Knight News Challenge Round 2

We’ll have more details when we launch on Feb. 12 and will also hold open office hours at 1:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, Feb. 7. Stay tuned to @knightfdn and #newschallenge for more details. In the meantime, if you have any questions, leave them here in the comment field, or hit me up at [email protected]. By John Bracken, director/journalism and media innovation at Knight Foundation

Andrew Sherry, Vice President/Communications, (305) 908-2677, [email protected]

Census.IRE.org (*) Joe Germuska, John Keefe, Ryan Pitts, Investigative Reporters & Editors Community Health Analytics: Making Community Health Data Useful Scott Lee, Harvard University Computer Assisted Text Analysis for Journalism Gary King, Harvard University Data Toys Heather Chaplin, Colleen Macklin, John Sharp, The New School The Internet of News Things Matt Waite, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Hyperaudio Pad Mark Boas, Happyworm LocalData (*) Alicia Rouault, Prashant Singh and Matt Hampel, Amplify Labs Mapping LA API Ben Welsh, The Los Angeles Times New tools for OpenStreetMap (*) Eric Gundersen, Development Seed Inc. Open Elections (*) Derek Willis, The New York Times; Serdar Tumgoren, The Washington Post OpenIR: Mapping Your Environment in a New Light Arlene Ducao, MIT Media Lab Pop Up Archive (*) Bailey Smith and Anne Wootton Safecast Radiation & Air Quality (*) Sean Bonner, Safecast Sentiment Analysis Engine for Chinese Social Media David Wertime, Tea Leaf Nation Social Bots Nicolas Della Penna By Knight’s John Bracken, director/journalism and media innovation and Chris Sopher, journalism program associate.

First, some background: We ran the contest for three weeks, ending June 20. And we sought ideas to help make the large amounts of data we’re creating more useful and informative. We received 881 applications, which we reviewed with the help of a group of advisers. We identified 50 proposals to discuss further, and in July we brought to Miami a group of reviewers to advise us.  We listened to their advice, had internal conversations, and conducted interviews and due diligence with 15 applicants. As we announce the below winners, we’re in the midst of reviewing applications for the News Challenge: Mobile, and later this fall we’ll begin planning our first News Challenge of 2013, on tools for open government. Knight News Challenge: Data Winners (Full project lead bios are here) Census.IRE.org Award: $450,000 Winner: Joe Germuska, Chicago; John Keefe, New York; Ryan Pitts, Spokane, Wash. Despite the high value of Census data, the U.S. Census Bureau’s tools for exploring the data are difficult to use. A group of news developers built Census.IRE.org for the 2010 Census to help journalists more easily access Census data. Following early positive feedback, the team will expand and simplify the tool, and add new data sets including the annual American Community Survey, which informs decisions on how more than $400 billion in government funding is distributed. LocalData Award: $300,000 Winners: Amplify Labs, Alicia Rouault, Prashant Singh and Matt Hampel, Detroit, Mich. Whether tracking crime trends, cataloging real estate development or assessing parks and play spaces, communities gather millions of pieces of data each year. Such data are often collected haphazardly on paper forms or with hard-to-use digital tools, limiting their value. LocalData is a set of tools that helps community groups and city residents gather and organize information by designing simple surveys, seamlessly collecting it on paper or smartphone and exporting or visualizing it through an easy-to-use dashboard. Founded by Code for America fellows, the tools have already been tested in Detroit, where they helped document urban blight by tracking the condition of thousands of lots. New contributor tools for OpenStreetMap Award: $575,000 Winners: Development Seed Inc. / Eric Gundersen, Washington, D.C. OpenStreetMap, a community mapping project, is quickly becoming a leading source for open street-level data, with foursquare, Wikimedia and other major projects signing on as users. However, there is a significant learning curve to joining the growing contributor community. With Knight News Challenge funds, Development Seed will build a suite of easy-to-use tools allowing anyone to contribute data such as building locations, street names and points of interest. The team will promote the tools worldwide and help contribute to the growth of OpenStreetMap. Pop Up Archive Award: $300,000 Winners: Bailey Smith and Anne Wootton, Oakland, Calif. Today, media is created with greater ease, and by more people, than ever before. But multimedia content – including interviews, pictures and more – cannot survive online unless it is organized. Pop Up Archive takes media from the shelf to the Web – making content searchable, reusable and shareable, without requiring technical expertise or substantial resources from producers. A beta version was built around the needs of The Kitchen Sisters, Peabody award-winning journalists and independent producers who have collected stories of people’s lives for more than 30 years. Pop Up Archive will use News Challenge funds to further develop its platform and to do outreach to potential users. Open Elections Award: $200,000 Winners: Derek Willis and Serdar Tumgoren, Washington, D.C. Elections are fundamental to democracy, yet the ability to easily analyze the results are out of reach for most journalists and civic hackers. No freely available, comprehensive source of official election results exists. Open Elections will create the first, with a standardized, linked set of certified election results for U.S. federal and statewide offices. The database will allow the people who work with election data to be able to get what they need, whether that’s a CSV file for stories and data analysis or a JSON usable for Web applications and interactive graphics. The project also will allow for linking election data to other critical data sets. The hope is that one day, journalists and researchers will be able much more easily to analyze elections in ways that account for campaign spending, demographic changes and legislative track records. Safecast Radiation & Air Quality Award: $400,000 Winners: Safecast / Sean Bonner, Los Angeles Safecast, a trusted provider of radiation data in post-quake Japan, is now expanding with challenge funding to create a real-time map of air quality in U.S. cities. A team of volunteers, scientists and developers quickly formed Safecast in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, when demand for radiation monitoring devices and data far surpassed the supply. The project has collected more than 4 million records and become the leading provider of radiation data. With News Challenge funding, Safecast will measure air quality in Los Angeles and expand to other U.S. cities. Disclosure: Knight Foundation Trustee Joi Ito is an officer of the Momoko Ito Foundation, which is receiving the funds on behalf of Safecast. This was the first News Challenge we’ve run with our new prototype fund in place. In the coming weeks, we’re likely to support as prototypes several projects that came to us through the News Challenge. We also found projects that we liked a lot but that fell outside our focus on data. We’re still exploring those projects and may fund some of them through other means. I expect we’ll see more of that in the future; the News Challenge is a means to get your project funded, but for us it’s also a way to uncover  ideas, innovators and projects. By Knight’s John Bracken, director/journalism and media innovation and Chris Sopher, journalism program associate. 

We’re excited to announce the theme for the third Knight News Challenge of 2012: mobile. We hope to learn about new approaches for using mobile to inform and engage communities, and build the foundation for others to do more in the future. We will open the contest on Aug. 29 and will close at noon EDT Sept. 10, on newschallenge.org. We plan to announce the winners early next year. As with the two prior News Challenge contests this year, on networks and data, we will keep the application light, limited to 500 words and a few questions. Why mobile? With 6 billion devices worldwide, according to the World Bank, the world will soon have more mobile phones than people.  The mobile device is so much more than a “phone”-- Jeff  Jarvis, among others, has argued that we need a better term for the device. “Mobile is my personal bubble. It is enhanced convenience, putting the device and the world in my hand,” he says. We saw this personal tinge to tech last week in the NASA Curiosity Command Center where staff, while landing a robot on Mars, were updating their friends and family via their phones (according to an interview with Bobak Ferdowsi.)   Despite these trends, and the presence of several mobile projects in our own portfolio  (including winners from Knight News Challenge on Networks PeepolTV, Behavio and Watchup), we realized how much we have to learn about this fundamental shift.  For many of us around the world, mobile has become an important tool for learning what’s going on around us, and for sharing details about our lives with friends, neighbors and strangers. We know that we (and our kids) have grown attached to our mobile devices, but we have less clarity about the ways people are using them, or might use them, as citizens, content producers and consumers to tell, share and receive stories. We’ve focused the News Challenge this year on big opportunities in news and information - networks, data and now mobile. In some ways, mobile represents both the greatest need and greatest potential for individual citizens and news organizations. Last week, we saw social media companies (Zynga and Facebook) and fast food franchises (Chipotle)  struggling to make sense of mobile. Despite the opportunities, news publishers like Huffington Post and News Corp are learning, according to Ad Week, that “the tablet publishing market isn't the runaway success many envisioned.” On the other hand, a police shooting in New York’s Times Square on Saturday was widely covered by passersby using their phones. So, send us your ideas for harnessing mobile to improve news, information, communities and democracy. For more details about the application and the questions that will be asked, check back in when the challenge officially launches on Aug. 29. On Sept. 20, we’ll announce the winners of the previous News Challenge, on data, at the Online News Association convention in San Francisco, Calif. You can contact us anytime at [email protected] or on Twitter at @knightfdn using #newschallenge. By Knight’s John S. Bracken, director journalism/media innovation and Christopher Sopher, journalism program associate

Also, a reminder: we’ll be running a third News Challenge this fall. Stay tuned for an announcement on the theme and dates. By John S. Bracken, director of journalism and media innovation and Christopher Sopher, journalism program associate

We closed the Knight News Challenge: Data in June with over 881 applications and have blogged about some of the themes we noticed.

1. What do you propose to do? [20 words] We propose to gather data to keep score regarding the hundreds of cases that are decided and released each day. 2. How will your project make data more useful? [50 words] Using our information on judicial qualifications, we will apply data to a variety of civic and criminal cases so the public can measure what happens and what effect these cases have. Now, there is not “data”- just words, a few stories, but nothing that draws the picture or invites comparison. 3. How is your project different from what already exists? [30 words] Nothing measures cases. We will create categories, such as damages, sentencing and other outcomes. Academics create some of this data every few years; we will do so every few days. 4. Why will it work? [100 words] We have already built databases of M&A agreements for corporate lawyers. We have used sophisticated proprietary text mining software. By creating a robust, accessible, and current database, we will create a scorecard of the justice system. Like stats for baseball players, our data summarizes critical, objective aspects of judges and provides simple, comparable, actionable data for the public, government officials and the media. Given the public nature of the cases, we can assemble the raw data for analysis. We will focus on state and federal cases, and various states and significant cities, depending on availability. 5. Who is working on it? [100 words] We will use the Policy Data Institute staff. These include a software programmer and a researcher. 6. What part of the project have you already built? [100 words] We have built databases for the judicial system in Chicago and Philadelphia. We have created text-mining software for contracts. We have been testing the software on cases, and require resources to better complete the technical aspects of the data collection and analysis. 7. How would you use News Challenge funds? [50 words] The funds would be divided between software programming (open source or custom) and non-technical research, such as contacting courts, scraping information from the Internet, and building systems for storing and retrieving the base text files. Some funds might be used to lease space in a subsidized technology incubator in Chicago. How would you sustain the project after the funding expires? [50 words]   First, we are in the process of obtaining grants and foundation funding.  Our non-profit has been organized, and we are seeking 501(c)(3) certification.  Second, we are contracting out text-mining research projects using our software to augment the foundation giving.  We could charge a fee to attorneys for highly technical information.   Requested amount: $100,000.   Expected number of months to complete project:  Phase I: 4 months.   Total Project Cost: $200,000.  We have other source of funds that will be used to supplement the funds from the Knight Foundation.   Name:  Suzanne Carbon   Twitter: N/A   Email address [optional]: [email protected]   Organization:  Policy Data Institute   How did you learn about the contest?  Internet

1. What do you propose to do? [20 words] Build a crowd-sourced data-graph that provides a real-time updated connection to what others know about what we’re reading on the web. 2. How will your project make data more useful? [50 words] Factlink builds a trust-graph reflecting what knowledge users have, on any specific subject they interact on with other users. Similar to Wikipedia, it is a collective perspective but then implemented as a layer that works on any web page so it provides a frame of reference to readers of online articles. If people know a piece of the puzzle, they can immediately add it and share what they know. 3. How is your project different from what already exists? [30 words] Existing solutions are typically editor driven or implemented as a specialized destination where users can exchange knowledge. There is no layer over the web that empowers users to know what others with expertise know about what they’re reading, providing a frame of reference and curbing misinformation by visually indicating credibility. 4. Why will it work? [100 words] Data is generated by users that respond to and interact with other users in their social and email networks. Factlink is inherently social, a conversation between people that discover relevant facts in a stream and contribute what they know. It is driven by strong personal motivations of users that can accumulate authority and stature but also support ideas they believe by endorsing and adding further arguments. Key building a sustainable data- and trust-graph is the ability of third parties and researchers to use the data for their own research, investigate exactly how calculations are implemented, detect potential issues in the continuous changing data-set (like attempts to spam/scam), and suggest potential ways of improving algorithms. 5. Who is working on it? [100 words] Factlink is a team (https://factlink.com/p/team) of very dedicated talent and a group of established advisors and collaborators that includes people from LinkedIn, Yahoo, O’Reilly, and PowerSet/Bing. CEO and founder Merijn Terheggen (http://www.linkedin.com/in/merijnterheggen) has founded two previous successful startups: a text analysis company and a photo album search engine. The combination of talent and expertise and building web scale products helps the team at building a product and service that scales and is sustainable. We’ve been working for the last year and have build a real-world working version that’s currently being used by a group of several hundred people. Factlink uses and contributes to over 20 Open Source projects. 6. What part of the project have you already built? [100 words] We’ve build the core engine, including API, and build a web application on top of it that helps users curate the news using their personal stream (analogous to a stream as used on services like Facebook), discover relevant information, and contribute what they know. The backend is based on a very scalable and distributed NoSQL setup as used by today's leading internet services and can be scaled to handle large volumes of users. The data model is designed to support distribution over many servers so there’s no inherent limits to growth. An introduction video can be found at https://factlink.com. 7. How would you use News Challenge funds? [50 words] The Knights Challenge grant would be used to focus on building a substantial community of researchers that cooperate on trust ranking and credibility of the methods and calculations used. Factlink has a lot of focus on creating a user interaction experience that works really well and lets anybody add what they know. Adoption of the underlying data model and public scrutiny on the calculations is something that is of key importance to bring trustworthy data to users. The successful implementation of the initial application now justifies spending resources on bringing the data models to the next level. 8. How would you sustain the project after the funding expires? [50 words] The current implementation has gained the interest of large online publishers that can use Factlink to offer their readers an additional frame of reference and increases engagement. Factlink has sufficient funding for 18 more months of operation and can be self sustaining based on current customer interest within that timeframe. Requested amount: $ 450,000 Expected number of months to complete project: 18 months Total Project Cost: ~$1,500,000. The amount can get increased based on future successes. Name: Factlink Twitter: @factlink Email address [optional]: Organization: Factlink Inc. City: Alameda, California Country: United States of America How did you learn about the contest? Through the advisory board, https://factlink.com/p/team

1.    What do you propose to do? [20 words] Launch interactive, bilingual platform to promote and accelerate school-family-community leadership around empirically-based action model for strengthening public schools. 2. How will your project make data more useful? [50 words] In a sea of school data, OurSchool Platform will zero in on leverage-point data, best practices and change strategies. The platform will deliver clear content through an interactive, seamless, bilingual (Spanish-English) platform that Local Action Teams can use to assess contexts, develop action plans, and benchmark and measure results.  3. How is your project different from what already exists? [30 words] Existing databases emphasize accountability or school selection, not partnership and action to improve schools. Our project delivers data around a tested action model, via a platform that enfranchises partners. 4. Why will it work? [100 words] The portal we designed for Texas has been used in over 100 sessions and three geographic regions as the centerpiece of regional planning. In communities such as Socorro ISD, a predominantly Hispanic district in El Paso, parents used the portal to identify weaknesses in the high school math program, then conducted surveys that located problems in pedagogy, class size and remediation. With this information, school officials revised professional development priorities and local remediation policies. Success has been replicated in other communities. The portal tested well with focus groups with families; usergroups.com and assessment by graduate students in UT-Austin’s IT programs. 5. Who is working on it? [100 words] The platform design team is led by Dr. María Robledo Montecel, a national expert in school system reform, with a doctorate in research and evaluation from the Urban Education program at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and includes: Dr. Abelardo Villarreal, director of IDRA’s national field services programs, and former director of the Regional STAR Center, which innovated technology for service delivery in schools; Mr. Hector Bojorquez, developer of IDRA’s OurSchool Portal, with expertise in bilingual education, and interactive data and portal design; Ms. Laurie Posner who manages technology integration at IDRA, with an emphasis on networks and engagement strategies. 6. What part of the project have you already built? [100 words] The OurSchool Portal has already been built as a bilingual stand-alone tool, providing data on every Texas secondary school, survey tools, and an “ourschool portfolio” to track and share data. Data is being added that links high school preparation, college readiness and participation. It is built on a scalable open-source LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) platform, chosen for the relative ease of upgrading and the low cost of maintenance. The portal also uses CakePHP and JQuery. Tools and resources on best practices have already been produced, including award-winning podcasts, articles, videos and tested guides. 7. How would you use News Challenge funds? [50 words] Funds will support increasing interactivity and development from a Texas based portal to a scalable platform.  Interactivity will include benchmarking user-defined goals, collaboration tools and video sharing. Platform development will allow users to populate their portal with data from state databases to provide comprehensible information framed through IDRA’s change model. 8. How would you sustain the project after the funding expires? [50 words] Use of the platform will be integrated into the IDRA’s organizational work with school districts and CBO capacity-building, including technical assistance through IDRA’s federally-funded South Central Collaborative for Equity, serving a five state region and through foundation-funded initiatives in Texas and other states. Requested amount: $175,000 Expected number of months to complete project: 16 Total Project Cost: $250,000 Name: María Robledo Montecel, President and CEO Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/IDRAedu Email address [optional]: [email protected] Organization: Intercultural Development Research Association City: San Antonio Country: United States How did you learn about the contest? Laurie Posner, via Pauline Turner Strong, Director, Humanities Institute, UT Austin

Requested amount: $360,000 Expected number of months to complete project: 8 months Total Project Cost: $400,000 to $500,000 Name: Jonathon Corbiere Twitter: @thoughtbubbler Email address [optional]: [email protected] Organization: Smart Bubble Society City: Toronto Country: Canada How did you learn about the contest? Knight Foundation Website

1. WHAT DO YOU PROPOSE TO DO? (20 WORDS) Create dramatizations for media, using timely data to enlighten vulnerable senior population about scams to prevent their victimization.   2. HOW WILL YOUR PROJECT MAKE DATA MORE USEFUL? (50 WORDS) Data  about current scams will be scripted into user-friendly content and presented by a well-known celebrity spokesperson, thus will be given better attention. Messages will be delivered through comprehensive, customized, frequently updated delivery systems, made accessible and available on website, free app’s, U-tube, power point, public service announcements.   3. HOW IS YOUR PROJECT DIFFERENT FROM WHAT ALREADY EXISTS? (30 WORDS) Currently, scam scenarios and alerts are in print, having minimal impact. Our outreach, using media formats, leveraging existing software and technology,  combining audio and visual, will be more effective.   4. WHY WILL IT WORK? (100 WORDS) Professional communicators acknowledge the influence of receiving information from a respected actor or known spokesperson, especially when delivered in  non-threatening manner. New media formats provide opportunities to transmit scam data differently ; we will adapt methods whenever technology changes.  Consultants will advise about how we can use data most effectively to alert the seniors. Focus groups will help guide our presentation decisions. Targets will either be adept in using the technology or trained to be comfortable with it. Qualitative reports will bring data about success of reception ;  this data useful, too, for public agencies and those working with seniors.   5. WHO IS WORKING ON IT? (100 words) Scam Spotlight project initiators: Deborah Hoffman, retired attorney and community activist; Joseph Adler, Producing Artistic Director, GableStage; and Max Rothman, Director, Alliance for Aging; Miami-Dade County. The  development consulting team includes: Michael McKeever,  Playwright, Actor, and Director; Fabio Iannelli, Director of Interactive Media, Advansis company, Adjunct Professor in Communication, University of Miami. At outset of creating Scam Spotlight concept, initiators met ,and will continue to consult with, representatives from the State Attorney’s Office; US Postal Inspector; and Consumer Fraud/Consumer Protection office. Additionally, other persons will assist with marketing and promotion, act as facilitators for focus groups, and make related presentations.     6. WHAT PART OF PROJECT HAVE YOU ALREADY BUILT? (100 WORDS) We’ve consulted with consumer fraud and senior service agencies.  We have developed a list of agencies and organizations which we will contact, seeking   ways to collaborate with them so that their constituents can benefit from the Scam Spotlight output . We’re now  in the process of formulating our Business Plan, including: Organization chart; Budget; technology development  goals ( website, apps, U-Tube, power point, etc.); production needs (scripts, casting, filming videos); timetables for implementation;  strategies for outreach and public networking ; strategies for surveying and collecting qualitative data from recipients and rating usefulness  and effectiveness of Scam Spotlight’s  approach.    7. HOW WOULD YOU USE THE NEWS CHALLENGE FUNDS? (50 WORDS) Funds would be applied towards costs for technical development*; production of educational content; outreach for public service; marketing and promotion; technical maintenance and updates; coordinator salary; generation of reports about outcome and success of project to spotlight scams; provide statistics to agencies. (*add interactive component in second stage)   8. HOW WOULD YOU SUSTAIN THE PROJECT AFTER FUNDING EXPIRES?(50 WORDS) Seek funding from our collaborating organizations as well as foundations, national and local governmental sources ( agencies, departments) where elder issues are their key concerns or an issue high on their agenda is attacking the high rate of victimization of elders from scams.   Requested amount: $30,000 Expected number of months to complete projects: 6 months Total project cost: $55,000 Name Deborah Hoffman Twitter: @DebiHoff Email address: [email protected] Organization: Scam Spotlight,Inc. City: Miami Country: U.S. How did you learn about the contest? Through a Knight e-newsletter

1. What do you propose to do? [20 words] Expand distribution of investigative reporting, aggregate micro local news and build revenue potential through a new community news network. 2. How will your project make data more useful? [50 words] A network of hundreds of community news outlets will distribute in-depth content and data produced by KPBS public media and Investigative Newsource, a data-driven journalism nonprofit. In return, the outlets will share micro local content with KPBS for vetting, tagging and aggregation through a mobile application based on location. 3. How is your project different from what already exists? [30 words] There is no interactive news delivery and aggregation system in San Diego County, let alone one that delivers mobile news by neighborhood location. 4. Why will it work? [100 words] As people are bombarded with information, they seek easy ways to receive and organize information they care about, most frequently news close to home. We’ll use Publish2 News Exchange, a proven and award-winning aggregation tool, to push investigative content out to the news outlets and to pull in their local content. KQED in San Francisco has offered to collaborate in sharing code from their Get Lost mobile application that tracks location. KPBS and Investigative Newsource produce in-depth content to share with community outlets. The local content producers have location-specific content desired by consumers. Widely distributing all of this content can mean greater mobile app advertising dollars. 5. Who is working on it? [100 words] Lorie Hearn, executive director of Investigative Newsource, Carrie O’Connell, media studies graduate student at SDSU with a specialty in social media; Tammy Carpowich, KPBS Director of Interactive Strategy; Jim Tinsky, KPBS Interactive Technology Manager 6. What part of the project have you already built? [100 words] We are constructing a database of more than 150 community news outlets and contact information, and have begun organizing them across Twitter categories based on geography, niche market and political districts in preparation for an outreach campaign. We have researched Publish2 and have had conversations with KQED about sharing the Get Lost app code. We have identified key roles necessary to build the network, vet the content and launch the aggregation tool. 7. How would you use News Challenge funds? [50 words] $250,000 for network and mobile app development, copy editing, aggregation and geo-locating; $15,000 training; $15,000 for publishing fees, $8,000 community news outlet partner outreach and hospitality. 8. How would you sustain the project after the funding expires? [50 words] The mobile application has potential for advertising revenue for KPBS, Newsource and the community outlets. In addition, KPBS has a history of securing three-year funding commitments for project-based initiatives with a 90 percent renewal rate. Current projects include one that was jointly funded as part of the unique KPBS-Newsource partnership. Requested amount: $288,000 Expected number of months to complete project: 12 Total Project Cost: $288,000 Name: Tom Karlo (KPBS) and Lorie Hearn (Investigative Newsource) Twitter: @kpbsnews and @inewsource Email address [optional]: Organization: KPBS and Investigative Newsource City: San Diego Country: USA How did you learn about the contest? The Knight challenge is legendary

1. What do you propose to do? [20 words] Create an Online News Portal using a sophisticated organizational engine to better distribute meaningful, original news/content to the public. 2. How will your project make data more useful? [50 words] Highly organized with a Dewey-decimal style system so that news and content from around the globe will be easier to find and organize than using any other current means. It will save users significant time, give news more relevance and meaning, and provide for a higher quality level of journalism. 3. How is your project different from what already exists? [30 words] It is a portal of original content (not simply aggregating existing sources) that is organized in a highly sophisticated manner unlike anything currently online. Furthermore, it generates revenue for newsrooms. 4. Why will it work? [100 words] This project is founded on a sound business model with revenue streams identified to provide sustainability right from the start with plenty of room to grow and expand. Another strong point is a well-developed marketing strategy. This is a technology-based news service that better meets the needs of the general public, businesses and newsrooms alike along with its unique journalist rating system and is sure to become the new standard in the industry with broad acceptance. We also have an excellent founding team supporting every aspect of this project. 5. Who is working on it? [100 words] Tanya Thibodeau, Lead Innovator (CEO); Pam Jones, Financial Advisor (CFO); Steve Sills, Lead IT (CTO).  We are an informal partnership not yet incorporated.  We also have informal Advisors in place with Alan Callan, Founder/Chairman of Criteria Media Exchange Plc from the UK/Monaco; Guy Huntingford, Publisher of Calgary Herald; Chris Haldane of iMining in Toronto. 6. What part of the project have you already built? [100 words] The conceptual designs and features are well into the planning stages and the initial conceptual draft is more than 80% completed.  We are ready to commence development to move the project forward but lack the funding to hire the necessary teams and implement testing platforms. 7. How would you use News Challenge funds? [50 words] To hire programmers for creating the initial beta version. To hire a sales team to begin negotiations with advertisers and newsrooms. To purchase the basic equipment needed to get these two teams started. 8. How would you sustain the project after the funding expires? [50 words] The project is designed to support multiple revenue streams with a unique advertising model being the primary one to start with. Part of the business model is to align the advertising right from the very beginning – even during the beta testing. Requested amount:  $500,000 Expected number of months to complete project: 12 Total Project Cost:  $40,000,000 Name:  Tanya Thibodeau Twitter: @tanyathib Email address [optional]: [email protected] Organization:  Gateway Gazette / Panoptyx City: Calgary, Alberta Country: Canada How did you learn about the contest? Twitter

4. Why will it work? [100 words] Media companies are motivated to create lucrative revenue streams in order to monetize their content. In order to attract digital advertising and fetch premium prices, media owners would provide prospective advertisers with Audience Central’s detailed data about their users, including demographics, psychographics, locations, incomes, spending, channel usership, time of day and engagement. Mario Diez, CEO of ad platform QuadrantOne, says publishers need to create a data strategy around their audiences. “Right now it’s unbalanced. Some may argue that the brand side knows more about a publisher’s audience than the publisher.” Publishers’ audience data can be interwoven with the market data. 5. Who is working on it? [100 words] World Newsmedia Network is a not-for-profit media research company with four people: CEO Martha Stone, editorial director Leah Mensching, business analyst Erina Lin and designer Jeff McMillen. We would partner with technology developer KipCast to design the searchable database, enable geo-tagging data and output to data-driven graphics. We will leverage Stone’s 2012/13 research fellowship at University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute by using graduate-student statisticians to help organize the data. We will scour the globe for audience intelligence research from academics and research companies, and we will secure permission to use it. We will add staff to assist, as needed. 6. What part of the project have you already built? [100 words] We have produced the Global Digital Media Trends report for 7 years. GDMT includes 500 data sets and analysis about revenue and usage patterns for digital media, worldwide. We have maintained partnerships with more than 65 research companies that contribute to GDMT. Many of these research companies produce audience usage data. We also have multiple partnerships with university researchers and repositories of data, such as consumer spending data. These existing relationships are invaluable for this project. We also have worked closely with KipCast and recognize their expertise in technology development. We follow companies that weave audience data into their strategies. 7. How would you use News Challenge funds? [50 words]; Funds would be used to pay for the development of technologies to enable audience research search by topic and geography, and uploading of audience data from the research community. The funds also would pay for the salaries of those reaching out to publishers, writing case studies and running the project. 8. How would you sustain the project after the funding expires? [50 words] After the data repository and search functions are built in Year 1, the new data will continue to be uploaded to the database. We would continue to promote the data to publishers with our expansive database of media executives. We would continue to write case studies of audience data successes. Requested amount: Expected number of months to complete project: 15 months Total Project Cost: $400,000 Name: Martha L Stone Twitter: WNMNorg Email address [optional]: [email protected] Organizations: World Newsmedia Network and University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism City/Country: Chicago, USA, and Oxford, United Kingdom How did you learn about the contest? E-mail list

1. What do you propose to do? [20 words] Build a networked word-processor that stores and accesses news information via interconnected facts instead of documents and metadata. 2. How will your project make data more useful? [50 words] Machine-readable facts stored in full context represent a class of information we call Robust Data. By efficiently capturing reported facts within standard newsroom workflows, we'll build an instantly accessible directory of all the knowledge collected by a news organization. 3. How is your project different from what already exists? [30 words] The industry dreams that inaccurate text-mining robots will someday understand what we've written. We give writers tools that translate the intended meaning of text into statements machines can process. 4. Why will it work? [100 words] Because it already works. We are configuring existing technologies and standards (XML, RDF) into a "Fact Check" workflow tool that will become as familiar to reporters as their "Spell Check" is today. The challenge lies in designing a simple user interface that efficiently converts what a reporter knows into a collection of reusable RDF statements. Blogging software didn't invent web publishing. It made web publishing possible without knowledge of HTML/CSS. We're working to give people the power to create and share machine-readable information. No special training required. 5. Who is working on it? [100 words] I'm Dan Conover, a 20-year newspaper veteran who has been deeply (and sometimes painfully) involved in pioneering on the digital edge of journalism since 2004. My wife Janet (a magazine art director and Drupal web designer) and I comprise Xarktopia LLC, which manages the intellectual property we've developed around the concept of semantic journalism. Over the past three months we've been working with a programmer/systems architect on the West Coast to develop a demonstration of the semantic word processor I've outlined. 6. What part of the project have you already built? [100 words] My collaborator is nearing completion of a demo that we hope to use in explaining key functions (such as a Wizard that converts a writer's knowledge into valid RDF markup) to potential investors. We view this word processor as the first component of an integrated product we generically refer to as a semantic content management system (SCMS). 7. How would you use News Challenge funds? [50 words] We would hire programmers to develop modules and plug-ins that extend the capabilities of an open-source web composition tool. Then we'd test it. 8. How would you sustain the project after the funding expires? [50 words] Two ways: 1. Submit the resulting modules to their relevant open-source community; 2. Use the results as an ongoing and expanding proof-of-concept to attract investors to our SCMS project. Requested amount: $75,000 Expected number of months to complete project: Four months (three active development) Total Project Cost: $75,000 Name: Dan Conover Twitter: @xarker Email address [optional]: [email protected] Organization: Xarktopia LLC City: Charleston, SC Country: USA How did you learn about the contest? Two readers familiar with my essays and work wrote to encourage me to apply for this grant.

Expected number of months to complete project: 9 months Total Project Cost: $200.000 Name: Pablo Rey Mazón Twitter: @numeroteca Email address [optional]: [email protected] Organization: montera34.com City: Cambridge, MA Country: USA How did you learn about the contest? MIT Center for Civic Media.