Missouri Journalism Student Wins Prize in Bay Area Contest Designed to ‘Hack the Future of Journalism’

The Winning App, HereSay, Combines Location-Based Tweets with Relevant News Stories

San Francisco (June 24, 2014) — Missouri School of Journalism student Jack Howard was among 80 programmers, news executives and community activists who teamed up May 31 and June 1 at San Francisco’s KQED Public Media to hack products designed to improve journalism.

Hack the Future of Journalism
Hack the Future of Journalism

The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the School cosponsored the hackathon with KQED Public Media, Google and the Public Media Platform, a consortium of America’s five largest providers of public media content, in conjunction with the National Day of Civic Hacking.

Howard joined a team of two University of Missouri students, Georgi Angelov and Connor Hickox, alongside American Public Media‘s Joellen Easton and Bay Area TV journalist Monique Soltani. The team earned the hackathon’s $500 prize for best use of the Public Media Platform application programming interface (API).

Their app, nicknamed HereSay, is designed for travelers. It combines location-based tweets with relevant stories generated by the Public Media Platform. Easton says the app gives listeners “the deeper context that maybe you wouldn’t know to match with the topics that are trending.”

Earlier this spring, the Missouri students received the top prize in the 2014 RJI Student Competition for an app they created called My 2 Cents Radio. The mobile player of public radio stories and podcasts allows users to donate directly to public media providers.

For more information about RJI’s Hack the Future of Journalism, contact Futures Lab Deputy Director Reuben Stern.

Updated: July 27, 2020

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