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  • Ideas |

    How to reach audiences that don't have internet access

    by Anne Li

    This story is part of a series on bringing the journalism we produce to as many people as possible, regardless of language, access to technology, or physical capability. Find the series introduction, as well as a list of published stories here. “Our audience” is a phrase that has been used so much during my time in various newsrooms that it has sometimes become as soothingly monotonous as white noise. "Who is our audience?" "How do...

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  • Profiles , Apps & projects |

    How WSJ used data and design to show Americans their polarized politics and media

    by Ryan Graff

    If you want to see just how polarized America's media and political landscape has become, you’d have a hard time finding something more compelling than Blue Feed, Red Feed from the Wall Street Journal. The project shows the viewer two hypothetical Facebook news feeds — one that contains content from sources favored by very liberal Facebook users, and a second that contains content from sources favored by very conservative users — each of which contain...

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  • Ideas |

    Getting started with conversational bots using Wit.ai

    by Bomani McClendon

    Bots. The word is everywhere and each week seems to bring a new project or piece of technology — from Facebook's new bot-building platform to Microsoft's Bot Framework to Taco Bell's bot for Slack. Journalism is not immune. Platforms like Quartz and Purple use bots to bring a conversational feel to news with a mobile apps and SMS interfaces while CNN’s bot will send you personalized news right through Facebook Messenger. The potential appeal of...

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  • Apps & projects |

    How I built my first mobile app scraper

    by Bomani McClendon

    Scraping web pages is a well documented process. There are plenty of guides on how to pull information using plugins like Python’s Beautiful Soup or browser extensions like Kimono. Many web applications even provide public APIs for gathering information, such as Facebook’s Graph API. Yet, there is a growing set of popular mobile apps that do not have a public API. Apps like Yik Yak, Tinder, and others contain a wealth of information about the...

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  • Ideas |

    Big tech wants to help journalism. What's that mean for creative storytelling and the user experience?

    by Aditi Bhandari

    As a typical #millennial I get most of my news from the organizations and friends I follow on Twitter and Facebook. I’ve also started regularly checking Snapchat Discover for curated entertainment content at my fingertips. This year, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Snapchat and Apple all released new news aggregation and presentation features and apps for mobile. There are so many new ways to get your daily dose of news and information that it can be overwhelming to...

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  • Ideas |

    The 4 Stages to Internet medium maturity: Why web audio can't grow up

    by Neil Holt

    Audio storytelling on the net has looked the same for about a decade - why are we accepting the status quo while text and music evolve? Screen grab from Comedy Central. The current state of audio on the 'net It doesn’t take a genius to see web audio has problems. In a Knight Lab brainstorm we pinpointed more than 20 things we can’t stand about how audio storytelling works on the net. Plus we’re not...

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  • 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,...

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  • Ideas |

    On being a journalist at Confab 2013, a content strategy conference

    by Sarah Adler

    Content strategy is a kind of floofy term, and it refers to a relatively new field. I didn’t know what it meant before I spent some time last week in Minneapolis at Confab 2013 with the Facebook content strategy team, learning from the great Kristina Halvorson and her gang of accomplished mavericks changing the way companies think about content creation, delivery and management. Many conference attendees complained that, at their companies, content wasn’t considered until...

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  • Profiles , People |

    Dan Fletcher on Facebook, good content and monetization

    by Ryan Graff

    Editor's note: Using the theory ‘Hire humans. Not skills. Not roles.’ as inspiration, the Lab’s profiles are Q&As with highly-impressive makers and strategists from media and its fringes, each with unique perspectives on journalism, publishing and communications technology. We’re talking to smart people who are shaping the future of media. Not all of them work in a newsroom, not all are big names, not all have fancy titles, but each is a bright person with something...

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  • Ideas |

    Students! Learn about content strategy and get paid

    by Miranda Mulligan

    Calling all journalism students! Apply for a fellowship at Facebook. Facebook is offering students a pretty fantastic opportunity to apply for content strategy fellowships and attend one of the leading content strategy conferences, ConFab Minneapolis, this summer. Three fellowship winners will receive the following: A full conference pass to Confab Minneapolis (June 3-5) All-expenses paid travel (flight, hotel and stipend) A private reception to introduce the winners Opportunity to apply for a paid 12-week internship in Menlo Park,...

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  • Lab projects |

    #Doprah and The Atlantic's 'blunder': This week on Twitter

    by Stephen Autar

    Each week our very own Stephen Autar tracks the tech and journalism conversations on Twitter as he runs the @KnightLab handle. He offers a recap of the most intriguing and important stories each Friday. This week, like every other, was a great week on Twitter. There was much news to follow and talk about—even more so than usual. Conversation surrounding the death of Aaron Swartz carried over into much of this week. Everyone from NPR...

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