Features / Project
Project Fast Hacks: Harnessing Google tools for crowdsourced mapping
On his second day at KPCC, Chris Keller and team wanted to build a crowdsourced map of experiences at the polls. Here’s how they did it and what they learned for the next election day.
Project Década Votada, a News App to Track Voting Records
- By Mariano Blejman
- Luciano Amor, Gonzalo Bellver, Mariano Blejman, Martín Szyszlican, Andy Tow
- Hacks/Hackers
In April 2013, Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires hosted a hackathon on D3.js. As part of a project co-sponsored by the International Center for Journalists, Knight-Mozilla OpenNews provided seed funding to the winning project, an app called “Década votada” (q decade in votes).
Project Meet Poderopedia Plug & Play
Let’s say you would like to map politicians and their connections, build a semantic database of companies and top executives in a specific industry, or create a visualization of lobbyists and their clients. With Poderopedia’s free, open source Plug & Play Platform, you can.
Project How We Made It: Your Hospital May Be Hazardous To Your Health
- By Justin Falcone
- Justin Falcone, Scott Klein, Nicholas Krusick, Matthew McVickar, Michael Nieling, Al Shaw
Your Hospital may be Hazardous to Your Health is an interactive web presentation on the widespread danger of in-hospital injury, built in a single week by PBS Frontline, ProPublica, and Ocupop.
Project Slouching Toward Sensor Journalism
Matt Waite explains his drought sensor project and breaks down the promise of sensor journalism.
Project How We Made Finding Care
- By David Eads, Maria Ines Zamudio
- David Eads, Yana Kunichoff, Wilberto Morales, Lucio Villa, Maria Ines Zamudio
- The Chicago Reporter, The Chicago Tribune
The Chicago MigraHack, held earlier this month, focused on the use of technology and open data to produce innovative apps and information tools on immigration and related topics. Nine teams participated, and we spoke with two members of the team that produced Finding Care, winner of the prize for best storytelling with data visualization.
Project Lessons of Running My First News Apps Team
AP Google Scholar and former Trib Apps intern Tyler Fisher breaks down what he and his team got wrong, and what they did right.
Project Creating an API of Veterans Affairs’ data
- By Cole Goins, Erika Owens, Shane Shifflett
- Cole Goins, Shane Shifflett
- The Center for Investigative Reporting
The Center for Investigative Reporting recently released an API of data from the US Department of Veterans Affairs, which it compiled in reporting on a backlog of disability claims.
Project Meet Tarbell
Introducing a very simple content management system from the Tribapps team (and friends).
Project The Nerd Side of the Reuters.com Redesign
In early May, Reuters began rolling out previews of its new design for Reuters.com. We checked in with Paul Smalera, Editorial Tools Product Manager and Technology Editor at Reuters.com, who fought his way out from under a stack of redesign-related work to answer our questions.
Project Mapping the History of Street Names
OpenNews Fellow Noah Veltman breaks down the design and code decisions behind his History of SF Place Names map.
Project Under the Surface of the NYT Mobile Redesign
- By Michael Behr, Ian Gardner, Andrei Kallaur, Erin Kissane
- Michael Behr, Ian Gardner, Andrei Kallaur
We spoke with three members of team behind the new New York Times mobile site to learn what’s going on under the hood and how they made the design decisions underlying the new view.
Project The Lobbyist Registration Meter
We spotted Tom Lee’s Lobbyist Registration Meter video on YouTube this morning and it made our day. Lee, director of the Sunlight Foundation’s Sunlight Labs, used an old voltmeter, a Raspberry Pi, and Sunlight Foundation data to create a meter that physically displays the number of new lobbyist registrations in Washington, DC. Lee very kindly agreed to answer a few questions about his setup and the data behind it.
Project Replaying A Night in the Life of a Cabbie
At The Boston Globe, I was charged with helping readers understand that struggle—to experience a night in the life of a cab driver—using a digital interactive. The result was published alongside an amazing article by the Globe’s resident journalist-sportswriter-cabbie, Bob Hohler.
Project Launching the Minnesota Legislative Bill Tracker
- By Beth Hawkins, Kaeti Hinck, Tom Nehil, James Nord, Erika Owens, Alan Palazzolo
- Beth Hawkins, Kaeti Hinck, Tom Nehil, James Nord, Alan Palazzolo
- MinnPost
This week, MinnPost launched an effort to track legislation in Minnesota throughout the 2013 session.
Project Introducing Tabula
- By Manuel Aristarán, Mike Tigas
- Manuel Aristarán, Jeremy B. Merrill, Mike Tigas
- OpenNews, ProPublica
A new PDF data extraction tool conceived by Manuel Aristarán and built out in a collaboration between Aristarán, who is a Knight-Mozilla Fellow at La Nación, and Mike Tigas, Fellow at ProPublica, and ProPublica’s Jeremy B. Merrill.
Project Under the Hood of the Open Gender Tracker
- By Erin Kissane, J. Nathan Matias, Irene Ros
- Adam Hyland, J. Nathan Matias, Irene Ros
- Bocoup, MIT Center for Civic Media
Open Gender Tracker is an open source deployable content analysis service funded by a Knight Foundation Prototype grant. We spoke with its creators about the project’s origins, technical specifications, and possible future in and near newsrooms.
Project Chris Amico on the View Source Podcast
On the most recent episode of Dave Stanton’s View Source podcast, Chris Amico walks through the process of making Your Warming World.
Project Fast Hacks: Solr and Newscoop
News startups in and around Georgia helped improve search in Newscoop content management system using Solr.
Project Chase Davis on fec-standardizer
Chase Davis breaks down his fec-standardizer project and explains where it’s going next.


