Could Your Newsroom Use Help With Its Most Important Work?
Parker Higgins
August 14, 2019
Update: As noted below, we have extended the deadline for projects to
Freedom of the Press Foundation is expanding our technical efforts, and we want to work with you—and for you. Today we're opening a Call For Projects, to hear from interested journalistic organizations or individuals that could use a few months of outside technical help on a well-defined project that furthers press freedom or protects journalists and their sources.
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We are especially looking for initiatives in any of the following areas:
We plan to spend three-month cycles working directly with newsrooms, media organizations, independent journalists, documentary filmmakers, or other groups with a journalistic focus, on projects shaped in conjunction with those teams, with feedback from select Freedom of the Press Foundation staff and members of our board.
The projects we hope to identify with this new Call for Projects could include the development of prototyping tools for communicating with sources, for working with sensitive documents, or for exercising the public's right to know. We're open to assisting with technical research and planning, or with other projects with a technical dimension that aligns with our mission: to protect, defend, and empower public-interest journalism in the 21st century.
Even if your idea is not fully formed, we want to hear from you, and we can work with you or your organization to define the scope and goals that we will work towards over a three-month production cycle. If the proposed project is beyond the scope of this cycle, we may be able to work towards a proof-of-concept or a prototype of the final idea.
Our small special projects team has launched several initiatives—projects like online backups for news archives under threat of deletion, a Twitter bot that monitors media outlets for stories that rely on public records reporting, and a tool that automates FOIA requests for FBI Files of recently deceased public figures. Previously, Freedom of the Press Foundation has also created a website that automatically tracks how dozens of news outlets have deployed security features to protect readers’ privacy.
Now we want to focus our technical expertise directly on journalists or news organizations that need it. We aim to do so by helping to bridge the gap between exciting developments in the tech world and the reporters, whistleblowers, and readers who can benefit from them.
So please, if you've got an idea for a project, fill out our short Call for Projects form by , and we'll be in touch about how we can work together.
For any other questions, please reach out to [email protected].