Idea Lab

NY Attorney General Should Practice Transparency He Preaches

by Daniel X. O'Neil
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Today New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo made news headlines by coming down hard on American International Group (AIG), the company that has paid out millions of dollars in bonuses to some of the people thought responsible for the billions of dollars in losses that preceded government bailout money that continues to flow to the insurance giant. In a letter to AIG Chairman Ed Liddy (PDF), Cuomo requested a "list of individuals who are to receive payments under this retention plan, as well as their positions at the firm" and "a list of who negotiated these contracts and who developed...

• March 17, 2009
• 2 comments

Toward a National Journalism Foundation

by David Sasaki
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Amid so much talk of federal bailouts for the banking and auto industries, what would a national bailout plan for journalism look like? If you were given $700 billion to save journalism, how would you use it? How would you fix the system? The End of Commercial Media Several months ago I watched Roger Alton, the new editor of the Britain daily, The Independent, get absolutely skewered by Stephen Sackur on the BBC evening talk show, Hard Talk. Their 30 minute discussion boiled down to 15 minutes of Sackur asking how The Independent planned to stop losing money and 15...

• November 17, 2008
• 8 comments

U.S. Government Should Publish All Mortgages It Buys

by Daniel X. O'Neil
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

It appears that the United States government is going to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars worth of bad mortgages in an effort to prevent the collapse of the world's financial system. If they do, I'd like them to publish a list of all of the mortgages they purchase -- the loan number, the address of the property, the lender, the amount of the loan, the status of the loan, the plaintiffs and defendants in any associated foreclosure cases, and so on. As far as I can tell, it's not currently possible for the public to determine the underlying assets...

• September 24, 2008
• 1 comment

Resorting to Interviews When Conversation Stalls

by Amy Gahran
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

When we started the Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker project, we believed what local people involved in this effort told us -- that they'd be happy to contribute to this public conversation, speak up with their ideas and observations. Since we're dealing with a fairly niche topic mainly involving local government in a small city, we were relying on some initiative from people involved in what the city is doing with the carbon tax money. The kind of engagement we envisioned was people speaking up, having a public conversation. But when it came down to it, most of the people "in...

• August 11, 2008
• 1 comment

Sidewalks for Democracy Online

by Steven Clift
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Government websites don't have sidewalks, newspaper racks, public hearing rooms, hallways or grand assemblies. There are no public forums or meeting places in the heart of representative democracy online. The question that this essay will ask and answer is not what can we do to redesign democracy for the Internet Age, but, rather, why have we decided to delete democracy from the most visited interface citizens have with "their" government? And what are we going to do about it? After almost two decades of "e-democracy," we seem content with simply accelerating online what's already wrong with politics. We raise money...

• June 22, 2008
• 5 comments

Sean Bell Illustrates Lines that Divide Us

by Dori J. Maynard
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Blaring red headlines on the Drudge Report announced to the world that the three New York City Police who shot Sean Bell 50 times, killing him, were found not guilty. Drudge, with his right wing reputation, it turns out was one of the only mainstream white blogs to prominently play the Bell verdict. In fairness, the Huffington Post did have a small headline about the verdict. Things were different in the black blogosphere. It wasn't just that the black interest sites carried the coverage, it was also that many included rich texture and context in which to look at the...

• May 12, 2008
• No comments

How Far Should Transparency Go?

by Steven Clift
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Government Technology reported on public employee protests to seeing their names and salaries online via a database on the Sacramento Bee. What about public employee salaries - should all be publicly posted online? Should only management level and above be listed specifically with others displaying the salary range per pay scales for various classifications? I have a hard time imagining a democracy where any and all legally public government information is not on the Internet for all to see in a decade or so. This means the ethics filings of public officials will be liberated from the dusty paper files...

• March 18, 2008
• 7 comments

The San Jose Mercury News and Gary Webb

by Benjamin Melançon
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

The San Jose Mercury News' location in Silicon Valley is not the first reason it should have become the newspaper of record in the Internet age. Reading about this year's round of layoffs and cutbacks, I think about the journalist the Mercury News cut off twelve years ago during boom times. In 1996, a series of articles by Gary Webb showed the Central Intelligence Agency's complicity in bringing crack cocaine into Los Angeles. Profits from the new, highly addictive, and illegal drug supported the U.S.-backed Contras' war of terror against the people of Nicaragua during the 1980s. In those first...

• March 11, 2008
• 2 comments

Crashing the E-Politics and E-Democracy Gates

by Steven Clift
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

My focus tends to be the "citizen" in citizen media. Over the last few years I've increasing found myself at conferences like Public Media and the Online News Association. I always feel a bit out of place, because despite the adoption of online interactivity in online news and media, I am still pretty much viewed as a "consumer." Someone to be captured and delivered to advertisers or to become a donor to public broadcasting. Interactivity is often viewed in the context of news be it reacting with reader comments or creating "news." True conversation, the heart of being a citizen...

• February 21, 2008
• 1 comment

Public Notices 4.0: Time to Upgrade Public Meetings

by Steven Clift
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Over the years my work has brought me to Rome a few times. The Roman Forum as well as the Athenian Agora have always intrigued me as a model for envisioning online public spaces. Surrounding a public space you have major public and religious institutions, a commercial market in one corner, a place for public speeches, and in Roman Forums the "Albus" or a white notice board with public announcements written in black. Today we often experience institutions (online and off) without a town square or commons in the center, which I try to counter with Issues Forums. However, today...

• February 13, 2008
• 1 comment

The Media's Opportunity to Promote Democracy Online - Get Government to Do It

by Steven Clift
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

As I noted in my IdeaLab introduction, my background is in online citizen engagement. Specifically, I run a non-profit, E-Democracy.Org, that promotes both government and media accountability at the local level through online town halls we call Issues Forums. (Note our Minneapolis discussion of changes at the StarTribune here and here.) In the mid-90's I managed the main website for the State of Minnesota and staffed the Minnesota Government Information Access Council. I am passionate about government's responsibility to play a lead role as the supplier of information "raw materials" for democracy. The media can and should do a much...

• November 12, 2007
• 2 comments