![]() It has proven useful for dozens of stories on topics as diverse as untimely trash pickup, potholes, short-term rentals and dog bites.Ī third expansion is in the works collaborating with The San Francisco Standard, a venture capital-funded digital startup. The format was clearly adaptable to other cities, and a third phase has expanded to and The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate, and WRAL-TV in Raleigh. “It gives them information no one else has.” The aggregated data also can spark stories - for instance, a surprise finding that car thefts were up during the two years of the pandemic.Ī typical newsletter might include a short issue overview and then some highly specific data points, describing whether the problem was getting better or worse and where a given neighborhood ranks. “The more local the data, the more relevant it will be to readers,” Kahn said. Google News Initiative’s innovation challenge was a second-round funder three years later, offering a $279,000 grant that made possible a build-out of the tech and a 13-person reporting staff (nine of them students). He piloted neighborhood newsletters with a grant from the Annenberg Foundation (separate from the school) in 2018. That was a news/information source that had not even been explored. What’s more, it could be sorted geographically. In aggregate, the data was a lightly tapped reporting resource. Kahn said that in his continuing focus on local news business models he had become aware that various agencies in metropolitan Los Angeles collected a ton of data - not just on crime, but other issues like traffic as well. ![]() Gabriel Kahn, professor of journalism practice at USC’s Annenberg journalism school, explained the project to me as straightforward in concept but complex in the tech that supports the reporting. It created a family of 110 hyperlocal newsletters, drawn from a shared data set, sliced and diced by neighborhood and complemented by some overview reporting. ![]() And he has concluded that just completing an application, even one that isn’t funded, can broaden the thinking of news outlets stuck in the day-to-day.Ī favorite among the 260 projects, Blecher said - so far funded at a total of $33 million, and one that models all those principles - is Crosstown LA at USC Annenberg. Google also learned to look for ideas that are both collaborative and replicable, Blecher said, so there is an industry impact, not just a lift to the recipient. … Something funded for one year that could then be expanded … gets to both vision and execution … (and) leads to projects that are truly iterative.” While others practice a long-term “go-big-or-go-home” strategy, Google’s philanthropy has taken the opposite tack.Īt first, the program went for big multi-year grants, Ludovic Blecher, who runs the Google Innovation Challenges from Paris, told me. ![]() Google has been in the innovation grant game for nearly eight years. ![]()
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