Knight Grant Supports D.C. Witness’ Mission for Transparency

By D.C. Witness Staff - June 25, 2020
Editors Corner | Op-Eds |

America is speaking, and it is saying change is needed. 

But what will that look like? Defunding the police? Criminal justice reform? 

At D.C. Witness, we do not believe our place is to advocate for any specific kind of change. 

Instead, by bringing thorough transparency to the system and sharing the data we gather, our goal is to provide data-backed information so that better, more informed — and most importantly — more effective policies can be developed.

We believe accurate data holds the answers to which way forward we should go. 

To that end, the Knight Foundation has joined us in our mission, awarding us a grant to rebuild our website as part of a $20 million three-year technology initiative to help newsrooms focused on local journalism strengthen their digital publishing solutions. The Knight Foundation, working alongside News Revenue Hub, developed a grant for publishing tools that will improve distribution, community engagement and revenue opportunities.

We are excited to be included in the foundation’s first group of grantees. 

With this grant, D.C. Witness will build out our publishing platform to provide readers with more data visualizations on homicides, domestic violence and sexual assaults in the District. We will also use the grant to make our mobile output stronger. 

All to the end of helping better plan what effective criminal justice reform should look like.