Idea Lab

Notifying Next of Kin in the Age of Facebook

by Teru Kuwayama
2010 Knight News Challenge Winner

When she picked up the phone, I could tell from the sound of her voice that she didn't know yet. "I'm sorry to tell you this -- but I wanted you to hear from a friend, not Facebook. Tim Hetherington was killed in Libya. Chris Hondros too. I'm really sorry." There's a nauseating absurdity to those words, but it's the conversation I had yesterday morning with a friend. I'd been getting "pings" for an hour, mostly by Facebook IM, asking if I knew anything about the tweets coming out of Libya. I wasn't taking them especially seriously at first, having...

• April 21, 2011
• comments

Basetrack Pushes Off to Follow Marines in Afghanistan

by Teru Kuwayama
2010 Knight News Challenge Winner

Safi Airways flight 4Q-52. Sept 28, 2010 at 20:00 GMT-Zulu -- I'm airborne and en route to link up with First Battalion, Eighth Marine Regiment (a.k.a. "one-eight," the subject of our Knight News Challenge grant), in southern Afghanistan. We're at cruising altitude, somewhere between Hungary and Turkey, on a civilian flight into Kabul. The first leg of our trip, on Singapore Air between New York and Frankfurt, was fully packed. Frankfurt to Kabul is almost empty. Go figure. Apparently Afghanistan has yet to re-establish itself as a vacation destination for European tourists. Battling Red Tape Plan A was to travel...

• October 19, 2010
• comments

One-Eight, Afghanistan: Social Media + U.S. Marine Corps

by Teru Kuwayama
2010 Knight News Challenge Winner

As the saying goes, "Be careful what you wish for." In my case, I won a Knight News Challenge grant to launch an online, social media reporting network that follows a battalion of U.S. Marines throughout their deployment to southern Afghanistan. (Congratulations! You've won a year in Helmand Province, roadside bomb capital of the world...) Although recently upgraded from "forgotten war" to "central front," the Afghanistan conflict exists on the periphery of the American consciousness. We're nearly a decade into the longest war in U.S. history, but most Americans still have a pretty fuzzy idea of what we're actually doing...

• August 23, 2010
• comments