Marketing
A few weeks ago, I received a fascinating package in the mail. It was a copy of the gospel of Luke interleaved with graph paper and QR codes. Uncover, designed and printed by UCCF: The Christian Unions, is a digital campaign within a well-established tradition of gospel distribution that goes back to the 19th century. [...] more »
First and foremost: Thanks to our early users for helping us make [PANDA](http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2011/08/panda-aims-to-make-data-analysis-easier-for-journalists-and-well-be-at-ona237.html) better! At the [NICAR conference](http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2012/02/journo-coders-take-nicar-12-to-a-whole-new-level059.html) in St. Louis, we helped almost two dozen PANDA servers enter the world in less than an hour. We’re hoping this is a sign that we’ve made PANDA easy enough for many newsrooms to install. Plus, our [...] more »
Last week, BookBrewer had the great honor to be chosen by The Huffington Post, which used our platform to create and distribute its first e-book: “A People’s History of the Great Recession” by Arthur Delaney. They’re already working on their second, “How We Won: Progressive Lessons from the Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” by [...] more »
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 [...] more »
Spot.Us recently launched a new design, so this is an opportune time to write a “State of the Spot” post — something we haven’t done since the website was six months old. I hope to lay out how far we’ve come and what’s on our plate and make a call to arms to the Spot.Us [...] more »
At the Block By Block “community news summit” in September, operators of locally focused websites came together to share what they knew and learn from their peers. Almost all of them were looking for advice on how to support their sites financially. Here’s a start: “Sustaining Hyperlocal News: An Approach to Studying Local Business Markets,” [...] more »
We are midway through the semester and the newsgames project studio at Georgia Tech is running at full steam. [Newsgames: Journalism at Play](http://www.amazon.com/Newsgames-Journalism-Play-Ian-Bogost/dp/0262014874/), a survey of the field of newsgames by project director Ian Bogost, graduate assistant Simon Ferrari, and myself, is out and is [available online](http://www.amazon.com/Newsgames-Journalism-Play-Ian-Bogost/dp/0262014874/) and in bookstores. We’ve spent the semester breaking [...] more »
This has been one of the most amazing, rewarding and surreal weeks of my life. Borders has chosen BookBrewer — the first product of my startup, FeedBrewer, which grew out of a News Challenge grant — to power the engine for its e-book self-publishing service. You can read about our partnership in the official press [...] more »
We opened the DocumentCloud floodgates less than six months ago and we’re still working hard to make DocumentCloud a better tool. We’re rolling out improvements at a healthy clip including SSL support, better documentation, and support for cross-newsroom collaboration. We continue to listen to feedback from our really incredible crop of beta testers (who now [...] more »
A Knight Foundation grant is a wonderful gift, but in our case at CityCircles (and for many projects), the grant only lasts for one year. Because most of that year may be spent on programming, this gives winners very little time to craft a pitch. By “pitch” I mean: How do you explain this to [...] more »
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