The nonprofit newsroom ProPublica announced that it will launch a new Illinois unit in 2017, publishing investigative journalism on key issues in Chicago and across the state. A search for an experienced, Chicago-based editor to lead ProPublica Illinois is underway and will conclude shortly.
With this state-based expansion, ProPublica seeks to further address the business crisis of the press. The collapse of regional and local newspapers, and the drastic cutback of reporting staffs, has left accountability journalism at the state and local levels shrinking and underfunded, weakening democratic governance at a critical moment.
Facebook has a particularly comprehensive set of dossiers on its more than 2 billion members. Every time a Facebook member likes a post, tags a photo, updates their favorite movies in their profile, posts a comment about a politician, or changes their relationship status, Facebook logs it. When they browse the Web, Facebook collects information about pages they visit that contain Facebook sharing buttons. When they use Instagram or WhatsApp on their phone, which are both owned by Facebook, they contribute more data to Facebook’s dossier.
And in case that wasn’t enough, Facebook also buys data about its users’ mortgages, car ownership and shopping habits from some of the biggest commercial data brokers.
Facebook uses all this data to offer marketers a chance to target ads to increasingly specific groups of people. Indeed, we found Facebook offers advertisers more than 1,300 categories for ad targeting — everything from people whose property size is less than .26 acres to households with exactly seven credit cards.
We built a tool that works with the Chrome Web browser that lets you see what Facebook says it knows about you — you can rate the data for accuracy and you can send it to us, if you like. We will, of course, protect your privacy. We won’t collect any identifying details about you. And we won’t share your personal data with anyone.
Breaking the Black Box: What Facebook Knows About You - ProPublica
The first in a news series from Propublica that looks into the algorithms that shape our digital world.
(Source: propublica.org)
ProPublica Launches the Dark Web’s First Major News Site | WIRED
Andy Greenberg writes:
On Wednesday, ProPublica became the first known major media outlet to launch a version of its site that runs as a “hidden service” on the Tor network, the anonymity system that powers the thousands of untraceable websites that are sometimes known as the darknet or dark web. The move, ProPublica says, is designed to offer the best possible privacy protections for its visitors seeking to read the site’s news with their anonymity fully intact. Unlike mere SSL encryption, which hides the content of the site a web visitor is accessing, the Tor hidden service would ensure that even the fact that the reader visited ProPublica’s website would be hidden from an eavesdropper or Internet service provider.
(Source: Wired)
I still worry that “engagement” in most newsrooms stops at the “grow our audience” part, and that we’ve come to assume that traditional journalists create the news those audience editors so deftly distribute.
Amanda Zamora, Senior Engagement Editor, ProPublica
Why Engagement Editors Should Go Beyond Promotion, and Tell Stories with the Audience | Idea Lab
(Source: mediashift.org)
We really relied on partners in the early days of ProPublica to find an audience for our work and now through social media we’re able to build an audience with readers and not be as reliant on traditional news partners. That has been really powerful for us.
Are you a college student of color interested in doing great journalism? ProPublica wants to help. We are a nonprofit investigative newsroom and we’re offering stipends to five minority students who work or want to work at college journalism outlets – newspapers, websites, radio stations or TV stations. We want to make college journalism accessible to students for whom it would otherwise be economically out of reach. Students can apply for the stipends annually. Those selected will receive $4,500 per semester.
Each student in our Emerging Reporters Program will also receive ongoing mentoring from ProPublica’s reporters and editors. We’ll also bring you to our newsroom in New York for a week.
(Source: propublica.org)
You have to write the headline on the story that’s there. You can’t, sort of, write the headline on the story you wish were there.
Kyle Massey shares headline pointers with ProPublica.
Read more: Headline Writing With an NYT Guru - ProPublica
(Source: propublica.org)
Werner Koch wrote the software, known as Gnu Privacy Guard, in 1997, and since then has been almost single-handedly keeping it alive with patches and updates from his home in Erkrath, Germany. Now 53, he is running out of money and patience with being underfunded. “I’m too idealistic,” he told me in an interview at a hacker convention in Germany in December. “In early 2013 I was really about to give it all up and take a straight job.” But then the Snowden news broke, and “I realized this was not the time to cancel.” Like many people who build security software, Koch believes that offering the underlying software code for free is the best way to demonstrate that there are no hidden backdoors in it giving access to spy agencies or others. However, this means that many important computer security tools are built and maintained by volunteers.
The World’s Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who is Going Broke - ProPublica
More funding has been provided for Koch since this article was published yesterday, but this is still an important read. It highlights how precarious internet security is when many of the key email encryption programs are underfunded.
(Source: propublica.org)
Resources worth knowing about. This is part of ProPublica’s ongoing investigative series on internships, which is really fantastic and you can actually get involved with by signing up to be part of their reporting network.
Reblogged from The FJP
Page 1 of 2
Loading tweets...
There are any number of pressing media issues in the digital age -- we're sure you can come up with a handful without breaking a sweat. ONA Issues is your platform to define them, share them, explore them and get a better fix on how they impact the work you do. Here we'll look to you for your perspectives and conversations and help jump-start discussions by posting insightful reporting, commentary and analysis from anywhere and everywhere. We're here to listen and learn. Join us.
Email
Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Follow on Tumblr
Mobile version
Random post