Idea Lab

SochiReporter Launches with Time Machine, Wiki Guidebook

by Alexander Zolotarev
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

I'm glad to say that SochiReporter, my Knight-funded project, launched on October 27. This was a very important day for me, and for our team. We tested SochiReporter for about two months before the public launch, inviting both web experts and users to comment on various aspects of the site. In the days before the launch, I didn't sleep a wink. But this is natural. I was very excited about the launch, and did my best to convey how cool and innovative SochiReporter is to the journalists and students that gathered on launch day in the hall of one of...

• November 20, 2009
• 3 comments

Hyper-Local a Hot Topic at All Russia Media Forum

by Alexander Zolotarev
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

The SochiReporter team recently presented our project at the 14th All Russia Media Forum, held in Dagomys, Sochi, in late September. This annual forum for Russian print and online media is organized by the Russian Union of Journalists. Among the participants this year were more than 1,000 journalists from local and regional Russian newspapers, as well as European and U.S. editors. The gathering discussed many global issues, such as the decline of trust in the press, measures of responsibility in journalism, and the social weight of the printed word. There were discussion groups, creativity contests, meetings with politicians, celebrities, scholars,...

• October 30, 2009
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Overcoming Drupal Challenges as SochiReporter Nears Launch

by Alexander Zolotarev
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

SochiReporter is getting ready to launch on the web and for mobile users. We spent the last three weeks fixing linguistic, technical and design bugs, all with the goal of maximizing ease of use. So far we have drawn a fabulous group of people from both local and virtual communities: garage tech geeks and web schizophrenics, coffee-shop amateurs, and folks who want to use the site and offer feedback. Their comments have helped us to get better. We also attracted an avid gamer in Sochi who spends most of his time in an underground Internet café at the center...

• September 18, 2009
• 1 comment

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

The Bustling Tech Scene at the Russian Internet Forum

by Alexander Zolotarev
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

I am entering the large movie theatre hall where the conference dedicated to the social networks is just about to start. A prominent web expert is commenting on the Russian President's decision to launch a Livejournal account and the first post on the Internet development in Russia. Someone is talking about the recent You Tube Success of Susan Boyle and the hot-spot detecting WiFi sneakers invented by the Canadian designer Stefan Dukaczewski. The atmosphere is properly wired. Six panelists representing the leading Russian media outlets are about to report on how social networks are being used by their marketing departments...

• May 2, 2009
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