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category archive listing Category Archives: civic

Spot.us and Fear of Change

November 11, 2008 – 10:00 am

As the traditional news business model continues to stumble, what people fear losing most is investigative and enterprise reporting — especially on the local level. This type of journalism is notoriously difficult, time-consuming, risky, and costly. It’s not something that amateurs or concerned citizens can readily handle. If we want it to continue, we need [...]

By Amy Gahran | Also posted in business, emotions, exploring, journalism, money/funding, psychology, questions | Comments (1)

12 Naked Pumpkin Runners Named, Camera Catches Up

November 4, 2008 – 1:24 pm

UPDATE NOV. 5: The Boulder police had other options. They could have cited streakers for disorderly conduct instead of indecent exposure. Also, the Daily Camera interviewed me on this controversy…
Yesterday, after much prodding from local bloggers (including me) and commenters on its site, the Boulder Daily Camera finally reported that the streakers who got busted [...]

By Amy Gahran | Also posted in citizen journalism, community, law, local, problems, processes, transparency | Comments (4)

Twitter Vote Report Map for Georgia

November 3, 2008 – 12:06 pm

Right now I’m producing an excellent post Barbara Iverson just wrote for Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits on Twitter Vote Report. Here’s an example Google Map she mentioned that shows data from this project:

This map shows Georgia, filtering for long waits and “bad” reports.

By Amy Gahran | Also posted in mapping, social media | Comments (0)

Boulder Naked Pumpkin Runners = Sex Offenders? COME ON!

November 2, 2008 – 3:10 pm

Scene of Boulder’s 2008 Naked Pumpkin Run busts, plus two nearby real (violent) crimes earlier that same day.

UPDATE NOV 4. The names of the 12 busted streakers have been published, so I’m following up on this case via local courts…
On Halloween, as I wrote earlier, I went down to Boulder, CO’s Pearl St. pedestrian mall [...]

By Amy Gahran | Also posted in community, law, local, mapping, news, politics, problems | Comments (8)

Working with Journalists: What’s in It for Geeks?

October 31, 2008 – 2:59 pm

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits, and there are some comments over there. I’m reposting this here because, frankly, this site poses fewer hurdles to commenters, and I’d like to get some diverse discussion happening.

Earlier this week I wrote about the internal and external obstacles journalism schools face when trying to achieve [...]

By Amy Gahran | Also posted in Net Effects on Society, collaboration, culture, geeks, journalism, mindset, networking, questions, skills, social networks, software, solutions | Comments (2)

Being a Citizen Shouldn’t Be So Hard! Part 2: Beyond Government

September 16, 2008 – 5:28 pm

NOTE: This is part 2 of a multipart series. See the series intro. More to come over the next few days.
This series is a work in process. I’m counting on Contentious.com readers and others to help me sharpen this discussion so I can present it more formally for the Knight Commission to consider.
So please [...]

By Amy Gahran | Also posted in Net Effects on Society, community, credibility, government, journalism, media evolution, media literacy, politics, problems, processes, productivity, relevance, services, software, transparency, usability | Comments (5)

Being a Citizen Shouldn’t Be So Hard! Part 1: Human Nature

September 15, 2008 – 2:51 pm

NOTE: This is part 1 of a multipart series. More to come over the next few days. See Part 2.
This series is a work in process. I’m counting on Contentious.com readers and others to help me sharpen this discussion so I can present it more formally for the Knight Commission to consider.
So please comment [...]

By Amy Gahran | Also posted in collaboration, community, emotions, experience, exploring, government, law, politics, processes, psychology, research, solutions, transparency | Comments (9)