Publishing files on the Web that were originally created for print publications has always been a challenge, especially for small community newspapers. News organizations have typically solved the problem by creating proprietary publishing systems for their sole benefit. This grant will create new and easy to use tools that will allow news organizations to essentially drag and drop articles onto an online news site. The process will save news organizations, particularly small community newspapers, significant time, money and manpower, allowing them to direct their resources to bring their community the news and information it needs.

DocumentCloud is a web site that will enhance investigative reporting by making source documents easy to find, share and read. While rich source documents are the foundation of investigative journalism, too often reporters throw or tuck them away after a story fades, never to be used again. DocumentCloud will provide an online database of documents contributed by a consortium of news organizations, watchdog groups and bloggers, and shared with the public at large. Users will be able to search by topic, agency or location. Reporters will benefit from the wisdom of the crowd, which will be able to collaboratively examine large document sets.

With more than half the world owning a mobile device, the media industry, civil society groups and citizens yearn to use the technology to create and distribute news and information. Yet they often lack the knowledge and tools necessary. The Mobile Media Toolkit will offer media production tool sets for download and use on a variety of phones across regions of the world. The toolkit will include applications for video and audio recording, a distribution tool for mobile content to social media sites and detailed how-to information that outlines what users can do with the phones they have.

The online Gotham Gazette, which focuses on New York City issues, will use this grant to expand its City Council coverage with a wiki devoted to local legislators. With Gotham Gazette providing coverage and context about campaign contributions and voting records, the public will be able to share what it knows about legislators through scrutinizing records and its own reporting and knowledge. The project strives to create a better- informed, more engaged citizenry and a new era of greater government transparency.

As more information becomes available online, the challenge is to easily find, use and make sense of huge amounts of complicated data. Data visualizations are powerful depictions of abstract information that can reach millions of people by creating clear pictures that effectively communicate what the numbers actually mean. Unfortunately, the tools to create these visual representations are usually too expensive and difficult for smaller news organizations and everyday citizens to use, creating a gap for the future of community journalism. This grant will create a suite of easy-to-use tools for anyone to use on any standard set of data ranging from government databases to demographics and statistics.

The mainstream press is not big enough to be everywhere news breaks out. During crises, there rarely is a centralized point for reporting and searching for data about a particular situation. Ushahidi can help fill the gap by creating a free web map and timeline that journalists and citizens can use to contribute multiple reports of large news events. Contributed by web, e-mail or mobile phone, the reports will be displayed as locations on the map, as well as on the timeline. The visual display of the source and type of information will help with trend analysis. The map has been tested in Kenya and will be rebuilt so that it can be used worldwide.

The city of Phoenix debuted a new light rail transit system last winter, changing the physical and social fabric of the city. Now The Daily Phoenix will use print, web and mobile technology to cater to these new commuters, offering news and information, games, social networking features and promotions on a stop-by-stop basis so that they can interact with the city on a more meaningful level.

All journalists make mistakes, but they sometimes view admitting errors as a mark of shame. MediaBugs aims to change this climate, by promoting transparency and providing recognition for those who admit and fix their mistakes. MediaBugs will create a public test web site in a U.S. city for people to report errors in any news report – online or off-line. Comments will be tracked to see if they create a conversation between the reporter and the error submitter, and then show whether corrections or changes resulted. Based on a system that technology teams use when releasing software, this aggregation process will display trends in errors and show which news organizations are responsible to public questions and comments.

The Greater Boston neighborhoods of Brookline and Roxbury are 2.4 miles apart, yet there is little interaction between them because of divisions of race and class. This project will connect them through citizen journalists’ video newscasts that will be projected on life-size screens to enable real-time interaction between citizens. Organizers hope the broadcasts spur crowds and discussion about their shared region, and engage citizens to think beyond their social circles. Reporters could then mine those crowds for further stories.