News

SXSW and ICFJ: Eye-Catching Technologies Help Media Engage and Track Information

I attended this year’s South By Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi) to interact with industry leaders and explore interactive technologies we could use to help people in developing countries access and share information in new ways.

For the unfamiliar, SXSWi is a five-day extravaganza of panels, parties, free food, meetings planned and moments serendipitous, accelerators, keynotes and one massive tech trade show. Few events bring together such an amazing array of mobile and digital thinkers and innovators.

In the Works: A Mobile App to Help Jordan's Farmers

Tomato farmers all over Jordan face a daily challenge. Should they collect their daily crops and send them to the central vegetable markets without knowing the market availability or price? If there is a big stock of tomatoes in that market, high supply and stable demand reduce the prices. Sometimes there aren't enough buyers and the produce goes to waste. Since there are no tomato processing facilities in Jordan, the result is a direct loss to Jordanian farmers.

Frontline SMS: How Lives Are Changing in Rural Indonesia, 160 Characters at a Time

When Knight International Journalism Fellow Harry Surjadi launched his mobile news network in rural Indonesia, it relied on Frontline SMS technology to work -- allowing citizens to text news reports that are sent to journalists, activists and others, and are aired on Ruai TV.

The project has been so successful -- empowering indigenous people to make their voices heard -- that Frontline SMS is profiling the project as an example of how journalists can use the software as an innovative

Former Knight Fellow Shines International Spotlight on Peru

Knight International Journalism Fellow Hena Cuevas was assigned to report on the Peruvian potato for China Central Television (CCTV). Peru is the birthplace of the potato and home to more than 4,000 species of the tuber.

Cuevas knew the best way to cover a global story so important to her country was through Red TV, the national network she partnered with during her fellowship to create Peru's first broadcast training center.

France's 'Burqa Ban,' One Year Later

Radio producer Arwa Gunja traveled to Paris as an International Reporting Fellow to examine the impact of France's "burqa ban." The law, instituted one year ago, is a restriction on Muslim women covering their faces in the traditional burqa or niqab.

Widely supported in France, the ban was meant to free women of gender enslavement and help Muslims better integrate into French society.

Jineth Bedoya Lima: An International Woman of Courage

There are more than 300 journalists working in the converged media newsroom of ICFJ partner El Tiempo, but one stands out – not just as an award-winning journalist but also because of the trauma and travails she has survived along the way.

It was 2000 and Jineth Bedoya Lima, then just 26-years-old, was covering a story about arms smuggling at La Modelo prison in Bogota for El Tiempo newspaper, where she is now deputy justice editor. When Bedoya Lima left the prison, she was seized by a group of paramilitaries who gang raped her.

A Crowdsourced Website and a Shootout Lead to a Crackdown on Crime

As part of a TV investigative reporting workshop, I was working with 12 Panamanian journalists and journalism students eager to learn how they could use Mi Panama Transparente (MPT) to investigate crime and corruption in their areas. I had planned a demonstration I thought would showcase the possibilities. Little did I know it would involve an exchange of gunfire the participants would catch on tape… and lead to a series of high-profile news reports.

MPT is a crowd-sourced website I developed as part of my Knight International Journalism Fellowship.

Market Research Experts Explain Real-World Data Mining

Whitney Foard Small, Regional Director of Communications for Asia Pacific and Africa of Ford Motor Co., and Tatt Chen, Senior Vice President of Penn Schoen Berland, Asia, were special guest speakers in Professor Lee Miller's Data Mining class on April 9.

Small and Chen, whose firm does consulting work for Ford, talked about how they measure the impact of public relations campaigns and the attitudes of key groups of potential customers.

"Measuring PR can be done," Small said.

Radio Journalists in Rural South Africa Find a New Way to Report Health News

It was with a bit of misgiving that I recently headed to Limpopo province to work with reporters at the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s regional station. The national office back in Johannesburg was hankering for stories about ordinary people amid constant unrest. The idea was to get reporters out of the main city, Polokwane, and into the field, fields being quite literal since Limpopo is 90% rural and one of the poorest provinces in South Africa.

Polokwane, however, has been a cauldron of political activity – at times, that can be taken literally.

Knight Fellows Create Data Tools to Help Journalists Tell Better Stories

In a region where few journalists know how to find and use data, two new Knight International Journalism Fellows will create a series of tech tools to help reporters in South America analyze material and investigate important stories such as the use of tax money in Argentina and the degradation of the Amazon. The new tools include interactive data blogs and online maps that display complex details in a way that readers and viewers can readily grasp.