Articles by

Shazna Nessa

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    Three years ago I wrote about “Visual Literacy in an Age of Data” in response to the growth of bold data visualization work in journalism. Our storytelling possibilities were exploding because of the number of tools and technologies – and data – at our fingertips. But we still had a lot of work ahead to meet the needs of audiences, who were trying to make sense of the world through the lens of our data journalism. The Data Journalism Awards launched in 2012 as the first international competition recognizing excellence in the field, supported by Knight Foundation and the Google News Lab. The 2016 winners were announced at the Global Editors Network (GEN) Summit in Vienna today (with 11 winners receiving 1,000 euros each [about $1,100] and one honorable mention receiving 500 euros [about $557]). As a member of the jury for the contest, I saw the impressive quality and quantity of entries (this year the contest received 471 entries from more than 50 countries) indicating that we have come a long way in the field.
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    Above: Catching up by Frédéric Poirot on Flickr. There's plenty of data to digest in the Knight Foundation-commissioned report, conducted with Nielsen and released today, on how different U.S. audiences use smartphones to access news and information. The fast growth of mobile news consumption over the past two years is one of many things that stand out: “In fact, 89 percent of the U.S. mobile population (144 million users) now access news and information via their mobile devices,” the report says. Related Links  Report: Mobile-first news: How people use smartphones to access information (Medium.com), 5/11/2016 PDF: Mobile-first news: How people use smartphones to access information (PDF), 5/11/2016 Press release: " The mobile disruption: New report provides insights into navigating the growing mobile news ecosystem ", 5/11/2016 “Mobile-First News: How People Use Smartphones to Access Information” points to a promising appetite for “hard news” about current and global events, with a substantial amount of engagement taking place on social networking platforms. It shouldn’t be a surprise to read that 70 percent of Facebook users use Facebook for news every day, providing a huge opportunity for news organizations to adopt these platforms to reach a wider audience. Today journalists can publish directly to the platforms with services such as Facebook Instant Articles and Google Accelerated Mobile Pages. This also surfaces broader questions about the future dynamics between social media platforms and news organizations, including: How much content should newsrooms publish directly to the platforms? How can local and regional newsrooms keep up with the pace of publishing and experimenting on mobile and social media platforms? Will the ability to monetize this work become easier? And how will the templates of services such as Facebook Instant Articles evolve; will editors have more autonomy over how information is presented? A deeper dive into the data in our new report illuminates other insights worth more exploration: Engage with audiences both offline as well as online What should new organizations be doing to tap into, facilitate and lead conversations with the 59 percent of Facebook users and 41 percent of Twitter users who say they continue to talk about news offline and in person?
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    Photo by Nicolas Nova on Flickr. Mobile news is a hot topic, with many newsrooms reporting that mobile makes up at least 50 percent of their traffic—and the trend is growing. So it’s no surprise that Knight Foundation’s recent mobile news panel at South by Southwest, “Bringing Stories to Life for the Smaller Screen,” drew a standing-room-only crowd. Knight VP of Journalism Jennifer Preston led a rousing discussion with some of the industry’s best thinkers on mobile-first approaches. Aaron Edwards of BuzzFeed, Eduardo Suñol of NBCUniversal, Sasha Koren of the Guardian Mobile Innovation Lab and Zach Brand of NPR One shared the different ways their newsrooms are learning about engaging their audiences better with the mobile devices that have become such an important part of our lives. Guardian’s lab and NPR One are both supported by Knight Foundation. 
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    At the Eyeo Festival in Minneapolis today, Knight Foundation Director of Journalism Shazna Nessa announced that the next Knight News Challenge will explore how data can offer a deeper understanding of the world. We’ve selected that theme to address the need for individuals to be able to navigate an increasingly complex and data-rich environment. For this, our 14th Knight News Challenge, we will focus on surfacing projects that build an understanding of the role of data in people’s lives. This is our second challenge specifically focused on data. Since the first one in 2012 we have seen data become even more entwined in our everyday lives, and we want to accelerate exploration of this area with data projects that create a more informed citizenry and demystify the collection and use of data.
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    Today, we are excited to announce that 46 projects have moved to the next stage of consideration in Knight News Challenge: Elections. These semifinalists, who include one private submission, will have a week to fine-tune their entries before we begin work with a group of advisers to choose the finalists. We received 1,056 submissions for the challenge, which centered on the question: How might we better inform voters and increase civic participation before, during and after elections?
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    The Knight News Challenge on Elections is now closed. We received more than 1,000 submissions. Thanks to everyone who entered and joined the conversation at newschallenge.org. Here’s what happens next. Through April 13, we’ll be in the “feedback” phase where we review the submissions. Whether you submit an application or not, please join us and our team of reviewers in asking questions and giving feedback on the ideas. The questions often help applicants improve their ideas, but applause and views will not affect our decision; we’re looking for the best ideas not the most popular. We read every application we get, but we’ve also asked 13 people to join us as readers. The readers will go through each application and advise us as we select the semifinalists. You can identify them on the newschallenge.org site by the “reader” tags on their profile photos.
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      The Knight News Challenge on elections is now open for ideas through 5 p.m. ET March 19. This News Challenge, our 13th, reflects Knight Foundation’s ongoing support for projects that improve how people access and use information to participate in democracy.In partnership with the Democracy Fund, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Rita Allen Foundation, we are seeking projects* that provide an answer to the question: How might we better inform voters and increase civic participation before, during and after elections? There are lots of ways that you can interpret that question, and we aren’t seeking any specific type of project. Ideas can address any part of the voter journey, from nonpartisan ways to inform voters, to streamlining the voting process, to converting the energy of Election Day into long-term civic engagement and everything between. This challenge is open to anyone, from journalists, designers, students, civic technologists and academics, to news organizations, startups, nonprofits, governments and individuals. Winners will share in more than $3 million.
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    Shazna Nessa is a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University and former deputy managing editor for editorial products and innovation for the Associated Press. Below, she writes about the theme of the first Knight News Challenge of 2014: How can we strengthen the Internet for free expression and innovation? In a life dedicated to information and the flow of information, the Internet has been a litany of learning and unlearning, of raveling and unraveling. The Internet gave me my wings. I was a teenager when I got a job at Cyberia, a cybercafe in Paris’s experimental cultural hub, the Pompidou Center.  Cyberia was sleek but industrial, like a place you would go to visit in the film “Blade Runner.” Visitors from all over the world paraded through Cyberia for an espresso and rented Internet time, with me as their guide. The Americans rarely needed my help, competently checking their emails and surfing the Web. But it was new to many of the others, so I sat with them and showed them what the magic of the Internet was all about. RELATED LINKS "Towards a stronger Internet" by John Bracken and Chris Sopher on Knightblog.org "Our future's Internet strengthened today" by Jenny Toomey on KnightBlog.org "A $2.75 million challenge to create a more open Internet" by Mark Surman on KnightBlog.org "Creating safe spaces for innovation on the Internet" by Kwasi Asare "Innovating to create comprehension of big data and the Internet" by Higinio O. Maycotte "4 most common News Challenge questions answered" by John Bracken on KnightBlog.org "Restoring equilibrium to the web" by Tyler Fisher on KnightBlog.org  Meanwhile my French friends, who had long used the Minitel service, rolled their eyes at my apparent naivete when I glowed optimistically about the new “global village” that was unfurling online. I’m not a teenager anymore and have a steelier approach to globalization today, both the good and the bad. But how I feel about the Internet hasn’t changed: The Internet needs to be open. I went on to work for what was then a small and scrappy tech startup near City Hall, called Easynet. It was an Internet service provider, and among other things, I stingily managed our batch of assigned IP addresses to the geeks who wanted to run servers from their bedrooms. How far we’ve come! Later, I spent many years at the Associated Press, a venerable wire service that distributes and informs so much of the news and information we see today. As with all journalism, the gathering and the distribution of that information are vital for an informed public and democratic participation. While the Internet was able to push information beyond the geographic confines of a newspaper, it also pushed news organizations to unlearn what they knew about distributing and monetizing products; many of them were unable to stay afloat. In the Internet era, how do we sustain the expensive work of newsgathering? We have to unlearn what we know and start again.