Amy Webb didn’t have to look far for an example of how Spark Camp, an "un-conference" she helps organize, pulls disparate people together for an informal exchange of ideas and problem solving. Co-hosted by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americasand the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, Spark Camp attracted an impressive variety of talented people to spend three days in January — in Austin — to ruminate on the crossroads of data and online journalism.
Brazilian journalists received death threats over e-mail after reporting on investigations by the State Public Ministry into family members and other people connected to the city's mayor, Silvio Félix, according to Canal Rio Claro. The reporters, in the city of Limeira, in the interior of the state of São Paulo, are from the newspapers Gazeta de Limeira and Jornal de Limeira, and TV Jornal.
According to Nieman Fellow Carlos Eduardo Huertas, columnist for the Colombian magazine Semana and founding director of the Consejo de Redacción (CdR), or Newsroom Council, today's newsrooms are caught between what journalism used to be, and what it can be in the future. Huertas, a participant in the second Spark Camp, held Jan. 13-15 in Austin, TX, spoke with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas about the importance of data journalism and computer assisted reporting.
An Argentine journalist was unlawfully detained after filming a violent police confrontation, reported the Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA in Spanish). Along with being detained for nine hours, the journalist claims police forced him to erase the recording.
A lawyer who served as a newspaper source was killed in Honduras on Jan. 17, three days after speaking out against police abuse and torture, reported the freedom of expression organization C-Libre.
In the Brazilian city of Aral Moreira, Mato Grosso do Sul, the creator of the website and print publication O Arrastão, journalist Geraldo Ferreira, was threatened online in the comments section of his website, reported MS Já on Monday, Jan. 16.
President Hugo Chávez's aggressive stance against the media in Venezuela has been characterized as "totalitarian and dictatorial" by the Inter American Press Association, which considers freedom of expression under threat in the South American country.
For the third time in the past year, the Associated Press (AP) has updated its social media guidelines, this time to deal with correcting erroneous tweets and deleting tweets, as well as proper procedure for designating a re-tweet, according to a press release from the news agency.
With Wikipedia blacked out to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) anti-piracy bills in the U.S. Congress, news outlets like the Washington Post, NPR and the Guardian teamed up to use crowdsourcing via Twitter to try to serve as a make-shift encyclopedia, according to the Huffington Post.
Brazilian police alerted a Paraguayan journalist of a plot to kill him, reported the newspaper Última Hora. The plot to kill Cándido Figueredo, correspondent for ABC Color in Pedro Juan Caballero, Paraguay, was discovered by Brazilian authorities after intercepting a telephone call.
In its first study of online journalism in Colombia, the Consejo de Redacción, or Newsroom Council, (CdR in Spanish) looked at who is producing online journalism in this South American country and how. The report found that since Colombia first connected to the Internet on July 4, 1994, online media have become "the protagonists of a quiet revolution in Colombia."
The Spanish language news agency EFE and the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation named five Latin American journalists winners of the King of Spain Journalism Awards on Jan. 12, reported EFE.