Here at The Bivings Group we're fans of Adrian Holovaty; he has developed fascinating on-line database news features for news sites like for The Washington Post.  Today, upon recieving a grant from the Knight Foundation that he'll use to develop an innovative site at EveryBlock that will make local news more useful.  He's leaving the Post to pursue this venture.

Another Knight Foundation receipent is the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.  Medill will use it grant to offer graduate scholarships to programmers and developers so that they can develop journalism skills to follow in the footsteps of Holovaty. (Hat Tip: Holovaty) 

Concerning the connection between technology and journalism, the scholarship page explains:

At Chicagocrime.org, people can investigate for themselves what kinds of crimes are most common in their neighborhoods. On the Web site for the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey, people can look up property assessments, campaign contributions and help journalists identify government workers who are “double-dipping” by holding down more than one taxpayer-financed job. At Digg.com, users help each other find relevant news by selecting and voting for the articles they find most interesting. At WashingtonPost.com, visitors can search through databases of congressional votes, campaign contributions and Bill Clinton’s speaking fees.

News organizations gather large amounts of data that they never use, and as Holovaty has proven, with a little programming it can gain great value — even for technophobes.

Yes, some computer geeks make good journalists, and we cannot wait to see how more of programmers/journalists will bring to the news industry. 

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