Each week as part of the Knight International Media Innovators blog, the ICFJ Knight team will round up stories focused on how their fellows are making an impact in the field. Find out more about the fellows' projects by clicking here.
MozFest 2015 is this weekend, ICFJ Knight Fellow Christopher Guess launches Push and more from the Knight Fellows in this week’s roundup.
Celebrating the open Web at Mozilla Festival 2015
MozFest 2015 will be held Nov. 6-8 in London. The event brings together engineers, activists, developers, journalists and educators to improve the open Web with new ideas and collaboration. ICFJ Knight Fellows Justin Arenstein, Stephen Abbott Pugh, Shaheryar Popalzai and Christopher Guess will be in attendance along with Code for Africa’s Serah Njambi Rono and David Lemayian. Follow #MozFest over the weekend for live updates.
Giving the right Push to smaller news organizations
ICFJ Knight Fellow Christopher Guess has created a new open-source mobile news app called Push, currently available for Android devices, that will give smaller news outlets an easy-to-use tool to deliver content via alerts and push notifications. Guess hopes the app will improve efficiency for media organizations that rely on websites and paid Facebook posts to reach their audience. Push is currently in use by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). For developers, Push’s code is available on Github.
Hacks/Hackers India launches new chapter in Bengaluru with kick-off event Saturday
ICFJ Knight Fellow Nasr ul Hadi and Hacks/Hackers India are launching a Hacks/Hackers chapter in Bengaluru this Saturday with an event on “How to develop social audiences for journalism.” Hacks/Hackers is a global community that brings together news professionals, programmers, designers and entrepreneurs to explore the intersection between journalism and technology. The event will feature short presentations from digital-focused organizations like YourStory, Saddahaq, Frrole, Simplify360 and Dailyhunt.
For more info about the event, visit Hacks/Hackers Delhi’s Facebook page.
¿Quién Compró? helps liberate financial spending data from Mexico’s Congress
The ¿Quién Compró? (“Who Bought It?”) team of data journalists and designers has released documents from Mexico’s Congress that reveal details about government expenses. In this article in El Universal (Spanish), the project contributors explain how they hope to increase government transparency by releasing over 350 invoices that record how 30 million pesos were spent. ICFJ Knight Fellow Juan Manuel Casanueva helped advise on the design and implementation of the project, which won third place at the Desarrollando America Latina (DAL) civic apps challenge in 2014.
Agência Mural continues to grow and support journalist training in Brazil
In 2010, former ICFJ Knight Fellow Bruno Garcez started the independent news portal Mural to feature strong citizen reporting in Brazil. Garcez’s work focused on promoting rigorous reporting of community-based local news and training journalists to publish at the highest standards. The news site Folha de Sao Paolo hosted the blog and helped it develop and reach new audiences.
Now, Mural has evolved into a nonprofit news organization called "Agência Mural." It will continue to deliver news from São Paolo’s peripheral regions and underserved communities. Check out its new website here.