Best practices
McCainspeakwrite plusgood, or How I came up with the name ‘Dodging the Memory Hole’
We started digging our current Memory Hole a few decades ago: Technological systems that support the creation and presentation of modern journalism, those digital troves holding “the first rough draft of history,” morphed so quickly and frequently over the years that we no longer know where the treasure is buried. Like drunken buccaneers, journalistic enterprises … Continued
McCainspeakwrite or How I came up with the name ‘Dodging the Memory Hole’
It’s been two years since I rolled out of Tucson, Arizona, and headed east on Interstate 10 toward the University of Missouri, a.k.a. Mizzou, my alma mater in Columbia, Missouri. Along with suitcases and camera gear from 30 years as a photojournalist, I brought audiobooks to pass the hours on cruise control. My first selection … Continued
Preserving a visual record, Part 2
The drive to create a born-digital photo archive at the Columbia Missourian
Preserving a visual record, Part 1
The drive to create a born-digital photo archive at the Columbia Missourian
Futures Lab update #96: Tips for mobile news delivery, and remixing with Trio
This week we get tips on what works when delivering news via mobile devices, and we check out a new app designed for remixing content. PART 1: Mobile insights As part of Al Jazeera’s Research & Development lab, the recently launched app AJ+ serves as an ongoing experiment in ways to deliver news via smartphones. … Continued
Futures Lab update 84: Engagement using text messages, and corrections via social media
This week we learn about a platform for engaging with audiences via text messages, and we explore how to handle corrections to social media posts. PART 1: Groundsource A new platform called Groundsource seeks to help newsrooms interact with their communities outside the confines of smartphones and social media, instead relying on more basic text … Continued
‘Losing a piece of you’: The fragility of digital news archives
In 2002, The Columbia Missourian received a shock when it lost a significant portion of its digital archives. A server crash wiped out 15 years of precious and painstaking work of journalists, photographers and editors. The data loss also weakened the paper’s link to the who, how, what, when and why of changes in mid-Missouri … Continued
Futures Lab update #40: News tailored for mobile platforms
This week we bring you three examples of how news is being reengineered for people on the go. PART 1: Circa The mobile app Circa has received a lot of attention for its effort to redefine the experience of keeping up with the news via smartphone. The operation is half newsroom and half tech start-up … Continued
Bill Densmore: The information valet project research proposal
Are people willing to pay for information online? Do they truly value privacy? What kind of information are consumers looking for online? To sustain an information valet economy — and along with it both participatory democracy and journalism — the next generation Internet needs a user-focused system for sharing identity, exchanging and settling value (including … Continued