Idea Lab

Does Social Media Really Boost Traffic?

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

It's clear that social networks have become a new kind of Holy Grail in the quest to build web traffic. What seems less clear is what all the tweeting, Tumblr-ing and Facebook posting is designed to do -- and how to gauge its effectiveness. Gotham Gazette (GG), a small site that cannot afford consultants and does not have a marketing person, has worked to create Facebook pages and to tweet to try to draw readers to our pages. We've all taken this on (with varying levels of zeal) -- since gone are the days when reporters didn't also have...

• April 28, 2011
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Councilpedia a Hit with New Yorkers, But Not Politicians

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

It's been a month since Gotham Gazette launched its Councilpedia project to monitor city elected officials and track money in local politics. (To read our earlier entry on Councilpedia, go here.) In those weeks, we've learned a lot about what people like and don't like about the service. This information will help us improve what we think is an important tool for New Yorkers and an example other local news sites might want to follow. Popular with People, not Politicians First, by and large, people like it. Even though most of the information -- but not all of it --...

• March 4, 2011
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Councilpedia Follows the Money in New York City Politics

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

More than two years since the idea first began buzzing in our collective brains, Gotham Gazette finally launched its Councilpedia site last week. Councilpedia, funded in part with a News Challenge grant from the Knight Foundation, is a unique new tool that will let people track the influence of money in New York City politics and help New Yorkers monitor their public officials. To accomplish this it does three main things. First, it brings together an array of information about two citywide elected officials and the members of the New York City Council: legislative records, campaign finance information, and places...

• February 7, 2011
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The Challenge of Attracting Traffic in a Post-Loyal Era

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Back in the early days of websites -- way back, a decade ago -- there were far fewer publications on the web than there are today, of course, and many people read them as they had read print newspapers and magazines. A reader would go to a favorite site and check in perhaps once a day, once a week or even once a month -- whenever they thought it might feature new material. Now, of course, that has changed. While some of us remain loyal to a few sites, we're more likely to click around, using search engines, blogs, email...

• December 16, 2010
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Pushing the Limits of What a Wiki Can Do with Councilpedia

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Barely two decades into the digital age, we take online media for granted. So much is so easy and convenient -- at our fingertips -- that we can forget technology can only do so much. Then we come up with a great idea that leaves us with the challenge of how to successfully push the limits. This is what has confronted Gotham Gazette as we move into the final stages of creating our Councilpedia site. Councilpedia, a Knight News Challenge winner that I've blogged about here previously, will explore more fully the links between money and politics in New York...

• October 6, 2010
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Councilpedia In Private Pilot, Overcoming Tech Challenges

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Over the last several months, Gotham Gazette has made major strides on its Councilpedia project, which will help New Yorkers keep tabs on their local officials and share their knowledge with others. Over the last year, the project has evolved and -- we think -- improved from our original plan. Currently we have a pilot for the site with the design, the structure and information for three office holders. We are not ready to release this to the world, but if you would like a sneak preview please email me at grobinson at gothamgazette.com. Councilpedia Brings City and Candidate Information...

• July 16, 2010
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In Search of a Wiki with Track Changes

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Most of us have become so used to being able to do so much online that is comes as a surprise when we want to do something and can't find the tools to do it. That's the situation confronting the Gotham Gazette staff as we move forward with our Councilpedia project that will use crowdsourcing to probe the links between money and politics. I'm hoping you can help. (For more on Councilpedia see my earlier post.) Monitoring Revisions The project will enable registered users to contribute information on campaign donors and the politicians they help. Like Wikipedia, Councilpedia needs to...

• March 18, 2010
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Councilpedia Uses Crowdsourcing to Link Money, Politics in NYC

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

As Gotham Gazette gears up to launch a pilot version of its Knight-funded Councilpedia project, we are confronting a number of interesting issues. To step back first, though, Councilpedia will provide information about New York's 51 City Council members and two citywide elected officials, including their campaign finance information, the bills they introduced, and the groups they gave "member items" -- the parlance here for pork or earmarks. (Our third citywide elected official -- the mayor -- only takes contributions from one person: his billionaire self.) Readers will be able to search this data and tag it, providing information and,...

• March 2, 2010
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How Gotham Gazette Redesigned a Decade-Old Website

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Gotham Gazette, our website about New York City policy and politics, unveiled its redesign recently. (Please take a look and let me know what you think by emailing grobinson at gothamgazette.com). For our readers, we hope the redesign will create a more useful publication by making it easier for visitors to find information about New York City issues. For our advertisers -- who we hope will increase in number -- it offers more space and more options. And for the GG staff, it reflects our evolution -- and to some extent, the web's evolution -- over the past decade. When...

• January 12, 2010
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Advertisers Still Prefer Print to Online

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

A rare bit of good financial news for journalism points once again to the difficulty of financing online media. PaidContent reported this week that Politico raked in more than $20 million last year, finishing with operating profits of about $1 million. That's the good news. But as Molly Fischer wrote in the New York Observer, Politico's print publication -- something few of us outside the Beltway ever see -- accounted for 60 percent of operating revenues. This was the case even though the paper version has an estimated circulation of 32,000 compared to the more than 3 million unique visitors...

• January 6, 2010
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How Gotham Gazette Used Games as Storytelling Devices

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

With the launch of its energy game Switch, Gotham Gazette this fall completed a two-year Knight Foundation-funded project to create several news games about New York City policy issues. We think we produced some good games (to view and play them go here.) And we learned a lot. Most satisfyingly, we confirmed that for some issues, games -- or perhaps "policy simulations," just so you don't expect Grand Theft Auto here -- provide an informative and engaging way to tell a story. People who played our Garbage Game, for example, told us that it gave them a whole new appreciation...

• December 2, 2009
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Reporting for Games

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Much of the discussion about online games focuses on the technical issues, and that's not surprising since the technical aspects make a game a game or a simulation and not a conventional story. But as Gotham Gazette continues its efforts to create interactive features to involve and educate New Yorkers on key policy issues, we have discovered that the reporting piece can be far more complicated than we originally imagined. Games, at least those that entail budget numbers, carbon emissions or other figures, require a level of precision most stories simply do not. This is not to say that reporters...

• November 17, 2008
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Government Data: File Not Found

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Earlier this month the district attorney in Albany, New York, released thousands of pages of documents related to his investigation of a scandal involving former Gov. Eliot Spitzer. This goes back to the days when Spitzer's alleged improprieties involved misuse of the state police, over-the-top aggressiveness and a lust for smearing political opponents. Not as titillating as the governor's later transgressions, perhaps, but still of interest to those of us who follow the sad state of government in the Empire State. State political reporters salivated -- until they heard how DA David Soares was issuing the material. Instead of putting...

• August 25, 2008
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NYC Police Deny Press Passes to Online Reporters

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

The New York City Police department, which issues (or refuses to issue) press passes and identification cards, has denied credentials to at least three on-line reporters we know of, including Gotham Gazette city hall editor Courtney Gross. In some instances, the denial seems like out and out political retribution. Leonard Levitt, a former Newsday reporter who now writes the blog NYPD Confidential, lost his pass. Levitt has been a persistent police critic, dating back to his days in print. But once he moved on line, the city had an excuse to pull his credentials. The New York Civil Liberties Union...

• July 8, 2008
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Into the Budget Dungeon

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Today, Gotham Gazette unveils the second of its news games: The Budget Maze. With challenges and a dash of humor, the game presents an entertaining way to educate New Yorkers about one of the eternal mysteries of policy and politics in the city: How the budget is determined. To make the topic engaging, we created three mazes. Players must navigate these labyrinths in a castle dungeon to try to win funding for a favored program or a tax cut. Each chamber presents a new challenge: How do you get information, who should you meet with, who holds the power? We...

• May 19, 2008
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How Do We Deal with Stolen Content?

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

In an ideal world, I suppose, all information would be free and widely accessible. Maybe not credit records, health stats or income information -- but certainly journalism would be. Alas, though, we're not in an ideal world. On-line publications need readers (hits) to survive. In the case of a small independent site like Gotham Gazette, we need hits to attract funders and advertisers and to build our reputation and credibility. And we need to maintain control over our material to preserve our integrity. So it was distressing when our technical director, Amanda Hickman, using Technorati, found many sites using our...

• May 1, 2008
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The Long Shelf Life for News Games

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

People who run news sites can be resistant to encouraging the developing games and other interactive feature. Perhaps it's that "game" sounds too playful, although given that most newspaper feature comics, crosswords and Sudoko, to say nothing of the latest celebrity photos and gossip, it's hard to see why. The interactivity may make some editors nervous as well as pairing a light approach -- a game -- with a serious issue such as the deaths in Darfur, hurricanes or legislative redistricting. The amount of staff time and resources -- technical experts, designers, writers, editors-- that go into a game can...

• April 8, 2008
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All the Summaries Fit to Print

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

As so many people who blog here have observed, newspapers face a quandary as they struggle to attract and keep readers to their print editions as well as their Web sites. They want to win customers at the same time they are giving those customers less for their money. One way to get around that is to give people the same or less and make it look like more. Is that the idea behind the New York Times redesign revealed this week? For those of you who haven't seen it, the Times seems to have exported a Web idea --...

• March 28, 2008
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Lessons from the Garbage Game

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

In the almost three months since Gotham Gazette launched the Garbage Game about New York City's refuse, we've learned interesting things - some about on-line games and some specific to this game and this topic. For a roundup of responses and reactions, presented on Gotham Gazette last month, click here. First, even people playing games on a relatively wonky site like ours want to have a game experience. That means they want to win or lose. Our game did not explicitly provide that, so people sought to provide it for themselves. Some wanted to compare their score - on money...

• February 5, 2008
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Announcing: The Garbage Game

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

After many nervous moments and late nights, Gotham Gazette's The Garbage Game is on our site and ready for players. This is the first in a series of six games on key policy issues facing New York City that Gotham Gazette will be producing over the next two years. As we hope you'll see for yourself, this one focuses on managing the almost 7 billion pounds of residential trash that New Yorkers produce every year. The idea behind the games is to let New Yorkers not only read about policy dilemmas but play an active role in addressing them. And...

• November 14, 2007
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Free and Open Source Games

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Our Technical Director, Amanda Hickman, is not a formal Idea Lab blogger, so I'm posting this on her behalf. This won't be the last you hear from her on the Idea Lab. --Gail As the Gotham Gazette prepares to launch our first Knight-funded news game, I've been thinking a lot more about their requirement that we produce our games using free and open source software. It is only fair for me to start with a couple of observations about where I'm coming from: I think that software freedom matters, a lot. As a Circuit Rider at the LINC Project I...

• November 2, 2007
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A New Way to Tell a Story

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

One reason Gotham Gazette has long been intrigued by the idea of so-called serious games is that they offer another way to tell a story. And the more methods one uses to tell a story, the more people will read (or hear, or watch, or play) that story. As a site on NYC policy and politics, it's been our mission from the beginning to try to attract people beyond the base of Wonks and City Hall habitues (no offense intended; they are, after all, a loyal and helpful audience). To do that, we try to tell present complicated issues in...

• October 15, 2007
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Ideas for an Online Game

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

The staff of Gotham Gazette is counting down to the day later this fall when our first online game goes up on our site. It's been an interesting process getting us this far. First, of course, we needed a concept. In some respects, this was the easy part as brainstorming sessions over the summer produced literally dozens of ideas. We'd like to do them all -- and we will do some of them in the next two years -- but we decided to do the first one on garbage. What to do with tons and tons of garbage has long...

• October 15, 2007
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