Live-Blogging Future of Civic Media Gathering

Mark Glaser
9:39 AM | bio | Comments: 3

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. -- I am in the swanky Stata Center at MIT for the conference on "The Future of Civic Media," put on by the new Center for Future Civic Media. Nearly all the Idea Lab bloggers are here in attendance as the Knight Foundation is using this gathering to help all News Challenge winners get to know each other and collaborate more. It's also a chance for this new Center at MIT (which got $5 million in funding from Knight) to show some off some of its early work and thinking. Mitch Resnick, another Idea Lab blogger who... continued...

Topics: Education, Mobile, Participation, Technology
Tagged: future for civic media, media lab, MIT, mitchel resnick

Knight Announces News Challenge Winners

Mark Glaser
5:37 PM | bio | Comments: 2

Hello from sunny Las Vegas! I am here for the E&P Interactive Media Conference at the Rio Hotel, but also to welcome the next round of winners in the Knight Foundation's 21st Century News Challenge. These folks will soon be blogging here on Idea Lab, and it's quite a group of winners. (To see the whole list of winners, go here, and for Knight's press release on the winners, check this out.) Knight Foundation CEO Alberto Ibarguen (pictured below) announced the winners at the conference this morning. I think the most exciting aspect of the next round of winners is... continued...

Topics: Financial, Legal Issues, Mobile, Technology
Tagged: international, knight, las vegas, news challenge, winners

How Do You Balance Anonymity & Accountability?

Mark Glaser
8:25 PM | bio | Comments: 7

Here's your question for the week on Idea Lab. Many people think that anonymity is important online for people who are whistle-blowers or would not speak out if they were identified. But the flipside of that is that many people use the protection of anonymity to lob insults and ad hominem attacks at opponents and turn civil conversations into flame wars. What happens if you try to pin down people and make them use real names in forums? Does that bring more civility? That's certainly the case at Front Porch Forum, where people must use their first and last name,... continued...

Topics: Best Practices, Participation, Philosophy
Tagged: anonymity, front porch forum, online forums, transparency

How Can Ads Support Community News?

Mark Glaser
9:13 PM | bio | Comments: 3

I'm going to be posting weekly questions here on Idea Lab to spark discussion by the various authors, as well as our community of readers. This week I'd like to follow up on the recent theme of new business models for local news sites. Many small hyper-local community sites start up with Google AdSense ads and other automated, quick ways of bringing in a small revenue stream. Eventually, though, they need to make more money than that, and must turn to local businesses to advertise. But it's difficult to entice small businesses online, as they are more likely to employ... continued...

Topics: Financial, Marketing
Tagged: advertising, business models, community news, hyper-local news

Reuters' Mobile Journalism the Wave of Future?

Mark Glaser
2:11 PM | bio | Comments: 7

Reuters has been experimenting with mobile journalism, testing out a way for reporters to file stories from the field using videophones. The news service has given reporters a Mobile Journalism Toolkit, including a Nokia N95, a fold-up keyboard and directional microphones. The idea is that reporters could do video, photo, audio and text reports without having to use a laptop. This effort mirrors an initiative by Ganett to outfit "mojos" with gear to report in multiple media from the field. But if you peruse Reuters' special website to see the early reports from Reuters mojos, they are uneven, with blurry... continued...

Topics: Best Practices, Mobile, Technology
Tagged: gannett, handhelds, mobile journalism, mojos, reuters

Welcome to Idea Lab

Mark Glaser
8:52 AM | bio | Comments: 16

A few weeks back, I heard gunshots outside my window. It was pretty scary, and reminded me of my urban environment here in Potrero Hill, San Francisco. But where could I turn to get the story on what happened? Was someone killed? Do police know what happened? In the past, I might have heard something about it on the local TV news or radio news, or perhaps read something in the local newspaper. But in this case, no one was hurt or killed, so there was nothing to see in any of the bigger media outlets in my local area.... continued...

Topics: Philosophy
Tagged: community news, crime, introduction