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.
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 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.
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.
Inspired by the recent protests in Spain that, since March, have demanded economic and electoral system changes, filmmaker Raquel Diniz, 31, created a collaborative map to pinpoint cases of corruption in Brazil, according to Folha de S. Paulo.
The Science and Technology, Communication and Information Commission of the lower chamber of Congress in Brazil rejected a bill that would have specifically allowed the use of the Internet as an official outlet for publication of federal, state and local information, according to IDGNow.
The president of Chile's central union CUT, Arturo Martínez, announced the filing of a libel complaint against the digital newspaper El Mostrador, because of an article that said the union president had spent about $1,300 on an extravagant lunch, reported Emol.
”Crowdfunding”, a term used to describe networking, usually via the Internet, to pool money and resources, is starting to take off in Brazil. An explosion of crowdfunding websites, like Catarse, Multidão, Movere and Benfeitoria, are just some to come on the scene.
From searching for information to contacting sources, social network sites increasingly are impacting the routines of Brazilian journalists, according to new research from Oriella PR Network 2011 distributed in Brazil on Tuesday, June 7.
The meeting began with a moment of silence for slain television journalist Yensi Roberto Ordoñez Galdamez. Nearly 80 journalists bowed their heads as they gathered for the “3rd International Meeting of Journalists from the Departments and the Capital of Guatemala.” Their mission: to bring journalists together for training and dialogue in hopes of improving coverage of the upcoming elections.
Knight Fellows at Stanford University recently discussed digital initiatives in the Americas, including a plan to improve communication among Cuban bloggers, a proposed web portal to help Latino teens become better informed, and an online "toolkit" to help journalists cover Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
Coinciding with a call by international organizations for increased freedom of expression on the Internet, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report urges governments to support internet use as a human right, GigaOm reports.