The following, written by the head of the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews project, Dan Sinker, is cross-posted from dansinker.com. Above, the 2014 OpenNews fellows from left to right: Ben Chartoff, Harlo Holmes, Brian Jacobs, Aurelia Moser, Gabriela Rodriguez, and Marcos Vanetta. 

2013 was an incredible year for OpenNews. Our Knight-Mozilla Fellows did fantastic work; Source continued to grow as a hub for the incredible work done by the news nerd community; we helped to sponsor more than 50 news hack days around the world, and much much more. But 2013 is almost over and, in these waning days of it, I wanted to tell you about some amazing stuff that’s happening right out of the gate in 2014:

Surprise Sixth Fellow! RELATED LINKS

“Knight-Mozilla OpenNews: Cultivating the community of people behind the code” by Marie Gilot on KnightBlog

“Knight-Mozilla fellows strive for global impact in journalism” by Jenna Buehler on KnightBlog

When we announced our 2014 Fellows at the Mozilla Festival in London this year, our friends at the Knight Foundation approached us about adding a sixth fellow, to be hosted by the team doing great work at the Washington Post. We jumped at the opportunity, in part because we received so many stunning applicants for our original fellowship search we were excited to revisit the list and find someone amazing to work with. And today, I’m thrilled to announce our sixth 2014 fellow:

Ben Chartoff designs and creates data visualizations. He is committed to building data literacy and numeracy through viscerally clear and compelling visuals. At the Sunlight Foundation in Washington, DC, Ben worked to demonstrate the value of open government and open data as essential elements in a democracy. He has a background in both the arts and sciences, and strives to bring both beauty and rigor to every project. He is passionate about most things, including food and backpacking.

Ben will be joining our five other fantastic 2014 Knight-Mozilla Fellows at our Fellowship Onboarding event in San Francisco in mid-January. We’re so excited!

We’re growing in 2014!

One of the most exciting aspects of our new grant is the ability to add some staff to OpenNews. And today I’m so excited to announce that in 2014, Erin Kissane will be joining us as Director of Content and Ryan Pitts will be joining us as Director of Code. We’ve been lucky enough to work with Erin and Ryan extensively on the Source project, but starting in 2014 (Erin immediately, Ryan a little later in the year), they’ll be joining as full-time partners in OpenNews. We’re *thrilled* to have them on board and excited about what that’ll mean for everything we can accomplish together.

And much more to come

In early December, Erin, Ryan, Erika Owens, Kio Stark, and myself got together in New York City for two days of building a calendar and a plan for 2014. There is so much to come this year, from SRCCON (our maker-heavy Source conference for the journalism-code community) mid-year, to two Code Convenings that will bring news developers together to open-source code, to learning and hacking events around the world, and much, much more. 2014 is going to be an incredible year.