Idea Lab

The Shocking Truth About Journalism, Activism, and the Healthcare Reform Debate

by Ryan Sholin
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

A few weeks ago, I spotted a link to something called deathpanels.org getting passed around Twitter, and quickly traced its origin to Matt Thompson, Knight Foundation interim online community manager and general champion of contextual journalism. (Note: deathpanels.org is an independent project of Matt's, and not affiliated with the Knight Foundation.) Remembering a conversation that I had with Matt and others at a recent conference, I realized the idea had been brewing for some time. A few minutes after I looked at the site for the first time, I called up Matt to talk about the idea. Listen to...

• September 4, 2009
• 2 comments

A Related Epidemic: Swine Flu Brings New Lows in Context-to-Chatter Ratio

by Benjamin Melançon
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

One pig, if only in the news topic logo*, usually gets a cameo in television coverage of swine flu. The lonely pig is out of context, though -- separated from the three-quarters of a million caged, crammed, and fattened pigs slaughtered annually at the massively polluting pig factory in the town with the first human case of the virus. There is not yet hard proof that the pigs half-owned by U.S. agribusiness giant Smithfield Farms evolved the virus in their literal cesspool conditions -- there isn't a single pig outed with having this flu anywhere -- but media are rarely...

• April 30, 2009
• 1 comment

What Drives News Decisions (What Are They Thinking)?

by Benjamin Melançon
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Senator Barack Obama mischaracterized statements of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. To be charitable, there's only so many media narratives any one person or even campaign can try to change at one time. That's my question for today: how are these media narratives formed in the first place, and why? Easier question: Did you see the videos below? The seven and ten minute versions, not the seven and ten second versions? Obama, in his speech, chose to defend Wright as a person and a leader, but he denounced the statements as divisive and reflecting a static view of progress in history. In...

• March 25, 2008
• 2 comments