Idea Lab

Freedom Fone Comes to Dar es Salaam

by Bev Clark
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Amanda and I have just returned from Dar es Salaam. We were on the road with Freedom Fone. Last Tuesday it was 9 degrees at 9am in orderly Johannesburg and 28 degrees with sweat inducing humidity at 7pm in chaotic Dar. After negotiating the jam-packed arrivals hall we smiled in relief when we discovered John holding up a torn piece of cardboard with Freedom Fone scribbled on it. We couldn't speak Swahili and he couldn't speak English but we made our greetings and jumped into his car for the ride of our life to a lodge off the Old Bagamoyo...

• November 26, 2009
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The New Journalist in the Age of Social Media

by J.D. Lasica
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

The New Journalist in the Age of Social MediaView more documents from JD Lasica. I'm at Day 2 of a remarkable two-day conference that is bringing nonprofits, citizen journalism and social media together in ways I've never seen before. I'm jazzed, hopeful and intrigued by the challenges ahead. The passion in the room is palpable. The 40 people who convened at the Visioning Summit yesterday in San Francisco, and the 30 participants who are steering the program today, consist of some of the most talented and forward-thinking innovators — nonprofit execs, strategists, journalists — that I've come across in recent...

• November 24, 2009
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How to Win a Knight News Challenge Grant

by Dan Schultz
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

October 12 was a day of high emotion; it was finally time to thrive under pressure. I got home from work, rushed to my friend's house, and cracked open my laptop. The goal was to brainstorm like crazy, write up some solid project descriptions, and submit as many Knight News Challenge grant applications as possible over the three days I had left. Thank goodness fate had a better plan: the deadline was extended. Now that we all have another two months, I'm going to take a few steps back and try to combine my formal education in information systems...

• October 28, 2009
• 1 comment

Look Beyond Data When Considering New Models for News

by Chris O’Brien
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

My post last month -- Future of Local News About More Than Paid Content -- generated some thoughtful discussion and comments. But there was one thread that I want to highlight in order to elaborate on an important concept for news innovators. Before I dive into the details of the conversation, let me summarize my overall point. When it comes to understanding behavior, there are two general strategies. The first is to gather as much data as possible. And in this Google-driven, engineering-led era of product thinking, this tends to be the dominant approach. The Anecdotal And Observational Approach But...

• September 10, 2009
• 1 comment

How Fear, Brand Addiction and Paranoia Block Innovation

by Dan Pacheco
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

I've been thinking a lot lately about organizational behavior and innovation, and how the former can hinder the latter. It comes to mind not because I like to dwell on the negative, but rather out of hope that understanding the root cause of problems can help us all avoid the mistakes of the past. This is an important exercise because, as many of us were reminded in the re-imagined "Battlestar Galactica" series, "All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again." Or if you prefer the non-geeky version: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned...

• August 3, 2009
• 4 comments

Inzwa: Listen up!

by Amanda Atwood
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

This week, Kubatana launched Inzwa, Zimbabwe's experiment with Freedom Fone, providing audio information via mobile phones. We'll be updating our information every Tuesday, and we are interested in any feedback to help us improve the service. How does it work? Tune into Inzwa by phoning +263 913 444 321-8 and . . . - Press 1 for 60 seconds fresh bringing you current news and views - Choose 2 to enter the doorway to chibanzi for job vacancies, scholarships or resources - Press 3 to find out about everyday heroes and take a new look at Zimbabwean activists and activism...

• July 15, 2009
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Redesigning Journalism At Stanford's Design School

by Chris O’Brien
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

I had the great privilege to be invited to sit on a panel earlier this month at the Institute of Design at Stanford to provide feedback on an effort called, "Redesigning Journalism." I've been wanting to visit the "D School" for some time now. So I jumped at the chance to participate. In this case, design refers to the fundamental way a product is conceived and built. The D School teaches something called "design thinking". It's a powerful method and I'll be writing more in the near future about using it to find new ideas for journalism. In brief, a...

• March 26, 2009
• 8 comments

Updating the Pulitzer Prizes for the Internet Age

by Dan Gillmor
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

The people who run the Pulitzer Prizes, undoubtedly America's premier journalism awards, have taken some useful steps into the 21st Century with new rules that welcome online-only entries. From the official rules (PDF): Entries for journalism awards must be based on material coming from a text-based United States newspaper or news organization that publishes--in print or online--at least weekly during the calendar year; that is primarily dedicated to original news reporting and coverage of ongoing stories; and that adheres to the highest journalistic principles. Printed magazines and broadcast media, and their respective Web sites, are not eligible.This will open the...

• December 11, 2008
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Freedom Fone Goes on the Road

by Amanda Atwood
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Freedom Fone had its first public debut at the Association of Women's Rights in Development (AWID) 2008 Forum in Cape Town, 14-17 November. The event was a great opportunity to deploy Freedom Fone -- even in its software prototype state. We prepared different content for each of the four days of the conference, and ran four "channels," or options which users could access when they phoned in: Highlighted Sessions, Interviews with Presenters, Culture and Inspiration, and the Feminist Tech Hunt, which was run in association with Take Back the Tech. We took advantage of South Africa's deregulated VoIP and rented...

• December 1, 2008
• 1 comment

The Next Newsroom Proposal is Complete

by Chris O’Brien
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

It is with great pleasure that I'd like to announce that we have completed work on our newsroom proposal for The Chronicle, the independent, student-run newspaper at Duke University. The Chronicle’s board has adopted our proposal for a new home. That document will now serve as the basis for negotiations with officials at Duke University. The plan is available here: http://nextnewsroom.wikispaces.com. But first, I want to establish a little context for that document. The plan was written in collaboration with The Chronicle's board, officially known as the Duke Student Publishing Company. The proposal conforms to explicit guidelines created by the...

• November 20, 2008
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Medill Student Innovators Focus on Conversations Around News

by Rich Gordon
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

It's been almost a year and a half since a grant from the Knight Foundation allowed the Medill School to offer journalism master's program scholarships to experienced programmer-developers. Since then, on this Web site, I've been documenting the experience of the first two "programmer-journalists." Now things start to get interesting. For graduate students majoring in new media, Medill's one-year academic program ends with one of our "innovation project" classes. These are team-based classes in which the students are challenged to create a new digital or cross-media product. Sometimes these classes seek to apply proven technologies or business models to a...

• October 5, 2008
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Innovations in Storytelling: Using Comics for Journalism

by Chris O’Brien
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Over the summer, I saw an incredibly exciting piece of visual journalism over at USA TODAY. The production involved a mash-up of sorts between one of USA TODAY's bloggers, Twitter, some comic book artists, and a nifty bit of flash animation. You can check out the results here. There are a couple of things that got me excited. First, I just find it visually engaging. Next, it involves an unusual collaboration between comic book artists, a blogger, and online developers to produce something distinct. On a personal level, it warmed my heart that a "newspaper" was trying something this daring....

• September 25, 2008
• 1 comment

Are the Info Needs of Local Communities Being Served?

by Chris O’Brien
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Last week, the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy arrived in Silicon Valley to hold the first of its three planned community forums. I was asked to speak on a panel that day about "technology and innovation" but hung around for most of the day to listen to the other two panels and the wide-ranging discussion. This is timely and important work. I've spoken with numerous community leaders in Silicon Valley in recent months who are growing more anxious about what will happen to the quality of civic life if the coverage of local...

• September 15, 2008
• 5 comments

What's a Good Challenge for a J-School Innovation Class?

by Rich Gordon
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

As I noted in my last post, the first two programmer-journalists (whose journalism education was financed via scholarships from the Knight News Challenge) will be among the students enrolled in a Medill School "innovation project" class. Between now and when the class starts (Sept. 23), we have to decide what the focus of the project will be. In my experience with previous projects, the key is to come up with an interesting challenge or question for the students to explore. Right now there are two competing ideas, neither of them yet specific enough to organize the class around: Civic engagement...

• August 25, 2008
• 4 comments

Partner With a University to Jump-Start Innovation

by Rich Gordon
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Dan Pacheco and Chris O'Brien wrote recently for IdeaLab about ways newspapers (or other media) can innovate successfully. One approach that wasn't mentioned (yet): partner with a university. Academic institutions are full of smart faculty members, including experts on innovation, technology, audience behavior, journalism and the business of media. Even more important, they are full of young people who are "wired" for the contemporary media world and can do amazing things if given an interesting challenge and the right amount (not too much, not too little) of coaching and direction. At the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where...

• August 15, 2008
• 1 comment

Five Steps to Foster Innovation in the Newsroom

by Chris O’Brien
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Last month, Dan Pacheco asked for readers' ideas on How to Foster Innovation in Newspapers. He was speaking at an upcoming Knight conference and was looking for feedback to augment his presentation. I didn't have a chance to respond in time to help him, but it's a subject I've been thinking about a lot over the past year as part of The Next Newsroom Project. I'm sure there are plenty of doubters who think newspapers are a lost cause at this point when it comes to innovation. Fine. But it's important to understand that this question is one that any...

• August 5, 2008
• 11 comments

How to Foster Innovation in Newspapers?

by Dan Pacheco
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Next week I'm leading a discussion at a conference run by the Knight Digital Media center about innovation within newspapers. The topic of the conference is "Transforming News Organizations for the Digital Now."They've asked me to talk about two things: The "ecology of innovation." What type of environment fosters innovation best?Provide examples of innovation that helps journalists to transform. I have my own thoughts about this, informed by my work in Bakersfield as well as at previous companies. I will share those ideas here soon, in addition to anything that comes out of the panel discussion. But to make sure...

• July 8, 2008
• 8 comments

Civic Media Innovation Camps

by J.D. Lasica
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

I've just arrived at MIT in Boston, where the Future of Civic Media conference is being held over the next three days. Attendees are gathering to compare notes, soak up new ideas (including some smart technologies devised by students here) and tease out ways to maximize the impact of civic media in our lives. Here's a proposal that I'll be bouncing off the assorted thought leaders: Civic Media Innovation Camps. The camps would be one part road show — trainers and local new media experts sharing learnings around social media technologies, case studies, interesting experiments and success stories --...

• June 11, 2008
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Newspapers Must Innovate or Die

by J.D. Lasica
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

On Friday Dan Gillmor wrote here about bringing an entrepreneurial mindset to today's journalism. On Friday, Dan's former employer, the San Jose Mercury News, laid off 15 newsroom staffers and lost five other editors through buyouts, shaving the editorial staff by about 10 percent, on top of a larger set of layoffs a few months ago. Or, to be more precise, the paper's corporate owners, MediaNews, did so. This is at once both troubling and ironic. Troubling, because the downsizing is indicative of deep-seated financial and circulation troubles in the newspaper industry as a whole. (As newspaper analyst Dave Morgan...

• March 9, 2008
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The Washington Post vs. washpost.com

by Chris O’Brien
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

The Washington City Paper this week published an extensive profile of the online strategy used by The Washington Post. Called, "One Mission, Two Newsrooms," the piece details how the Post has built an entirely separate newsroom for the online staff across the river in Arlington, Va. While the online team has flourished, and developed a number of innovations, the profile notes that this arrangement has led to tension between the old newsroom in the city and the dot-com operation. The story kicks off with an extended anecdote about how Dana Priest and Anne Hull kept their big investigative series on...

• February 21, 2008
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