That's obvious enough -- just ask anyone using AT&T in an area densely populated with bandwidth-hogging iPhone users like me.

Or ask any Twitter user.

But with the launch of Twitter Lists in recent days, it's now theoretically easier for users, news organizations, bloggers, and companies to create little tributaries off the main river of news. Bu building these subsets out of the main stream, you can find tweets from a group of users, which means a news organization can create a list of reliable sources.

And in theory, this has value, because the list of users has been hand-picked by journalists.

But what happens when everyone makes lists that look the same, full of the same sources?

I started thinking about this because I now find myself on 179 lists. Of those, the titles of 123 include some form of the words "media" or "journalism." That's 123 lists with a lot of overlap.

The same idea ran me down yesterday as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Huffington Post, among others, made Twitter lists related to the shootings in Fort Hood, Texas. (And as I write this, they're all doing it again in Orlando.)

The Fort Hood Lists

There are differences between these lists, but there are also a lot of similarities, as you can see here:

(Click on the image to see the large version. Those lists are from the LAT, NYT, and HuffPo, left to right.)

Now, while they're not identical, there's strong overlap in the type of sources in the first two examples. They're all experts. News organizations. Government. The Red Cross. And, inexplicably, Chuck Todd...

Meanwhile, on the far right, is my favorite list -- the Huffington Post's "Fort Hood Locals." It contains the sort of tweets I was spotting in this search yesterday while I was tracking the story and wondering how many primary sources I could find on Twitter.

Personally, I prefer curating individual tweets, rather than pointing a fire hose of information at the reader. But everyone is experimenting at the moment, and there's nothing like breaking news to get people like me excited about their shiny new toys. As we should be. I just worry that we're going to end up tripping over each other instead of working with each other.

Two Other Takes on Fort Hood Twitter List Efforts:

I encourage you to read two other stories about the Fort Hood Twitter Lists. The first is
Fort Hood Shooting Shows How Twitter, Lists Can be Used for Breaking News" at Poynter. Craig Kanalley's round-up of Twitter use on the Fort Hood story covers the Austin American Statesman's choice to launch a one-story Twitter account, as well as the New York Times list efforts.

The other story is "Fort Hood: A First Test for Twitter Lists" at Columbia Journalism Review. Megan Garber takes a look at Twitter List use by the media for the Fort Hood story. She has this take on the overlap in mainstream lists:

"Yes, there was overlap and redundancy in yesterday's coverage -- the "Fort Hood" lists all generally contained the same local news outlets, the same official sources, etc. -- but, then, that's the case whenever different media outlets cover the same events."

I think there's a problem with that. I don't want to see Twitter Lists become a piece of commodity news.

But I do want to keep chasing after shiny toys...

(Bonus link: Andy Carvin of NPR did a similar bit of navel-gazing and list-counting in this post at All Tech Considered.)

When done properly, M&E begins with the grantee setting out clearly the objectives of the grant, the activities necessary to achieve the objectives, and the resources applied to make these activities happen. So, for example, blogging for Idea Lab is an activity. An objective might be to create a thriving community, or to help guide the way for community news in transition.

For our Knight project, the objective is a bit more specific: to create open source tools that make community news and information easy to visualize. Activities include mapping existing tools, surveying users for specific unmet needs, coding, testing, translating, demoing, fixing, etc. Our primary resource will be the Drupal community, which is also one of our project's main beneficiaries. Ideally, we will create a virtuous circle.

The grantee is expected to have a clear causal logic, setting out how the activities will achieve the objectives, and identifying verifiable measures to assess performance against targets at each level: resources, activities, and objectives. Especially objectives. It is important to do this well, because far too often the project gets underway and the grantee loses sight of the objectives. They end up obsessing about performance as it relates to activities and resources. This is natural because activities are much more easily controlled and measured than the messy causal chain leading to the objectives. The donor, meanwhile, is mostly interested in the objectives. These differing centers of attention are the root of most donor-grantee disputes.

By starting out so early on M&E -- essentially before the grant even begins -- Knight is demonstrating how these tools can be used for partnership and management, not merely bean-counting. Our opportunity as the grantee is to embrace their challenge of partnership.

In part one of this series I looked at the history of media development, the major players in the field, and some of the current obstacles - from regulatory reform to linguistic divides - that stand in the way of a healthy media ecosystem. In part two I examined points of agreement and tension among those directly involved in media development, and the recommendations that they made to a group of donors who gathered in a subsequent meeting. In this third and final post I will attempt to summarize the main themes at the meeting of funders, and look at the field of media development from the funder's perspective.

Has Media Freedom Waned Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall?

Eric Newton, Vice President for Journalism at the Knight Foundation, began the three-day meeting at the Salzburg Global Seminar with a series of maps from Freedom House charting media freedom since 1989 until today. While it is difficult to aggregate imperfect data across entire countries, much less the whole world, these global maps show a slight decline in media freedom over the past twenty years. Why is there an alleged decline in media freedom worldwide when over $600 million has been spent on media development during that time? For Newton, the explanation lies in the fact that "governments and funders have failed to recognize and take advantage of the incredible potential of digital media." He points to the Knight Foundation's own $25 million News Challenge initiative as an attempt to push the innovation and adoption of digital media tools and applications. Newton says that this is the third major meeting of funders involved in the field of media development. "It didn't work in London," he said, "it didn't work in Paris. So now we're trying Salzburg."

Amadou Ba, the co-founder of AllAfrica.com and executive director of the African Media Initiative then took to the podium for his keynote address. He began by quoting Thomas Jefferson: "If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter." He also cited Amartya Sen who claims that "no substantial famine has ever occurred in any country with a relatively free press." Ba feels that media is "an essential public good, which informs people of their rights." He recounted a conversation he once had with an unpopular African leader who Ba had hoped would increase federal media investment. "Why would I help feed the monster that wants me out of my seat?" the leader responded. For Ba, the response shows why healthy media is such a crucial ingredient in the recipe of democracy.

But, despite the clear importance of press freedom, he feels that funders have little to show for their millions of dollars of investment. Unlike Newton, Ba doesn't see a lack of engagement with digital media to be the problem, but rather a lack of trust by donors in the local leadership of African media outlets. Unsurprisingly, his answer is to invest more in networks like the African Media Initiative, which brings together owners and operators of major media companies in Africa to increase cooperation, coordinate on relevant research, and advocate for better media regulation.

More Investment or a Better Understanding of What Works?

Troy Etulain, the senior advisor for Independent Media Development at USAID left the first evening's discussions unsatisfied:

"There was talk tonight about 'underinvestment.' That's too vague. What's the logical math? If there had been more investment would there have been more development?

Much of the conversation during the next day remained stuck on this issue of whether or not funding in media development over the years has been effective or not. Marguerite Sullivan of CIMA presented numbers from a study which found that globally $600 million has been spent on media development. Forty four percent went to training and twenty eight percent was direct assistance to support the operational costs of media organizations. Sullivan noted that among US government funders there are almost no experts in the field of media development (four people in USAID and one person in the state department) and that media development at USAID is a sub-sub sector of the Democracy Assistance program. For Stewart Chisolm, the senior program manager of OSI's Media Program, the level of direct investment in the media organizations is still too low.

Mark Koenig, challenging the assertion by Newton and Ba that media development has failed, presented research which showed that media assistance had the highest degree of positive correlation of impact among all of USAID's Civil Society initiatives. Brian Levy, an advisor at the World Bank, also presented research which shows a positive correlation between information access and effective development.

Vanessa Mazal of the Bill & Melinda Gates Global Development Program felt that media development has traditionally been too focused on training reporters, and that more resources should be invested in the business and management aspects of journalism in order to make the organizations sustainable. Nazeer Ladhani of the Aga Khan Development Network stressed that funders should help establish locally managed institutions like the Aga Khan Universities in Pakistan and Nairobi to foster indigenous leadership and implement sustainable training programs in partnership with local companies.

Metrics for Success

How do funders know if their investments have an impact not just on the media landscape, but also in terms of better governance and more effective development? None of the funders seemed content with the current metrics for evaluating media worldwide. Some felt that IREX's Media Sustainability Index was outdated, to which Mark Whitehouse, director of Media Development Programs at IREX, responded that, rather than criticizing metrics, the conversation should focus on how to improve them. Pia Hallonsten of the Swedish International Development Agency would like to see more longterm longitudinal studies which look at the impact of media development programs over many years.

Peter Goldstein, the director of online communications at InterMedia, presented the initial findings from AudienceScapes, a new media analysis initiative funded by Gates Foundation and set to launch in January 2010. AudienceScapes aggregates data about media from a variety of sources and supplements it with their own questionnaires. Among the topics in their surveys: demographic information, access to ICTs, usage patterns, mobile phone use, internet use, personal finance, health, and agriculture. Goldstein says that AudienceScapes' data will be available to the public without a subscription, but that they are looking into a business model which would make special information and reports available to paying customers. A sample of AudienceScapes' policy research with focus on Ghana was presented.

Pippa Noris of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government presented the some of the research and conclusions from her latest book Public Sentinel: News Media and the Governance Agenda, which she has summarized in a post on her blog. Norris stressed that data about the impact of media, and about governance in general, is far from perfect, but suggested that the media development community should collaborate more closely with academic researchers from the International Communication Association, which focuses on the impact of media on society.

Good Media for Good Governance

Much of the conversation over the first two days treated media development as a goal in itself, or as part of a strategy to further other development objectives (like health and agriculture). James Deane of the BBC World Service Trust said he would like to shift the conversation to focus on good governance first, and media as a part of that. Most of the speakers on the panel represented multilateral development agencies like the World Bank, the UNDP, and the Asian Development Bank whose clients are national governments. Deane feels that good media is a requirement for good governance; that quality media outlets serves as irreplaceable public watchdogs. He also notes that good media can help spur economic development by battling government and corporate corruption. (BBC World Service Trust published a 40-page report on "Governance and the Media" in April, 2009.)

Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which documents how Liberian women blockaded the Presidential Palace until a peace agreement was signed, was one anecdote cited as an example of how media can lead to improved governance. But there were also murmuring whispers of the role of radio stations during the Rwandan genocide, and how media can also lead to chaos and brutality.) Both Brian Levy from the World Bank and Bjorn Forde from UNDP alluded to internal distrust at their organizations toward media. They insisted that they weren't involved in outright media development, but that they value the role of transparent information in making development more effective. Both David Hoffman of Internews and Eric Netwon of Knight Foundation felt that large development agencies should cooperate more closely with media development initiatives to further the goals of both.

Final Thoughts

As a mostly silent observer, it seemed to me that the representatives from funding organizations were more concerned with convincing one another that they were making an impact than in thinking of ways to more effectively support the work of their grantees and promote cooperation to engage all aspects of a dynamic media ecosystem for the 21st century.

During the first meeting of media development practitioners there was general agreement that most funders were not sufficiently aware of the needs of the organizations implementing projects, and that funders are not up to date on the latest innovations taking place in the media field. One idea was to organize an online one-week fair so that media development organizations and funders can each learn more about the needs of each other. Unfortunately, when this idea was presented at the meeting of funders, there was apparently little interest.

I have personally witnessed several worthwhile media development projects die out because there was no clear pathway from initial seed funding (often won through some sort of competition like Changemakers or Ideablob) to "mezzanine funding" in order to scale up and then sustainability funding to support basic operating costs. If there was more open dialog between practitioners and funders - and among funders - then there wouldn't be such a high turnover rate and so little expertise in the field.

The gathering discussed many global issues, such as the decline of trust in the press, measures of responsibility in journalism, and the social weight of the printed word. There were discussion groups, creativity contests, meetings with politicians, celebrities, scholars, and various workshops held by leading Russian journalists.

One of the highlights of the Forum was the presentation of SochiReporter (www.sochireporter.ru), which is funded by the Knight Foundation. Sochi residents and several local citizen journalists presented our project to the gathering. Visitors could also learn more about us and read related articles at the SochiReporter stand.

Bringing Citizen Journalism to Sochi

On September 26, I led a panel, "Online Media: Citizen Journalism in Russia," which featured six local newspaper and magazine editors:

• Svetlana Handabak, editor-in-chief, City Fresh (a Sochi lifestyle magazine)
• Irina Druzhinina, law reporter, Zakon i Pravo (a local newspaper about law and order)
• Lana Petrosyan, editor-in-chief, Nashe Vremya (a local weekly for young people)
• Eleonora Ervandyan, deputy editor-in-chief, Nashe Vremya
• Anna Petrosyan, culture reporter, Chernomorskaya Zdravnitsa (Sochi's oldest quality paper)
• Alexander Kim, Editor-in-chief, Student (a Sochi student magazine)

Some of the issues raised on the panel included:

• The current information needs of the Sochi residents, and how they changed after July 4, 2007, when Sochi was awarded the Olympics.
• The role of hyper-local news and how it relates to local newspapers.
• The impact of the financial crisis on local media.
• User-generated content and other new sources of news for local newspapers.
• The need to develop citizen journalism in the pre-Olympic city.
• The growing need for additional public Internet access points, and the local government's initiatives to wire the city.

The audience was comprised of representatives of Sochi media outlets and journalists from different parts of Russia, such as the Volga Region, the Urals, and Siberia. They participated in the discussion and commented on the novelty and importance of SochiReporter as a model for the Russian media market. The participants also noted that this is the right time to initiate a discussion about new models, as both Sochi and the industry are undergoing big transformations.

Right now, Sochi is receiving a lot of attention in Russia because of its preparations for the Olympics. The stakes are high for the city, and for SochiReporter.

The system, called CloudCrowd, performs the distributed computing that helps process the vast quantities of documents that will eventually be stored in DocumentCloud. It might seem premature to be releasing code so early -- in the past some Knight grantees have chosen to wait until the end of their grant -- but the larger part of open-source is community, not code. We're planning on releasing portions of DocumentCloud as we build them in order to take advantage of the contributions that the open-source community can provide.

When finished, DocumentCloud will be a software system, a website, and a set of open standards that will make it possible to read, search, and organize primary source documents across the web. As a journalist or researcher, you will be able to run filtered searches across the library of documents, and embed your source documents right alongside an article or blog post. All the aspects of the system -- the search engine, the document viewer, the journalist workspace -- will be open-sourced during the course of our grant.

The Value of Open Source

Going open-source is often viewed by skeptics as a sort of feckless altruism: a free handout of valuable intellectual property. I couldn't disagree more, especially with respect to nonprofit organizations. A small team with limited resources benefits greatly from the ideas, bug reports and patches that a community can provide.

Since releasing CloudCrowd a month ago, we've fixed a handful of bugs and added dozens of features, directly as a result of input from the community of contributors. There are, as of this writing, 375 developers that choose to follow the project on GitHub, which means that they pay attention to the project and are notified any time changes are made. 12 of them have 'forked' the project, pushing CloudCrowd in the directions that matter most to them.

Needless to say, this community of contributors dwarfs the size of DocumentCloud as an organization, and is invaluable in helping to increase the quality of the software. CloudCrowd is already being used to process biomedical data and align gene sequences across strains of influenza virus, an application that's far afield of our original use. We're looking forward to hearing more about how it holds up in other arenas.

Because anything worth doing is worth doing twice, yesterday morning we released the second open-source component of DocumentCloud: Underscore.js. These days, creating a modern web application means taking JavaScript seriously. Underscore is a library that provides a base level of functional programming support in a manner that's easy to integrate with projects and other libraries. Since yesterday morning, we've received a whole slew of patches, and have made a number of updates driven by suggestions from the community.

Most of our work over the past few months has been on the internal DocumentCloud prototype, which is a complete first draft of what the system will become. We're hoping to extract additional portions of the prototype for release in the near future. So stay tuned as more and more bits of DocumentCloud come online.

October 12 was a day of high emotion; it was finally time to thrive under pressure. I got home from work, rushed to my friend's house, and cracked open my laptop. The goal was to brainstorm like crazy, write up some solid project descriptions, and submit as many Knight News Challenge grant applications as possible over the three days I had left. Thank goodness fate had a better plan: the deadline was extended.

Now that we all have another two months, I'm going to take a few steps back and try to combine my formal education in information systems with my Knight-sponsored crash course of journalism's ongoing transformation and the lessons I've learned from three years of applications. I hope that the resulting guide will help you come up with some good ideas of your own. Remember, there is no limit to the number of applications you can submit. (Note: I won a 2007 Knight News Challenge grant for $15,000 to blog about
"connecting people, content and community.")

Well-designed solutions require well-understood problems. When brainstorming ideas for your News Challenge application, the first step is to write down a long list of complaints. (This also works if you already know what you want to do.) What do you want to change? What isn't working well today? What isn't happening that should? This list will give you a starting point, and will make sure that the ideas you come up with will have a real purpose.

Complaints might start from your own personal experience, but you need to expand from there because the true gems come from a fusion of imagination and research. Here are some ways to gather information:

• Talk to people. If you are looking for new problems, ask people you know what they would change. If you are looking to better understand one that you have already identified, ask if the problem exists for them and why. Their insights could provide the spark you need to turn a potentially good opportunity into a great one.
• Pay attention to buzz. Read what other people are saying about your issues. I can guarantee that as you read this there are members of the blogosphere discussing their own trials and tribulations with new media. This will help you get a general understanding of how people fit into the way things work, where they see opportunities for improvement, and which direction the crowd is moving.
• Know the current process. You can't change something without knowing what it is you are changing. Even if you plan to completely redefine the status quo, you need to appreciate and learn from the way things work now. There will always be something worth incorporating or maintaining.
• Explore the cutting edge. What are the front-runners doing, and what problems are they addressing? The cutting edge is known for being risky because nobody is sure of the best solution. Look at the problems that they are addressing and add those to your list. With any luck, you can think of a better idea.

The more you understand the tools available to you, the more effective you will be at finding creative applications for them. Ideally, you want to get to the point where you can have an intelligent conversation with a programmer, but for now it is enough to just have higher-level knowledge.

For each technology you think you might be able to use, figure out:

• How it works. While you don't have to be able to program, you really should have a general idea of how the magic happens. So long as you know what the tool is called, you will be able to find an accessible guide. Just remember that Google is your friend here.
• What it does. Tools tend to have an intended purpose, although often it's a very broad one. Be sure to understand what that purpose is. You can start by looking at its website and see what its creators say. Also try to find out which existing sites have used it, and examine what they have done.
• What it could do. Once you get a basic understanding of a tool, you can start to get creative and think of ways to use it that its creators never would have thought of. This task is all on your shoulders, but you can always scour tech blogs like TechCrunch or SlashDot to find examples of how people can push the limits.

If the technology is at all popular there is probably a community surrounding it. Once you find it, create an account and join the party; there will be people willing to help you learn.

You have a list of tools and a list of goals, now it is simply a matter of creative application: find out how to achieve those goals with the technologies available. Brainstorm as many solutions as you can for each problem, and be sure to dream a little bit here.

For each solution you need to be able to explain:

1. What it would do and how it would be used.
2. How it could fit in and what it could change.
3. How it would incorporate technology and/or people.
4. What assumptions would have to be met and how you would meet them.

You will probably find yourself coming up with new tools, new processes, or (more often) a combination of the two. If you're having trouble, try looking at how people are solving problems in completely different fields. Maybe you can learn from their work. Just remember that you don't need to know how everything fits together just yet.

This is when you descend from the land of the theory and optimism and take a close look at the world. You have some ideas already thanks to your list of solutions, but there are plenty of others to be found; plus, not all of what you have will work. What looks promising? Which ones can you cross off the list?

Some things to think about:

• Who are you dealing with? You need to understand your stakeholders (i.e. the people who would be impacted by your project). You want your solution to provide them so much value that they will be willing to donate time -- and maybe even money. At the very least, they need to be willing to try it.
• What is your competition? There will be direct and indirect competition, but you need to know about both. This will help you differentiate your idea from what is already out there, and it can also force you to further develop your solution into something even better.
• What resonates personally? You are going to need to explain why you are the person to take this idea and make it a reality, so figure out what you bring to the table and make sure you can get excited about it. It won't be enough to say, "I thought of it!"

To get funding from the Knight Foundation you need to be able to convince the world that what you have is a genuine opportunity. It should have the potential to redefine landscapes.

Take your most promising solutions and try to envision their implementations. What is going on behind the curtains? What kind of synergy can you create? Even though you are getting more concrete, don't get bogged down in unimportant details -- you are still brainstorming here.

Think in terms of process (how things get done), objects (e.g. "news article," "user contributed question," or "media clip") and user roles (e.g. "journalist," "editor," "consumer," or "judge"). How will the objects interact? How will each role fit into the system? Refine this line of thought with your previously researched understanding of your stakeholders, the current state of affairs, and the technologies available.

By now you've probably conjured up something spectacular, and filling out that first round application will be a breeze. With any luck you will have enough inspired thought to submit more than one. Good luck!

In part one I looked at the history of media development, the major players in the field, and some of the current obstacles - from regulatory reform to the linguistic divides - that stand in the way of a healthy media ecosystem. In this folow-up post I will continue to summarize the discussions which took place at a meeting earlier this month at Salzburg Global Seminar where representatives from the field of media development and funders who have supported their work all gathered to discuss how to more effectively "strengthen independent media."

The week-long meeting was divided into two parts, first convening practitioners involved in media development projects for three days, and then representatives from funding organizations for a separate, succeeding three-day meeting. (Some funders were resistant to participation from non-funders, I was told as an explanation for why the two meetings were held separately.)

Better Access or Training?

A recurring tension during the meeting of practitioners was whether investment in the field should focus on lowering the barriers to participation (by bringing down the cost of connectivity and making intuitive tools easily accessible), or on training programs which teach participants how to use new media tools to build community, monitor government, and promote development. Erik Hersman, one of the co-founders of Ushahidi, feels that if enough citizens have access to participatory media tools like Ushahidi, then a culture of tinkering will necessarily follow without costly training programs. Josh Goldstein echoed Erik's observation, pointing to the pervasive use of MXit, a mobile social network in South Africa. Ramsey Tesdell of 7iber, however, was skeptical of the "if you build it, they will come" mentality. "Technology is easy," he said, "it's building a community that is hard." Others added that there is no shortage of online tools available to all, but that active participation is still restricted to mainly elites.

The role of "quality" in media development was another repeated tension. Joyce Barnathan of the International Center for Journalists felt that the conversation was too focused on quantity - in terms of encouraging a larger number of media producers - and not enough on the quality of the content that is produced. Ivan Sigal of Global Voices, in language reminiscent of Pierre Bourdieu, observed that "quality" is often a coded word to distinguish those who are allowed to speak and those who aren't; that the concept is often meant to serve individuals inside exclusive institutions. Benjamin Glahn, the facilitator of the meeting, put it in more diplomatic terms: "quality is a process, not a static achievement."

Rob Faris of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society noted that much of the conversation over the three days focused on augmenting the supply of media - that is, encouraging more people to produce more and better content - but that there was little discussion about the issue of demand for content, especially from developing countries. All participants agreed that media literacy education is a fundamental component of a healthy media system. At Global Voices, for example, we have been encouraged by high school teachers and university professors who integrate our content into their syllabi.

During the second and third days of the meeting a number of the participants presented their projects. In addition to some of the latest work of Appfrica Labs and Overmundo, which I wrote about previously, we also heard from Tihomir Loza and Alexey Leonchik of Transitions Online, Serhii Danylenko of the pro-am journalism Ukrainian journalism portal Highway, Alex Park of Moby Group, John West of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, Arturs Mednis of Jaffa.lv, and Ramsey Tesdell of 7iber.com.

Generational Divide

A generational divide between younger activists who grew up using digital tools and older representatives from major institutions who are wary of the changes taking place in the media field was readily apparent. Arturs, Ramsey, and Sergii - all in their late 20s - said they couldn't be bothered with the paperwork, bureaucracy, and reporting requirements that are necessary to receive funding from major foundations. They would rather spend their time holding workshops, building websites, and creating community. Older participants in the room were all appreciative of their work and their voluntary ethos, but were concerned that the lifestyle isn't sustainable once marriage, mortgage, and children enter the picture.

By the end of the three-day meeting the participants agreed on a summary of major discussion points to be presented to the funders for their consideration. There was agreement that funders need to find ways to support the work of passionate and talented individuals like Arturs, Ramsey, and Sergii. One possible solution is to support intermediary funders like Rising Voices and Mobile Active which can give more attention to small scale innovation that often stays off the radar of large philanthropic foundations. Funders should keep in mind the need to reduce barriers to access as much as implementing training programs. This can be done by working with telecommunication companies to convince them that lowering their fees will increase their number of customers, or by working with regulatory agencies to increase competition and encourage more service providers to enter the market.

There should be more cooperation among donors so that successful media development projects have a clear pathway from initial start-up funding (for example, a microgrant to test the idea) to second stage funding in order to scale up, and finally sustained funding of staff and recurrent costs. Donors can also cooperate to streamline the application process so that media development project leaders spend more time on their work and less time writing separate proposals for each funder. Donors should avoid financing closed, proprietary tools and rather invest in open source tools and open source communities. Funders should be more up-to-date with innovations and trends in digital media and there should be more open communication between the funding community and the media development community. Funders can also take better advantage of their role to encourage cooperation between complementary (and even competing) projects.

In the third and final part of this series I will summarize the discussions that took place in the funders' meeting. Were they receptive to the suggestions made by practitioners? How do funders measure the impact of their investments? What do they see as the hallmarks of healthy media? What can be done from the funder's perspective to encourage sustainability in a field that is as chaotic and fast-paced as media? All this and more coming soon.

Andynoise: Citizen Sports Journalist
The best example so far is a sports enthusiast named Paul Anderson in Bakersfield, California who goes by the online moniker "Andynoise." He's now one of 400 publishers who have collectively created 1,500 editions since we launched in late March.

For several years now, this citizen journalist has been blogging about cross-country running in Bakersfield on Andynoise.com, a bare-bones site that focuses completely on local runners in Bakersfield. As just one example, he's taken and posted 61,000 pictures of high school runners in three years. It goes without saying that nobody in Bakersfield -- not even the local newspaper -- has done more to cover cross-country running events than him.


When we told Paul about Printcasting, he immediately saw its potential to get his content into a printable magazine form that he can take to cross country meets. We helped him with the printing costs for his first issue (an offer we made to all of our active publishers). As a result, a few weekends ago he handed out 500 copies of his Printcast at the Wolf Pack Invitational cross-country meet in Bakersfield that was attended by 700 athletes from 16 schools. We'll be printing up another issue for him for a second event, and have also sent a copy of his magazine to local sports shops and given them an offer for free advertising for one issue.

In addition to being a great case study for Printcasting, I think Andynoise says a lot about the future of journalism and the role that average people play in it every day. He's the perfect example of a journalistic entrepreneur, and he uses every tool available to him to find new ways to inform his audience. He publishes two other Printcasts in addition to Andynoise.com: one for the Bakersfield Distance Project and another for the Bakersfield Marathon Walkers. He's also active in Facebook, Twitter, Smugmug and any service that helps him serve his community of interest.

New Feature: The Edition Builder

The great thing about having active users is that they immediately tell us what they hate (really!), and we were caught off guard when the majority of users told us that they don't like the idea of automatically-generated editions.

As we probed into this more, we realized that they don't hate all automatic (people like Andynoise love how Printcasting pulls in content they've posted on blogs), but rather the lack of control over which stories appear in each spot.

In response, we've launched an entirely new path for creating a Printcast that we call the Edition Builder. Users can now choose every single article and placement, and also write or copy & paste stories from elsewhere (for example, from a Word document). But the real power is in the Story Finder, which lets you search through the 6,000 articles that have been imported into Printcasting. You can save them in a Story List (what we internally call "hunter-gatherer mode"), then drag and drop them into your publications.

This video shows how the Edition Builder works:

Initial reactions to the Edition Builder have been positive, but we're not stopping there. Over the next two months, we'll launch a completely new version of Printcasting that's tied more tightly to the node structure of Drupal 6.

Also, a new PDF generator we're experimenting with should allow much more flexibility and variability between templates, with headlines, images and story spots appearing in completely different places as you switch between them. Here's a screen shot of one of them, created by our Web designer Don Hajicek (who is also behind most of our site design and even some functionality):

We're also working to make Printcast subscriptions work more like an email newsletter tool that just happens to include a beautiful printable magazine.

Planning for More Partners

Finally, we continue to get inquiries from large companies and organizations that want to experiment with Printcasting -- and the nature of the inquiries in changing. Perhaps the most interesting development there is that not just one, but two membership organizations are now looking at Printcasting as a way to provide value-added news services to their members.

This was a pleasant surprise, but we should have seen this coming. Organizations of all types seem to be ramping up their content staffs (some even call them "newsrooms") just as newspapers are laying off reporters, and they always have a certain number of members who like the option of reading in print. In some cases, these organizations' members are telling them that they want them to do something to help save newspapers. Who would have predicted that?

Printcasting fits in because it's a "bridge" product that provides digitally aggregated content in a form that works great on a home printer. In the current economic recession, they can't afford as much paper and ink as they used to, so having a PDF version that members can print at home is appealing. And they all see the value of having instant handouts that they can take to real-world meetings. That isn't all that different from what Andynoise is doing with cross-country meets.

From a philosophical standpoint, this makes me wonder if membership organizations, non-profit news startups and the like will be the ones who carry the torch of the printed newspaper as "newspapers" reduce or eliminate printed copies altogether. But more likely, they will both end up in a happy middle-ground.

Oh, and one last thing about partnerships. Our objective has always been to spend the last 6 months of our Knight News Challenge grant period helping 5 other organizations make Printcasting work in their local communities. We have the ability to do that now thanks to some focused tests with MediaNews Group, but we won't delve into partnerships fully until around January.

If you or your organization are interested in being a partner, we'd like to hear from you. Please fill out this form. We'll contact you if we think there's a good fit.

Last week, hNews became an official draft microformat. Having been proposed as a new data format and then discussed within the microformats community, it is now in draft 0.1 at Microformats.org. This means it has reached a stage where the microformat community believes it is stable enough for widespread adoption. This also reaffirms hNews as an open standard, free for anyone to integrate to their news content, whether they're from big news agencies like AP, a non-profit like OpenDemocracy.net, or individual journalists blogging on WordPress.

We also learned last week that AOL is adopting hNews. Though AOL has yet to make a formal announcement, hNews is already live on a number of its sites, including AOL News. This article, for example, has hNews embedded in its source code.

Then, this week, TownNews announced it was integrating hNews into its content management system. TownNews provides technology to support the publication of newspaper interactive editions online. By integrating hNews to their CMS, they suddenly make it available to up to 1,500 news sites across the U.S. If these news organizations want to start making their news a lot more machine-readable -- or "semantic" -- pretty much all they have to do is flick a switch.

This news builds on the adoption of hNews by the Associated Press. AP has not yet made its hNews marked-up content public, but plans to before the end of this year.

Making News Machine Readable

These developments are the culmination of the first stage of our transparency initiative, a non-profit project jointly funded by the Knight Foundation (we won a Knight News Challenge Award in 2008) and the MacArthur Foundation. We have also worked with the AP in the latter stages.

hNews, for those unfamiliar with it, makes some basic, factual information about the provenance of an online news article machine-readable. In other words, it makes distinguishable a lot of information that is currently indistinguishable on the web (e.g. to search engines). hNews is not the same as "beacon," "web bug," the controversial data tag that Associated Press is attaching to its content to help track its use around the web, and allow it, as I understand it, to create a "News Registry" of its users to create a registry of news - i.e. who owns it and how you can use it.. AP is layering beacon web bug on top of hNews.

The reason hNews is so useful to anyone producing journalism and to the public is that it helps to differentiate news on the web. At the same time, it should make news easier to find, give greater credit to the author (or help "ascribenation", as Doc Searls called it on LinuxJournal), link the story to the news principles it adheres to (if any), unlock some of the value of the news archive, and enable untold unintended consequences.

Currently, only some articles published by AOL, and a few hundred published by OpenDemocracy.net, the first adopter of hNews, are marked up. But within a month or so, there will be thousands and then perhaps hundreds of thousands of stories. Once that happens, we will actually be able to truly see how helpful hNews can be. The aim will then be to develop features and tools built on hNews, and begin benefiting from the marked up information. For example, this could be done via searches and APIs.

For us, the Media Standards Trust, the next stage will involve juggling many balls simultaneously. We need to communicate what hNews is and how it works to as many people as possible. This means making sure people realize that hNews is for anyone producing journalism, not just big news organizations. We also need to develop applications based on hNews in order to illustrate what it's useful for. And we need to keep evolving hNews to include additional (optional) semantic information. At the same time, we'll have to be flexible enough to cope with the unintended consequences.

We are still a little ways from seeing what impact hNews will have, but now we have the opportunity, over the next few months, to see how it can make news more transparent.

Our launch party in Tempe this past month led me to realize that this is all just now starting...

Up until that moment CityCircles had been a concept that we've had to explain to our friends and colleagues - using hand gestures or drawings. Many people thought the idea was cool but just couldn't visualize it. Lots of people asked: "when can we play with it??"

On October 8th we finally had something to show our constituents! At our launch party we demo'd the alpha site and received lots of great feedback. With every comment made by our audience (about 70 or so individuals) I realized how much potential this project has and how much work is yet to be done.

In the meantime (while our brilliant programmers are hammering away on changes, additions, features and functions) Adam and I have been working on building relationships with the communities around the light rail as well as the local merchants. We're looking for participation from the communities in creating content for our site - neighborhood news, community improvement projects, neighborhood events, etc.

Getting buy-in from local merchants will be crucial in building a sustainable business model. So far a lot of local businesses have expressed enthusiasm in trying to promote via our site. We've got some eager participants who can't wait to see this site launch.

We're trying our best to build momentum before CityCircles is released to the public. We'll be sending some invites out this week so we can get users to play with the site and provide as much feedback as possible. However, we plan on releasing new functionality and features very often in the next coming months.

The software, the first version of which was developed this spring by a team of computer science and journalism students at Northwestern University, has evolved significantly since then. John Templon and Nick Allen (a "programmer-journalist" attending the Medill School of Journalism on a Knight News Challenge scholarship) were two of the students who worked on the initial version of the software, which has been made available on an open-source basis. John and Nick, both Medill grad students, developed the software with Tian Huang of Medill and Thu Cung, a student in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

The software, then called "Machine Generated Sports Stories," was one of five projects developed in an experimental collaboration with the McCormick School's Intelligent Information Laboratory, or InfoLab. The class brought together students from Medill's Interactive Innovation Project and from McCormick's practicum in intelligent information systems. Two professors from Medill (me and Jeremy Gilbert) and two from McCormick (Kris Hammond and Larry Birnbaum) led the collaboration.

If you want to know more about the class and the software the students developed, you can read the class blog, watch the students' final presentation, or download their comprehensive report that includes recommendations for journalists, media companies and journalism education.

Since June, Nick and John have kept working on the baseball project as paid interns at the InfoLab. They've reconstructed the code, built a greater variety of game narratives and begun to incorporate details about trends in player and team performance over time.

Earlier this month, an article in Medill's alumni magazine brought StatsMonkey to the attention of a lot of journalists. A couple of them didn't like it:

• "Soon enough, sports reporters could be obsolete," wrote Andrew Greiner at NBCChicago.com.
• Rick Green of the Hartford Courant, asked, "... isn't something lost when the reporter isn't there at the games, talking to players, paying attention to what's not said and feeling the mood?"

These weren't the first journalists to express concerns about StatsMonkey. Back in August, Gregory Hardy of CBSSports.com worried about what might happen "if robot sportswriters take over."

Given the turmoil in the news business these days, it's understandable that journalists -- especially sports journalists -- would be nervous about StatsMonkey. But I don't think sportswriters need to be worried -- if StatsMonkey becomes a commercial product, it is highly unlikely to put sports journalists out of work.

To understand why, let's start by explaining what StatsMonkey actually does:

• It imports the box score and play-by-play information, information routinely captured for games in professional leagues, college baseball and some lower levels (high school, youth leagues, etc.).
• It uses some baseball-geek stats (leverage index and win probability added) to identify high-stakes at-bats and key plays that significantly change the probability that one team will win.
• It determines a game narrative -- for instance, a come-from-behind win, a pitcher's duel, etc. -- from these key at bats and plays
• It constructs a headline and story from the options for game narratives and incorporates key events from the play by play
• It uses historical data -- about teams and players -- to add context (for instance, that a particular player's hit broke a 5-game hitless streak, or that this was the team's third win in a rwo).

Of course, the program will have a limited number of possible game narratives, and it cannot account for events that don't show up in the box score or play by play (for instance, the infamous play in a 2003 Chicago Cubs playoff game in which a fan caught a foul ball that might otherwise have been fielded for an out). A StatsMonkey story will be a very poor substitute for richly textured narrative by a professional sportswriter.

But think of a few ways StatsMonkey could add to what professional journalists do:

• It could instantly write a game story as soon as the last out is made, freeing a reporter to go down to the field or the locker room to do interviews
• It could generate a story about any game in progress, at any point during the game -- just what someone might want when checking on a favorite team during the work day.
• It could create stories about games -- for instance, college baseball -- that are not routinely covered by professional journalists.
• It could generate stories about each player in a game for whatever people are especially interested in particular players (not hard to imagine for college baseball)
• If Little League coaches start to enter game information through a mobile device (and there already is at least one "app for that"), it could generate game stories about Little League games, which have a passionate following but will never be covered by professional journalists.

Beyond that, even given my background and identity as a journalist, I would have to say to any sportswriter: If your game story CAN be generated by a computer, at some point it WILL be generated by a computer. Human journalists will do -- and should do -- the kind of reporting and storytelling that computers can't.

Beyond that, StatsMonkey is just a first experiment in identifying formulaic stories could conceivably be generated by software rather than people. Some other possible examples: corporate earnings reports, obituaries, even accounts of what City Council did last night. As with StatsMonkey, software that generates these kinds of stories most likely wouldn't replace journalists. The software would create stories that would otherwise not be written, or free up journalists to do more important work that can only be done by humans.

Got any other ideas for topics that would be a good fit for computer-generated stories? Post in the comments below.

Writing with a distinct voice that allows her personality to shine through, Belton rarely leaves the readers wondering what she's really thinking.

"Big Sis sent me this story Friday and my head almost exploded from the sheer ignorance of it," she wrote about on the Louisiana judge who refused to marry an interracial couple.

Belton is equally up-front about her personal life, recounting her failed marriage, her forays into fashion and on being bipolar. Here is the former print reporter in her own words.

How would you describe your blog and when did it start?

The blog started in August of 2007, but then it was just a personal blog and not what it is today. I would describe what it is now as a political, pop cultural blog with a satirical tilt. It can be serious, but most of the time I like to poke fun at the day's news and find a lighter way of dealing with heavy issues.

Can you tell us about the name?

The name started out as a joke-meets-a-message. The idea was that I am an intellectual snob who was shunning, i.e. poo poo-ing, some of the less savory aspects of black culture, and endorsing the more artistic and high cultural side. In reality, I'm not much of a snob, nor I have I ever been, but the name is very catchy and memorable, which was another reason why I chose it.

**Who is your audience? **

My audience is primarily African American, mostly female, but [there's]a significant portion of men. The men don't always comment even though they make up more than 40 percent of the readership. I also have a significant white and conservative readership, despite the fact that the blog has a Liberal slant. I'd like to think that's because I don't engage in demagoguery, so they feel safe in commenting on the site.

What is your goal?

My goal is to continue to grow the site until it becomes a blogging-meets-news-meets-social networking hub for like-minded individuals, aka, "snobs" of all types. I'd like to bring on more writers and editors and really create a full service news site with a strong, seriously funny slant.

What are you proudest of?

I most proudest of how far the blog has come, from a little blogspot site to what it is today, and what it's potential could be. I'm still amazed that people are drawn to it, and that it resonates so well in the web community as well as in the media. I'm very humbled by how fast I've grown.

You started out working in newspapers, do you still consider yourself a journalist?

I do. I feel that as long as I work in some form of the media I'm still a journalist and must adhere to journalism ethics. I think that is another thing that makes my blog a tad different. There is some element of quality control and news judgment that goes on. I don't post a lot of rumor and hearsay, I try to get even basic gossip sourced somehow. It's important to have standards.

How do you get your news?

I read a lot of blogs, newspapers and magazines and I watch a lot of television news. I'm a voracious consumer of news. I love it. I've watched 60 Minutes almost every Sunday of my life since I was about nine years old.

Any thoughts on the future of news?

I feel that things are change very rapidly right now, and it's been a tough adjustment for newspapers. People can get the news at such instantaneous speeds that stories break and die before people can even get the chance to fully understand them. I think traditional media will eventually make the adjustment to this, but I'm still concerned how newspapers, regional and national, will be able to make money when a majority of people online believe news should be free.

What blogs do you read?

I read Salon.com, Slate.com, Huffington Post, Gawker, "Wonkette"http://wonkette.com/, Jezebel, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jack and Jill Politics, AverageBro, Se7enMagazine, Awesomely Luvvie"www.awesomelyluvvie.com/, Politico, Racialicious, Angry Asian Man, TPMMuckracker, Crooks and Liars, The Negro Intellectual, What About Our Daughters, What Would Thembi Do, Michelle Obama Watch, and many, many more. I could go on forever.

What do you think about the power of the black blogosphere?

I think through groups like Afrosphere and gatherings like "Blogging While Brown": http://www.bloggingwhilebrown.com/ show the ability of the black blogosphere and its potential. There are just so many great writers doing amazing things who have organized amazing things... like Gina McCaul of What About Our Daughters, who spoke out on the Dunbar Village case and called leaders to task when they came out in support of the perpetrators, but not the woman and child who were attacked and brutalized. There is a strong activism streak among many black bloggers on everything from anti-tasering campaigns to campaigns to improve (or marginalize) BET.

It's really very exciting and fascinating. People underestimate the power of black bloggers, but they're on the come-up and they've made things happen. The Jena 6 was almost exclusively something that was pushed by black bloggers and black radio before it made it to the mainstream. It's really rather incredible what people can do with a little internet real estate and a voice.

For those not familiar with the project, I'll offer a quick description. Large glass storefronts in two Greater Boston area neighborhoods, Brookline and Roxbury, will be transformed into video screens, providing pedestrians of each neighborhood with a portal into each other's worlds. Running 24/7, these life-size screen images and AV technology will enable real-time interaction between residents of the neighborhoods.

These portals will also act as media centers for news collection and dissemination. The viewing and sharing of news will be brought out of private spheres and into a public forum to create a kind of virtual town hall meeting. Though only 2.4 miles apart and connected by the Route 66 bus, people living in one of these two neighborhoods rarely visit the other. Using technology developed to bridge geographical distances, Virtual Street Corners instead traverses the social boundaries that separate two important cultural and transportation hubs with significant historical connections.

Citizen Journalists in Each Neighborhood

There will be both planned and spontaneous interactions. Three different citizen journalists from different parts of the neighborhood will be employed to deliver daily news reports about what is happening in their area at specified times each day. There will be a website with live feeds streaming from each location. Both storefronts are located next to a bus stop, and riders (or anyone else) will be able to download podcasts or videocasts.

Virtual Street Corners is closely related to a project that I created with Liz Canner called Symphony of a City, which premiered at the Boston Cyberarts Festival 2001. Symphony of a City used headcams, projections and streaming video to paint a portrait of Boston through the eyes of eight different residents.

Both pieces evolve out of earlier work I've done that aimed to create participatory community public art projects across Boston. While doing those projects, I was struck by the diversity of culture, as well as the segregation that still permeates Boston. Residents appear to treat the situation as normal, and little dialogue appears to take place around the issue. These works invite people to confront this reality, reflect and dialogue about it. It also allows them to experience the city in a new way outside their daily routines.

Art or Activism?

Virtual Street Corners first took shape in 2006 when I received a "Public Art Incubator" fellowship from the Berwick Research Institute in Dudley Square, Roxbury. This grant provided me with an opportunity to have a studio in the middle of Dudley Square, and feedback from two curators, Susan Sakash and Andi Sutton. I was able to test early models, which culminated in a one-day trial at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT.

During this process there were several issues that came up repeatedly and are worth mentioning. One is about how to classify the project. Is it art or activism? Journalism or humanities? In fact, it fits within several different fields of practice, and it is more important to me that it is engaging and useful, than whether or not it falls within one category or the other.

I think there is an evolving openness to cross-disciplinary projects. Nevertheless, it continues to be an issue I repeatedly confront from many sides, including funders and academics. Within the art world, it was brought to my attention that similar projects had taken place. Most frequently mentioned is Hole In Space by Erkki Huhtamo. I have found his work to be particularly insightful. What I take away from him is that it is not so important that we come up with new and "groundbreaking" ideas. Ideas or works of art are not better because they are "new"; often, what we perceive as new is a restatement of an old idea. (He labels this a "Topoi.") But capitalism and consumerism is driven by this idea of coming up with the latest hottest thing.

Just the fact that Virtual Street Corners will be seen by a completely different group of people, that it is executed in a different context and at a different time, makes it worthwhile. I'm thinking of this as a cooperation rather than a competition. And that's something I appreciate about the Knight Challenge -- that it is centered on building and expanding ideas, rather than making them exclusive.

User-generated comments, and text messages in particular, are causing umbrage in Namibian government circles. Their unhappiness highlights the historic shift of media away from unidirectional, univocal information.

This case underlines the politics entailed when the media becomes a platform for broader communication, which is exactly what's happening with mobile phones in some
African countries.

Things came to a head in Namibia in early October at a political rally held as part of the build-up to the country's November elections. A torrent of abuse and threats were issued at the event, and they emanated from the Namibian minister of justice, who also serves as the secretary-general of the ruling Swapo party.

In what amounted to a tirade, Ms. Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana launched a racist attack on the editor of The Namibian, Gwen Lister, and accused this celebrated journalist of personally writing the critical SMS messages that have been published in the paper.

Attacks Target Namibian, User-Generated Content

Significantly, as the Editors' Forum of Namibia (EFN) noted, "it is not the first time politicians have called for an end to the publication of the cell phone-generated SMSes."

EFN went on to defend "the rights of citizens to approach print or electronic news media to offer their opinions on current affairs, matters of state politics and other issues of public debate in the form of letters to the editor, SMS or by direct participation in interactive programs."

An alternative newspaper founded 24 years ago to fight against South African occupation, The Namibian has been fiercely independent and has played a major role in exposing corruption and poor administration in the post-colonial period.

The publication today maintains the most visited website in Namibia, even though the country has very high-cost and low-penetration Internet access. This digital deficit notwithstanding, Namibians at large have seized upon SMS technology to express themselves, and a range of newspapers are jam-packed with their personal adverts and political opinions.

While some publications charge premium rates for SMS messages and make money out of the service, The Namibian provides the same access at cost.

MISA Takes on Information Access

Coincidentally, as the row raged over the minister's remarks, a group of media activists gathered in the capital, Windhoek, to plan a campaign over the next 18 months. They were brought together by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), an influential lobby in the region that has achieved the following milestones:

• This organization was a product of a conference in the city on 3 May 1991, which also gave birth to the "Windhoek Declaration." In turn, that statement secured endorsement by both UNESCO and the United Nations General Assembly, and it is the reason why World Press Freedom Day is commemorated worldwide every anniversary.

• In 2001, MISA convened a follow-up conference, this time concentrating on the need to end state monopolies of the airwaves in Africa. The "African Charter on Broadcasting" that emerged from the event helped to do exactly that.

Now, with "Windhoek +20" looming on 3 May 2011, the focus is being put on information access. The MISA argument is that freedoms without access to information are hollow and inimical to deepening Africa's democratization and clean governance.

This aligns with a long-standing campaign around the world for the right to information. The traditional focus in this area has been on securing sunshine laws which will give members of the public the means to look into the hidden realms of official information. But changing technology requires changes to a paradigm that has historically put exclusive focus on rights to government-held information.

As The Namibian SMS case shows, the issue now has to go beyond this. With public expression enabled through cell phones, access to information needs to embrace society's rights to have citizen-produced content seeing the light of day.

In part, this issue is a question of cost. Although a commercial entity, The Namibian treats SMSes as part of its public service. In contrast, in neighbouring Zambia, the state-owned broadcaster charges premium rates. Labeled "participation at a price" by academic Fackson Banda, this practice is diametrically opposite to real public service media, such as providing toll-free numbers.

What's also critical is that governments keep their hands off of media entities that are publishing user-generated content. It is entirely inappropriate of the Namibian authorities to try and entrench a model of one-way, push media. This model intrinsically facilitates control.

As Lister wrote in March, long before the current controversy, "When people are given public platforms to voice their opinions, such as the call-in shows and the SMS pages in this newspaper, our political leadership soon takes exception when they're exposed to criticism."

In other words, for this particular government information is okay, but communication is taboo.

Registering Journalists and Bloggers in Botswana

What's scary is that in next door Botswana, a draconian law was passed which requires the registration of all media, including bloggers. The system of course could allow for their de-registration and criminalization.

Despite these heavy-handed approaches, the genie of user-generated content is out of the bottle. A totalitarian regime would be required to stop all SMS messaging in order to prevent political criticism, and both Namibia and Botswana count themselves as democracies.

Nevertheless, the Namibian politicians have set out on a problematic path that needs to be countered. MISA and its activists must campaign for information, and also for communication.

Access to information subsumes -- but is much more than -- the right to information.

In turn, this also points toward causes such as defining the remit of public service in new media in a way that does not exclude poorer people who can't afford premium SMS rates. It also emphasizes the importance of advocating for progressive policies which ensure that Internet access is available and affordable to those citizens who want to add their voices to the media mix.

In a column responding to the attacks from the minister of justice, Lister wrote that Namibians "see the SMS pages as an opportunity for dialogue with government and others on matters close to their own hearts."

Her final assessment was that "Our SMS pages are an important voice for civil society, and if in the process their views are not always to the liking of leadership, then it is high time they get used to it."

Another story I've written on The Namibian experience

1. Good and fast: If you went for good and fast it most likely means you hired top notch folks. This is a boon to any website project starting out -- but it also means you need to watch your cash flow because it won't be cheap. Unless you are rolling in cash, the cost should be a concern. Still, going this route can save you money in the long run. If you are able to get something to market before you cut off development, you'll be able to lean on what you've produced and it will work reliably. In contrast, I know plenty of projects that went with option number two...
2. Fast and cheap: If it works out then you've won the lottery. Again, I'm not saying quality is impossible here. But I personally know projects that went the fast and cheap route and in the long run it hurt them. What they ended up bringing to market failed. Most users are not as forgiving as they are to Twitter. If your site breaks, they won't come back. It often takes an organization twice as much money and time to build a stable website if the initial site was built fast and cheap. If you are not a tech-minded person, you might wonder why everyone doesn't outsource or go with the cheapest labor out there (and there are cheap developers on the market). Think of this scenario: you could pay an Amish wood craftsman to build an heirloom cabinet that will last generations, or you can get something from Ikea that will last two to five years and require some assembly and maintenance on your part --but will cost a tenth of the price. There is no right or wrong answer. It often depends on where you are in life. When I was in college it was Ikea all the way, baby! In either case the trade-offs are apparent. That's the difference between options number one and number two.
3. Good and cheap: The typical scenario here is that you have a great web developer (an Amish craftsman of code) who is ready to donate some of his/her time to your project. This is great. It means you can get quality at a cheap price. But this also usually means the development comes at a pace dictated by the volunteer, not you. Set all the deadlines you want in your mind -- the reality is that you're at their mercy. Again, this isn't a bad thing. It's just a trade-off. The good news is that when something does finally get put out, you'll have quality and it won;t have broken the piggy bank. If you aren't in a rush this can even be ideal (for example, maybe it's something you are working on as a volunteer as well).

Now, as promised, below is a sneak-peak at a rough redesign of Spot.Us. (It's very rough -- see the Spot.Us blog for details).