$10,000 Grand Prize: New York Times Body of Work

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.

$1,000 Special Distinction Awards

Apture

http://www.apture.com/

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/

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

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/patchworknation/#/archive/?category=hardship&map=hardship-index-july-2009

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

http://www.printcasting.com/

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.

$1,000 Special Distinction Award for Nonprofit Journalism

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.

$1,000 Citizen Media Award

MyReporter

http://www.myreporter.com/

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.

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