Tools for managing, visualizing, and distributing data was a recurring theme in the 16 vanguard media projects that will share $4.7 million in funding from the 2011 Knight News Challenge. Since it began in 2006, the initiative, primarily funded by the John S. and James L Knight Foundation, has given out $27 million to 76 projects to promote journalistic innovation.
The announcement that the Chilean government will begin to monitor comments on social networks has prompted controversy among Facebook and Twitter users and sparked a debate about Internet privacy.
The government of El Salvador has announced a plan to make state television and radio broadcasters autonomous public media with the aim of preventing the outlets from being used to serve ruling political interests, reported the news agency AFP.
Amidst the new wave of violence against the Mexican press, including the killing of two journalists in two weeks, the discovery of a journalist's body in a secret grave, and the kidnapping of a reporter, journalists and press freedom organizations are doubting whether freedom of expression truly exists in Mexico.
Two Mexican journalists who risk their lives covering the illegal drug trade along the U.S.-Mexico border will receive the 2011 Knight International Journalism Award, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) announced June 22.
Edinaldo Figueira, newspaper founder, blogger and political party leader was shot to death Wednesday, June 15, in Brazil, according to Terra. Figueira, president of the Serra do Mel municipal chapter of Brazil's Workers' Party (PT in Portuguese) in Brazil's northern state of Rio Grande do Norte, had started a local newspaper and maintained a blog about local issues, according to Rede Brasil Atual.
The Brazilian government said it will no longer wade into the fight over adding a permanent secrecy provision to the information access law that is pending in Congress, Correio Braziliense and Folha de S. Paulo report. The amendment would allow top-secret documents to remain classified indefinitely.
The award-winning Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez, who writes the blog Generation Y, has published a book about how to maintain a blog under conditions as adverse as those that independent journalists face in Cuba.
The Attorney General of Colombia has accused a former deputy chief of the secret police of instigating the murder of journalist and humorist Jaime Garzón, perpetrated by the paramilitary almost twelve years ago, reported El Heraldo.
At the II National Meeting of Progressive Bloggers, held June 17-19 in Brasília, Brazilian ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva criticized the press and thanked bloggers for their support during the electoral campaign that brought Dilma Rousseff to the presidency, according to Agência Estado.
After publishing a story on drug dealing in an Uruguayan prison, La República newspaper reporter Víctor Carrato received emailed threats, Montevideo Portal reports.
Cuba is one of the top two nations in the world with the worst record of forcing journalists into exile, said the Committee to Protect Journalists in a new report.