Posts

Archive of posts from
July 2013

  • Profiles , People |

    Mark S. Luckie on finding inspiration, testing ideas, and the importance of asking Why?

    by Jessica Soberman

    The Lab’s profiles are Q&As with smart people who are shaping the future of media. Follow the series. The first eight years of Mark S. Luckie's career have been rich with accomplishment. For starters he founded and sold 10,000 Words. Then he penned The Digital Journalist's Handbook, which was published in 2010 and is now in its third edition. He's also held a variety of writing and technology jobs at the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment...

    Continue Reading

  • Ideas |

    Six things to know about successful open-source software

    by Rich Gordon

    In the community of media and journalism innovators, it is commonly accepted that releasing software with an open-source license is the best way to maximize the chance that others will use your code. Yet, by any measure, the vast majority of open-source software goes nowhere. That's why we've spent some time at Knight Lab trying to understand the dynamics of software adoption — especially the factors that cause open-source software to be widely adopted. After...

    Continue Reading

  • Profiles , People |

    Sisi Wei on news games, learning to code, and improving Code with Me

    by Jessica Soberman

    The Lab’s profiles are Q&As with smart people who are shaping the future of media. Follow the series. As a journalist who is about to graduate, I find easy inspiration in Sisi Wei.  She’s a recent Northwestern grad (class of 2011), which is where I’m studying. More importantly she’s already had a big impact in journalism. She's a news application developer at ProPublica and a co-founder of Code with me, taking on the role of...

    Continue Reading

  • Ideas |

    Fact checking Chicago Public Schools using algorithms, statistics and data mining

    Some students take it easy for the spring semester of their senior year; I loaded up on Introduction to Algorithms and Statistical Methods for Data Mining. The stats class covered theoretical foundations for data mining techniques like logistic regression and neural networks and finished with an open-ended group project assignment. As it happened, the class coincided with Chicago Public Schools' decision to close 49 schools. The move drew ferocious criticism from community groups (including the...

    Continue Reading

  • Ideas , Apps & projects |

    The Department of Better Technology wants to get us one step closer to "Government as a platform"

    by Miranda Mulligan

    In our profile series, we often ask the question: If you could design an application that would solve any problem in the world, what would it be? Clay Johnson, the subject of our most recent profile, was recently awarded a Knight News Challenge grant, so he was ready with an answer substantial enough to deserve a piece of its own. With Adam Becker, Johnson has started a company, the Department of Better Technology. They are designing...

    Continue Reading

  • Lab projects |

    Introducing Neighborhood Buzz

    by Joe Germuska | joegermuska

    Neightborhood Buzz, Chicago, O'hare, Science tweets As social media have become a regular part of daily life, people have wondered what they can learn about themselves and their communities from the millions of messages posted online—especially on Twitter, because it is so public and so conversational. Many projects in this space begin by selecting tweets for analysis based on who tweeted or specific terms used in the tweets. Students in our Fall 2012 Innovation in...

    Continue Reading

  • Ideas |

    Newsroom developer? Why? Journalism matters and it is in crisis is why.

    by Miranda Mulligan

    I care deeply about journalism and it is in crisis. Journalism matters. The free press is important to a functioning democracy. Journalism has the power to change the world. There are few moments in time more innovative, entrepreneurial and exciting than right now in the news industry. It amazes me how often I find myself talking about journalism's design problem and that technologists are struggling to understand why the digital transition has been so painful for...

    Continue Reading

  • Profiles , People |

    Clay Johnson on creative technologists, designing with empathy and news as a community service

    by Miranda Mulligan

    The Lab’s profiles are Q&As with smart people who are shaping the future of media. Follow the series. In many ways, Clay Johnson is a force of nature. He is best known as the co-founder of Blue State Digital,  his book — “The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption” — and as a full-throated advocate  for open source information in the federal government. In fact, meeting and befriending Clay was the highlight of my trip to Webstock in February. Formerly,...

    Continue Reading

  • Events |

    SEO for news — you might not know everything you should

    by Ryan Graff

    A month or two back I got roped into going to a happy-hour SEO seminar. Ugh. Talk about an acronym that doesn’t inspire joy in the typical journalist or even the typical hacker journalist: SEO. I’d heard it all before, I thought — keywords, links, URLs, metadata, etc. — but I agreed to go, wanting to appease a boss and deciding that at the very least I’d get to meet some folks and talk some...

    Continue Reading

subscribe via RSS