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.
Kira Goldenberg was an associate editor at CJR from 2012-2015. Follow her on Twitter at @kiragoldenberg.