.com is still trying to figure out the new normal, now that the Globe has split off. What role is there for a regional portal site in 2012? h2. Responsive web design The site was designed from scratch with the understanding that mobile is the future, and new designs and websites should adapt naturally to whatever size screen you're using. This design movement was sparked by Ethan Marcotte (a.k.a. "unstoppable robot ninja":http://unstoppablerobotninja.com/) and "his manifesto":http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/ on the changing nature of web design. Screen Shot 2012-02-02 at 5.06.36 PM.png In the Globe's case, responsive web design meant building six different versions of the site, starting at 1,200 pixels, and working down through traditional monitor sizes, the iPad, the Kindle Fire, and mobile phones. The easiest way for a rookie to understand responsive web design is to go to the Globe's website, grab the diagonal corner of your browser window, and drag it back and forth, watching the content magically realign at your whim. The site also detects and allows for your device's unique features like swipe capability and offline storage features. The goal is an app-like experience within the browser. The benefit is a single codebase to rule them all, not to mention that all of your traffic is going to the same URL, which has proven great for search engine optimization. h2. Why doesn't everyone build sites like this? It's still an emerging concept, and advertisement blocks pose challenges to the dynamic resizing. Like Google, the Globe team has placed their bets on the browser winning over apps in the mobile space, and HTML 5 has made more things possible. Few sites have implemented responsive design this aggressively, so the Globe team came across some new challenges. They had six months and two development teams, "Filament Group":http://filamentgroup.com/ and "Upstatement":http://upstatement.com (and many working weekends). It's still one of the most aggressive implementations of the responsive web design concept. Future plans include making the site feel more app-like and offline use more natural. The Globe team feels like the browser lets them do most of what they want to do, as they don't need deep integration into the device's operating system. The goal across the site is to let the journalism shine. They showed us some nice shrinkable galleries and 360-degree exploratory tools, none of it using Flash. h2. A Playlist for News The Globe team paid close attention to how users acted on the Globe website. They noticed that people have a habit of opening many tabs of stories they want to read, and then progressing through them, closing them as they go. This discovery informed the design of My Saved, a sort of playlist for news content. Users have saved 60,000 stories across the site so far. My Saved was built using the somewhat obscure Erlang programming language and Mnesia database, which allowed for high performance across every page on the site. Facebook Chat was built using the same languages. h2. Social Media The Twitter accounts for the "Globe":https://twitter.com/#%21/bostonglobe and Boston.com combined have grown from 300,000 to 600,000 followers in the last year. They send out 30,000 tweets a month, and using "TweetReach":http://tweetreach.com/, they estimate they reach 20 million accounts each month. Two genres of tweets have emerged at the Globe. First, there's people following reporters because they're interested in the beat. Then there's the tweet-of-the-moment at live events like the "Whitey Bulger":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_Bulger proceedings inside the courthouse, where cameras weren't allowed. They sought to capture details of the experience, from what kind of shoes he was wearing to the nature of his interaction with his establishment "brother":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_M._Bulger. News reporters outside the courthouse ended up reading the Globe's tweets on air. The live tweeting genre has posed new questions about what's appropriate for a news outlet to write, for example, at former "Mayor Kevin White's funeral":http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2012/02/outstanding-mayor-and-gentlemen-vignettes-from-former-kevin-white-funeral-procession/60tL6DiKdW54TzVOx8CNvJ/index.html. The procession might be fair game, while a tweet from inside the service would trigger a #toosoon tag. h2. Man, or Muppet? puppets.jpg Another transparency solution to courts barring television cameras comes from WOIO in Cleveland, where they've used "puppets to re-enact transcriptions from trials":http://www.cleveland.com/countyincrisis/index.ssf/2012/01/jimmy_dimoras_trial_spawns_the.html. This leads to the obvious conclusion that we need a Bulger puppet, and likely a whole series of open-sourced public figure puppet designs (see also: "NMA News":http://www.youtube.com/user/NMANews, "Bradley Manning puppet show":http://breadandpuppet.org/lubberland-national-dance-company, and BBC's "The Hour"). In some seriousness, MIT Center for Civic Media's Ethan Zuckerman noted, puppet lampoons work because it's really hard to do TV reporting without video. You need actualities to be able to report an event, or it doesn't get reported. Pastel court sketches don't do very well on TV these days. h2. Data Journalism Reporters like "Matt Carroll":http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/bios/carroll.htm have helped lead the Globe into the open data era. The Globe has produced data-driven investigations like "Boston's Worst Towing Spots." In a feature like this one, an investigative team might spend weeks on a story, where some of that time is spent developing the dataset. What starts with public government data might develop into Carroll doing a stakeout in Allston. Screen Shot 2012-02-02 at 5.09.45 PM.png Another data-driven news feature is the Globe's timeline of neighborhoods fragmented by public school divisions. As a parent in Boston, choosing a school for your child can be a stressful affair, as we previously learned from Nigel Jacobs at the "Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics":http://www.newurbanmechanics.org/. NUM's approach was to dramatically improve the school lottery website, while the Globe built an interactive feature showing the radii of school districts with a neighborhood map overlay. Other interactive pieces include an interactive audio piece where visitors can try their hand at a school spelling bee, and a timeline of occupy protests. The aforementioned paywall has made finding and linking to these features burdensome. h2. Competition Among Government, Journalists and Civic Hackers This brings up the question of partnerships, fragmentation, and who maintains civic apps once they're built. "Nick Grossman":http://wrkng.net/, managing director of "Civic Commons":http://civiccommons.org/, pointed out the "Discover Boston Public Schools":http://discoverbps.org/ app built by "Code for America":http://codeforamerica.org/, and wondered who will sustain the app. The Globe team responded that, as a newspaper, these questions generally interest them intensely, but only for a short period of time, while Boston.com and the government have different needs. The Globe is, however, planning a Hack Day Challenge with Mozilla, Harvard Business School, the Department of Urban Mechanics, and others in town. They're also building their own MBTA app using the public data, and expect it to be one of the best available. The Globe also uses data to make intelligent decisions about content placement on the website. They have a tool that overlays clickthrough rates on the site, and as one might expect, their editors closely monitor these numbers throughout the day to determine which stories should get promoted. It has become one of many data points that goes into the editor algorithm. The team lives by testing early and often. The My Saved feature came about this way, and user studies have shown that because BostonGlobe.com looks so much like a newspaper, visitors are often unclear that it's being updated frequently. The website is live, but the Globe team is focused on innovating up, down, and across the chain of news gathering and distribution. beta.boston.com showcases some of these experiments. h2. Real-time News The overarching goal is to be ubiquitous across Boston, no matter what screen you're looking on, in real-time. Chris showed us some real-time visualizations of Boston, some of them built by Grace Woo and the "Viral Spaces group":http://www.media.mit.edu/research/groups/viral-spaces here at the Media Lab. Grace also works in the Globe Lab. She took a real-time feed of geotagged "Instagram":http://instagram.com/ photos and got them to pop up over a map of the city. The result was a very raw, honest window into Bostonians' lives: People don't necessarily know that their pictures are public when the submit them to Instagram. Tools like this replace the editor, and we see people's self-reporting of their lives rather than breaking news: their new pants, their latest meal, live events. The Instagram map has to account for the fact that people in different areas of the city produce real-time data such as Instagram photos at varying rates. The MIT section of Cambridge, Mass., for example, uploads far more frequently than less tech-driven areas of Boston. The Globe team has also built what they call "tweets on a pole." Six screens on a pole display what their people are discussing, what their competitors are saying, and so on. (Like "Festivus":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festivus, the pole sometimes displays grievances.) The team is looking at various kinds of data they can use to tell the story of Boston in real time. They're curating Twitter lists for individual events, such as a Patriots game. There are roughly 200 people in the newsroom, including a social media editor, who curates these lists. Ethan brought up "SwiftRiver":http://ushahidi.com/products/swiftriver-platform, a system that tries to deal with multiple information streams when you have a rapidly breaking event. This platform is designed for an event in Syria with no one on the ground and 200 semi-anonymous incoming streams. How do we take the flood of information and weight and prioritize them? The Globe teams imported "Cascade":http://nytlabs.com/projects/cascade.html from the "New York Times Lab":http://nytlabs.com/. (The Times owns the Globe.) It shows how tweets and other content proliferates across the Internet. You see a tipping point where sharing explodes. The Globe is starting to apply these features to advertising products, but they can't go into detail on that yet. h2. More Fun Projects Another project, "Shim":https://github.com/marstall/shim, allows you to load and view the same page on multiple devices at the same time. Node.js acts as a proxy that lets you take a bunch of devices and connect them all to one access point. They all stay in sync with one browser. (Click on a link on one, and all seven go to the link.) As you may have guessed, this project was developed while building the six versions of the new website. It lets news producers quickly see how a layout might work on, say, an iPhone. Given the significant advances they've made in the emerging field of responsive web design, someone in the audience asked if they've though about open sourcing the design. They have, and, as a for-profit enterprise, they've also considered commercializing it. Paper Eye lets people share articles with their phone by taking a photo of the physical newspaper. You take a photo of the print headline, and it fetches the digital link for you to share. Grace told us that Optical Character Recognition actually performed very poorly, so they're simply matching the headline against a finite database of headlines. The New York Times is using Paper Eye now as well. It could defeat the ugly QR code, and serve as an in-between technology, for those Sunday mornings when you're actively avoiding your laptop while you read the paper, but still want the link to the article you just read. I can't find it online, but Grace has built similar technology with Travis Rich, Stephanie Yu, and Andrew Lippman with "NewsFlash":http://pixels.media.mit.edu/newsflash/.

NewsFlash from Travis Rich on Vimeo.

h2. Journalists as Jacks of All Trades Like other content industries, the news business has seen enormous fragmentation in devices and reading habits. Someone in the audience asked how the Globe manages where stories appear. On the production side, reporters are now writing stories with a web-first mentality. By default, stories now must include metadata and geo-coordinates. The first version of history is now written as a blog post, and may or may not go to print. The editors have tried to divorce content creation from its final destination. At this point, that means ensuring that a traditional news article needs to have useful metadata, like location. Reporters now have to tweet, take video, write a story or blog post, and essentially act as jacks of all trade. The Globe has hosted trainings on individual skills as well as trainings on how to integrate all of these demands into your limited bandwidth at the scene of a story. h2. Local Expert or Global Citizen? As a native Bostonian, growing up with the Globe every morning, I'm excited when I see the rest of the world linking to its content. By far the most common feature I see linked to elsewhere on the web is "The Big Picture":http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/, the Globe's high-resolution photoblog. But otherwise, the trend among newspapers is to focus on local content at the expense of global coverage (see, for example, this "Media Standards Trust paper":http://mediastandardstrust.org/publications/shrinking-world-the-decline-of-international-reporting-in-the-british-press/, which found that international reporting had decreased in every measurable way, while overall newspaper content doubled). The pressure is on the side of writing for a more local audience. When information is available a tab away, are people going to turn to their wire story on Russia? Big Picture was an anomaly, as it was so early, and so good. The blog receives comments from around the world instantly after publishing a new post, as it features very global content. Ethan noted, "from experience":http://globalvoicesonline.org/, that while it's very hard to start up a global news service, the local space is also extremely competitive. But, he asked, don't you lose anything in the long run by focusing mainly on local content? Bennie, Boston Globe's managing editor, responded that the world is a big place, and that "New England is big enough for us." The Globe's readers trust them to curate and deliver what they need to know. A traffic jam at 6 o'clock will be a big headline on Boston.com, but not BostonGlobe.com. The Globe has withdrawn from foreign bureaus, and now considers their Washington bureau their best stab at contributing to international press coverage. They focus on areas of core strength, like former Massachusetts Gov. (and now GOP presidential frontrunner) Mitt Romney. h2. Does it come in pulp? The team says that the print edition of the Globe is here for the foreseeable future. Digital products have good margins, given that they're not shipping dead trees around town, which is why the Christian Science Monitor moved entirely online. The Times and Globe still see demand for a print version, but may need to price it differently to account for the cost of delivery. The extremely recent shift in people being willing to pay for apps and websites is an encouraging development (their words), and one that might hasten the demise of the print edition (my words). The Globe saw 2 million visits from iPad users in January, representing 5% of Boston.com's traffic. As baby boomers pick up e-readers and tablets, print subscriptions might fall off beyond the point of profitability. Correction: This post incorrectly stated the number of the Globe's Twitter followers. The Globe and Boston.com Twitter accounts combined have grown to 600,000 followers. ]]> OpenRural Takes Public Records Out of the Attic and Onto the Web tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7758 2012-02-06T14:00:23Z 2012-02-08T07:11:49Z Storing paper records in the attic of a police station might sound like a practice from the distant past, but that's what I learned happens in at least one rural North Carolina county. In fact, good old-fashioned paper copies of public records are still common in rural parts of North Carolina. Part of our job here at the OpenRural project at UNC is to somehow get that paper out of the attic and onto the web, and do it in a way that's financially sustainable for the staff of small papers. To find out just how often records are stored... Eliza Kern http://openblockproject.org/ To find out just how often records are stored only on paper, I talked to officials in nine police departments in three rural counties and found that paper was the format that many of the departments -- and records requesters there -- preferred. At four of the departments, police incident and arrest reports are handwritten. But we also found that every single one of the departments is highly digitized when it comes to internal records management. Employees at about two-thirds of the departments stated emphatically that they do not post any information on the Internet -- as though it would be bad public policy to do so -- and would only provide the information in print format if someone asked for it. The driving force behind the creation of digital records isn't an interest in making public information widely available, but the ease of filing monthly data to the State Bureau of Investigation and sharing information with other agencies. Only two departments -- Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro -- post any digital information online. North Wilkesboro pays a Utah-based company called "CrimeReports.com":https://www.crimereports.com/ to post an index of its records on a map and Wilkesboro makes some of its reports through "PoliceReports.US":http://www.policereports.us/, where visitors are asked to pay $2.50 for each copy of a record. Because of the lack of transparency, though, it's impossible to determine whether records are being redacted or even withheld entirely. h2. paper still makes the cut Even though digital records play an important internal role in most rural police departments, paper isn't giving up without a fight. There were only two agencies -- the sheriff departments in Columbus and Wilkes counties -- that I could determine are truly paperless. In fact, in three police departments where records both started digitally and were transmitted outside the station in digital format, the records were printed out and filed using paper somewhere in the process. One secretary described printing and hand-filing every police report, explaining that when the year is finished, she boxes up the reports and takes them to the police station attic. Those pages destined for the attic are the records that local journalists, insurance agents and attorneys request and receive. These interviews with local law enforcement have begun to reveal the scope of the public records portion of the OpenBlock Rural project. Even if we wanted to scrape the websites of police agencies, there isn't anything to scrape. On the other hand, it appears pretty likely that a good deal of digital records are going to be available to us. State law requires that public records must be provided in any format in which they are available and that agencies cannot use the need to redact some information from the digital file as an excuse for prohibiting access to any of it. Eight of the 13 agencies in our sample all manage their records using a Microsoft SQL Server application built and maintained by "Southern Software":http://www.southernsoftware.com/blog/2012/01/05/rms-2/, which already has a function called something like "export for media." It also should be relatively easy to export data from the Microsoft SQL database to a CSV format that can be easily parsed by OpenBlock. When we asked the Columbus County Sheriff's department for incident and arrest reports in a digital format, they were very helpful in our initial meeting. But we're not out of the woods yet. One police department has balked at giving us digital records. And there's still a ways to go between getting one day's worth of records and figuring out how to set up a system that's sustainable both for local government and newspapers. The good news is that we're not going to have to spend too much time in the attic. Image courtesy of Flickr user Sonrisa Electrica.]]> Video Volunteers Makes an Impact in India with Incentives for Media Makers tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7753 2012-02-03T14:00:05Z 2012-02-03T03:15:32Z As part of a 4-part series, Video Volunteers is sharing what we've done over the last year, our experiences, and what we've learned. Part 1, which you can read here, was a basic introduction to IndiaUnheard, our flagship rural feature service. Part 2 outlines new ideas we implemented into our training programs in 2011. For instance, we set incentives for our community correspondents in India. This triggered a series of valuable positive changes for the communities concerned. Incentives work In October, we held an advanced training session for our strongest community correspondents which focused on activism and getting "impact." (To... Jessica Mayberry h2. Incentives work In October, we held an advanced training session for our strongest community correspondents which focused on activism and getting "impact." (To us, "impact" means that the community correspondent is able to resolve the problem the video addresses.) We told them we had decided to incentivize impact. They would be paid 5,000 rupees (approximately $100) -- more than twice the regular stipend -- for an "impact video," which means they would make a video; show it locally to get the issue solved; and make another documenting that process and proving the impact actually took place -- and for that second video, they would get the 5,000 rupees. Some amazing impacts happened this year: In Orissa, "illegal timber smugglers":http://indiaunheard.videovolunteers.org/sarita/deforestation-wreaks-havoc-on-climate-tribals/ were stopped by local villagers. In Mumbai, a factory was forced to clean its pollution. In Assam, politicians released desperately needed water to villagers. Rather than be turned away, Dalit children got help in village child centers. Expectant mothers received folic acid which had previously been withheld. And, in one area, some 600 women for the first time were paid minimum wage. These are just some of our stories. You can watch our "impact videos here":http://indiaunheard.videovolunteers.org/category/videos/impact/. h2. Recruitment is challenging Our goal is to have 645 community correspondents, or one in every district of India. We had to think hard about how we could quickly scale up if we needed to. Our first two rounds of recruitment for "IndiaUnheard":http://indiaunheard.videovolunteers.org/ was through our existing network. We sent emails asking people to nominate someone from the villages they work in and then to help them fill out the online application. We got a few hundred applications that way and thought we could keep doing it like that. But when we tried for the third round, the number of eligible applications was low (though the overall applications were higher than previous years). Maybe we had tapped out our existing network. So how could we quickly scale up? Possibly through big non-profit institutions (like microfinance). We are reaching out to them now. h2. Choose the right geographies For our first two rounds, our goal was to get one or two people in every state. Now that we've almost done that, we're going to focus on key regions we feel are "unheard." Last month, we took about 20 new community correspondents from Jharkhand. We chose Jharkhand because it is part of the so-called "Red Corridor":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_corridor where there is a "Maoist":http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Chhattisgarh/Maoists-creating-new-Red-corridor/Article1-655091.aspx insurgency taking place. In the future, we'll look at the North East where other separatist movements are taking place, and Kashmir. (Those two areas were out of our budget this year.) My colleagues Kamini Menon and Stalin K. spent two weeks traveling around this area meeting the activists and doing the recruitment; this live recruitment is making recruitment easier and will also make retention higher because the 13 new correspondents, each representing one district in the same state, can support each other. h2. Partnerships are challenging Two years ago, when our Community Video Units were our primary focus, we felt that we could scale this network through investments from NGOs (non-governmental organizations). We've realized that co-ownership is very difficult and can at times be a hindrance to innovation. We now feel that we can scale better through partnerships with the mainstream media, rather than NGOs, and so for that reason, a huge focus this year has been on ensuring the content can work for both a local community and outside audience. From our "Community Video Units":http://www.videovolunteers.org/programmes/cvus, we've learned a few other things: One is that a model where people are paid only when they perform is better than the Community Video Units model, in which the six or seven people who work together on a film are given a monthly wage. h2. Women produce more Two observations we are thrilled to see: Women produce more, and retention is higher with the underprivileged. It suggests that journalism really is an appropriate livelihood for the poor. We started to see that with online recruitment, we had selected certain people whose incomes were clearly higher than they had told us on the phone. Live recruitment in extremely remote areas of Jharkhand will help get the correct balance. h2. The amount they can produce is low We ask correspondents to produce two videos a month. They produce on average one or less. One reason is that being a journalist is difficult; it takes a lot of personal courage to confront officials and ask people private questions. They can spend a whole day on a bus getting to an official who then won't see them. They have to take care of their families, too. I learned this year about the concept of "businesses in a box" and franchises, such as rural women selling solar lamps or soap sachets, and I discovered that we should make the process as simple and step-by-step as possible. But journalism is simply harder than selling soap. We also ask them to produce tough stories that they have to research and which take time, unlike stringers, who are told to "go film this event and send us the footage." This means that our "cost per story" is higher than we would like. But we also aren't taking huge steps to increase their productivity right now, because we don't yet have enough buyers to support a huge level of production. h2. Choose the right people to train The fact that we put such effort in selecting interesting people to train is a huge asset for us. Our new batch of correspondents includes people whose personal stories are, in some ways, the story. We have two boys from Kashmir who have seen the insurgency; a young man whose sister was the first dowry death in his state; women who have experienced sexual violence and have the courage to speak about it; and a good representation from the North East, including one young man who got the first footage of a particular insurgent camp because he's from that area. In our training, we teach them that their power as a community correspondent will come through using their personal experiences and connections to the issues. This is what they have that no professional, no outsider, can ever replicate. They learn that they themselves must speak out, and speak personally, if they want their communities to do so, too. Good training is not necessarily scalable. (That's another thing that we learned in 2011 -- that the training aspects of our work will always be expensive because education doesn't have a lot of economies of scale.) But it is the most valuable investment. You can watch a video from our trainings "here:":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcPfSkgsCHk Stay tuned for **Part 3** of this series, which will focus on our modes of online and offline distribution and our experience with earning income from partners and the mainstream media. ]]> The Other Side of Entrepreneurial Journalism tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7757 2012-02-02T14:00:31Z 2012-02-05T22:46:35Z A version of this post first appeared here. It is yet another Carnival of Journalism (our one-year anniversary). The Carnival is a network of bloggers I reinvigorated who all write a response to a different question every month. This month's question comes from Michael Rosenblum: "Can a good journalist also be a good capitalist?" A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak at the Cronkite School of Journalism in Arizona by my friend and mentor Dan Gillmor. It was a gathering of journalism professors from around the country who are going to build their own curriculum to teach entrepreneurial... David Cohn http://spot.us A version of this post first appeared "here":http://blog.digidave.org/2012/01/the-other-side-of-entrepreneurialism. It is yet another Carnival of Journalism (our one-year anniversary). The Carnival is a network of bloggers I "reinvigorated":http://carnivalofjournalism.com/about/ who all write a response to a different question every month. This month's question comes from "Michael Rosenblum":http://www.nyvs.com/blog/user/michael/How-To-Make-Millions-As-A-Journalist: "Can a good journalist also be a good capitalist?" A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak at the "Cronkite School of Journalism in Arizona":http://cronkite.asu.edu/ by my friend and mentor "Dan Gillmor":https://twitter.com/#!/dangillmor. It was a gathering of journalism professors from around the country who are going to build their own curriculum to teach entrepreneurial journalism. Dan asked me and "Mark Luckie":http://www.getluckie.net/ to come speak about our experience going from J-school to startup. It's a different career path from many, and the point is to show professors that it's a viable path. Without a doubt it is a real path. I've been living it for so long (even before "Spot.Us":http://spot.us/ I had been working on "experimental projects") it doesn't even seem like a question to me. Sometimes I am seen as a poster-boy for entrepreneurial journalism. And on those occasions I'm happy to evangelize what is a totally viable path. But one of the professors at the Cronkite J-school gathering asked a very important and a totally fair question. I'm paraphrasing here: _"I know it's a real path, but it can't be all butterflies and kittens. What are the tradeoffs? What are the hard parts of going down this route? I don't want to send off students without a healthy dose of reality."_ Sometimes those of us who have drank the entrepreneurial Kool-Aid like to point out success stories and perks without mentioning just what you have to give up to go this route. I wouldn't change a thing about the career path I've chosen. It has absolutely worked out for me. But if I were to advise a younger me -- I would be remiss in my egoistic duties if I didn't convey both sides of the question "should you go out on a different kind of career path." There are plenty of positive things I would say. I often shout out about how awesome it is to start your own project, blog, company, nonprofit, etc. But that's not the purpose of _this_ blog post. I'm playing the contrarian so that our Carnival isn't one big "yes we can"-fest. With that in mind, there are **three** big areas that somebody who is thinking of going out on this path should keep in mind. h2. 1. There is a time burden I used to joke "that the Internet doesn't sleep and so neither can I." I've gained some wisdom on how to balance certain aspects of work/life but if you have gone out on your own to start something up it is not a 9-5 job. It is not a Monday-Friday job. "**What you gain in freedom, you lose in free time.**" h2. 2. There is a mental burden The buck stops with you. There is no "boss" to complain about. If things have taken a turn for the worse, the only person you can blame is yourself. In fact, as other people start to rely on you for a paycheck it becomes an even bigger mental burden. You don't want to let anybody down. You must learn to live with that mental pressure. **What you gain in potential reward you lose in mental security.** h2. 3. There is a path burden It is a career path. Once you start walking down that road, it is difficult to go back. When I made the choice to go down this path I was a hardworking tech reporter. I have followed some of my tech-reporting peers and admired their careers. In fact, my replacement at Wired is still there holding down a solid job. It is a path I could have gone. If I wanted, I could still go back to being a reporter/writer -- but after several years being out of that game, I'd have to do some backtracking. I'd have to work underneath that guy at Wired (ironically enough, I interviewed/hired him). I'd have to sharpen my skills again. It is difficult to go back. **Moreover -- you might not want to go back.** There is a bit of the "take the blue pill or the red pill" aspect to striking it out on your own. As you probably picked up -- there is an upside to all of these downsides. As with most things in life it isn't black/white. There are shades of grey and you have to be prepared to paint with those shades. It's amazing what you can do with only a few colors. grey.jpg Image courtesy of Flickr user ConnectIrmeli.]]> How Video Volunteers Created a Network of Community Correspondents in India tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7752 2012-02-01T14:00:26Z 2012-02-02T17:35:48Z The state of technology today means that nearly every village in the developing world could have someone -- a local changemaker -- who broadcasts his or her issues to the world. It's commonplace today to hear people say the world is flooded with content and that "everyone" can now be a producer. At every community video training that Video Volunteers conducts for people from marginalized communities in India, more and more people are showing up with $15 Chinese-made video-enabled cell phones. It's now possible for rural people without data connections to send tweets via SMS. In India, the government has... Jessica Mayberry The mere presence of information technology, like the "800 million cell phone connections":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_India in India, does not ensure local content creation. If you search the names of most remote Indian villages on YouTube, nothing will appear. If you search them on Google itself, never mind YouTube, most of what appears is raw government data. Content is produced by a small group of people, and the world's poor, in particular, are producing virtually zero digital content. Content continues to be made by the "drivers" for the "driven." Video Volunteers is seeking to change this one-sided status quo; we're posing as a question the statement with which I started this post: _What would it take for every village in the developing world to have someone -- a local changemaker -- who broadcasts that village's issues to the world?_ How can one provide the training, support and human connection for some of the world's most underprivileged communities to feel that their voice matters? Over the last year, we've re-strategized our programs and revamped our business model in the search for a truly scalable model of community media. As part of a 4-part series, I'll be sharing what we've done over the last year, our experiences, and what we've learned. This has relevance to people interested in numerous issues, from improving the quality of journalism, to understanding how communications between government and its citizens can be two-way rather than one way, and increasing the quantum of good ideas the world has for tackling poverty. In this post, **Part 1**, I'll be giving a basic introduction to "IndiaUnheard":http://indiaunheard.videovolunteers.org/, our flagship rural feature service. In **Part 2**, I will share what we learned in 2011 on how to make community media a sustainable enterprise. **Part 3** details our distribution plans and strategies to earn revenue from the mainstream media. **Part 4** looks toward the future. h2. A network of community correspondents IndiaUnheard is Video Volunteers' network of community correspondents. In February 2011, we took in our second batch of "IndiaUnheard community correspondents":http://indiaunheard.videovolunteers.org/community-correspondents/, bringing the total number of community correspondents to 52, 45 of which are still with us. They now cover 24 states in India and 45 districts. The basic model is as follows: * We recruit grassroots activists through a network of social movements and NGOs (non-governmental organization.) * The basic criterion is that the candidates be economically poor and also have a history of volunteerism and a strong sense of belonging to their community. This is to ensure that they'll stay committed to producing the videos of the stories their communities say need to be told. * We only work with socially marginalized and oppressed communities -- Dalit, Tribal, religious and sexual minorities, and women. * We train them for two weeks at an intensive training camp in video activism, journalism ethics, and television news-style production. * We give them each a low-cost HD video camera. Cisco has recently donated 500 of them, and we are very excited. * They return to their villages and produce at least two videos a month. * They come up with stories from their own village and in neighboring villages in their district. * They each work with a mentor in the Video Volunteers office. Every senior staff member mentors 5-7 community producers, advising them once a week by phone on their stories. * They shoot their stories, go to an Internet cafe, and transfer the footage to DVD, which they snail-mail us to our office in Goa. * It's an entrepreneurial model where they are paid on a per-video basis. We pay them what we know the Indian media pays its stringers, or its local freelance reporters. A team of editors in the office edit the stories. * They are then posted on our "website:"http://www.indiaunheard.videovolunteers.org where we broadcast one video a day, accompanied by an article, which is generally written by a research intern. Once the video is online, the community correspondent can download it from the Internet and start using it to get an impact in her village. Meanwhile, from our office, we can start the next level of distribution to mainstream media and other NGOs. In the longer term, this low-cost, innovative model is a way for every village in the developing world to have someone trained to use the latest technologies to advocate for their rights. There are now video-enabled cell phones in all corners of the world, and a model like IndiaUnheard can enable these technologies to be used to capture human rights violations and bring them to the attention of the world. "Here's a video":http://youtu.be/nE1KWvjs-_g compiling different sound bites from the community correspondents. You can watch more videos "here":http://indiaunheard.videovolunteers.org/. Stay tuned for **Part 2** of this series, in which we'll discuss what we've learned about what makes community media a sustainable enterprise. ]]> TileMill Now Lets You Design Maps for the Web on Windows tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7756 2012-01-31T19:47:22Z 2012-01-31T22:54:05Z TileMill, the free and open-source design studio for creating beautiful web maps, is now available for download on Windows. With the latest release, the map-making tool is fully operational on the three leading operating systems: Windows, Mac, and Linux. With Windows still dominating the marketplace, this is a huge development that will open the door to many more users being able to use TileMill to make custom maps. This was possible because Node.js, the blazingly fast open-source software that's at the core of TileMill, recently gained Windows support. Quick Start To get started making custom maps with Tilemill, download the... Bonnie Bogle [TileMill](http://mapbox.com/tilemill), the free and open-source design studio for creating beautiful web maps, is now available for [download on Windows](http://mapbox.com/tilemill/#windows/). With the latest release, the map-making tool is fully operational on the three leading operating systems: Windows, Mac, and Linux. With Windows still dominating the marketplace, this is a huge development that will open the door to many more users being able to use TileMill to make custom maps. This was possible because [Node.js](http://nodejs.org/), the blazingly fast open-source software that's at the core of TileMill, [recently gained Windows support](http://developmentseed.org/blog/2012/jan/13/tilemill-on-windows/). ![](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7168/6691482483_7fb1e5ceca.jpg) ## Quick Start To get started making custom maps with Tilemill, [download the latest release](http://mapbox.com/tilemill/) and follow the installer directions to quickly get set up on any Windows XP, Vista, or 7 computer. TileMill is a desktop application that you can integrate into existing GIS workflows or use on its own as a design tool. [Take the tour](http://mapbox.com/tour/) to see what features it offers, and check out [documentation](http://mapbox.com/tilemill/docs/) for details on getting started designing maps. ## A 20-Minute Crash Course in TileMill We also just published a new [crash course](http://mapbox.com/tilemill/docs/crashcourse/introduction/) for TileMill that covers the entire map making process -- from preparing data to publishing a map online -- in short, easy-to-follow tutorials. This is a hands-on introduction, walking through the four main steps for making interactive maps. In roughly 20 minutes, you will have created your first map in TileMill while touching upon the four critical aspects of a typical project. ![Crash course for TileMill](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7011/6790469445_e23f9643e6.jpg) Along with some introductory information about how to use and maximize making maps with TileMiill, the crash course walks through: 1. [Importing a basic spreadsheet](http://mapbox.com/tilemill/docs/crashcourse/point-data/) 2. [Styling a basic point map](http://mapbox.com/tilemill/docs/crashcourse/styling/) 3. [Adding tooltips and legends](http://mapbox.com/tilemill/docs/crashcourse/tooltips/) 4. [Exporting maps and sharing them on the web](http://mapbox.com/tilemill/docs/crashcourse/exporting/) ## Community support If you have a question or problem that isn't covered in the help documentation, or have other feedback, start a conversation with us in the [support forum](http://support.mapbox.com). For updates on new documentation and other news, watch the [MapBox blog](http://mapbox.com/blog/) and follow us [@MapBox](http://twitter.com/mapbox) on Twitter. After Crystal Cox Verdict, It's Time to Define Who Is a Journalist tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7751 2012-01-31T14:00:08Z 2012-01-31T22:54:34Z Last month, the Crystal Cox verdict re-energized a debate among journalism's most passionate and articulate thought leaders and professionals by begging the question: Who is a journalist? Just about anyone with a laptop or cell phone can use free technology to create quality media and reach audiences larger than any newspaper or television network. Indeed, we are all publishers now. But are we all journalists now, too? Never has technology unraveled an industry so fast that its professionals no longer agree on what it is that they do. It's not surprising; the sharp line between journalist and non-journalist is so faded that few... CJ Cornell http://metapreneurship.net the Crystal Cox verdict re-energized a debate among journalism's most passionate and articulate thought leaders and professionals by begging the question: Who is a journalist? Just about anyone with a laptop or cell phone can use free technology to create quality media and reach audiences larger than any newspaper or television network. Indeed, we are all publishers now. But are we all journalists now, too? journalist.jpg Never has technology unraveled an industry so fast that its professionals no longer agree on what it is that they do. It's not surprising; the sharp line between journalist and non-journalist is so faded that few can see it anymore. If someone happens to be at the right place at the right time and captures a significant event on his cell phone, it will be newsworthy to some audience. At the moment he tweets the image, does he magically transform from a bystander into a journalist? If he is an employee of The New York Times, most would have little trouble classifying him as a journalist. But if it also was his very first uploaded photo, then really what is the difference between the NY Times employee and the bystander? Who is the journalist? Thought leader and colleague Dan Gillmor insists we've been asking the wrong question:
The way we frame this discussion is important. When anyone can publish, I'm often asked, who's a journalist, anyway? That's the wrong question, I believe. The vastly more relevant issue is this: What is journalism?
In other industries, the problem would resolve itself once the technological chaos subsided and a new world order emerged. Journalism doesn't have that luxury. The Crystal Cox case again highlighted what is at stake: the special legal protections that allow journalists to do their collective jobs. At the other end of the spectrum is the charming sentiment that everyone is a journalist. h2. One Less Journalist In a recent popular article, GigaOm's Mathew Ingram  asked the question: "If we are all journalists, should we all be protected?" I reject the premise. We are not all journalists. In fact, I may be the only remaining person in America who is not a journalist, despite making some of the same motions: I've been blogging since 1995 (when the creator of Wordpress was still in elementary school); I've written and published scores of papers and articles; I've worked for a few major media companies, and spent a few years on the faculty of the Cronkite School of Journalism. Yet I am certain that I am not a journalist. Being formally educated in engineering, business and behavioral economics puts me about as far as you can get from the field of journalism. Perhaps for this very reason, my outsider's perspective might add some unique fuel to this debate. First, I commend journalists on one unexpected bit of subtle collective behavior: Despite  witnessing the rapid demise of newspapers and broadcast news industries,  journalists -- far more than any profession -- have been particularly welcoming of the new class of content creators and publishers. Any other industry would have branded them as amateurs and interlopers -- blogging, tweeting or uploading on YouTube. Journalists have joined the newcomers in embracing new media, experimenting and extending journalism's frontiers without any class distinctions. Other professions, especially those being affected by new technology, typically close ranks and erect many kinds of barriers to protect their closed societies from newcomers fast-tracked by technology. Not so, with journalism. Journalists seem to be genuinely happy that technology allows everyone to participate in their craft. But this virtue is also the heart of the problem. h2. Why does it matter? Journalism and journalist: Many argue that the definitions don't matter. As long as my activities and their effects are the same as a professional journalist, and I am "committing an act of journalism," then I too am a journalist, they argue. Sooner or later, we either must agree on definitive answers or forever throw our hands up and declare: "It doesn't matter." It matters. The Crystal Cox case reminds us that journalists need special protections, as a part of their work, to ensure their sources remain confidential. Occupy Wall Street represents countless examples where journalists are granted special access. Do we grant self-described "citizen journalists" access to the White House? Travel along with Air Force one? As long as there needs to be special protections and privileges, it matters. As long as there is a need for standards of quality and ethics for journalists, it matters. And because it matters, we need to define "who is a journalist," and by logical extension define "what is journalism?" h2. Other Professions As an engineer, I've seen my field(s) disrupted and again empowered by technology that is cheap, available and easy to use. There were loud objections to technologies in the hands of "non-engineers" (for instance, not everyone is thrilled with the prospects of journalists coding sophisticated software and web applications). Despite the proliferation of easy-to-use tech tools, certain fields of engineering (as with medicine and law) are still subject to rigid standards and licensing in order to determine who can represent themselves as a member of these professions. We immediately can see the logic: Few people would want "citizen physicians" performing brain surgery, nor would we want merely any techie with a working knowledge of AutoCad to be building drawbridges or passenger planes. In most cases, the professional standards are determined by the leaders and working professionals in these fields, and recommended to the licensing boards. All the certifications require academic degrees, rigorous exams, and a track record of apprentice-like work (e.g., residency) before one is granted the special rights and privileges that comes from being a recognized professional in these fields. Why should the qualification of journalist be any less clear cut or less rigorous? And yet, journalists seem to pride themselves on inclusiveness and lauding the category of citizen journalist. Gillmor and his contemporaries stress the "acts of journalism" define the journalist. Intuitively, this seems to make perfect sense, but it certainly doesn't apply to any other field. As one person (Craig R) commented in response to Ingram's article: "Journalism is a trade, one that is learned through cadetships, training and study. I just painted my bedroom at home, that does not qualify me to be a painter." And yet another (Rick Gregory) pointed out: "Short answer? We're not all journalists. Longer answer ... if the term covers everyone with a pulse it has no meaning."   People from all sides of the debate seem to agree at least that some definitions are needed. Today there seem to be three camps, or "theories"  for trying to define journalism and the modern journalist. h2. The 'Infinite Monkeys' Theory If I take enough video or photos, eventually I might capture something an audience might find newsworthy. For instance, if I am constantly shadowing the police with my camcorder rolling, I may capture an officer treating a suspect harshly -- fodder for a "caught on tape" abuse story. For the first 100 hours, I am just a annoying stalker, until I get that 30 seconds of video -- then am I a journalist? Before the first 100 hours, how is one to know the difference? This camp maintains that the result is the defining evidence. If an accidental journalist happens to tweet important breaking news because his house happens to be in the flight path of a rescue mission, should he be afforded the same rights and protections as the professional journalist? The emphasis of this theory is on the relatively skill-less talent of being at the right place and time -- blogging or taking enough video until you capture something noteworthy: pretty much the same strategy employed by anyone who has ever posted a cat video. As journalists, perhaps you can set the bar a little higher? h2. The 'Magic Hat' Theory While the Infinite Monkeys Theory defines the journalist only by the outcome of a relevant journalistic act, it does so regardless of the intent, the skills or work ethic. But very often we need to identify the journalist before the start of the journalistic act, or before the result is published. New media technology has nearly eliminated the practical requirement that someone needs an affiliation with a publisher in order to be considered a journalist. Thus, anyone with a free WordPress account can "hang a shingle" and call themselves a journalist and publisher. Once this person puts on the magic hat of "journalist," or uses an injket to print a "press badge," how does one know the difference between the journalist and the non-journalist? Once someone puts on the magic hat of journalist -- are they magically qualified to write about anything or anyone as an expert and with impunity? Most other professions that affect the public's well-being have a higher bar to guard against self-described practitioners -- in order to maintain a higher quality of standards and ethics. The citizen journalists camp is often with the Magic Hat Theory -- where anyone with a business card can call themselves a journalist. As journalists, shouldn't the bar be a little higher? h2. The 'Anointed Priests' Theory Here, the title of journalist is bestowed by the government or some other authority. From then on, every journalistic action is under special protections and enjoys special privileges. I am pretty sure my journalist friends would quickly point out the First Amendment threats apparent in the Anointed Priests Theory. The prospects of having some committee or board dictate journalism would send some of them running to the Second Amendment to prevent this from happening. But these fears would be overstated. Being recognized by an "authority" as a journalist would not prevent anyone from creating content or publishing -- it would only determine who has special legal protections. And regardless of whether anyone wants this, by default, it is the way our system works today -- except that the authority is a legislature or a judge. But the Anointed approach doesn't have to be a court, a government or even a small committee. Many other professions have formal peer review processes that serve the same purpose. The Bar association is a perfect example. The scientific community in almost any field has peer review systems that serve similar functions. Why not for journalism? Even bartenders and auto mechanics have some official requirements to pass before becoming a professional. I get it. Even the remote possibility of blacklisting and censorship keeps journalists awake at night. But an official designation of some kind would also serve to provide a standard of ethics, integrity and quality -- giving the newcomers some standards and the courts a unified criteria for identifying journalists. As we were reminded recently, if journalists don't re-sharpen that line that separates the professional journalist from "other," then the courts will continue to do it for them. We already have a model for peer reviewed "certification" for journalists. Most journalism schools are accredited by a board that's composed of journalism educators and professionals. They define the standards and requirements for graduating a student with a degree that says "journalism." I am not suggesting that the journalism degree be the official legal designation for journalist. Arguably most of history's greatest journalists never had a journalism degree, but this was during an era where the publisher defined the journalist, when working for a newspaper, broadcast radio or TV network defined the journalist. Today, journalists are no longer exclusively defined by their relationship to a publisher -- despite the many courts still clinging to this anachronistic definition. If journalism is "in the eye of the beholder" then soon the definition gets too diluted to have meaning. Journalists are still guardians and champions of freedom of the press. You should collectively, assertively and quickly define the profession of journalism. If not you, who else? Image courtesy of Flickr user Lichfield Live.]]> 5 Keys to a Killer Presentation tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7746 2012-01-30T14:00:38Z 2012-01-31T18:39:50Z Two and a half years ago, I co-founded Stroome, a collaborative online video editing and publishing platform and 2010 Knight News Challenge winner. There are a lot of uncertainties in the startup game. But one thing is for sure: When it comes to presenting your product to potential investors, customers and partners, you're always on stage. We first unveiled our platform at USC Annenberg's pioneering Program for Online Communities in the fall of 2009. Nearly three years -- and probably a hundred presentations later -- we're still showing off our wares. Recently, I was asked by Jason Nazar, founder of... Tom Grasty http://www.stroome.com/ This article is the fifth of 10 video segments in which "digital entrepreneur Tom Grasty":http://www.docstoc.com/profile/thomas-grasty talks about his experience building an Internet startup, and is part of a larger initiative sponsored by docstoc.videos, which features advice from small business owners who offer their views on how to launch a new business or grow your existing one altogether.]]> The Front Line of the U.S. Censorship Battle Is Behind Bars tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7750 2012-01-27T21:30:00Z 2012-01-30T05:35:23Z A longer version of this post first appeared on MIT's Center for Civic Media blog. In our ongoing quest to trace the outline of the phrase "civic media," we began the Center for Civic Media's 2012 lunch series with Paul Wright, editor and co-founder of Prison Legal News, and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center, the non-profit umbrella which publishes PLN. PLN operates in a unique media environment, where the very act of distributing a magazine to their customers might first require winning a lawsuit. You see, their primary audience is made up of prisoners themselves. Prison Legal... Matt Stempeck http://civic.mit.edu/ A longer version of this post first appeared on MIT's Center for Civic Media blog. In our ongoing quest to trace the outline of the phrase "civic media," we began the Center for Civic Media's 2012 lunch series with Paul Wright, editor and co-founder of Prison Legal News, and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center, the non-profit umbrella which publishes PLN. advertise_ad.jpg PLN operates in a unique media environment, where the very act of distributing a magazine to their customers might first require winning a lawsuit. You see, their primary audience is made up of prisoners themselves. Prison Legal News is the longest-running publication put together with the help of people who are incarcerated, and since its first issue in 1990, it has become a critical resource for discussing issues facing these populations. It's an independent, monthly magazine that reviews and analyzes prisoner rights, court rulings, and news about prison issues. PLN focuses on state and federal U.S. prisons, as well as some international coverage. Paul himself has become a distinguished advocate on behalf of the U.S. population. Asked whether we could blog his talk, Paul responded, "Secrecy is the antithesis of publishing." h2. From Newsletter to National Publication Prison Legal News started as a newsletter, in 1990, covering only Washington state's prisons. It was 10 pages and hand-typed for 75 subscribers. It launched into the publishing world with a $50 budget. The organization was completely volunteer-run until 1996. The first run of six issues ended up becoming a 22-year, 224-issue run (and still going). Some of their earliest subscribers are still with them -- a great sign for the publication's longevity, but a less great reflection of these subscribers' sentences. PLN's perseverance has paid off: In 1990, there were 30 or 40 prisoners' rights news publications, but many have since ceased publishing. Prison Legal News has expanded its coverage as its subscriber base expanded. At one point, they realized they had more subscribers in California than in Washington, and that they had graduated to a national publication. Yet Paul considers himself one of the few people in print publishing these days who welcomes competition. He wishes there were other publications and institutions engaged in this work. Prison Legal News is not light reading -- there's no horoscope, no advice column, just hard news and information. But that's what their customers want. An annual reader survey draws a 30-40% reader survey response, and the feedback is consistently asking for more useful information rather than lighter fare. There was a publication in the 1990s called "Prison Life," which covered prison life and the prison experience, and they were somehow surprised when they were unsuccessful, because prisoners would rather not read about this in their leisure time. An expansion into book titles has focused on self-help and non-fiction reference books for prisoners, especially titles that aren't viable for traditional book publishers. Paul mentions books including "How to File a Lawsuit and Win," and books on hepatitis C (a dangerous health threat within the incarcerated population). There's great interest in books on health, including "Our Bodies, Ourselves," which Paul notes has been banned in some prison systems. They also provide "radical critiques of the criminal justice system", including edited volumes titled "The Celling of America," "Prison Nation" and "Prison Profiteers." Paul notes that the books reach a different audience than the magazine, that there are people who prefer reading the long form of arguments. h2. Who Reads Prison News? Prison Legal News is a niche publication. It's not trying to reach the whole incarcerated population of the U.S. It's targeting activists and lifers interested in improving prisons. Paul said they want to reach the activists, the 1% of people who make change. Men are 95% of the U.S. prison population, and make up a higher percentage of PLN's readership compared with women. Paul attributed this to the fact that women generally receive shorter sentences, and their subscribers tend to have long sentences ahead of them. Paul has found that it's the people who are in prison for a long period of time that make things happen. These are the lifers, the ones filing the lawsuits and organizing other prisoners. These are people who have accepted that prison is their life now, and who are working to do something to improve it. There are around 7,000 subscribers to the print publication, but the reach is much broader. Reader surveys suggest that copies reach more than 10 prisoners each -- Paul estimates a readership of 80,000-90,000 readers. Additionally, the website gets around 100,000 visitors per month. The subscriber base includes judges, court officers, lawyers, journalists and academics, including Noam Chomsky, who Paul told us proudly was one of the first subscribers. All the big investment banks subscribe, Paul told us, because they follow news on the private prison industry. "I was happy when Lehman Brothers went under, but we lost a subscriber," he said. Lehman Brothers had been one of the biggest bankrollers of the private prison industry, so it was a happy day when they went down. h2. Publication Litigation A big focus these days is making sure the target audience in prisons can actually receive the magazine. This requires extensive litigation. Prison Legal News has obtained consent decrees in nine states, ordering state prisons to deliver the magazine. PLN is currently litigating in New York and Florida to enable subscribers to receive their publication, both the magazine and the books they publish. Almost every state's prison system has censored and banned the magazine at one point or another, Paul told us. The organization has won nine lawsuits, receiving consent decrees that order state prison systems to deliver the publications. The bans are generally pretextual. They're bans based on postal rates used to deliver magazines, or whether prisoners are allowed to pay for the magazine from their trust accounts. Sometimes there are arbitrary blocks on sending publications to prisoners in certain types of custody. In Washington, PLN discovered they needed to become an "approved vendor" and had a very difficult time figuring out "who's brother-in-law we had to work with" to gain "approved vendor" status, Paul said. It's not just PLN getting banned. In one case, in South Carolina, the American Civil Liberties Union had to sue when a prison banned all books except the Bible. These pretextual excuses can get pretty absurd -- Paul is currently facing an argument that the staples used to bind the magazine might be used as dangerous weapons. While we think it's funny, these are the issues PLN is forced to litigate (marshal the resources to sue the government, and win). "Think of every magazine held together by staples, delivered by mail. TIME, Newsweek. We're the only publisher in America who routinely challenges this censorship," he said. Many of these rules are designed to prevent prisoners from having material to read, far beyond PLN's magazine. It would help if other American publishers would join in the fight to ensure publications are able to reach prison populations. When an Indiana judge upheld a ban on gay publications "Out" and "The Advocate," Paul asked the publishers to file suit, because it would stand up better in court than a suit from a prisoner. But publishers aren't seeking the prison population. "They tell us that they're not part of our targeted advertising demographic," he said. For PLN, the core audience _is_ prisoners, and there's no point in publishing if the core audience can't get it. In recognition of this, they realized that funding staff attorney positions was a priority. I noted that some critics of PLN have argued that it's as much a litigation platform as it is a publication. Paul countered that "our initial goal was always just to publish the magazine. But we got to to the point where we're just consuming ever greater amounts of organizational resources just getting the magazine into prisons." Paul estimated that he can spend as much as 40% of his time focusing on being able to distribute the publication, rather than producing and editing it. "The editor should be worried about being (an) editor, not worrying about why one prison system or another is censoring content," he said. For there to be any litigation, the government has to illegally censor the magazine, then PLN has to sue, and then they have to win. "If you don't like the consequences, don't break the law," Paul said. h2. Isolation from Society Restrictions on what can be sent in and out of prison harm PLN in another way: It makes it very hard to hear from the incarcerated. In some prisons, prisoners can no longer send or receive information beyond what fits on a postcard. Other layers of draconian restriction include rules that postcard communication has to be in ink, can't use a label, etc. These mechanisms tend to be arbitrary and are designed, Paul argued, to prevent prisoners from having communication to and from the outside world. His organization has challenged a couple of these successfully, with a couple more pending. Paul told us that they are trying to nip this trend in the bud before it gets entrenched. "Part of the goal is to get prisoners information. But conversely, we want to hear from them," he said. The bulk of the magazine's content is provided by contributing writers, who are mostly prisoners, some of whom have been working with PLN for over a decade. In the hopes of ensuring widespread distribution of the information, PLN doesn't demand exclusive publishing rights -- and people are free to copy and disseminate the information. This is an area of close overlap with one of the Center for Civic Media's projects, "Between the Bars." BTB is a blogging platform for prisoners that gets around the lack of Internet access by scanning and publishing letters to a blog, and then mailing comments back to the authors on postcards. In addition to helping the incarcerated publish to the web, it helps the rest of the U.S. population by ensuring that we are able to hear from these voices, who comprise 1% of our entire populace. h2. Prison News Online The Internet has greatly improved the visibility of Prison Legal News. Paul told us he conducts 3-4 interviews a week about the publication and the issues it raises. He's fluent in Spanish and noted that there's a great deal of interest in these issues from programs in Colombia and Venezuela. One of his associate gives interviews in Russian media, which seems to have an endless appetite for stories about the U.S. prison system. Some have observed that the U.S. prison system must be pretty bad when the Russians enjoy making fun of it. The online presence of the magazine has allowed PLN to build a publication library online, with more than 6,000 documents available in its Brief Bank. "We've got the biggest, and I would say, the best, repository of prison documents online," Paul said. As a result, PLN generally shows up in Google's first page for prison-related queries, except sometimes when the "Prison Break" program is on TV. At the same time, few prisoners have access to the web from their cell. Six prison systems allowed web access in 1990, but by 2000, that number was zero. Paul noted that not one of the prisoners who took part in a program to learn to use computers receded.

Prisons can be a bit of a timeless place, said Paul, where the equipment you see is 50-60 years old. PLN's print publishing business still thrives here (advertising levels for the print magazine are actually going up), and web publishing is almost nonexistent. PLN hasn't figured out how to make money online, like other publishers. Its content performs poorly with online advertising. On the site, the news content is free, legal content is paid, and these fees cover basic staff time put into the site. Advertising and subscription income and book distribution bring in about the same amount. Payroll is the biggest expense. They get some foundation funding and donations, and when all of this revenue is cobbled together, it's enough to move forward. h2. Staying Human The acts of reading and writing are core to helping prisoners maintain their humanity, especially when everything else in these punitive systems is working to degrade that humanity. A publication like PLN lets prisoners connect with others, when the rest of the system is designed to isolate and alienate. Paul is wary of the dehumanization that takes place before genocides and in prisons. We lose sight of the people in prison. We need to keep in mind that they're someone's father, someone's son, regardless of what they've done. When someone's been murdered in a prison, it's almost always that person's mother who calls PLN. Paul closed his presentation by noting that he's now 264 issues into this project, and that since 1990, "everything to do with the criminal justice system, by objective or subjective standard, has gotten worse." This post was written with Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT. For more information about PLN, see their Frequently Asked Questions and get in touch.

]]> How Journalists Are Using FrontlineSMS to Innovate Around the World tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7745 2012-01-27T14:00:22Z 2012-01-27T00:55:05Z So much can be said in 160 characters. As we've started to look at tailoring FrontlineSMS software for journalists, we've realized just how much potential there is to use text messaging as a news source. As FrontlineSMS's community support coordinator, I interact every day with people and organizations that are using SMS in innovative ways. Increasingly, I've come across uses of FrontlineSMS as a journalistic tool, and this is particularly exciting for us as we embark on building new mobile tools to help increase media participation in hard-to-reach communities. FrontlineSMS is a free and open-source tool, so its most interesting... Florence Scialom http://www.frontlinesms.com/ FrontlineSMS is a free and open-source tool, so its most interesting uses have always come from motivated, engaged users who discover and experiment with ways to use SMS to improve what they do. When we talk about using SMS for journalism, some people immediately jump into thinking about how they could cram an entire newspaper into 160 characters. Obviously, that would be a bit tight. What our users have found, however, is that there are lots of ways to use shorter communication to enable effective journalism. In fact, FrontlineSMS users regularly demonstrate how a wealth of information can fit into 160 characters. It's through the creative ingenuity of our users that the impact of using SMS as a news sharing tool really comes to life. The following are some examples of our users that answer the question: What difference can SMS make for the media? h2. texting into radio shows "Equal Access":http://www.equalaccess.org/ is an innovative organization focused on using media and technology to help support development. In Chad and Niger, Equal Access runs interactive community radio shows that feature topics such as politics and religion and discuss how to overcome community tensions. With listeners keen to discuss these topics, Equal Access needs an accessible way to manage regular audience interaction. FrontlineSMS enables users to manage large numbers of incoming and outgoing SMS, providing the ability to view multiple messages on-screen, set up auto-replies, and divide contacts into groups depending on their interests. Using these functions, Equal Access sets up a way for audiences to text into its radio shows, and is able to effectively manage incoming audience text messages while on-air. The Equal Access team talked about the value of this in a "guest post":http://www.frontlinesms.com/2011/09/13/a-powerful-combination-radio-and-sms-promote-open-social-dialogue-in-chad-and-niger/ on our blog, saying, "We use FrontlineSMS to create interaction ... and this shows listeners that they are being heard. In closed communities, or those struggling with violence or intolerance, the act of engaging in an interactive dialogue ... can help people feel engaged and included." Equal Access' use of SMS demonstrates that 160 characters can be enough to enable audience engagement. And it's not just radio audiences that engage in this way (although the combination of radio and SMS is prominent, as seen through our work on "FrontlineSMS:Radio":http://radio.frontlinesms.com/). h2. Raising AIDS awareness In the Democratic Republic of Congo, SMS has been used to engage opinions from audiences of a television drama broadcast called "Rien que la Vérité" (meaning "Nothing but the Truth"). One of the aims of this broadcast, which isn't just your standard entertaining drama, is to raise awareness and challenge stereotypes on HIV/AIDS. Viewers of "Rien que la Vérité" were given the option to interact with the show's producers via text message. In this case, hearing from the audience via SMS helped demonstrate whether opinions on HIV/AIDs are being affected by the show's content. For both Equal Access and "Rien que la Vérité," using FrontlineSMS software enables more efficient audience interaction, making text messages easier to manage, respond to, and analyze. Ongoing audience interaction is clearly important, and in today's changing media landscape the audience is now a major news provider, too. Even in areas where there's no Internet connection -- where the power of social media has yet to reach -- citizen journalists are still playing a key role in the production of media content. h2. breaking news in 160 characters Harry Surjadi, a Knight International Journalism fellow, is enabling citizen journalists from remote offline communities in Indonesia to break news in 160 characters. Surjadi has used FrontlineSMS to set up a system in which incoming reports from citizen journalists can be forwarded via SMS to groups of subscribers who would not necessarily have access to news from other sources; the result is a truly innovative and powerful SMS news service which is "proving successful already":http://www.icfj.org/news/new-mobile-sms-service-helps-indonesian-villagers-hold-company-accountable. The system is run with Ruai Citizen Journalism Training Center, part of a local television station in Indonesia called RuaiTV, and was set up with support from "Internews":http://www.internews.org/. Surjadi's motivation in setting this system up was to enable remote indigenous communities to actively engage in producing media content, and due to the accessibility of SMS, he is achieving his news-sharing goals. It's exciting to see how FrontlineSMS is allowing people to engage at a wider community level. Our users have demonstrated the wealth of potential uses of SMS in the media. Through our community, I've seen that 160 characters can speak volumes -- facilitating dialogues, providing a voice to isolated communities, and, ultimately, providing access to information that can help improve lives. Image courtesy of Ken Banks of kiwanja.net. ]]> Zeega + Localore = Innovative Local Storytelling for Public Media tag:www.pbs.org,2012:/idealab//31.7747 2012-01-26T14:00:51Z 2012-01-27T19:23:21Z Last week, I sat in a conference room in Dorchester, Mass., with some of the great minds of public media to recommend which 10 producers and public media stations should be supported for year-long projects to transform the industry. Localore is a new $2 million national competition produced by the Boston-based Association of Independents in Radio (AIR), with $1 million in funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to catalyze producer-led innovation teams at local stations. Here at Zeega, this is particularly exciting because we'll be teaming up with several of the winners as creative technology partners. (For more info... Kara Oehler http://www.zeega.org Don't have iframes? Visit http://airmediaworks.org instead to see the Localore Station Runway. Media theorist "Marshall McLuhan":http://marshallmcluhan.com/ said, "It is the artist's job to try to dislocate older media into postures that permit attention to the new. To this end, the artist must ever play and experiment with new means of arranging experience." For us, it's about searching for means to create new possibilities with what currently exists, making it, and in the process, often subverting the intentions imagined by a technology's original creators. We'll be back with more at the beginning of February when we can share the winners!]]>