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The FBI is supposed to track how police use force – years later, it's falling well short

Aaron Miguel Cantú

May 17, 2021 |

The Guardian |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

Five years after the FBI started tracking how often police use force, the majority of police departments still fail to comply and the FBI refuses to release publicly what information it has collected. The policy was enacted in response to the realization that no one had definitive data on how often the police kill people, use teargas, or other incidents of force. What little data exists showed racial disparities in whom police use force against. But compliance was made voluntary and the FBI made public release of the data contingent on 80% of police departments complying, a goal it's nowhere near.

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Meet the Activist Archivists Saving the Internet From the Digital Dustbin

Mark Hill

May 12, 2021 |

Discover Magazine |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

The Internet Archive is a digital library of around 544 billion archived web pages, most of which are found using a bot that crawls the web and saves snapshots. However, a self-described loose collective of volunteer activist archivists, known as the Archive Team,' individually monitors and preserves websites at risk of being abruptly taken down. Using donated bandwidth and hard drive space on the archiving application “Warrior,” they systematically download sites they fear will be deleted. The downloads are saved within the Internet Archive database, which is available to the public.

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Fifty new outlets, 250 journalists: Canadian startup unveils plan to revive local news

Leyland Cecco

May 03, 2021 |

The Guardian |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: Canada, Victoria, British Columbia

Tech entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson started Capital Daily, a daily newsletter emailed to subscribers with news highlights from around Victoria. The local journalism model keeps residents informed on local issues and increases the accountability of decision makers. The publication began with just one reporter and used Facebook and Google advertising to grow to over 40,000 readers. After two years, the newsletter has evolved to produce long-form investigative features. A startup media group plans to replicate the model across the country, by hiring 250 new journalists and launching 50 new outlets by 2023.

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Africa's Wikipedia Editors Are Changing How the World Sees Their Continent

Tolu Olasoji

April 12, 2021 |

Reasons to be Cheerful |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: South Africa

WikiAfrica Education increases information about Africa’s diverse languages, cultures, and politics from the voices and perspectives of African people. AfroCuration events enlist the help of young people to create and edit content for Wikipedia. The volunteers receive lessons on democracy and freedom movements and then use that information to create profiles of key events and history-makers. Strategic partnerships provide technical support and other resources, which have enabled hundreds of young people to produce hundreds of new entries and translate many existing entries into indigenous languages.

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Can nonprofit news fill the local journalism void in Kansas?

Joel Mathis

March 01, 2021 |

The Kansas Leadership Center Journal (KLC Journal) |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Kansas City, Missouri

As local journalism businesses struggle with dwindling advertising and readership, posing a threat to accountability journalism focused on state and local governments, nonprofit newsrooms are filling some of the void. In Kansas City, The Beacon launched at the start of the pandemic to provide health and community news. Its launch succeeded well enough to attract grants from national journalism-support organizations. Despite a number of such successful launches, questions remain about how sustainable such operations will be, especially in rural areas and small communities.

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With free print newspaper, Indian farmers record their protest

Rina Chandran

February 04, 2021 |

Thomson Reuters Foundation |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: India, New Delhi

Because of internet shutdowns, six friends created a bilingual newspaper to document and record the farmer protests in India. Thousands of farmers have been protesting for weeks about the government’s new agricultural laws. Since there are many older farmers and the government has blocked the internet, they give out free print copies of their biweekly “Trolley Times” newspaper with information on speeches, medical aid, and community kitchens. While producing the newspaper has become harder, they are able to print about 5,000 copies for the farmers.

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SC law enforcement agencies are supposed to report info on traffic stops, but most are not

Daniel J. Gross

January 28, 2021 |

The Greenville News |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, South Carolina

After the South Carolina legislature in 2005 began requiring police to enforce a seat-belt law with traffic stops, it imposed on all police departments a duty to track and report traffic-stop data on drivers' race. The law was meant as a way to prevent biased policing, through public disclosure of disparities. But only about one-third of the state's law enforcement agencies have consistently complied with the law, and some never have. Some blame ignorance of how the system should work. But another explanation is the state has done little or nothing to enforce the law.

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How Asian Canadians Are Fighting Racism During the Pandemic

Erica Ngao

January 19, 2021 |

Reader's Digest Canada |

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Under 800 Words

Response Location: Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia

By establishing online platforms to make anonymous reports of anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic, two Canadian organizations elicited hundreds of stories that help victims to process their experiences. The first platform, Elimin8hate, was the creation of a filmmaker who understands the therapeutic value of storytelling as means of coping with trauma. Her Vancouver group's alliance with a Toronto organization attracted funding to train discussion leaders who will lead anti-racism discussions in government and businesses.

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On its 20th birthday, Wikipedia might be the safest place online

Heather Kelly

January 15, 2021 |

The Washington Post |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

Wikipedia’s large number of volunteer editors document history in real time, while making sure different viewpoints are considered and avoiding misinformation. While other social media sites are hesitant to label unreliable sources and misinformation, Wikipedia clearly labels controversial and unproven topics and deploys many tools to avoid false information. A single page per topic makes monitoring easier, pages can be locked from new edits, and people who frequently make false edits can be banned. While it doesn’t claim to be a reliable source, editors do follow policies meant to keep out anything untrue.

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How a 1980s AIDS Support Group Changed The Internet Forever

Michael Waters

December 18, 2020 |

OneZero |

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Over 3000 Words

Response Location: United States, San Francisco, California

In the 1980s, a virtual messaging network, then known as bulletin board systems (BBSs), acted as a support group for many who were in search of peer support and reliable information as the AIDS epidemic spread. Although the site was a grassroots effort with little to no financial stability, it grew to 500 daily users and 100 messages posted per day.

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