Idea Lab

'Alive in Tehran' Lets Iranian Citizens Report Through Voicemail

by Ryan Sholin
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

I've been following Brian Conley's work at Alive in Baghdad since October 2007, when I met him at the Networked Journalism summit at CUNY. Conley -- somewhat more commonly known as Baghdad Brian -- is one of the few supporters of citizen journalism with several trips to wartime Iraq under his belt. In this interview, Conley talks about his recent project, Alive in Tehran. Listen to the full interview here (15:35) or right-click to download the mp3. Full transcript follows, with links added: Ryan: Hey this is Ryan Sholin here, I'm recording this today for PBS Idea Lab, and I'm...

• June 24, 2009
• 2 comments

Twittering Away the Jobs of Journalists

by Paul Lamb
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Jon Steward did a funny bit last night, referencing how the major news networks were forced to rely on the "hearsay" of Twitter and Facebook postings to understand the events unfolding in Iran. But with the State Department requesting that the good folks at Twitter delay their scheduled site maintenance to keep Tweets flowinng from Iran, you know we have turned a corner. So in all seriousness, in the era of twittering and crowdsourced journalism, are journalists themselves still relevant? Obviously I am not the first person to ask this - or to piss people off by asking it again....

• June 17, 2009
• 7 comments

Online Filmmakers Offer New Glimpses of Iran

by David Sasaki
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

The last time we checked in with Iran Inside Out, project leader Shaghayegh Azimi had just finished a trailer video to whet our appetite for what was to come. As she details in a two-part project evaluation, Azimi intended for Iran Inside Out to become a full-time venture to spread awareness about and raise the profile of young Iranian filmmakers by introducing their works to an international audience. The project has encountered several obstacles, but it has also made important progress over the past six months, including an attractive and interactive website. Iran Inside Out has also managed to publish...

• December 19, 2008
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A Year of Rising Voices

by David Sasaki
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

With this week's introduction to Iran Inside Out, a video-blogging project led by Shaghayegh Azimi, all ten Rising Voices grantees have now been introduced. Some of the earliest projects, like Nari Jibon in Bangladesh, have been active for nearly a year now. Here is a comprehensive run-through of some of the successes and challenges they have met along the road. Nari Jibon Introduction Feature Posts Happy Pahela Baishakh! Last Monday marked the first day of year 1415 according to the Bangla calendar. Nari Jibon students and staff celebrated with songs, poetry, and a brief skit. They started the evening by...

• April 21, 2008
• 2 comments

Iran Inside Out

by David Sasaki
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Shaghayegh Azimi is the epitome of what is often referred to on Global Voices as a "bridge-blogger"; that is, someone who uses his or her weblog to bridge two or more cultures. There is only one catch - Azimi isn't really a blogger. As a former film producer in Iran, video has always been her preferred medium of expression. And she's not alone. In an interview over Skype, Azimi says that thousands of Iranian youth yearn to become filmmakers, but that limited access to equipment, along with Iran's few channels of distribution, mean that only the very best, luckiest,...

• April 19, 2008
• 3 comments

Will Online Video Make the World a Better Place?

by David Sasaki
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

The impact of the digital divide (or at least the bandwidth imbalance) is most pronounced when it comes to online video. In regions where lightening-fast internet connections are taken for granted, such as North America, Western Europe, and East Asia, it has become a common occurrence to observe teenagers watching YouTube videos on their iPhones or Korean businesswomen watching the nightly newscast on their mobile phones. Even those who have yet to transform their mobile phones into television sets, still regularly catch up on the latest and most popular YouTube videos. In fact, much of the world has already moved...

• January 5, 2008
• 5 comments

Congratulations to the New Rising Voices

by David Sasaki
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

The inaugural group of Rising Voices citizen media outreach projects have given us new and powerful voices from communities that previously were rarely seen participating online. Last month we put out a call for new citizen media outreach proposals, of which five would be selected to join our current projects based in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Colombia, India, and Sierra Leone. In total we received 63 project proposals from over 35 different countries. Although the quantity of applications was less than the 142 we received in July, the quality and innovation that stood out throughout all of this round's proposals made the...

• December 28, 2007
• 2 comments