Knight Foundation

Informed & Engaged Communities

ScraperWiki

Tides Center

Date Awarded
08/01/11
Amount
$280,000
Grant Period
08/01/11 to 07/31/13
Focus Area
Journalism & Media Innovation
Initiative
Knight News Challenge

Project Links

Grantee Contact

Featured Media

To make it easier for journalists to collect information from across the Web by adding new features to ScraperWiki.org

ScraperWiki.com provides a way to make it easier to collect information from across the web from diverse sources. The site helps anyone freely create “scrapers” to collect, store and publish public data, and make it freely available for anyone to use. As such, the site provides journalists with updated, aggregated data that allows them to produce richer stories and data visualizations. This grant will add a “data on demand” feature where journalists can request data sets and be notified of changes in data that might be newsworthy, and data embargos that will keep information private until a story breaks. To accelerate the adoption of the platform, the U.K.-based site will host “journalism data camps” in 12 U.S. states.

Learn More

Project Team

Francis Irving

CEO of ScraperWiki

Francis Irving, CEO of ScraperWiki, is a computer programmer living in Liverpool, England. He was founding developer at mySociety, which for eight years has made innovative democracy websites. In 2004, TheyWorkForYou was the first website to scrape a Parliament and make a better interface for citizens, inspiring the Sunlight Foundation. Other sites Irving helped make at mySociety include FixMyStreet, the first national interface for reporting graffiti, potholes, etc., and WhatDoTheyKnow, the first interface for making Freedom of Information requests in public. In his earlier career, Irving founded developer tool TortoiseCVS. He has a first class degree in mathematics from Oxford University.

Related Projects

News & Updates

Get Updates on ScraperWiki

News Releases

Knight Blog