Idea Lab

Signal-to-Noise and Related Content

by Benjamin Melançon
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Related Content: If you're in California's bay area, don't miss Drupal Day on Friday May 3, a special open session of NewsTools2008's mixing up journalists, technologists, entrepreneurs. Journalism's charge is to increase the signal to noise ratio. Some commentators on stuff, including my favorite marketing guru, say the irrelevant noise has begun encroaching on the signal that matters, after some years of improvement driven by online tools. I wish I could tell you the easy answer. I can't. I just know that the faltering signal is a problem. As mentioned by IdeaLab bloggers and elsewhere, solving this problem is a...

• April 29, 2008
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Questioning Candidates on Government Openness and Transparency - Pick your Top 5

by Steven Clift
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

While the mainstream media community raises awareness about open government each year during Sunshine Week, we need to push local up strategies that promote greater government transparency online so local citizen media has access to the raw "info" materials we need to improve democracy. We need to take a lesson from OMBWatch's Open Government online survey and ask questions of state and local candidate. Here is the survey introduction from OMBWatch: Open Government: What We Need to Know We deserve a more open and honest government. Elections are the time when politicians pay the most attention to people and issues,...

• January 29, 2008
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