Knight Foundation Awards Nearly $1 Million for Open-Source Publishing Platform
Knight Foundation Awards Nearly $1 Million for Open-Source Publishing Platform
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has announced a $975,000 grant to the Texas Tribune in Austin and the Bay Citizen in San Francsico to develop a free, open-source publishing platform that will help other online news organizations better engage with readers, manage content, and generate revenue.
The two nonprofit online journalism organizations will use the grant to build a platform that can manage an integrated library of text, video, and audio files; maximize search engine optimization by improving the way articles are linked, aggregated, and tagged; better integrate sites with bloggers as well as social networks such as Facebook and Twitter; and offer membership tools and integration with advertising networks to help online news organizations cultivate new revenue streams. The two organizations are seeking other partners for the initial release of the platform later this year.
Coming on the heels of a $4.2 million award to create the Knight News Innovation Laboratory at Northwestern University, the grant is the foundation's latest effort to nurture innovation in the media field. Last month, it announced the launch of a $2.5 million joint partnership with Mozilla to develop open-source solutions to technical problems at news organizations.
"Knight Foundation's generous support of technological innovation creates a bright future for online news organizations," said Bay Citizen chief technology officer Brian Kelley. "Organizations will no longer be faced with the cost and expense of developing their own publishing platforms from the ground up, or tied to using systems that were not meant for online news. And, as an open source initiative, this will be a collaborative effort that engages developers, journalists, and editors from all over the country to actively participate in ongoing development and enhancement."
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