Sunlight Live
http://sunlightfoundation.com/live/archive/hcrsummit/
Sunlight Foundation, Washington, D.C.
$10,000 Grand Prize Winner
From the judges: “They showed how to add journalistic punch to a carefully orchestrated government event, adding context and insight to the proceedings. And they don’t stop at merely shedding light on the behind-the-scenes proceedings of government - they go a step beyond to make it fun and engaging, creating a social experience around the event.”
An innovative blending of data, streaming video, liveblogging and social networking, Sunlight Live attracted nearly 43,000 users in its first use at the bipartisan health care summit in February 2010. The judges not only honored the project for its individual merits, but also because it epitomizes the Sunlight Foundation’s entire body of work.
The experiment, detailed in this blog post and this demo video, was designed to prove that live coverage can come from anywhere “with relatively minimal development, production and promotion”. As people watched the live streaming video, the team added additional reporting and document links on the opposite side of the screen, hosted a live blog, and displayed an evolving log of Tweets about the event - all in one place. Plans are to continue to experiment with this model.
ProPublica Distributed Reporting
http://www.propublica.org/special/reportingnetwork-signup
ProPublica, Washington, DC
$1,000 Special Distinction Award
From the judges: “This is a major step forward with how we understand crowdsourcing.”
This investigative news site is systematizing the process of crowdsourcing, conducting experiments, polishing their process, and tasking citizens with serious assignments. Its more than 5,000 Reporting Network members have conducted spot checks on federal stimulus spending, unraveled loan modification stories, and tracked the oversight of state nursing board, among other efforts. ProPublica was also recognized with a Notable Entry for applications the nonprofit newsroom has developed.
48 HR Magazine
48 Hour Magazine, San Francisco, CA
$1,000 Special Distinction Award
From the judges: “As important as the product was the work flow that they created.”
In an era where most magazines go through a lavish multi-month production cycle, the 48 HR team made a spectacular 60-page magazine and online site in a weekend in May 2010 with little more than Twitter, coffee, grit and more than 1,500 submissions collected in just over a day. Although the print publication is no longer available for purchase, the execution demonstrated the potential of citizen-generated news at high speed.
The Obameter
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/
PolitiFact, St. Petersburg Times, St. Petersburg, FL
$1,000 Special Distinction Award
From the judges: “They made a game out of substance in a good way. It’s tracking a story that is unfolding into the future, which is not something we do very often.”
St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times’ PolitiFact pioneered a new form of accountability journalism by rating the progress of 500 of President Barack Obama’s campaign promises. Citizens and journalists can easily sort and search the progress reports in a distinctive database. Readers are invited to suggest updates and ratings. The paper continues to innovate, having received a Knight-Batten and a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for PolitiFact.
Ushahidi Haiti
Ushahidi, Medford, Mass.
$1,000 Special Distinction Award
From the judges: “They have set the bar for future mapping mashups.”
Less than two hours after Haiti’s devastating earthquake in January 2010, Ushahidi marshaled Skype, Twitter, Facebook, radio and short codes to crowdsource real-time needs. With 1,000 online volunteers translating text messages from Creole, and other volunteers mapping crisis spots, the effort had an unprecedented impact on disaster relief efforts. Ushahidi was also a 2008 Knight-Batten Special Distinction award winner.
Publish2 News Exchange
http://www.publish2.com/about/news-exchange/
Publish2, Lansdowne, Va.
$1,000 Special Distinction Award
From the judges: “This is an ambitious concept that could be genuinely disruptive of existing distribution networks.”
Introduced in May 2010, this platform allows news organizations to interact directly with one another to create custom newswires and set terms for collaborating and sharing content. It moves the newswire from a traditional “hub-and-spoke” model where everything is distributed through a central place to a genuine network of information sharing.
Sourcing Through Texting
The Takeaway, WNYC and Public Radio International, New York, N.Y.
Public Insight Network and WDET Detroit
$1,000 Special Distinction Award
From the judges: “The experiment opened doors for engaging non-listeners in ways they liked.”
A team from The Takeaway radio show joined journalists from WDET Detroit in a successful experiment that prompted residents to text tips about particular stories from Mexicantown in Southwest Detroit. Residents texted information about trucks illegally barreling down their side streets, and in another experiment, they sent keywords describing their neighborhoods. The result: non-listeners became engaged and more informed. The experiment has continued in Miami’s Little Haiti.
Community Centered Advertising
Spot.US, San Francisco, Calif.
Created by crowd-funding pioneer Spot.US, Community Centered Advertising embraces innovation in the advertising arena. The process allows users to engage directly with advertisers by answering surveys or quizzes, and then directing real advertising dollars to the story pitch of their choice. Community-Centered Advertising gives the community control over how an advertising budget is spent.
Collaborative Journalism
The New York Times, New York, N.Y.
The New York Times is partnering with other outlets, including the Chicago News Co-op, The Bay Citizen, and CUNY and NYU to cover neighborhoods in New York. They are attempting to “equip residents to cover everyday life with journalistic standards.” A key innovation has been a change in expectations, allowing local editors, not Times editors, to control the “publish” button on sections of NYTimes.com.
Also see:
http://www.Chicagonewscoop.org
http://www.NYTimes.com/BayArea
http://www.Baycitizen.org
http://NYTimes.com/fortgreene
http://journalism.nyu.edu/lev/
Google: Living Stories and Fast Flip
http://livingstories.googlelabs.com/
Google, Mountain View, Calif.
Living Stories was an experiment developed by Google in which The New York Times and The Washington Post tried a different approach to displaying news online. With coverage unified on a single, dynamic page, information was organized by story developments so you can easily find the new material. Living Stories automatically tracks user interactions with the story, helping readers get the latest updates to the stories they follow and sift through the coverage in novel ways. The Living Story platform is open source, so any interested publisher can continue to use it.
With Google Fast Flip (http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/), users can “flip” through pages online as quickly as flipping through a magazine. It also enables people to follow friends and topics, discover new content, and create their own custom magazines around searches.
ProPublica News Apps
http://bailout.propublica.org/
ProPublica, New York, N.Y.
The investigative non-profit continues to pave the way in inventive collaborative work, developing a number of news applications to make data accessible to many. The Recovery Tracker, for instance, enabled readers to see the stimulus projects under way in their county. TableSetter lets newsrooms use Google spreadsheets as a “Data CMS,” giving reporters the ability to keep an important set of tabular information that’s live on the web up-to-date without having to wait for developer assistance.
See also:
http://projects.propublica.org/recovery
http://projects.propublica.org/unemployment
http://projects.propublica.org/stimulus-speed-chart
http://projects.propublica.org/lpacs
Stump Interrupted
http://www.texastribune.org/search/?q=Stump%20Interrupted
Texas Tribune, Austin, Texas
Stump Interrupted is a twist on the traditional stump speech. Using pop-up bubbles and illustrations over video, Stump Interrupted adds context and value to canned speeches delivered by politicians or candidates. In the first six months of the project, the videos were viewed nearly 10,000 times.
Picture the Impossible
http://www.picturetheimpossible.com
Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Rochester, N.Y.
This community-based game had citizens of Rochester exploring the city, scoring points through Web- and newspaper-based games, such as video quizzes and interactive maps and crosswords and clues hidden in printed pages. Users also scored points by meeting face-to-face at live events, including scavenger hunts and photo assignments. In the process, the 2,500 players raised thousands of dollars for charity.
Haiti Rewired
http://haitirewired.wired.com/
Wired Magazine, San Francisco, Calif.
Haiti Rewired is a collaborative blog, based on a Ning platform, aimed at reporting on and recommending grassroots technology solutions to reconstruct Haiti. The project has drafted an earthquake resistant construction manual tailored for Haiti, built three Web-based frameworks for creating volunteer and NGO databases for Haiti, and brought a wireless hotspot into Port-au-Prince to provide connectivity for a blogging community.
DocumentCloud
DocumentCloud, New York, N.Y.
DocumentCloud is designed to improve journalism by making documents easier to search, analyze, find and publish to the web. With reporting relying heavily on primary source documents, there are few tools available to help journalists find that needle in a haystack, and then share those revelations with the public. DocumentCloud incorporates The New York Times’ Document Viewer, which was part of the Times’ winning entry in the 2009 Knight-Batten competition.
MyBackyard Coastal Carolina
http://mybackyard.starnewsonline.com
Star-News,Wilmington, N.C.
MyBackyard is a hybrid hyperlocal site that brings the power of a data aggregator such as EveryBlock to a small geographic area: New Hanover County, N.C. MyBackyard combines news and blog posts with data such as crimes, arrests, traffic accidents, real estate transactions and events listings.
NPR: NPR.org, Captioned Radio, and “Drug Can Stop Strokes, But Most Patients Don’t Get It”
NPR, Washington, D.C.
NPR’s three Notable Entries all demonstrate the public broadcaster’s attempts to accelerate its mission “...to create a more informed public - one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures…” On NPR.org, correspondents have learned to use smart phones, Skype, cloud-based applications and Twitter to enhance their digital reporting.
Captioned Radio continues to research the use of new technology to reach a hearing-impaired audience. (http://www.nprlabs.org/research/accessibleradio.php)
And the multimedia story on a clot-busting drug used for stroke victims included a Zip Code-driven database of hospitals providing the treatment. (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121032269)
The Wall Street Journal for iPad
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/ipad.html
The Wall Street Journal, New York, N.Y.
One of the first apps designed specifically for the iPad delivers the Journal’s news coverage quickly and in its entirety, providing each complete daily issue in a seven-day archive available to readers whether they are connected or offline. An updating “Now” edition offers people the latest breaking news and the news judgment of Journal editors throughout the day.
Working It Out
New Hampshire Public Radio, Concord, N.H.
“Working it Out” is a section of NHPR’s website for people to share descriptions and experiences about the impact of the recession by posting “notes” on the WIO site. The crowdsourcing application is organized by topic or community, displayed on a map, and is publically available.
Lakewood Shooting
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2009/12/01/2010396205.pdf
The Seattle Times, Seattle, Wash.
The Seattle Times newsroom used Google Wave to provide real-time information after a man gunned down four police officers in a diner. Twitter was used simultaneously, but Wave, which had just been released, had an even greater response. Its use illustrated the viability of real-time newsgathering and presentation platforms other than Twitter.
Red Ink
http://www.make-them-think.org/Main/Home
MIT Media Lab, Center for Future Civic Media, Cambridge, Mass.
Red Ink is experimental open source software created by the MIT Media Lab for analyzing consumer financial transactions. Its major goal is to empower communities to use their collective financial data as a resource for self-knowledge and advocacy.
Powering a Nation
http://unc.news21.com/index.php/stories.html
School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C.
This visually appealing site investigates the political, economic, and scientific tensions behind U.S. energy use with multimedia reporting. It also contributes to the ongoing energy debate through a blog, social media accounts, and featured editorials. The project is a member of the News21 collaboration, which is part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education.
Elkhart Project
MSNBC.com, Redmond, Wash.
Using the town of Elkhart, Ind., as a prism with which to explore the financial crisis, MSNBC.com offered users slideshows, multimedia and blog posts to tell the story.
The microsite included custom applications like the Stimulus Tracker and the Adversity Index, created in partnership with Moody’s.
10 Questions that Count: The Brian Lehrer Show’s Census Project
http://beta.wnyc.org/shows/bl/census/
WNYC, New York, N.Y.
The Brian Lehrer Show covered the 2010 U.S. Census by gathering the stories of change in its communities over the past 10 years. With radio as the backbone, the project incorporated live events, interactive web elements, original videos and quizzes into coverage. The narrative exists in both traditional and new media efforts.
WellCommons: A New Approach to Local Health Reporting
Lawrence Journal-World, Lawrence, Kan.
WellCommons provides the community with new social media tools to participate and collaborate with reporters in an attempt to aid the health problems in Douglas County, KS. The site structure helps people assess the reliability of information based on who posted the information, using their real names, and where it’s posted.
Charter Explosion Interactive Map
http://columbia.news21.com/2009/
Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University, New York, N.Y.
The Charter Explosion Interactive Map uses in-depth reporting, innovative interactivity and rich multimedia to closely examine the controversial charter school education movement. The site explores the factors that have prompted thousands of these hybrid public-private institutions to emerge since the 1990’s, as well as the future implications for education and for community diversity. The project is a part of News21, a component of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education.
Video Tag Player
http://news21.com/2010/04/marylands-video-tag-player-making-it-easy-to-use/
Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park, Md.
The Video Tag Player allows users to navigate video clips by selecting keywords. Fellows at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, a partner in the News21 collaborative, conceived the player as a way to present a large collection of video clips in a searchable system that lets viewers quickly find what interests them.
CityLab
Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Calif.
CityLab is a database that collects and displays demographic data on 65 cities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. It is a working prototype for a nationwide city database that will allow reporters to compare important, but hard-to-find information about cities all over the country. CityLab is a project of News21, a part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education.
Crisis Guide: The Global Economy
http://www.cfr.org/economyguide
Council on Foreign Relations, New York, N.Y.
The Crisis Guide, a Knight-Batten First Prize winner in 2007, this year explored the causes and consequences of the global economic crisis. The Guide takes reams of data and organizes it for better understanding. It was written with insights from leading thinkers on economics and international affairs. It offers a video overview, a three-part timeline, interactive Google Motion Charts, expert video analysis, a map of global responses, and a list of resources for further inquiry.
American Visualizer
http://www.americanvisualizer.com
Medill, Northwestern University, Chicago, Ill.
In its alpha version, American Visualizer allows users to tap into the wealth of American FactFinder data and customize it for their needs an in easy to use interface. The tool takes advantage of the Open Flash Chart open source visualization library and could prove beneficial in helping citizens harness Census data for the first time.
Pictory
Pictory, San Francisco, Calif.
Using vivid online photographs to tell a story, Pictory cultivates a community of shutterbugs and enthusiasts to post captioned photos in a storyline. Each photo is its own story but is related to the others in the stream. The site is also partnering with others, including The New York Times.
Gulf Oil Leak Meter
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/horizon-oil-spill.html
PBS NewsHour, Arlington, Va.
As oil continued to gush into the Gulf of Mexico from a BP well on the seabed, the staff of PBS NewsHour created an interactive widget to demonstrate the impact. It allows users to choose which source they trusted most (BP or NOAA) and use a slider to calculate their own corresponding total leakage estimate in gallons, a term more easily understood than “barrels.” The meter, designed to look like an old gasoline pump, is updated in real-time.
SeeClickFix News Web Widget
http://www.seeclickfix.com/citizens
New Haven, Conn.
SeeClickFix, a pioneer in crowd-sourcing municipal issue reporting, encourages users to take an active role in exposing neighborhood problems. The company’s widget has made it easier for other sites to allow users access to SeeClickFix. The tool also allows journalists to track community issues in their stories.
America’s Next Great Pundit
http://views.washingtonpost.com/pundits/
The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.
“America’s Next Great Pundit” was a reality-show-style competition for a spot on The Washington Post’s opinions roster. In addition to finding a new voice, they wanted to leverage web technology to give readers an unprecedented say in the selection process. The competition highlighted what it takes to be a modern-day, multi-platform pundit, and awarded a three-month writing contract to a Teach for America staffer.
Civil Rights in America: Connections to a Movement
http://civilrights.historybeat.com
Gannett, McLean, Va.
As part of a large undertaking with a number of Gannett newspapers and websites across the country, “Civil Rights in America” includes a dynamic omnibus page featuring digitized newspaper clippings, blogs and video all updated continually. The local pages include nationwide content and items specific to individual markets. Using Gannett’s ContentOne approach the paper sites have branded content and use archival print and video footage from the 1950’s and 1960’s, along with breaking news.
Arizona Political Directory App for Mobile
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/arizona-political-directory/id369575859?ign-mpt=uo=2mt%3D8uo%3D2
New Media Innovation Lab, Arizona State University, Phoenix, Ariz.
Designed to serve as ArizonaGuardian.com’s pocket political directory of Arizona’s federal, state and local elected officials, this guide offers users photos and contact information. On GPS-equipped phones, this shows a list of elected officials based on the user’s current location. ArizonaGuardian.com routinely updates the app to reflect election outcomes and other changes.
Oil Leak Widget
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/05/how-much-oil-has-spilled-in-the-gulf-of-mexico.html
PBS Newshour
Developers at PBS Newshour have created a free, constantly-updated widget for anyone to use on his/her website or blog. No one knows for sure how much oil has leaked into the Gulf of Mexico since the explosion of Deepwater Horizon, an oil rig owned by British Petroleum, on April 22, 2010. But this tool uses estimates provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, outside experts and BP itself to keep a running tally of gallons leaked into the Gulf.
NBCOlympics.com’s Twitter Tracker
http://www.nbcolympics.com/olympicpulse/tweet-tracker/index.html
NBC Olympics
During the 2010 Winter Games, NBCOlympics.com did not just cover the athletic competition. It also offered site users a chance to track tweets related to the games. In a visually engaging way, fans could see what the world is talking about in real time. By clicking on a topic, the Twitter Tracker sorts out secondary keywords. Gold medal from us!
Gotham Gazette’s Bump the Birds
http://www.gothamgazette.com/article//20090707/201/2961
Gotham Gazette, Published by Citizens Union Foundation (New York, NY)
Attempt to alight on the ballot as Hektor Heron, a comptroller candidate endorsed by the local party. You can try pecking your way through as Pidge the Populist, an insurgent City Council candidate. Or you can try to strut on the general election ballot as the third party candidate, Starla the Citizen Upstart.
Don’t let your chance to get on the ballot fly away from you.
Walkshed Philadelphia
Avencia in Philadelphia, PA
Walkshed is a prototype web application that calculates and maps walkability for the city of Philadelphia. The site was developed to demonstrate that it is possible to more accurately calculate and map walkability and features: Actual Walking Distance - walkability score is based on the actual walking distance to each amenity, accounting for street connectivity and barriers such as highways and rivers. Decision Factors - including transit access, crime density, car share locations, grocery stores, farmer’s markets, and more. It also is possible to choose different priorities allowing person to person customization.
Trends Map: Real-Time Local Twitter Trends
Stateless Systems
Trendsmap.com is a real-time mapping of Twitter trends across the world. See what the global, collective mass of humanity are discussing right now. Whether viewing the world or just your neighborhood the Trendsmap uses Twitter’s Open data stream, GoogleMaps, and the website www.WhatTheTrend.com to superimpose the area with constantly updating keywords. Clicking on a keyword accesses a feed of the tweets in the area containing the keyword and then provides a live update stream.
Light up New York City's electric grid by deciding how the city should conserve or produce energy.
http://www.gothamgazette.com/games/switch/games/index.php?game=switch
Gotham Gazette, Published by Citizens Union Foundation (New York, NY)
If New Yorkers continue to use electricity at the current rate, they’ll need a total of 72 million megawatt hours annually by 2030. They used about 50 million megawatt hours in 2005. With such a large gap to close the Gotham Gazette highlights the choices that need to be made: Should NYC ramp up generation? Take drastic measures to use less? Or both? Play Switch and you decide.
Switch is a matching game, like Concentration or Memory. Click on any square in the grid to turn your first card over. Then find its match. Once you find a matching pair, you get to see what that measure would do. Then you decide whether it’s right or wrong for New York City. When you’re done, “flip the switch” to see whether your slate of choices can meet the growing demand.
Darfur is Dying
In the face of the humanitarian crisis in the Sudan, mtvU partnered with the Reebok Human Rights Foundation and the International Crisis Group. The three companies began a contest to “...[Bring] together student technology and activism to help stop the genocide in Darfur.” The winner is “Darfur is Dying a narrative-based simulation to raise awareness of the daily lives of the Darfurian refugees in the Sudan. The “game” is a thoroughly depressing, eye-opening “game.” Players begin by selecting a character to walk through a sparse desert for a single jug of water while avoiding the patrols of Janjaweed militia. If successful, the next level focuses on keeping your refugee camp healthy amid attacks, food and water shortages. The site offers links to help with the crisis throughout the game and links to various groups, government contacts, and assistance funds.
Stimulus: How Fast We’re Spending $792 Billion
http://projects.propublica.org/tables/stimulus-spending-progress
“The success of the federal stimulus program may hinge on the speed with which the government is able to distribute the billions authorized by Congress. Unlike some other estimates of the cost of the stimulus, which are based on spending projections, we took our numbers from the actual budget authority issued by Congress—$792 billion and change.”
How Much Stimulus Funding is Going to Your County?
http://projects.propublica.org/recovery/
“Want to know what’s going on with the stimulus in your area? ProPublica has compiled nearly all the contracts, grants and loans that the government has reported awarding so far in the stimulus program. Type in your county or click on your state to find projects in your area.”
Halted Development
http://blogs.wnyc.org/lehrer/2009/07/15/halted-development/
WNYC
WNYC’s interactive Google map uses crowdsourcing to pinpoint stalled developments in New York City as part of their “Your Uncommon Economics Indicators” project, which was a Knight-Batten Awards notable entry.
Apture
Powerful multimedia program allows Web content creators to embed images, video, audio and screen grabs into their articles. Content pops up in a small window in the same screen, allowing users to get more information from articles without having to open new windows or tabs or do their own searching. Apture even allows content creator to specify the point that an embedded video should start at or what portion of a document should be captured so that users don’t have to watch a long video or read a large document to see pertinent parts.
Other examples:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/whale-watching-trumps-whaling/
MyReporter
MyReporter.com is customized WordPress blog that allows readers to pose questions about their community and get answers researched and written by the editorial staff. It works like this: You ask a question in any of three ways: a form on the site, MyReporter.com’s Twitter account or e-mail. Within 24 hours (longer on weekends and holidays), you get a personal response letting you know how they plan to handle your question. The project seeks to reverse the traditional reader-input-follows-the-story-model to a reader-is-in-control-from-the-start model.
Tobacco Underground
http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/tobacco/
Center for Public Integrity
The project uses interactive multimedia channels to expose the black market for tobacco. The stories were integrated with undercover footage; audio and video interviews with experts, smugglers, and undercover agents; maps and charts; and extensive links to resources ranging from tobacco control groups to repositories of tobacco industry documents. The project is produced by 17 journalists in 13 different countries.
Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown?
http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/economic_meltdown/
Center for Public Integrity
Explaining the faults of the recent financial disaster “Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown? The top 25 subprime lenders and their Wall Street backers” uses digital media for their Subprime 25, the interactive maps page, and the Share Your Story section. This project included substantive analysis of the public officials and the press, which led to the press and government officials’ recognition.
Broken Government
http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/broken_government/
Center for Public Integrity
The Center created a list of over 120 “Executive Branch Failures” of the Bush Administration in diverse areas ranging from education to veteran’s affairs, They reached out to 4,800 government employees for their nominations. The project was developed by more than one dozen reporters and involved scores of experts and outside collaboration. The list is searchable and each entry includes critical information and resources.
Change Tracker
http://www.propublica.org/ion/changetracker
ProPublica developed a Web application called ChangeTracker to monitor www.whitehouse.gov for changes, and provides before-and-after pictures of the site. ChangeTracker was created using easy-to-use, free software so that other organizations could use a similar application to monitor other Web sites. The day after it launched, ChangeTracker disclosed a change on the WhiteHouse.gov Hurricane Katrina page, and later changes on its Iraq policy page. The code for the program has been used almost 100 times.
Patchwork Nation
Patchwork Nation is a Web site shared by the Christian Science Monitor and NewsHour with Jim Lehrer that uses reams of demographic data to break the nation’s 3,100-plus counties into 12 different kind of places, with the idea of studying how different parts of the United States are dealing with an era of dramatic change in politics, culture and the economy. There are 24 communities, two for each type, that they track through citizen bloggers in each place. Along with that street-level reportage they use their community types as a filter for data they collect at the county level. With public broadcasting they have found 15 partner stations. In other communities they have identified local bloggers to help with local news.
Printcasting
Printcasting translates a blogging into a physical magazine that printcasters can distribute however they like. Additionally, users can share content with each other across different blogs. Users will also be able to sell advertising and trade content for advertising share.
Debate Analysis Tool
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/president/debates/first-presidential-debate.html
New York Times
Andrew DeVigal, Gabriel Dance, Tom Jackson, Shan Carter, Matt Ericson
The New York Times created this tool that allowed users to watch 2008 presidential debates and speeches on demand with the transcript scrolling simultaneously alongside. Users have the option to search the text or jump to a specific part of a speech or debate to find topics most important to them, something that cannot be done with video alone. The project is easily replicable for future debates and speeches.
Document Reader
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/04/world/africa/20090204-nazi-documents.html
New York Times
Aron Pilhofer, Ben Koski, Alan McLean, John McGrath
“Document Reader” allows readers and news organizations the freedom to post documents of all sizes in a clean interface that allows searching, book marking, comments, and annotations (reporters can highlight and annotate passages they found important). Document Reader is part of the related project called Document Cloud and ProPublica (partners) are beta testing Document Reader on its site, which if the project goes well it will be launched in late summer or early fall. They have published 77 documents since March.
Other examples:
http://documents.nytimes.com/c-i-a-reports-guidelines-for-interrogators#p=1
What One Word Describes Your Current State of Mind?
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/04/us/politics/20081104_ELECTION_WORDTRAIN.html
New York Times
Gabriel Dance, Andrew Kueneman, Andrew DeVigal
On Election Day, NYTimes.com users were asked to answer a simple question: “What One Word Describes Your Current State of Mind?” And they were given an opportunity to state whether they voted for John McCain, Barack Obama or neither. Then the NYTimes took hourly snapshots of their responses. The responses were presented in the Word Train; the more popular the word, the larger it appeared in the train, the longer it stayed on the screen, and the slower it moved.
Living with Less
http://projects.nytimes.com/living-with-less
New York Times
Juliet Gorman, Amy O’Leary, Elliott Malkin
The New York Times created the “Living With Less” project in recognition of the need for people-focused coverage of the recession. The page showcases in-depth video and audio portraits of real people whose lives have been upended, taking readers inside a motel room that houses a family of six, or a foreclosure court where stunned defendants wonder about their next move. Their repository of reader-contributed content—more than 78,000 user contributions and interactions with the project’s features—is a “living history of the present turmoil.”
Custom Times
http://nytlabs.com/customtimes/
New York Times
Michael Young, Alexis Lloyd, Ted Roden, Nick Bilton
The New York Times created a prototype called “Custom Times” which offers users a personalized version of The New York Times that seamlessly transitions across multiple platforms: print, web, mobile, tv/living room and the car. The goal of Custom Times is to provide a rich, engaging news reading (and watching) experience that anticipates the user’s needs across devices and environments. Custom Times consists of a interactive newspaper box, a personalized web site, a mobile web site, a TV application and car integration.
Represent
http://prototype.nytimes.com/represent/
New York Times
Andrei Scheinkman, Derek Willis
Represent is an interactive feature on nytimes.com that helps New York City residents keep tabs on their elected officials. Represent culls information from dozens of sources across the web into into a Facebook-style activity feed localized to an individual reader. Represent determines a reader’s elected representatives at each level of government—from their local community board up to the U.S. Senate—and provides maps to show how their address fits into the political geography of the city. The application then generates a feed specific to the elected officials representing that address.
Mug Shots
St. Petersburg Times
Mug Shots posts mug shots from Tampa Bay County along with biographical information of each arrested individual. This information is available publicly through the Sheriff’s website, but is not user-friendly. Mug Shots is intuitive, simple and visually pleasing. This system is affordable, as a newsroom staff is not needed to gather these public records. In May alone, Mug Shots had 6.9 million page views.
Demotix
London, England
Citizen photojournalists and professional freelancers post their photos on Demotix, allowing for them to market themselves outside of traditional outlets. Demotix licenses the best work to newspapers. Users create 100% of the site’s content and monitor for suspicious activity. Over 5,000 users worldwide participate. They say they post 50 stories a day.
SeeClickFix
Over 4200 citizens use SeeClickFix to instantly upload pictures, stories, videos or comments about non-emergency issues in their local areas to the web. These hyperlocal issues are then posted on the web or used as news in various outlets. Almost 900 geographic communities have been represented, resulting in 30 traditional news stories.
Bank Tracker
http://banktracker.investigativereportingworkshop.org/
Investigative Reporting Workshop, American University
The Investigative Reporting Workshop’s BankTracker, done in cooperation with msnbc.com, was the first online tool that permits a user to look up the health of any bank in the nation, using information from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The project simplifies complex data using charts and interactive tools that would not normally be possible through traditional media channels. The partnership with msnbc.com has created substantial site traffic for the project: March 17 through June 7 the site had received more than 128,000 visits and nearly 1.6 million page views.
Breaking News
http://newsok.com/weather/playground
NewsOK--The Oklahoman
The Oklahoman and NewsOK.com used Internet chat software to have real-time conversations with audience while streaming live video event coverage. They also blogged and used Twitter to break news faster. During an ice storm, 13,000 people logged into the chat and chatters and Twitter users were directing reporters to specific locations to check driving conditions. Coverage of that storm and of a tornado-producing series of storms each broke 1 million page views in 24 hours.
What Is Barack Doing?
http://www.whatisbarackdoing.com
What Is Barack Doing? aggregates presidential news from many different sources, from the major networks to social networks to the White House itself. It uses good Web design practices to increase usability and accessibility.
Rio Nuevo Audit
http://www.azstarnet.com/special/rionuevo-dollars
Arizona Daily Star
Arizona Daily Star investigated the Rio Nuevo project and made thousand of paper records available online. The Rio Nuevo project was supposed to revamp Downtown Tucson but since its inception in 1999 little progress, if any, has been made. Because of the ADS’s reporting and investigation, the public has been made aware of the project’s mismanagement and as a result, control of the project has been taken from the City Council by the Arizona Legislature and both the City Manager and Project Director have been fired. The Star’s Rio Nuevo investigations are innovative because they created a detailed and searchable list of what the city had spent redeveloping Downtown—information the public craved and learned for the first time from the paper.
Map of the Week
http://thestar.blogs.com/maps/
Toronto Star
Map of the Week is an ongoing series of interactive maps on the Toronto Star’s Web site based on the Google Maps API, anchored by a blog (thestar.blogs.com/maps). The subjects range from the serious, like reports of sexually transmitted disease or postal codes of drunk driving suspects, to maps that are just interesting, like dog licences or the range of urban bees. Often the maps are based on open-source data, but more typically are created from information obtained under access-to-information laws.
The Sacramento Press
http://www.sacramentopress.com
Robust local online news site covers Sacramento with contributions from more than 400 volunteer community reporters. The site allows comments and ratings on articles and aggregates relevant RSS feeds. It posts 10-20 new articles each day and receives more than 30,000 visits per month.
News Mixer
Medill School, Northwestern University
Six Medill/Northwestern graduate journalism students set out in September 2008 to solve two problems: Improving conversations around news, and building news engagement among young adults. The site uses the Facebook Connect feature to allow users to stay connected via Facebook and post comments. The site concentrates on the Easter Iowa area and is geared toward young adults and high school age teens.
DavidsonNews.net
DavidsonNews.net is a community news website covering Davidson, N.C. They combine volunteer reporting by veteran journalists with citizen contributions and links to other sites. The site helps build community by providing a common frame of reference, shared stories, and a forum for discussion. DavidsonNews.net covers Town Hall, community events, schools, churches, and other institutions, including the town’s major employer, Davidson College.
Jobs Database
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-02-06-new-jobs-growth-graphic_N.htm
USA Today
The Jobs Forecast gave readers a unique way to look at predictions by moodys.com about where employment would grow, and in what job categories. The data is displayed on the USA Today page and encourages readers to dig deeper and deeper into the data through rich charts and visuals.
TimeSpace
http://specials.washingtonpost.com/timespace/
Washington Post
TimeSpace is a map and timeline interface that displays thousands of media items from around the globe. The interactive map allows users to explore the world and see where news is happening. TimeSpace is a newsroom tool that provides journalist a way to aggregate multiple sources of content and present them in an intuitive map and timeline interface. Currently, there are five versions of TimeSpace presenting more than 10,000 items per day and receiving more than 1 million page views per month.
The Big Picture
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/
Boston Globe
The Big Picture is a project created to create a home for big pictures, not in gallery form, maximizing the impact of expanding monitors. The site is based around comment sections and uses a blog format to display pictures. Since its inception, several other prominent news companies (Wall Street Journal and New York Times) have created mirror sites to emulate The Big Picture.
Your Uncommon Economic Indicators
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/economic_indicators/
WYNC Radio
The project is an online project on WNYC.org where listeners spend time on the site and where they come to share stories about the economy. There are multiple ways for visitors to see indicators and share their own including: a drop-box submission form, photos or video, and an address bar that locates the story on a Google map. Viewers can choose from 6 category icons such as Behavior, Housing or Bright Spots, and see each entry or see a photo display and a 26-page (and growing) chronological story archive. Many stories end up on-air as part of WNYC’s economic reporting.
Stories That Fly
Kent State University
Students, professional and participant journalists work in this online lab to experiment with new approaches to improve the public understanding of general aviation. They feature stories that largely go unnoticed in the regular coverage of environmental, business, health, economy, technology, agriculture, sports and entertainment news. Stories that Fly is an online magazine and blog. Utilizes an enormous amount of internet functionality including but not limited to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube and Digg.
GlobalPost.com
Covering international news with a network of more than 65 correspondents in 45 countries, “GlobalPost” discusses topics of economy, politics, and culture in poorly covered countries. Since its start in January 2009, it has attracted more than 2 million visits from over 200 countries and more than 7,500 other Websites have linked to them. It also provides readers a chance to participate in the editorial process by Passport Stories, which reports are proposed by members, voted on by the membership, and then edited by professional journalists.
NCPR Dynamic News Maps
http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/newsmap.html
North Country Public Radio
North Country Public Radio is creating the “NCPR Dynamic News Maps” project using mapping tools that encode location information into news and events through a content management system, and the use of geoRSS to deliver the content onto maps generated by Google Maps API. In seven days the maps received a 2.74% increase of page views since the first day. The project will use professional and citizen journalists to update information in near to real time to viewers from hundreds of villages, towns and small cities with distinct diverse communities.
The Smokestack Effect: Toxic Air and America’s Schools
http://www.smokestack.usatoday.com
USA Today
The USA Today investigative team created a searchable database that analyzes what pollutants and health risks children are exposed to at their school. It has received attention from concerned parents, local governments, senators, and the EPA, and has prompted change in air monitoring practices at schools across the country. They claim 1.7 million page views of the database and 8,000 letters to members of Congress.
AP Economic Stress Index
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/stress_index_premium
Associated Press
The AP Economic Stress Index combines unemployment, foreclosure, and bankruptcy data down to the county level to create an index of the overall health of the economy. The data are displayed on a clickable map and the data can be mashed up in several ways to dig deep into the numbers.
Twitter Vote Report and Inauguration Report
http://twittervotereport.com http://inaugurationreport.com
NPR
A free tool for the public to report any voting irregularities they experienced. As reporters could not cover each county on election day, this allowed citizen journalists to instantly submit stories, later outputted through widgets and the web. Over 12,000 reports were received. The same system was used on inauguration day, with over 40,000 reports coming in.
Turning The Camera Around: Health Care Stakeholders
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/2009/hearing-pano/
NPR
Rather than taking pictures of the Senate members at a hearing, an NPR photographer took a panoramic picture of the crowd that attended. NPR then asked its listeners to identify lobbyists and other individuals that had a stake in the outcome of the hearing.
Mexico Under Siege: The drug war at our doorstep
http://projects.latimes.com/mexico-drug-war/#/its-a-war
The Los Angeles Times
An interactive map, multimedia project, and Los Angeles Times aggregator for news about Mexico’s drug war.
Iran’s Presidential Election Fallout
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2009/jun/10/iran-elections-government
The Guardian
An interactive graphic with an in-depth look into the background for Iran’s 2009 presidential election.
Left of Boom: The Struggle to Defeat Roadside Bombs
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/specials/leftofboom/index.html
The Washington Post
An interactive timeline and multimedia story about roadside bombs in Iraq.
The Los Angeles Times - President Barack Obama's First 100 Days
http://projects.latimes.com/obama-100-days/#/index/
The Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times reporters asked commuters what they expected from the new president a week before the 2008 election, and then again after Obama’s first 100 days and posted video of their responses.
Oregon Historical Society Timeweb
http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/timeweb/
An interactive application that allows users to create their own timeline based on historical documents in a database.
Power Hungry: Visualizing the U.S. Electric Grid
http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2009/apr/electric-grid/
NPR
An interactive map showing the United States power grid.
Post 200
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/business/post200-2009/post-200-graphic.html
The Washington Post
An annual report of the Washington area’s top 200 companies, featuring a filterable database and visualizations.
Immigration Explorer
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html?ref=us
The New York Times
An interactive map showing immigration patterns to the United States by country and continent since 1880.
New York Times - Living Tag Cloud
http://nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/04/us/politics/20081104_ELECTION_WORDTRAIN.HTML
Throughout Election Day, NYTimes.com readers submitted the words that best described their moods.
Fold-Ins, Past and Present
Al Jaffee’s fold-ins for Mad magazine, from the 1960s to the present, in interactive form.
NewCastleNOW.org
Chappaqua, N.Y.
A weekly cyber newspaper built from citizen-generated content for the Chappaqua area in Westchester County, N.Y., which has lost its local newspaper. The project is spearheaded by volunteers under the auspices of the Friends of the Chappaqua Library.
Vermont Climate Witness
http://www.vermontclimatewitness.org/
Tamarack Productions, Burlington, Vt.
To create a map-based interactive experience to track how residents see climate change affecting the state’s economy, from fall foliage and maple syrup to skiing. Tamarack Productions, a nonprofit environmental awareness organization, will work with the Vermont Natural Resources Council to develop user content and create Google Map mash-ups to help users visualize weather data and real-time weather indicators.
NeighborMedia
http://www.cctvcambridge.org/neighbormedia
Cambridge Community Television, Cambridge, Mass.
An innovative citizen journalism initiative empowers local residents to use technology to bring attention to issues in their community that they deem newsworthy. NeighborMedia’s nine citizen journalists, based in all of Cambridge’s zip codes, are using a unique combination of web and television media to promote community events, alert neighbors to proposed development, and explore difficult issues like violence and racism. NeighborMedia content is available for viewing on the web at www.ccvcambridge.org/neighbormedia and on CCTV’s community cable channels.
Greater Fulton News
School of Mass Communications, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Va.
To train local citizen journalists and build a news and information portal for Fulton Hill, a low-income neighborhood in Richmond, Va. Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Mass Communications will work with the Fulton Hill Neighborhood Resource Center to help local residents produce stories, photos, audio, video and a Fulton Hill wiki.
The Eminent Domain
Pratt Center for Community Development, Brooklyn, N.Y.
TheEminentDomain.org is a news, information and networking resource for New Yorkers working to influence the shape of their neighborhoods and make sure that development is an asset to their communities, not a force for displacement and destruction. The site aggregates local real estate development news, offers original reporting and analysis, discussion forums, and a calendar of community meetings and public hearings about Harlem (Manhattan), Coney Island (Brooklyn), and Kingsbridge Armory (the Bronx).
Bilingual Interactive Environmental Journalism
Reynolds School of Journalism, University of Nevada - Reno, Reno, Nev.
A Spanish language newsletter and Web site highlight issues of importance to the Latino population in North Lake Tahoe. Environmental concerns are just part of the challenges this community deals with; employment, economics, housing, and community cohesion are closely related. Several Latino residents are writing regularly for the publication, which is distributed in the Kings Beach and Incline Village communities.
St Paul City Newsdesk
http://www.spnn.org/departments/access/saintpaulnewsdesk.html
Saint Paul Neighborhood Network, St. Paul, Minn.
To create and pay for a network of citizen journalists to cover neighborhood and municipal news for use by media outlets throughout the Twin Cities. Network stories, videos and radio pieces will be published on the St. Paul Neighborhood Network cable-access television web site and on the Twin Cities Daily Planet site.
Anansi’s Web
http://www.sl-goml.blogspot.com/
Central District Organization, Gary, Ind.
To build a news and information hotline for Gary, Ind., accessed via web, phone, mobile text messaging and mailing lists to supplement available media. Content will be generated by students and young professionals and coordinated by the Central District Organization, a group led by young professionals who have returned to Gary to live.
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J-Lab helps journalists and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life with projects on innovations in journalism, citizen media, interactive stories, entrepreneurship, research, training, and publications.
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