Blog Post

Carpe Diem: Covering Health In Kenya Post Referendum

Two days after Kenyans defied expectations and peacefully, purposefully approved a new Constitution, I was processing two powerful emotions.

The first one mirrored my overall mindset during the 2008 US Presidential Election, when the chance to participate in an historic event was literally intoxicating. Being able to fly home from my ICFJ Kenya program base to vote only heightened the excitement. I know many Kenyans are feeling that same tidal wave of impact at defying the naysayers through the power of the ballot.

But the other sensation I’m feeling is deep relief.

New Digital Map Tracks Crime and Corruption in Panama

As a Mexican journalist living at the U.S.-Mexico border, I recognize the footprints of organized crime: drug-related executions, drug seizures, and drive-by shootings. I have seen these same signs in Panama. That’s why I think my project as a Knight International Journalism Fellow will be crucial for my Panamanian colleagues.

Citizens can tweet or submit an online form with their crime report. Soon they will be able to text as well. The reports are geo-tagged on a digital map using Ushahidi, an online platform that originated in Kenya to track violence during the elections.

Delivering the Goods: Overview of the Marketing and Product Development Process

Start-ups often grow organically and often need a little guidance on growth and development.

Mobile phone technology meets citizen journalism

When my health-journalism fellowship began two and a half years ago, I dreamed about finding the “killer app” for mobile telephones that would revolutionize journalism in Africa.

I didn’t make much headway, and the dream came to look like a wild fantasy. But today, 26-year old Lydia Namubiru is engineering the kind of leap forward I once dreamed would be my claim to fame.

The diminutive Ugandan was working as a features writer for the New Vision newspaper when I arrived in her country at the beginning of 2008.

Southeast Asian Media Legal Defense Network Launches in Kuala Lumpur

SEAMLDN officially launches regional network to support the legal defense of media freedom in Southeast Asia.

Media controls are a complicated business.  We are all aware of the overt control exerted over the media in markets where the media is owned or “affiliated” with the government or where access to the Internet is filtered through a firewall.  But, in markets across Asia less overt but equally effective techniques are used to keep the media under control or out of the picture.  These techniques often take the form of legal or administrative barriers to operations.

In th

Ideas para aumentar el Voz a Voz de un medio digital

Un mercadólogo que cree en el poder de referenciadores usa un método sencillo para escoger un restaurante en la carretera.

Para él los referenciadores son los camioneros. Escoge un restaurante donde hay muchos camiones estacionados porque se supone que los conductores son los expertos de la comida en la carretera.

Before the last lesson

We are now going to the final week of lessons offered to a group of citizen journalists from peripheral areas of São Paulo, that have become the first wave of trainees of the "Mural" project.

Business Models and OpenWebAsia 2010

Looking at new business and funding models for independent online media at the annual OpenWebAsia conference held July 13th and 14th in Kuala Lumpur.

Looking for more background on developing sustainable business models for the independent online media in the region, I attended the Open Web Asia conference that was held in Kuala Lumpur this past week.  This is a semi-regular event last held in Seoul in 2008.  This year’s event was sponsored by the Multimedia Development Corporation MDeC a branch of the Malaysian government responsible for the

Tinker tailor soldier spy, where does my future lie?

We are pursuing a great story: More than a hundred teen girls are having fainting spells in a school outside Maputo. The community says ancestors are upset and rituals need to be performed. The Ministry of Health says it is collective hysteria.

A young journalist that I coach is covering this story.  After a press conference at the Ministry of Health, we go for coffee to discuss story angles, ways of asking questions and of taking notes (he takes notes verbatim and slowly, and admires my arrows, bullets and shortcuts, capturing best quotes as they are spoken).

Endless Possibilities of the New Media

Editors Note: Ghana's Sylvia Vollenhoven attends Knight Foundations/MIT COnference on the Future of News and Civic Media 2010.

My career started on the media timeline with yellow copy paper in triplicate and an Olivetti typewriter. In my son’s book this era followed shortly after the Gutenberg Bible. I am now at a place where the possibilities stretch into infinity and I’m not sure my head can hold it all or that we’re still talking linear progress here.