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Rise in Use of Ballot Drop Boxes Sparks Partisan Battles

Elaine S. Povich

October 16, 2020 |

Stateline |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

Free-standing ballot drop boxes during the pandemic provide assurance to voters who worry about the reliability of the postal service or health risks at polling places. Drop-box voting gradually won acceptance in states relying entirely on remote voting. By 2016, most voters in three big states used drop boxes. Many states lack rules governing the number of allowed drop boxes per county, which has contributed to partisan feuds over the numbers of collection boxes. The battles have focused on claims of ballot-security threats, but there is little evidence drop boxes are less secure than other methods.

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How nonprofits stepped up training for campus journalists despite COVID-19 lockdown

Ifedayo Ogunyemi

October 15, 2020 |

Nigerian Tribune |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: Nigeria, Ogun State

In Nigeria, nonprofit organizations are helping to organize and deliver virtual journalism-related training to university students who can't attend classes as normal due to the coronavirus pandemic. Although some students have said that the organizations aren't always transparent about the price of the webinars, many have reported that their writing has improved and they have made connections with others.

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'It's on the writers': How The Correspondent drives interaction between members and its journalists

Lucinda Southern

October 14, 2020 |

Digiday |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

To entice paying subscribers to its ad-free news site, and to spark informed discourse in its comments section, The Correspondent promotes an unusual degree of interaction between its journalists and readers and actively seeds discussions with experts’ comments. Unlike often-toxic discussion forums on other news sites, The Correspondents' forums foster collaborations between writers and readers on prospective articles and in analyses after publication. While it's too soon to tell if the strategy will retain and expand subscriber rolls, the forums show an unusual level of quality and civility.

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Doctor Offices In Wisconsin Step In To Help Register Voters

Maayan Silver

October 14, 2020 |

NPR |

Podcast |

3-5 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

VotERdoctors partners with doctors, clinics, community centers, and hospitals to register voters. Staff can wear badges with a QR code that patients can scan with their cellphone, which takes them to a webpage that offers information about how to register to vote, including a live help line if the patient gets stuck. Some facilities, such as Progressive Community Health Centers in Milwaukee, send monthly text messages to their patients to remind them to register. VotER is being used by more than 300 U.S. hospitals and about 40,000 patients have gotten help registering or requesting ballots.

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How will Lithuania's contact-tracing app work?

Giedrius Vitkauskas

October 13, 2020 |

Lithuanian Radio and Television (LRT) |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: Lithuania

Lithuanian officials are launching a contact-tracing app to better trace the path of coronavirus cases and alert people when they have potentially been exposed. Although there have been delays in the roll-out of the app, other countries have already released the technology and have seen success in people downloading the app as well as quarantining when alerted that they've been in contact with the virus.

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With unemployment hotline overloaded and stimulus on hold, PA boosts chatbot 90x

Layla A. Jones

October 13, 2020 |

Billy Penn |

Text |

Under 800 Words

Response Location: United States, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Accessing information about unemployment compensation online just got easier for residents of Pennsylvania. The current chat box capacity is 500 but will be increased to 50,000 by the end of the year. The phone hotline currently receives about 20,000 daily calls and has been difficult to get through since the unemployment benefits began in the wake of the coronavirus shutdown. The website also features a virtual assistant, which answers hundreds of commonly asked questions.

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This game can stop people from falling for COVID-19 conspiracies

Ruth Reader

October 13, 2020 |

FastCompany |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United Kingdom, Cambridge, England

To combat the spread of conspiracy theories, researchers at Cambridge’s Social Decision Making Lab have created an interactive game that puts users in the shoes of "manipulators" to teach them how to "question social media posts that have the hallmarks of engineered virality." Although experts say playing the game just one time will likely not result in sustainable change, a similar game that focused on understanding how fake news was created found that users' beliefs in fake news decreased by an average of 21%.

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‘Smart Buses' roll WiFi to students without access

Lex Gray

October 12, 2020 |

WAVY-TV |

Broadcast TV News |

Under 3 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Virginia

In order to bridge the digital divide one school district in Virginia is putting Wi-Fi routers on its school buses. They call them Smart Buses. They buses drive out to neighborhoods where students don't have access to fast, reliable internet. “Four of the Smart Buses go out every day. Each can serve about 40 students, covering about three-quarters of the need in the district.”

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How a #Litterati army on Instagram sparked a global fight against litter

Michael J. Coren

October 12, 2020 |

Hothouse Solutions |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, San Francisco, California

What started as a small group of people taking pictures of waste in their communities and tagging it on Instagram with the hashtag #Litterati, turned into a global effort, and even an app, to map and dispose of trash. Users can upload to the app an image of trash and machine-learning algorithm can tag it location, material, and company who made it. The city of San Francisco asked the makers of the app for help documenting cigarette butts and tobacco products on its streets and ended up winning a legal victory over the tobacco industry to increase the taxes on their products.

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Old learning concept can help students without resources learn online amid the pandemic

Lori Jane Gliha

October 12, 2020 |

KDVR-TV |

Broadcast TV News |

3-5 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Denver, Colorado

In Denver, learning pods are helping students access virtual classes during a pandemic. At the Adams 12 school district, 4000 students, district-wide, participate in the pod. Similarly, HOPE Online Learning Academy Co-Op launched a learning center. Students can sit in a classroom, access Wi-Fi, and count on the support of an adult. They also distributed 600 computers, 400 webcams from PCs, and 1,077 laptops to enrolled middle and high school students.

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