Philosophy
Along with the other free peoples of the Internet, we’ve been discussing our reactions to PRISM, and whether and how U.S. — and global — citizens might be able to organize against this unprecedented digital spying. There are more questions than answers at the moment, and there’s an enormous challenge of confronting a massive entity [...] more »
Last September, Gideon Lichfield wrote a post on a new phenomenology of news he wanted to try with Quartz. The thrust of it: No more beats — Quartz would have “obsessions” that it would cover…obsessively. The reason: “Beats aren’t so much an objective taxonomy as a convenient management tool devised for an old technology…So instead [...] more »
As recently as five years ago the story by Toronto Star reporters that they had seen a video purporting to show the city’s Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack with a drug gang would have likely sold a lot of newspapers for a few weeks, and been followed by a protracted trial and judicial process. Published [...] more »
Detritivores are creatures that consume decaying matter. Detritivore designs use abundant waste products to make scalable technology solutions. Unlike loftier concepts of zero-waste design such as Cradle to Cradle, Detritivore design accepts that the world is already loaded with discarded and broken technology. Detritivore designers need not create a recyclable or even non-toxic product, since [...] more »
Andrew Donohue has developed a special kinship with his daughter, Maya, on father-daughter visits to Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Photo: Andrew Donohue So do we, like, have a desk or anywhere we have to show up during the day? This was my last burning question for my Knight Fellowships adviser, Pam Maples, as I [...] more »
Richard Gingras, Google’s head of news and social products, talks with Knight Fellows about journalism and web ads. Credit: David Sarno The digital earthquake that’s knocking the traditional news industry off its foundations is not over, said Richard Gingras, Google’s head of news and social products. And it probably never will be. “Sometimes I think [...] more »
As the deadline to apply to become a 2013 Knight-Mozilla Fellow approaches, there’s one question often comes up: Why would I want to work as a developer in the newsroom? There are all sorts of reasons—from being in the room when news breaks, to working with a community of people creating the future of an [...] more »
While Ushahidi maintains a startup mentality internally, we’re 4.5 years old now, which is a long time in tech years. In an industry like ours, where nimbleness and speed are rewarded, this mentality needs to be maintained. Earlier this year, we started asking ourselves a bunch of questions about the platform itself. Included in that [...] more »
The MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference has just wrapped up in Cambridge, Mass., and Michael Maness, who leads Knight’s Journalism and Media Innovation program, gave a closing presentation that highlighted key quotes and ideas that grabbed people’s attention over the duration of the event. Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, started [...] more »
For the last five months, I have been running a journalism training program in the West Bank and Jerusalem. We started out with the best intentions, a four-person team and 40 cameras strapped to our backs. Within three months, political activists had run us out of the West Bank, half our team was deported from [...] more »
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