The Bloomfield Information Project was created in March 2020 by Simon Galperin as a community news service focused on providing the residents of Bloomfield and Essex County, New Jersey better access to “information, context, and connection” as a part of making the community “more informed, engaged, and resilient.” The project is thriving in its own right and is also a pilot program of the Community Info Coop, a nonprofit which “uses journalism, media, and technology to strengthen democracy.”
I reached out to them after hearing Simon on the It's All Journalism podcast because I saw an opportunity to contribute to their "news harvest" process with my own blended interests and skills in journalism, software development and civic engagement, and to hopefully further their efforts while adding something broader to the world of local news.
We ended up collaborating, initially through the final capstone project of my graduate journalism degree where I created several software tools and workflow improvements, a project website documenting all my work, several open source software repositories and a 45 page paper that brought together my research, work and projects in one place.
Today I remain a supporter and occasional volunteer, interested in further contributing to developing their tools, programming and community impact.