Adrian Holovaty: Changing the news one block at a time
Adrian Holovaty is the news industry’s favorite techie, even as he develops a kind of news that is changing the newspaper game.
EveryBlock, his latest project funded with a $1.1 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s News Challenge, enables citizens to create a profile of their own neighborhood by utilizing the site’s constantly updated databases on crimes, housing, events and activities, and news stories. News companies are vying to partner up as they go “hyper-local,” even as Holovaty’s fellow techies herald his achievement.
Over the weekend, the beleagured Tribune in Holovaty’s hometown of Chicago, celebrated Holovaty’s work with a profile. Last month, the online Trib added a widget developed by EveryBlock that was designed to let site users locate Tribune articles by geographical location.
One big newspaper chain has already asked Knight if they could license EveryBlock. This from an industry that Holovaty has criticized for its lack of individuality and entrepreneurship.
A former developer at the Lawrence Journal-World and washingtonpost.com, Holovaty first caught the attention of newsies in 2005 with chicagocrime.org. The site won the Grand Prize in the 2005 Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, but, more importantly, it influenced Google to open its mapping infrastructure for all to use. Soon after, he co-created Django, an open-source development framework that makes it easy for programmers to build database-driven Web sites.
Holavaty mashes his creativity through music as well, posting acoustic guitar arrangements on his You Tube channel.
“I like making Web sites and hacking on various things,” he says on his web site. Follow his projects.
