Knight Foundation Seeks to Boost Local News with OpenBlock Grants

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced three grants, totaling $458,625, to go toward furthering its OpenBlock Initiative, aimed at helping news organizations to better manage and present local content. Nonprofit OpenPlans is developing the OpenBlock open-source software, which will be installed and tested at two newspapers of opposite size and scale -- The Columbia Daily Tribune (Mo.) and The Boston Globe. The Knight Foundation said $235,000 would go to OpenPlans over two years so it can streamline and extend the code base for EveryBlock.com, along with building a community of open-source software developers and newspapers to use and improve the software. The Columbia Daily Tribune will get $90,500 to install and test OpenBlock, as well as adding new features in the context of use by smaller newspapers, while The Boston Globe is receiving $133,125 for the same duties but, obviously, in the context of a larger newspaper. Knight Foundation vice president of journalism Eric Newton said: The digital age is turning journalism upside-down and inside-out. Definitions of news are changing. What was once the "police blotter" is now a clickable map. What were once listings of civic data in small, hard-to-read type are now easy-to-see graphics sorted by neighborhood. This kind of civic data is the clay from which the bricks of news are made, and software that media organizations everywhere can use to display it is the goal of the OpenBlock Initiative. OpenPlans director of civic works Nick Grossman added: As city governments make more data publicly available, it creates a need for tools and strategies that citizens can use to derive value from these data sets and improve their communities. Making block-by-block data available on an open-source platform improves the accessibility and usability of this information and encourages people to collaborate, communicate, and develop applications that enhance their daily lives. The Boston Globe vice president of digital Bob Kempf said: Our digital audience increasingly expects more precise and very local news and information from us. Our participation in the OpenBlock project supports our mission to provide essential local news and information to our users in a sustainable way. And Columbia Daily Tribune VP of interactive media Andy Waters added: The data and news feeds we'll be able to present on the web with OpenBlock will be of enormous benefit to our readers. This is something we've wanted to do for a long time. Now we'll have the tools available to follow through. OpenBlock will help us fulfill our mission to make local information accessible and relevant.

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Knight Foundation Seeks to Boost Local News with OpenBlock Grants

David Cohen

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David Cohen