Crowdsourced radiation measurements, a user-friendly organizing tool for community data, and a less confusing display of census information were among the projects that won up to $575,000 on Thursday in the second round of the Knight News Challenge, focused on data innovation.
The competition, sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, sought “ ideas that help make data more useful, by collecting, processing, visualizing or otherwise making it available, understandable and actionable.” This round was the second of three this year. The first challenge was focused on networks and the upcoming challenge, on mobile, closed its application cycle on September 10.
The total grants awarded in this second round of competitions exceeded $2.22 million. Winners included Safecast, LocalData, OpenStreetMap, Census.IRE.org, Pop Up Archive, and Open Elections, an election results database helmed by staffers from The New York Times and the Washington Post.
A teacher would be fired if her lectures were as unpredictable as the events the news media must investigate. And no one in the journalism profession is interested in communicating better if it means they have to communicate like a teacher. But that doesn't mean anything when it comes to winning a journalism award.
#1 Posted by Stanley Krauter, CJR on Thu 20 Sep 2012 at 11:34 AM