Idea Lab

Students Get Blogging Seminar, Digital Cameras for SochiReporter

by Alexander Zolotarev
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

I've just returned from helping deliver the first seminar about blogging and citizen journalism ever held in Sochi, Russia. Just weeks away from launching my Knight News Challenge project, SochiReporter.ru, I organized a seminar for third, fourth and fifth year students from the five leading Sochi-based universities. Thirty-five journalism and IT students participated in the two day seminar called "Web and Journalism: The New Trends." We received press coverage in over 30 online publications, in newspapers and from three of the city's leading TV channels. Clearly, this city, which will host the 2014 Olympic Winter Games, is ready to embrace...

• August 20, 2009
• 1 comment

Can Bloggers Shape Health Care Policy?

by David Sasaki
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

M.D. Leaves Profession to Blog Last week one of the most emailed stories on the New York Times website was about a medical doctor who traded in his profession for a more lucrative one: blogging. No, Arnold Kim M.D. does not blog about kidney diagnosis, his specialty, but rather, rumors about future Apple products. His blog, MacRumors.com is listed as the second most valuable blog ($85 million) on the internet right behind Gawker Media and ahead of The Huffington Post, according to 24/7 Wall St., a financial news blog. But what if Arnold Kim M.D. did decide to blog about...

• July 29, 2008
• 1 comment

XO Laptop Turns Kids into Media Creators in Uruguay

by David Sasaki
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

"On YouTube, there is an 11-minute video of the veterinarian-assisted birth of a calf on a farm in Villa Cardal, Uruguay, a small town in a dairy-rich region four hours north of the capital, Montevideo. It's an amazing thing to watch--at least, to a city slicker like me who doesn't get to witness the miracle of birth every day. But what makes this particular video remarkable is that it was shot by a fourth-year student at Villa Cardal's Public School 24, using the built-in camera and recording software on the student's XO Laptop, within weeks of the machine's arrival at...

• February 12, 2008
• 2 comments

Some Goals and An Idea

by Dan Schultz
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Jay Rosen beat me to the punch but I'm still going to jot down seven goals that I think the perfect news system would address. I used this list as a foundation when thinking about how to utilize digital media and it is what I feel any type of aggregation system should include. Afterwards you'll find a quick summary of the idea that got me into this big mess in the first place.

• October 22, 2007
• 4 comments

Ready? Here's My Formula for Online News Success

by Jay Rosen
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

I am at the Online News Association annual meeting in Toronto. Listening to some of the speakers at the J-Lab's workshop, puzzling through the success of some sites and the failure of others, and putting together what I have learned from four years of doing PressThink, the emerging model I see would combine... √ High quality aggregation within a strong editorial focus. (Like the Huffington Post nationally, or Twin Cities Daily Planet locally.) √ Blogging platform with the best posts filtered to the front page. (Like Daily Kos) √ Original reporting with hybrid strength: amateurs with pro support (training, production...

• October 17, 2007
• 9 comments

Three Ideas About Citizen Journalism and Web 2.0

by Lisa Williams
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

"Is the Zapruder film citizen journalism?" Amy Gahran, 2005 To paraphrase Dave Winer, "You'll make more money because of your blog than from your blog." But read the whole thing. The net rewards narrow comprehensiveness -- " everything about something. Listen to Brewster Kahle, who runs the Internet Archive....

• October 16, 2007
• No comments

We Don't Have to Save the Newspaper Industry. We Do Have to Bring "The Press" Across the Digital Divide.

by Jay Rosen
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

At the recent Networked Journalism Summit I referenced a darker argument on the future of online advertising by Doc Searls. Here is where I discuss it. Because I write about the Internet and what it's doing to the press, and follow that story at my blog, I am sometimes asked what I believe the future of newspapers to be. Or, more bluntly, "will newspapers survive?" Very rarely is anyone satisfied with my answer: "I really don't know what's going to happen." (I like that answer, myself.) "... And I don't think anyone does." Not knowing what the model is, we...

• October 16, 2007
• 2 comments