StoryCorps, led by founder Dave Isay, will develop a recording app with $35,000 from the Knight Prototype Fund.
A rejiggered phone booth from New York Public Radio, a mobile app produced by StoryCorps and a public-records data tool from the founder of FOIA Machine are among the 16 recipients of grants from this year’s Knight Foundation Prototype Fund.
The foundation’s annual contest awards six-month, $35,000 grants to help recipients develop early-stage media ideas. Winners were announced Thursday.
“While six months and a $35,000 grant might not always be enough to finish version one of a project, it can go a long way towards validating an assumption, developing a minimum viable product or identifying a need to revise an approach,” Chris Barr, a media innovation associate with Knight, wrote in a release.
This year’s pubmedia and nonprofit media prototype grant winners include:
- Talk Box, a New York Public Radio project to turn select New York City phone booths into “a direct, two-way line to the New York Public Radio newsroom.”
- DIY StoryCorps, a mobile app from StoryCorps that will allow users to record and upload stories on their own, without visiting a StoryCorps booth.
- Veritza, a data tool that will scrape online public records for patterns and anomalies, developed by Djordje Padejski, founding director of the FOIA Machine. The Machine is housed at the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting.
- Global I-Hub, a social platform for reporters developed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a part of the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity. Global I-Hub will allow investigative journalists around the world to share messages and status updates.
- QC Tools, an app from the nonprofit Bay Area Video Coalition, which will allow users to digitize analog video.
Read the full list of Knight Prototype grantees.