Idea Lab

At SXSW: Poderopedia, Others Spotlight Civic Media in Latin America

by Miguel Paz
2011 Knight News Challenge Winner

Citizen heroes who are recognized by their fellow citizens in Juárez City; how people from Panama fight corruption and denounce violence and crime; what we're building in Chile to show you who's who among the elite and their possible conflicts of interest -- all of these are part of the Latin American experience you'll be able to see and hear about at the Civic Media Projects in Latin America panel at SXSW. The panel takes place Monday at 3:30 pm in Room 5ABC at the Austin Convention Center.In this panel, you'll hear from Yesica Guerra, director and research affiliate of...

• March 9, 2012
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How Poderopedia's Future Users Are Telling It What to Build

by Miguel Paz
2011 Knight News Challenge Winner

The past month and a half has been very busy for us at 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...

• February 9, 2012
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Meet the 1% Who Call the Shots in Chile

by Miguel Paz
2011 Knight News Challenge Winner

Marco Kremerman, an investigator from SOL, a Chilean foundation that conducts research about the labor market, recently published a column in which he stated that 4,000 families run Chile. Kremerman's post was highly controversial among Chile's elite, an endogamous group of power players, little accustomed to public scrutiny and not fond of being forced out in the open. It also caused some deep rumblings among the middle class, during a time when issues such as inequality and the extreme gap between the rich and poor have become a matter of national and international public interest around the world. One of...

• December 16, 2011
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How Mobile Phones Could Bring Public Services to People in Developing Countries

by Miguel Paz
2011 Knight News Challenge Winner

In Santiago, Chile, more than 60 percent of the poorest citizens don't have access to the Internet. In the rest of the country, that number increases to 80 percent, and in rural areas, an Internet connection is almost nonexistent. But there are more than 20 million mobile phones in the nation, according to the latest survey by the Undersecretary of Telecommunications. (That's actually around 1.15 cell phones per capita in a nation of 17,094,270 people.) And in rural areas, cell phones are king. As Knight News Challenge winners FrontlineSMS, Ushahidi and NextDrop have shown, mobile communications are crucial for citizens...

• October 6, 2011
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Poderopedia Keeps Track of Chile's Most Powerful and Influential

by Miguel Paz
2011 Knight News Challenge Winner

In December 2008, almost a year before Sebastián Piñera was elected president of Chile, the millionaire businessman and politician got together with his closest friends for a small birthday party in his investment headquarters in upper Santiago.This tight group, which the media has dubbed "Piñera's business West Wing," was composed of Piñera's brother Pablo, CEO of the state bank BancoEstado; his top adviser and current Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter; and seven high-profile businessmen who own some of the biggest investment banks, pension funds, private health care companies, airlines, and TV stations, among other things. Many are also board members in...

• August 25, 2011
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