“The 9/11 Memorial: Past, Present and Future” is a new iPad app that looks at the World Trade Center using scores of videos and photos. Since being released last week, it’s quickly risen to be the #11 downloaded app in the News category in the iTunes app store. It’s by far the best 9/11 iPad [...]
Finalists announced for the 2011 Online Journalism Awards
The Online News Association and the School of Communication at the University of Miami have announced the finalists for the 2011 Online Journalism Awards. Eight awards come with a total of $33,000 in prize money, courtesy of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Gannett Foundation, which also is supporting innovative investigative work with [...]
NYC, nonprofits try crowdsourcing storm damage
NYC has set up a website for residents to submit damage reports for the city from Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene. A number of non-profits have teamed up for a similar initiative along the entire East Coast.
Celebrities react to East Coast earthquake
As soon as a 5.9-magnitude earthquake struck the East Coast today, Twitter users jumped online. Web analytics company Chartbeat, which tracks traffic on hundreds of news sites, said it quickly broke previous records for web traffic across its sites, with more than 4.6 million visitors across them and 400,000 in about 15 minutes. BreakingNews.com set [...]
WNYC shows how easy it is to hack into voicemail
WNYC did a good bit of simple reporting that made the News of the World scandal particularly relevant to U.S. audiences, showing how easy it is to hack into voicemail systems — including those in the U.S. The station found it could easily access voice mail messages in AT&T and Sprint accounts, but wasn’t able to [...]
Knight announces 16 media innovation grants
The Knight Foundation is giving $4.7 million to 16 ideas aiming at creating innovation in media, as part of its annual program to fund digital news experiments that inform and engage communities. Keep an eye on these — past winners have produced very interesting products, including Spot.Us and DocumentCloud. Winners include experiments to: Help newsrooms organize and [...]
Panoramic photos of Joplin before and after tornado
What a great use of a simple web tool to illustrate a story in a new and interesting way: The New York Times uses panoramic images from Google Maps Street View to show two locations in Joplin, Mo. before and after the devastation. Pan around either image to see how the scenes compares before and after. Check [...]
Groupon deals in great writing
Groupon says its unique approach to writing is one of the biggest keys to its booming success. And not only that, it is hiring on average two editorial employees a day. That’s right – two a day, which makes it one of the fatest growing hirers of editorial talent right now.
How Drudge drives more traffic to news sites than Facebook
It’s surprising to many that Matt Drudge’s site, DrudgeReport.com, drives more traffic to news sites than any other web property besides Google. That’s right, even with the growth of Twitter and Facebook, his simple site still drives more than they do to major news sites, and as a result, he helps set the news agenda. [...]
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