Computational journalism and the emergence of news platforms

In June 2014, the Coral Project launched with a $3.9m grant from the Knight Foundation. An ambitious effort to reimagine and create an open-source community platform, the goal was to enable publishers both large and small to cultivate and tap into their online communities, to support and empower contributors, and to provide for a productive and civic space for readers. Some might find this a curious endeavor given that analogous community platform software like Disqus or Livefyre already exists and are sold by such vendors to meet market needs. But what is particularly interesting and perhaps even paradigm shifting about the Coral Project is that it represents a collaboration between the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Knight-Mozilla OpenNews. It is a platform tailor-made for news publishers and the types of community needs that emerge in that context, with their interests and values designed into the core.