Local journalism is all about location: No matter if you’re covering a city or a neighborhood, reporting is always focused on a community within a geographic footprint. How can we leverage that to build better news products?

In setting up the Lenfest Local Lab, we wanted to devote a small interdisciplinary team to building prototypes for more relevant and engaging local news products.

Local news. Location, we thought. It seemed like a natural place to start.

Creating a lab meant we were free to think about product from first principles: What product would you build if you started from scratch today, using all we’ve learned about user experience, interactive design and applying the latest technology? What if we were less constrained by integrating with legacy processes or systems? Could this liberate us to imagine an entirely new local news experience?

We’re now a few decades since the birth of the Web and more than a decade since the iPhone’s debut. We know so much about how people are experiencing news on these incredibly personal devices. What if we could take everything we know about users to build a better news product?

When we talked about more relevant local news products, early discussions kept coming back to location. If we knew where you lived and worked, how might we serve you better with local news and information? How could we improve if we knew which issues were important to you in the neighborhood where you spend time, and how you consume information differently at home vs. elsewhere?

If we had access to your location — with your consent and solely to create a better experience for you — how could we help you as you went about your day, knowing the path you take and how you’re getting there?

It opened up all kinds of questions. Do people want location-targeted information when they are near something relevant, or later when they aren’t driving or walking somewhere? A map seems like an obvious interface for location-based apps — what other interfaces make sense? What technologies can we adapt, and what do we need to build to serve our users? How do story formats need to be adapted for people on the go to be quickly scannable? How might we incorporate media formats like audio for city residents who walk around with earphones constantly plugged into their skulls?

Thinking about location-based products also has implications for newsrooms and how journalists cover their communities. If we link stories to locations, what does this show us about coverage? Are some parts of the city covered differently, or more frequently than others? Putting stories into a location-based experience may help uncover areas of improvement or point towards ways to make coverage more relevant to people in the area.

And once we know that a group of people shares something in common, like living in the same neighborhood, how might we help them come together both online or in person?

Local news organizations are uniquely suited to capitalize on this opportunity. Local knowledge is difficult to scale and isn’t something the technology giants can easily acquire. But local news organizations have deeply sourced, quality information about their community. They have boots on the ground and the historical knowledge to back it up. They know where to get the information they need if they don’t already have it, and can verify the accuracy of data if anything looks fishy.

What if we could take this expertise and build it into a product? Could we create products that leverage high-quality, vetted local information, paired with compelling user experience and design?

The Lenfest Local Lab has so far launched one location-based experiment, an application called HERE to give users location-based notifications when they walk by places written about by The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Pulitzer-winning architecture writer, Inga Saffron. The next experiment will explore food and restaurants, and how an app with professional reviews and news can offer a more curated experience than similar products that rely on community reviews.

What are we missing? Are you thinking about these issues too? If so, reach out to the Lenfest Local Lab — you can find us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lenfestlab where we’ll be posting more questions like this one in an effort to keep the conversation going about how product development can be a driving force of innovation in local news.

Lenfest Local Lab on Twitter

Has anyone implemented custom Google Maps styles for a news project? We're exploring it and would love to talk about it. @CitizenApp went dark; @Lyft went bright, we're wondering what fits with local food reviews. Let's talk! Documentation here 👉 https://t.co/GYsLOQuGbR

The Lenfest Local Lab is a small, multidisciplinary product and user experience innovation team located in Philadelphia, PA supported by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism.

The Lenfest Institute for Journalism is a non-profit organization whose mission is to develop and support sustainable business models for great local journalism. The Institute was founded in 2016 by entrepreneur H.F. (Gerry) Lenfest with the goal of helping transform the news industry in the digital age to ensure high-quality local journalism remains a cornerstone of democracy.

Oh, The Locations You’ll Go … was originally published in The Lenfest Local Lab @ The Inquirer on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Today, we’re announcing $475,000 in new grants to support collaboration and new business models for news.

Using data to make smarter decisions about where to find subscribers, or match readers to jobs. Bringing together a major hospital with the main local newspaper to equip the community to save lives threatened by drug overdoses. Putting journalists in conversation with their communities in direct ways to increase dialogue and trust.

These are just some of the ways local news organizations are working to better serve the communities they cover.

The Lenfest Institute for Journalism was created with the sole mission of preserving the local journalism that’s essential for democracy. One of the ways we’re working to accomplish this goal is through grants to individuals and organizations experimenting with exciting and innovative ideas, including the ones mentioned above.

Today, we’re announcing our second cycle of grants. By who we fund, we are trying to show a way forward, both in our home city of Philadelphia and for cities like it across the country.

In our first grants, we cast a wide net. We asked for proposals in five areas that we thought were essential: news and information products, reaching underserved communities, new revenue sources, community engagement, and local news ecosystem collaboration.

As a new player on the journalism funding scene, setting broad parameters for applications helped get the word out that we were open for business. It was a clarion call for help to reach anyone we could, asking to share ideas and projects with us shortly after we began working more than two years ago.

But when we looked back on our initial grant process and applications, we realized we needed to bring more focus. For our second round of grant applications, we zoomed in on two of the areas we felt were most critical: new revenue models and local news ecosystem collaboration.

Figuring out how to make the economics of local news work is one of the central questions for the Institute. The advertising monopoly that regional newspapers once held is gone. So how do we sustain the vital journalism that helps democracy function?

Like many others, we think the answer lies in aligning the business model with the “customer” being served: the community. We have focused intensely on reader revenue and building digital subscriptions and membership, leveraging our expertise and working with many partners including the News Revenue Hub, Knight Foundation, Facebook and others.

We need to find more ways to make journalistic ends meet, and more experimentation is needed. So we created a grant focused exclusively on revenue models for local news and called for applications from anywhere. We’re excited to announce those grantees that include organizations from across the country:

The Associated Press and Newsday: To prototype a model for leveraging Newsday’s local data with AP’s news automation expertise to produce content that engages audiences and adds revenue through new local news products.

Distributed Media Lab: To develop a distributed model for monetizing syndication using the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) standard, expanding revenue potential for advertising and donations/memberships.

Pico: To prototype paid user marketing campaigns connected to audience data with the goal of increasing subscription and membership conversions.

VTDigger: To launch self-serve portals and a new revenue stream for user-sponsored content such as press releases, classifieds and birth, wedding and engagement announcements.

SembraMedia: To create an audience growth and engagement toolkit in Spanish providing best practices on the most popular tools for driving local news revenue through donations, events, services and digital advertising.

Technical.ly: To create a prototype of a “Recruiter’s Dashboard” that will leverage reader data to match users with relevant job postings.

WBUR: To explore new mechanisms and practices for listeners to purchase items through affiliate programs that relate to products tied to the station’s journalism.

Collaboration is also essential to serve all people in a community. Just as the ad monopoly is gone, so too is tight control of distribution. People have many places to get information, and one organization won’t serve all their needs. Through collaboration, news organizations can find new stories that need to be told, and then give their stories wider reach.

We were especially inspired by our grantee Resolve Philly, an effort to bring together news organizations across the city to focus on a single issue. More than 20 outlets are currently collaborating to cover poverty and economic justice in Philadelphia, which is the poorest big city in the United States. We saw how this focus could build new connective tissue across the local ecosystem, and we were thinking of ways to inspire more such projects. We also wanted to make clear which grants were focused on our home region of Philadelphia, and it made sense to zero in on that for the collaboration grants — with the aim of this serving as an example for other communities.

So that led to the creation of our Philadelphia news ecosystem collaboration grants, and we’re excited to announce the following grantees:

The University of Pennsylvania Center for Public Health Initiatives (CPHI) and its Healthy Library Initiative, together with The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Department of Public Health and the Free Library of Philadelphia: To raise public awareness and expand journalism and information sharing around a grassroots effort to equip more Philadelphians with naloxone, a drug that counters the effect of opioid overdoses, that will track people trained, encourage naloxone-carrying “commitment pledges” and tell stories of lives saved.

The Reentry Think Tank, together with Philadelphia Reentry Coalition, Village of Arts and Humanities, People’s Paper Co-op, Defender Association of Philadelphia, Community Legal Services Resolve Philadelphia and the Juvenile Law Center: To create a journalism and new-media fellowship for formerly incarcerated Philadelphians.

Free Press, together with Germantown Info Hub, Kensington Voice, The People’s Education Center, Temple University, and WHYY: To train and mentor community members to work with residents, develop stories with journalists and boost information that helps counter stigmatized coverage.

Mighty Writers, together with CAMDEN, NJ: A Spirit Invincible, WHYY, the Center for Environmental Transformation in Camden and the Rutgers Camden Office of Civic Engagement: To support a daily after-school workshop for Camden teens at a student newsroom focusing on issues relating to life in the Waterfront South neighborhood of Camden.

Media, Inequality and Change Center at University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and Rutgers University, together with Media Mobilizing Project and The Philadelphia Inquirer Opinion Section: To create a series of public dialogues between a diverse group of Philadelphia’s leading journalists and Philadelphia’s leading public advocates from across the political spectrum, in the run-up to local elections.

Untitled Folder LLC, together with Neo4j, Technically Media, Linode and Code For Philly: To create an open-source web application project designed to empower citizens, journalists, data scientists, coders and creatives with the ability to harness open data for journalism, public information, and civic good.

The grantees are just kicking off their work this month, and we’ll be providing regular updates on their work. You can also visit our website to get more detail on each grantee and to learn more about why we decided to support them. Please also reach out if you have any interest in collaborating with any of the grantees.

How and why the Lenfest Institute funds innovation was originally published in Lenfest Institute for Journalism on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hi everyone,

I’m writing to you because you are a local organizer of a Hacks/Hackers group. First, I want to thank you for all the work you’ve done to start a group in your city. It’s been humbling and deeply inspiring to see how our mission to build the future of media by bringing together journalists and technologists has resonated with so many of you. You have made this movement into something far larger than we ever imagined.

This is the first time I’ve ever sent a note like this to all of you, and the reason is for some big news: We are announcing a major partnership with one of the world’s most prominent technology companies to support a new event series on media entrepreneurship. This partnership also comes with support for Hacks/Hackers to help take the organization to the next level. We’ll be sending you the announcement tomorrow with more details when this goes public. We were able to do this after the U.S. parent organization of Hacks/Hackers received formal non-profit status last year.

What does this mean for you? This is just the start of us being able to provide more support to local groups and organizers for all the work you are doing. We still very much remain a grassroots group and rely on local organizers like you to spread the word and organize events. However, having an official organization will enable us collaborate with partners in a more coordinated way, enabling us to do more by working together.

This was never something we planned when I started the first group in San Francisco in 2009. I never imagined we would have groups on every continent. We are living in a time of great changes, and Hacks/Hackers has been at the heart of the reinvention of media in the Internet age. We’re just getting started!

And the formal announcement:

Hacks/Hackers and the News Lab at Google launch global program for media entrepreneurs

Hacks/Hackers, the global journalism and technology movement, and the News Lab at Google are thrilled to announce the launch of Hacks/Hackers Connect, an international program designed for media entrepreneurs.

Hacks/Hackers Connect will begin with a series of one-day events designed to support current and aspiring media entrepreneurs. At a time of great innovation in the news industry, the program aspires to encourage more developers and media professionals to come together to create a new generation of media companies. The first event will take place in Berlin, Germany on June 27 at Factory Berlin. This new partnership between Google and Hacks/Hackers will also support a global online community of active media and technology participants, and will facilitate related Hacks/Hackers activities across local chapters.

This program marks the first major partnership for Hacks/Hackers, which began in San Francisco in 2009. The movement, guided by board members Rich Gordon (Northwestern University), Burt Herman (Storify), Jenny 8. Lee (Plympton), Aron Pilhofer (The Guardian) and Chrys Wu (The New York Times), has since grown to include more than 60 groups internationally. Hacks/Hackers’ U.S. parent organization was granted non-profit status last year.

“We never imagined that Hacks/Hackers would grow into the movement it has become, thanks to organizers and members around the world,” said Burt Herman, board chairman and co-founder of Hacks/Hackers. “It’s an honor to be working with Google, one of the world’s top technology companies, to fulfill our mission of bringing media and technology together.”

The News Lab at Google is the company’s effort to drive innovation at the intersection of technology and media.

“This partnership grew out of a series of ongoing conversations we have been having with Hacks/Hackers,” said Steve Grove, Director of the News Lab at Google, “We asked ourselves how we might work together to better support the media startup ecosystem and empower more successful media entrepreneurs. We can’t wait to get started.”

About Hacks/Hackers

Hacks/Hackers Inc. is a global grassroots network of journalists, technologists, designers and businesspeople who are passionate about the future of media and believe the free flow of information is essential for democratic society. With more than 60 local groups across all continents, members gather regularly to learn, network and collaborate on projects. The U.S.-based parent is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization.

About the News Lab at Google

The News Lab at Google is the company’s effort to empower innovation at the intersection of technology and media. Our mission is to collaborate with journalists and entrepreneurs to build the future of media with Google. We do this through a global outreach effort to empower technology-driven storytelling in newsrooms; a strong data journalism practice based on our Google Trends platform; and through unique partnerships that seek to increase access to quality information globally.

A first-ever partnership for Hacks/Hackers was originally published in Hacks/Hackers - journalism meets technology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We all know the real goal of technology companies and the geeks working within them is to make the world more like Star Trek — and we’ve achieved a stunning amount of progress in just the last few years.

We have computers that can answer questions (Google) through voice-controlled assistants (Siri). We have early forms of replicators (Makerbot), the tricorder (Scanadu) and the holodeck (Oculus Rift) .

Before we get to warp drive and transporters, there’s another simple way our world can be more like Star Trek, right now. I’m talking about bringing space-age advances to a common technology that everyone uses many times a day: door locks and light switches.

I realize that improving the function of doors and lights isn’t the type of revolutionary technology shift that will save the world. However, it will make our daily lives more convenient and safe, and perhaps give us a little more time to get to the pithy stuff.

Think back to Star Trek: Did you ever see anyone on the USS Enterprise put a key in a door lock or switch on a light? Instead of this primitive encumbrance, doors satisfyingly swooshed open whenever a crew member approached, lights already on in the room.

Star Trek came to mind as I’ve been thinking a lot about home automation now that I’m an apartment owner. I have a first-generation Nest thermostat, and eagerly pre-ordered their smoke detector the day it was announced. Our garage door is on the Internet, partly because to my geek mind that seemed cool — but really to prevent it from accidentally being left open. I’m hoping to do much more to automate our home, as we also regularly have Airbnb guests and I’d like a better way to share our key.

As I scour the web for cool home automation gadgets, one major question with all these systems is how to control them all. How will I keep it simple and not totally frustrate my wife Liz, as I boldly go where few have gone before to wire up our home?

In thinking how these devices can all work harmoniously, it becomes clear that the ideal system should have no controls at all. Your home should figure out what you want based on where you are and what you’re doing. A well-designed system shouldn’t require me to give an intensive technical orientation to Liz so she can simply turn on our living room lights. The lights should go on when she’s in the room and it’s dark outside.

(I imagine eventually this leading to something like Google Now for your home where your domestic devices anticipate and respond to your actions, which is also clearly a reason why this happened.)

This technology was enabled on the newer TV incarnations of Star Trek through silver and gold-colored pendants worn on the crew’s chests. The fictional devices worked as a communication device and also tracked a person’s location, so doors would only open automatically for the authorized person.

A similar precise indoor location tracking technology exists in the real world today in the form of iBeacon, which arrived with the latest version of iOS last year. Through iBeacon, new types of Bluetooth-enabled hardware sensors can very accurately track an iPhone’s position in relation to them.

Much of the blog coverage about potential uses of iBeacon has been for retail stores, which doesn’t make much sense to me. If I’m in a store where I can touch a real product and speak to real people on staff, why should I have to pull my phone out of my pocket to get more information or a special offer? It’s a distraction, and those claimed benefits are likely a red herring to distract from the real business purpose of iBeacon: tracking customers.

But one place that I’d have no problem being tracked down to the millimeter would be in my own home. My front door should unlock itself when I get home from work; not when I approach from inside to see who’s there. Lights should turn on as I walk into different rooms, and at different brightnesses whether I’m sitting on the couch or in the chair next to it.

Once this is in place and works reliably, we won’t need keys or light switches. The best interface is totally invisible to the user.

That’s all I’m asking to make our world more like Star Trek here in 2014. Let’s save the planet from fumbling in the dark through a purse for your house keys, or getting up from the couch to dim the lights for a movie. Stop my endless quest through the cavernous aisles of hardware stores for the perfect light switch. Instead, give me a solution that gets rid of the switches altogether.

Then, we can finally get to work on those transporters.

Home … the final frontier was originally published in Impatient Geek on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.