Tools, Tips & Trends | Knight Digital Media Center

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Get ready for Give Local America Day, May 6: Knight updates Giving Day Playbook

Tue, April 8, 2014 | 11:58 a.m. PDT

On May 6, community foundations around the U.S. will celebrate a century of local philanthropy through Give Local America Day. With less than a month before this event, there's still time to get started with your own Giving Day -- if you start now. To help community foundations prepare, this week the Knight Foundation updated its Giving Day Playbook: a how-to guide with tips to plan a successful 24-hour online giving campaign.

Pew: Smaller news sites are gaining ground

Tue, March 25, 2014 | 3:13 p.m. PDT

by: Amy Gahran

Although independent local news sites are a small part of the overall news industry, this sector has been making noticeable gains in the last year. According to State of the News Media 2014, published today by the Pew Research Center, small U.S. new sites currently support about 1900 jobs -- an average of 4.4 jobs per outlet. "In terms of the numbers of outlets, the largest component of the growing digital news world is the smaller news site."

Traffic map: Data visualization highlights local housing, jobs imbalance

Tue, March 25, 2014 | 12:16 p.m. PDT

by: Melissa Kaplan

Traffic congestion, jobs, and housing: Using public data to pull these important aspects of local life together on an interactive map can spark powerful community conversations about quality of life. Recently, data journalist Chris Walker recently drew on Silicon Valley commuter traffic data to produce a visual, tactile sense of the region's struggle with rapid tech industry growth. The result is this interactive map, published by the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

How people get to news websites influences engagement: Pew report

Wed, March 19, 2014 | 11:59 a.m. PDT

by: Amy Gahran

People who choose to directly visit a news site -- rather than follow a link from social media or a search engine -- tend to stick around longest and come back more often, according to a new Pew report. But since news publishers cannot control how people get to their sites, it still makes sense to offer value and engagement opportunities for casual as well as regular visitors.

Mobile messaging apps: Not yet a good way to reach your community

Mon, March 10, 2014 | 5:48 p.m. PDT

by: Amy Gahran

WhatsApp -- the mobile messaging app with over 450 million users, a popular alternative to conventional SMS text messaging -- was recently bought by Facebook for a whopping $19 billion. Does that mean that WhatsApp or similar apps might be an easier, cheaper options to engage your community via mobile text messages? Probably not. At least, not yet.

ProPublica launches Data Store

Thu, March 6, 2014 | 1:57 p.m. PST

by: Amy Gahran

Want to try some local data journalism but don't want to start completely from scratch? The new ProPublica Data Store can be a resource of free or relatively inexpensive datasets that might be relevant to your community, or to put local issues or data in a useful context.

Different flavors of Twitter conversations: Pew research

Thu, February 27, 2014 | 2:33 p.m. PST

by: Amy Gahran

Conversations on Twitter, on any topic, can be difficult to wrap your head around. One way to make it easier to follow and understand Twitter conversations within or about your community is to understand the different types of conversations that happen on Twitter. New research from Pew has identified six basic types of Twitter conversations, and explores how they each function.

Community media, engagement: New & updated Knight resources

Wed, February 19, 2014 | 11:27 a.m. PST

by: Amy Gahran

This week, the Knight Foundation unveiled a new community information resource guide -- a collection of examples and tools to help you start a media project in your community.

ONA local groups, training

Wed, February 12, 2014 | 11:48 a.m. PST

by: Amy Gahran

The Online News Association may be best known for training and inspiring journalists employed by major daily news outlets -- but this organization also offers local events that could be useful to anyone involved with informing and engaging communities.