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How a CNN user propelled the network into Twitter’s top slot — or why CNN...
James Cox just wanted the news on his phone. But the year was 2006, and if you can remember that distant age, getting the latest headlines on your mobile device wasn’t yet trivially easy. CNN already...
View ArticleKnight News Challenge: Building a better toolkit for producing and sharing...
Mobile was one of the big themes of this year’s Knight News Challenge; yesterday, we talked about the Kenyan mobile-crowdsourcing grantee Ushahidi. But it wasn’t the only cell-themed winner that...
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Knight grantee NextDrop builds community by linking two scarce resources:...
In Hubli, a major city in Karnataka, India, water flows but a few hours a day, sometimes as infrequently as once every two weeks. Information is an equally scarce resource. “People wait around the...
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“Adding context to content”: Swift River gets Knight funding to tackle the...
One of the biggest challenges news organizations face is the real-time aspect of newsgathering: the massive problem that is making sense of the torrent of information that floods in when breaking-news...
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FrontlineSMS, a News Challenge winner, connects people in places where the...
There are more than 5 billion mobile phone connections on earth, by some estimates, far more than the number of people who have access to clean water. In much of the developing world, however,...
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Deutsche Welle’s trying to use Africa’s mobile-phone boom to spread news by...
As the fastest-growing mobile market on the planet, Africa is facing huge opportunities — and distinct challenges — in news dissemination. By the end of the year, it’s estimated that more than...
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News Challenge winner WeFarm wants to connect the world’s small farmers to...
Farmers in developing countries all over the world ask a lot of the same questions. They’re the kind of questions that would quickly turn you or I to Google, Wikipedia or maybe even Yahoo! Answers:...
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News Challenge winner Abayima takes a low-tech approach to communicating in a...
Knight News Challenge winner Abayima wants to turn an ingenious hack for feature phones into a low-tech means of sharing information in unstable parts of the world. Instead of using your phone’s SIM...
View ArticleNew guidelines could make SMS a more powerful tool for disaster relief
A new set of guidelines aimed at helping disaster relief workers better use SMS in crisis scenarios was unveiled Monday at the Mobile World Congress. “Towards a Code of Conduct: Guidelines for the use...
View ArticleDiaries, the original social media: How our obsession with documenting (and...
If you’ve ever kept a diary, chances are you probably considered that document private. As in, MOM I’VE TOLD YOU A MILLION TIMES MY DIARY IS PRIVATE SO DON’T FUCKING READ IT AGAIN PS THANKS FOR...
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You’re probably underestimating how much your articles are being shared via...
Last fall, in our Predictions for 2015 package, Jamie Mottram of Gannett predicted we’d see an increase in SMS sharing. He cited the impact a SMS share button had had on Gannett’s sports site For The...
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With Purple, you can get election updates and political info via text
Hours before the first polls closed on Super Tuesday, my phone buzzed. I had a new text message. “Ahhh I’m so excited Joseph! Today is Super Tuesday, the most important day of the election thus far. 12...
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GroundSource is trying to help news sites build community through...
Text messaging is, by far, the most popular feature Americans use on their phones. Ninety-seven percent of American smartphone owners send or receive a text in a given week, according to a 2015 Pew...
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Remember Facebook Messenger bots? The Washington Post just launched one (with...
Remember when bots were all the rage? Waaaaaaaaay back in April, Facebook announced that it would begin supporting bots within its Messenger chat app, and CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and other...
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Purple, the news startup built around SMS, is leaving it behind for Facebook...
The trend toward distributed content — moving news and information from open platforms to those controlled by a few tech giants — has a new and interesting example. Instead of the web, it’s SMS —...
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Inspired by Purple, The New York Times will text readers behind-the-scenes...
The New York Times wants text readers about the Olympic games in Rio — and it wants readers to text back. Over the next three weeks, deputy sports editor Sam Manchester, one of dozens of Times...
View ArticleNews startup Purple is now a service that lets creators charge people to text...
It turns out text messaging is better than Facebook Messenger for the type and frequency of news and information the news startup Purple wanted to deliver to its phone-toting audiences. “I think being...
View ArticleWith its new Olympics texting experiment, the Times is saying goodbye to SMS,...
The New York Times isn’t giving up on its ambition to use text messaging to communicate directly with readers — but it is switching up the tech that it uses to do so. Dating back to the Summer Olympics...
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GroundSource switched from an email newsletter to a SMS newsletter and...
Want to connect with and update audience. Spend time perfecting email newsletter. Ask subscribers for responses. Receive zero responses. Sound familiar? This is the trap into which GroundSource, a...
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By mass-texting local residents, Outlier Media connects low-income news...
If you received an unsolicited text message about a free service offering to check the public record of your house or landlord, would you respond? What if you were a renter without much money and...
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BuzzFeed News’ podcast cohost, Jojo the bot, wants to help listeners follow...
*techno beep* “Did you hear that? That’s Jojo, our gender neutral robot.” Jojo, a chatbot, is a cohost of BuzzFeed News’ new weekly news podcast, along with human Julia Furlan). The News, which will be...
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The Skimm launches a 1:1, bot-less (for now) texting service to help...
If you’re thinking about cutting the cord on a cable TV subscription, would you Google the pros and cons? Post on Facebook? Call your parents? …Text The Skimm? If you’re one of their 7 million...
View ArticleWhat kind of information — not just content — do you need as a news consumer?
For all the questions journalists ask, sometimes one of the most important ones can get lost in the shuffle: What do you, as a reader/listener/viewer/news absorber, need? The self-authority of...
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How the Lenfest Local Lab used texting to inform Philadelphians about...
Text messaging gets overlooked in most local news strategies. Maybe it seems too simplistic. Maybe it feels too personal or intimate. Or maybe it just doesn’t seem like journalism. (Spoiler: It is.)...
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Will enough readers pay for hyperlocal journalism — over text? Cleveland.com...
There is no single fix for sustainable local journalism. But here’s an attempt at adding another piece of the puzzle: Cleveland.com, part of Advance Local and a digital sister company to the Plain...
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Bad actors are returning to old-school methods of sowing chaos
Ed. note: Here at Nieman Lab, we’re long-time fans of the work being done at First Draft, which is working to protect communities around the world from harmful information (sign up for its daily and...
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Amid rolling power outages, Texas news outlets are texting audiences with...
Texas is in crisis mode after unprecedented winter storms left millions of people without electricity and clean drinking water in freezing temperatures. From the Texas Tribune‘s executive editor Ross...
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The Equal Info Text Line is bridging information gaps in Philadelphia through...
Philadelphia’s city government spent a lot of time during the pandemic trying to understand who did, and did not, have access to high-speed internet. Just 84% of Philadelphia households are connected...
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Sahan Journal is using voice-note newsletters to reach Somalis in Minnesota
Last November, Sahan Journal hosted a Facebook Live conversation for Somali parents in Minnesota. The host, Somali journalist Abdirizak Diis, interviewed a local teacher and an assistant principal in...
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