Creating a bold and serious collaborative niche membership network with existing and emerging independent media should be a primary objective of WHYY, the Delaware Valley public media organization. Highlighted by its six-month-old NewsWorks online news site and hyperlocal news experiment, WHYY has attempted to recast itself as something more than a stodgy PBS TV channel [...]

Three recently shared numbers stand out to me as being incredibly powerful, evocative and important for the future of Philadelphia: 8,456 The tiny, 0.6 increase in Philadelphia’s population from the 2000 to the 2010 U.S. Census, a small grow that halts an enormous trend: 50 years of population loss from a 1950 height of 2.1 [...]

When re-purposing technology tools as  solutions, the core problem and end user are often ignored and so little will be accomplished. Back in March, I was on a panel of judges for Temple University’s Center for Design and Innovation NorthBroadband DesignWeek competition. In short, nearly 100 Temple students from six different schools were broken into [...]

If all the timing was right on track, some time this month or next, a CEO might be named for a new collaborative nonprofit news and information project being initially funded by the William Penn Foundation. As first shared here, the deeply invested regional foundation put an initial $2.4 million onto the table to form [...]

Last week I saw Mike Topel got a ‘digital content’ promotion over at Philly.com. Then he tweeted he was “starting a hyperlocal project,” and followed that up by calling for South Philly activists. It’s worth noting that I’d bet a lot of old head Inquirer folks will remind others that the paper tried something not [...]

For Philly.com to maintain and expand upon its role as the dominant hub site in the Philadelphia region, it needs to become a comprehensive, collaborative and open source for all news, information and analysis that happens, reflects and impacts this metro area. For 15 years, the now Philadelphia Media Network-owned news website has exclusively featured [...]

Do news organizations have responsibility for their outcome? That became the final and, I think, as yet unanswered close to a discussion I led during the final session of the third national BarCamp NewsInnovation, held Saturday April 30 at Temple University and rounding out the inaugural Philly Tech Week. [See past BCNI write ups here.] [...]

The three of us who founded Technically Philly dissolved our partnership at the end of last year. But it was good news. Moving away from the general partnership we launched in early  2009, we’ve incorporated as an S-Corporation in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, for better protection against liability, losses and for better treatment by the [...]

Here’s something completely unoriginal: you’re going to get flat-ass rejected, crushing whatever self-indulgent perspective you have on yourself, and then you will go some place magical and it will change you. Here’s my submission to the #jcarn FAIL blog ring. In 2003, I was an involved and eager high school senior who struggled to focus [...]

The inaugural Philly Tech Week has passed, and I shared a roundup of the entire week, but I wanted to focus in on one of the larger events. As I noted, my Technically Philly colleagues and fellow PTW organizers each took hold of a portion of the nine of the week’s 65 events that we [...]