How the Chicago Community Trust and OpenGov Chicago are creating a new type of accountability journalism

Emerging from the platform of the Chicago Community Trust, OpenGovChi holds promise for creating a new type of accountability journalism that quantifies problems and identifies fixes in response to the needs of the public.

National Day of Civic Hacking: Opportunity to grow your local tech network

Network-building is central to the work of community foundations and organizations -- yet often they lack strong personal ties with programmers and others in their local tech community. A nationwide event in June offers a perfect opportunity to meet and assist civic-minded techies you might want to draw into your network.

Building a great Civic Data Challenge entry

The National Civic Data Challenge, a project of the National Conference on Citizenship, opened on April 11. The Challenge will bring together community organizations and tech teams to build projects that illustrate the importance of civic health.  

Sounds cool, right?  

So if you're interested, how do you build a good application for the Challenge?  I spoke to representatives of the National Conference on Citizenship today and came away with plenty of useful tips to help you build a competitive, compelling entry to the Challenge.  

Do online comments build a premium news brand? Advertisers might think so

New insight into how people interact with Web pages shows that the most engaging content often takes the audience “below the fold,” to the online comments. Where the audience goes, the advertisers go. 

Simple mobile tools yield community impact in Grand Rapids

Should community foundations have a mobile strategy? Why not? For the last three years the Grand Rapids (Mich.) Community Foundation has included mobile in its community information and outreach efforts. Here's what they've done, and how it's working.

7 key questions to jumpstart your community mobile strategy

Within the next couple of years, most U.S. internet access will happen via mobile devices. Community news and engagement projects are looking ahead to adapt and capitalize on this shifting digital media landscape. How can you set priorities and make key decisions to help your project go mobile?

Seven reasons why hashtags are good, especially for community media

Hashtags in social media are, unquestionably, #ugly. But is that really a problem for news and engagement, especially at the community level? In a recent controversial article, a New York Times social media editor argued against hashtags -- a perspective that probably makes sense for a national/global news organization. But from the community perspective, hashtags can be very helpful indeed.

Moderation thwarts comment free-for-all

When news sites invest in staff to vanquish the trolls whose offensive comments chase away thoughtful readers, it pays off in cleaner comment threads and stronger community. And that can pay off in a stronger Web presence. 

“Some editors take the view that this whole comment thing is just a time suck. It can be,” said Jack Lail, Director of Digital for the Knoxville (TN.) News Sentinel. “But our editor does not take that view.”

Building a new J-school? Build the newsroom first

What would you do if you could build a brand-new journalism school from scratch? Monclair State in New Jersey is doing just that.

Pew State of the News Media hints at community news opportunities, advantages

This week Pew published its big State of the News Media 2013 report, with lots of insight into the fortunes of and prospects for mainstream media outlets, as well as some types of niche and alternative media. The report has little to say directly about startup community news and engagement projects -- but reading between the lines, it hints at some growing opportunities in the community media landscape. Here are four possible opportunities and advantages for community news/info projects that I gathered from reading the report's key findings.