Idea Lab

'Alive in Tehran' Lets Iranian Citizens Report Through Voicemail

by Ryan Sholin
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

I've been following Brian Conley's work at Alive in Baghdad since October 2007, when I met him at the Networked Journalism summit at CUNY. Conley -- somewhat more commonly known as Baghdad Brian -- is one of the few supporters of citizen journalism with several trips to wartime Iraq under his belt. In this interview, Conley talks about his recent project, Alive in Tehran. Listen to the full interview here (15:35) or right-click to download the mp3. Full transcript follows, with links added: Ryan: Hey this is Ryan Sholin here, I'm recording this today for PBS Idea Lab, and I'm...

• June 24, 2009
• 2 comments

Moving Beyond Text for Cell Phone Citizen Media

by Harry Dugmore
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Cell phones are great for making calls, listening and speaking. So when it comes to media convergence, and the ability to do more and more on our cell phones, why is our media still so writing-centric? Even in the Iindaba Ziyafika project, our Knight funded expansion of the public sphere in Grahamstown City, we're focused on getting citizen journalism in via text (in particular in through SMS) and getting it back out via text. Text content for smartphones and mobile sites are huge and growing niches. But why not use voice more for citizen journalism, public debate, and just getting...

• June 2, 2009
• 5 comments