MSNBC buys Knight News Challege project EveryBlock.com
Gary Kebbel is Knight Foundation's Journalism Program Director
After Knight Foundation's grant to EveryBlock.com ended, MSNBC.com has bought the Knight News Challenge project that makes neighborhood-level news and information easy to find and use.
We always hope that innovations Knight Foundation funds are supported by the marketplace. As founder Adrian Holovaty says in his blog post announcing the sale, "it means that we'll have resources to expand EveryBlock profoundly."
A requirement of the grant was that EveryBlock.com publicly release the code that powers the site, so that others could use it free for their communities. That code is posted at
http://www.everyblock.com/code/
and at
http://code.google.com/p/ebcode/
EveryBlock.com lists information like, crime reports, zoning changes, street closings, restaurant inspections or business openings. It currently has sites in 15 cities.
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August 17th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Wonderful! How about using PayCheckr.com to monetize?
August 17th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Any idea if the purchase affect Everyblock's plans to make future code improvements publicly available?
August 17th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
The grant agreement only requires that fully functional code be released at the end of the grant period, which it was on June 30. EveryBlock.com is not required to release future updates. You raise an important point about what Knight Foundation might think about when structuring future grant agreements that require code releases.
Gary Kebbel
Journalism Program Director
August 18th, 2009 at 7:01 am
[...] by Dave Levy This is what I’ll call the EveryBlock edition, given the news yesterday that MSNBC purchased the former Knight Foundation challenge winner. Microlocal data is apparently the new pink, so a few links on what this all is [...]
October 3rd, 2009 at 6:09 pm
[...] The sale raised questions about nonprofit funding of for-profit ventures. After all, Knight had essentially seeded EveryBlock’s development while Holovaty profited from its sale. Soon after the deal was announced, Gary Kebbel, director of Knight’s journalism director, said the foundation was gratified by EveryBlock’s move to MSNBC. “We always hope that innovations Knight Foundation funds are supported by the marketplace,” he wrote. [...]