On Innovation

Next Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET, The Washington Post and Bloomberg will hold the first Republican presidential debate to focus on a single issue: the economy.

The candidates will assemble at Dartmouth to talk social security, the national debt, health care, taxes and jobs. They will repeat well-rehearsed talking points, try to zing their opponents, and convince voters that their proposals qualify them to win the White House. 

But these debates generally contain few surprises. The candidate who can keep to their talking points without tripping over questions tends to “win.” But what about what the candidates don’t say? What about larger political questions that go unaddressed? What about fact-checking?

As we get geared up for Tuesday’s debate, we are partnering with Quora to get help tackling the questions that might otherwise go unanswered, starting off with Wonkblog’s Ezra Klein.

whitneyshefte:

Kat Downs produced this cool PhotoSynth project using an amalgamation of images Nikki Kahn shot at the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial here in D.C. It feels like an inverse panorama, but better because of the different vantage points the variety of images offer. This is a great idea for a situation like this where the subject is a static, single object or person that the viewer can encircle.

I also got to check out the memorial yesterday when it was opened to the press. I shot this quick day video to show viewers what they can expect when they visit the memorial now that it is open to the public. A few interesting takeaways from my visit there, some of which don’t make it into the video:

-The memorial was made by a Chinese sculptor and the stone is also from China. When the head of the project foundation was pressed about why an American, specifically an African American, was not chosen as the sculptor, Harry Johnson, Sr., offered Dr. King’s quote about how a man should not be judged by the color of his skin but by the content of his character. He said in this case he was referring to artistic character.

-The memorial is situated on a line between the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials on the Tidal Basin. The foundation planted 182 new cherry blossom trees in the area so visitors can indulge in more cherry blossoms come March or April.

-The design of the memorial is taken from a line MLK’s famous “I have a dream speech” when he said, “With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” When visitors first enter the memorial they see two pieces of the “mountain of despair” and then thrust forward toward the water is the “stone of hope,” which includes a sculpture of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Checking out: New app that visualizes cable news topics live  

It’s all about the content analysis across platforms at the moment. A new OS X app called News Mapper, created by Synchronize.tv, lets users search for words or phrases, like Obamacare for example, or mentions of people, like Rupert Murdoch. The app then displays the frequency with which each word was mentioned. A graphical display is updated in real time as the coverage/mentions continues. I’m just now digging in to how it measures, wondering what exactly it measures and how useful of a tool it can be for digital journos. Thoughts? 

via @gigaom

Cory Tolbert Haik / Deputy editor, universal news

Social sharing, via QR

This Sunday, The Washington Post did a twist on the old QR codes we’ve been putting in the paper. Instead of sending our weekend readers to more Web content or features from a quick QR scan, we sent them straight to a Facebook sharing link. The idea was to pick a story that we thought readers of the Sunday printed product would want to share in the moment. We used Eli Saslow’s piece on a Somali American man whose nephew joined the extremist al-Shabab group, and who now tries to keep others from the lure of jihad. Our logic in launching this was simple: It’s Sunday, we know you’re busy and might never get to your desktop computer to share this. But perhaps you’ve got your smartphone handy to scan a QR code. 

Cory Haik / Deputy editor, Universal News 

lensblr:

FANTASTIC VIDEO by @washingtonpost’s multimedia team on the birth of the U.S. space program. As former astronaut Robert Crippen said about America’s first shuttle launch: “It was obvious that this was a big deal not only for the country, but for the world.”

Read the story by Joel Achenbach »

Get the backstory on this video »

focusandrefocus:

Man reading newspaper

In transition. 

pol102:

This seems like a really great idea, w/ great potential uses. I would love to be able to design a personalized newspaper (say, an “international relations/politics” or “Latin American politics” edition) and assign it to my students for a semester.

From washingtonpostinnovations:

Swiss Post International aims to find out by launching MyNewspaper in November, a one-year pilot project that will allow Swiss readers to customize their print editions:

Head of press/publishers at Swiss Post International, Carsten Vossmeyer said: “This means that readers can combine…

Interesting idea. Hadn’t thought of educators.

futurejournalismproject:

Visualizing Internet Freedom Globally

A motion graphic representation of Internet access and rights based on a April 2011 Freedom House report.

To paraphrase Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei, there’s a soft war going on between protestors, Internet users and international media. Iran plans to win this one. So too Burma, North Korea, Syria, Cuba and others.

Run Time - 3:22.

Nice video on the “war for internet access” being waged as governments recognize the power of social media and web technology in mobilizing populations. Some related reading: 

» U.S. warns against blocking social media, elevates Internet freedom policies
» Clinton: U.S. losing global public-relations battle - to ‘Baywatch’ and wrestling

(Source: futurejournalismproject)

breakingblog:

Fast-tracking Twitter tips to BreakingNews: We’re excited to announce a new feature that allows news organizations to fast-track news tips straight to BreakingNews.com and potentially, @breakingnews on Twitter.

Here’s how it works. Once we’ve whitelisted a news organization’s Twitter account, appending @breakingnews or #breakingnews anywhere in a tweet will pop it in front of our editors on this page. If it’s a breaking story with national or regional interest — and it’s the first we’ve seen of it — we’ll publish it on the BreakingNews.com home page, our three mobile apps and potentially on Twitter and Facebook, too. The bigger the story, the more places it goes.

For the news organization, that means a burst of traffic and perhaps a few new Twitter followers.  For us, it helps BreakingNews find stories faster (we receive a daily avalanche of Twitter replies and mentions) and give credit where credit is due.  All we ask is that the tips stick to original breaking stories that have a regional or national interest.  Our goal is to link the source of breaking stories, not rewritten copies of it. 

Nearly 40 local TV stations (of all affiliations) and newspapers who have opted into the program. If you’re a news organization that routinely covers breaking news of regional interest, send us a note (to the editor) with the Twitter handle on this contact form.

Smart way to leverage the network.

The one-two punch of A Gay Girl in Damascus, the Syrian lesbian blogger who turned out to be Tom MacMaster, 40, an American, married man in Edinburgh, and the Lez Get Real editor Paula Brooks, the deaf lesbian mom who was actually a retired construction worker in Ohio named Bill Graber, 55, opened up all sorts of avenues of debate.

Who has the right to tell the story of the lesbian community? The Syrian community? How will this affect bloggers in the Middle East? What does this say about anonymity online? What does this mean for journalism?

As journalists, we’ve been dwelling on that last question. We were taken in by both MacMaster and Graber, but we also tracked down the truth about both of their identities. What did we do wrong and what did we do right? Here are some of the lessons we learned:

1. Question anonymity with rigor. (continue reading)