Iceland may become a haven for investigative journalists

Iceland’s parliament approves legislation to make the country a haven for investigative journalists

Iceland has passed a package of legislation that intends to make the country an international safe haven for investigative journalists, it was reported by the AFP and the Independent among others. The new laws, created with the help of Wikileaks, were passed unanimously in the Icelandic parliament at 4am on Wednesday last week.

Harriet Sherwood reflects on the role of foreign correspondents and digital media

Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, recently reflected on what it means to be a foreign correspondent in the digital age of media. She begins by reflecting on what a foreign correspondence should be. The Guardian, she says, should be “bold distinctive, thoughtful and original as well as, of course, covering the ‘news,’ ie reacting to events.” Moreover, she asserts that foreign correspondents should spend their time in the field, talking to people and finding things out. Essentially, it is the foreign correspondent’s job to get out there, not be “chained to their laptops,” and do what newsroom journalists can’t.

Spot.Us Case Study Shows Impact of Crowdfunding on Journalism

Platforms such as Spot.Us and Kickstarter have shown that crowdfunding can work as a financing mechanism for journalism. We will likely see more crowdfunded stories in the future, which means it’s important study how crowdfunding impacts journalism and the role and work of a journalist.

I’m currently in the process of completing a Ph.D. project about collective intelligence in journalism, and my case study about Spot.Us attempts to address these issues. I interviewed 15 Spot.Us donors and reporters for the study, which I presented last week in the form of a research paper at IJ-7, the Seventh Conference on Innovation Journalism at Stanford.

Knight funds 12 innovative digital news projects

The Knight Foundation is giving $2.74 million to fund 12 new media innovation projects, as part of the Knight News Challenge.  Among the winning ideas are two easy-to-use tool sets for journalists and bloggers to illustrate raw data visually; tools to create ?real time ads? that display a business? latest Twitter or Facebook update; a place for the public to pitch and pay for stories on public radio; a mobile application that enables residents to geo-tag ideas for improving their neighborhood.

Iceland’s economic downturn is a ?freedom of speech? upturn, Kim Andersen

During recent years, Iceland has suffered from a recession incomparable to that experienced in any other country in Europe. Today, however, the situation is about to change. Not on the financial stage but on the political rights stage. On 16 June, the Icelandic parliament unanimously approved a bill that will create a ?new media haven? on Iceland.

The bill is inspired by a proposal put forward by Wikileaks, an organisation that has lately has come under pressure from the American administration because of classified documents published on their website.

Universities and journals work together for journalistic innovation

The New York Times, The Bay Citizen, and Next Door Media have recently formed partnerships with local universities, reports Poynter. The publications hope the partnerships will help them expand their hyperlocal coverage, engage new audiences, and experiment with different business models. Moreover, says Jay Rosen, who helped to create the partnership between NYU and the Arthur J. Carter Journalism Institute, the partnerships are “correcting a misalignment between journalism schools and the news business.”

HuffPo acquires Adaptive Semantics

The Huffington Post has recently acquired Adaptive Semantics, company whose software provides “learning and sentiment analysis” to the HuffPo, reports PaidContent. HuffPo had already been working with Adaptive Semantics to make online comments sections safe for advertisements by filtering offensive language and patterns of behavior used to evade censors. However HuffPo CEO Eric Hippeau assures that this acquisition (HuffPo’s first) does not signal a future buying spree for the company. “We’ll be opportunistic,” says Hippeau. “We’re not looking but if there are things that are important to us, as demonstrated with Adaptive Semantics” HuffPo would consider it.