Rich Databases

EarmarkWatch

http://earmarkwatch.org/

Sunlight Foundation, Washington

The Sunlight Foundation and grantee Taxpayers for Common Sense have created a tool that gives citizens access to the tools necessary to do real investigative journalism on the issue of congressional earmarks, the once-hidden budgetary amendments to federal appropriations where members can funnel pork to pet projects and campaign donors. The research tool has also led to professional journalistic investigations and citizen action.

EveryBlock

http://www.everyblock.com/

EveryBlock, Chicago

Adrian Holovaty, creator of 2005 Batten Grand Prize-winner chicagocrime.org, has created EveryBlock.com, which offers a Web “newspaper” for every city block in Chicago, New York and San Francisco. Enter any address, neighborhood or ZIP code in those cities, and the site shows you recent public records, news articles and other Web content that’s geographically relevant to that address. Included are civic information (building permits, crimes, restaurant inspections), news articles and blog entries, local Flickr photos and Craigslist postings, among other things. This project is the product of a $1.1M 2007 Knight News Challenge grant.

USA TODAY Travel Communities

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/cruises/default.aspx

USA TODAY, McLean, Va.

USA TODAY’s Gene Sloan had been writing a blog about cruising for over a year. In January 2008, USATODAY.com launched its new Cruise Log Community site, which added a variety of new tools to the basic architecture of the blog and recast Sloan as a “curator” of cruise content. Because of its success, within two months they launched “Today in the Sky” concentrating on the airline industry. They’ve built widgets called “Cruisedex” and “Flightdex” which track news buzz around cruise lines and airlines.

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