The Coral Project began in 2015, as a collaboration between Mozilla, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Our mission was and is to bring journalists closer to the communities they serve. We do this to improve journalism, to strengthen civic society, and to make the internet a better place for everyone to interact safely and in a productive way.
Soon after we began, we were contacted by several people wanting to know how their companies could get involved in our work.
Three hugely successful years later, it’s time to talk about how we can collaborate with you, and have an even greater impact on the health of online communities. We’re excited to announce a new path for the project, and a new opportunity.
Our work has been incubated by the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health of the internet. We’ve done amazing things together to support journalists and their communities: more than 20 newsrooms have used Ask to gather and share reader stories (one became a Pulitzer Finalist), while 23 newsrooms in nine countries now use Talk to improve comments and conversations on their sites, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Sydney Morning Herald, and The Intercept.
The Coral Project’s impact is expanding fast, and both Mozilla and the Coral team feel that this is the right moment for Coral to explore how to increase the project’s reach and long-term sustainability.
Over the coming year, we will be offering hosting options for our open-source software, and also looking for a new home for The Coral Project – either as a standalone organization or by partnering with an existing nonprofit or for-profit organization in a related sector.
Wherever The Coral Project ends up, we will remain true to our key values: building for and with newsrooms, focusing on inclusive online communities, keeping open source software at our core, and honoring your users by never selling, sharing, or aggregating personal data.
Journalism needs the support of loyal community members to survive, and community members need journalism to maintain a healthy democracy. We will continue to provide the tools and the strategies that make this possible.
We’re excited about this new path, and are keen to talk to anyone – funder, founder, CEO, investor, you – who wants to support journalism, open-source software, and making the internet a better place for all.
In the meantime, we’re not going anywhere. Talk v4.4.1 just came out, we have more funding announcements to make shortly, and we have plenty more work to do. Because journalism needs everyone.
Interested in being part of the future of The Coral Project? Reach out to andrewl@mozillafoundation.org.
Photo courtesy of WOCInTechChat