5 ways to use Slideshare to engage communities, build traffic

Community news, engagement, and information projects offer a wide range of content types, but so far few have done much with slide presentations. Slideshare, a popular social platform for publishing, sharing, and embedding presentations, may help you get more mileage and benefits from your photos, maps, videos, charts and other content -- as well as capitalize on relevant content from other sources, and attract the attention of influencers. A new book explains how to do this well.

Pew survey offers lessons for funders of nonprofit news start ups

Results of a newly released survey of 93 nonprofit news start ups underscores the need to build business capacity in the field. That's something supporting foundations and large donors should insist on.

Civic data isn't boring: National Civic Hack Day

Last weekend nearly 100 hackathons and related events were held around the U.S. as part of the first-ever National Day of Civic Hacking -- an opportunity to spur creativity and collaboration for using public data to help solve challenges for communities, cities, states and the nation.

Switching your CMS: How, why two community sites did it

When you manage a busy community site, switching to an entirely new content management system can be the stuff of dreams -- and nightmares. It can open up a world of opportunities to try new things and overcome past limitations. And it can also conjure catastrophic visions of glitches, crashes, and regretted investments. This month two well-established community news venues, Oakland Local and Voice of San Diego, both switched to a new content management system as part of their site redesigns. Here's how they did it, and what made these projects work.

Can the mobile internet help communities leap forward?

The internet can provide access to many valuable services, resources, education, information and opportunities of particular value to underserved communities. Yet one in five U.S. adults still did not use the internet. Could mobile internet access help underserved communities leapfrog ahead? What role might local initiatives play? A new report offers some insight from around the world.

14 cities show how community engagement is working

What does community engagement look like when it's working well? A recent in-depth report from the Knight Foundation and the National League of Cities examines community initiatives that "foster a sense of attachment, expand access to information and resources, and create opportunities for citizens to play more active roles in setting priorities, addressing issues, and planning the longer-term sustainability of their communities."

The news ecosystem -- What helps news startups?

You can't get a complete picture of what we might call the news ecosystem by looking only at the largest organizations, any more than you could get a picture of the ecosystem of whales while ignoring the existence of plankton.  

So what about small news organizations?

Onramps to OpenGov: Getting started with open government, open data, and online civic engagement

With the Knight Community Information Challenge theme -- OpenGov -- how do you get started in open government/open data projects?  Here are ideas that can serve as onramps to open government and open data work that can fuel civic engagement. Want to learn about other onramps to OpenGov? Sign up for the KDMC webinar happening May 15!

Northern Arizona team launches emergency alerts service

It's live!  After 8 months of planning and development, e928.org, Northern Arizona’s Free Mobile Service for Local Emergency News and Information, is live on the web and about to start sharing data with citizens.

Civic Engagement in the digital age: Pew report

To engage with civic issues or their government, people have always needed to get information and talk to people. Access to the internet, social media, and mobile communications has changed civic engagement somewhat -- but it's not really helping to bring in new voices or amplify marginalized ones. Well-educated, well-off people still tend to do it more, according to a new Pew report.