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Profiles

Covid Wire

Covid Wire
Image source: MIT Solve

Covid Wire (CW) was an American news aggregator based in San Francisco, California.[1] It was an initiative of the Local News Project.[2]

History

A team of 15 volunteers in San Francisco began working on Covid Wire at the onset of the declared COVID-19 pandemic.[2:1] The project was listed on the Help with COVID portal in March 2020.[3] On June 18, 2020, the team submitted Covid Wire to MIT Solve's "2020 Health Security & Pandemics" funding opportunity. Covid Wire's application named several potential funding partners, including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google News Lab, Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), Knight Foundation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s AI for Humanity Prize.[1:1]

Covid Wire was launched on September 9, 2020, aggregating localized news coverage on the declared COVID-19 pandemic in Detroit, Miami, New Orleans, San Francisco and Seattle.[4]

Organization

Covid Wire was developed by a team of 15 volunteers.[1:2]

Name Position Notes
Jeffrey Lin Co-Founder[4:1] Autodesk, PlanGrid, Samsung Research, IDEO
Tom Gilmore Co-Founder[1:3] Morgan Stanley, Karten Design, Designworks, Rucola
Joe Burgess News Editor[5] Apple News, New York Times
Si Te Feng Engineer[5:1] Apple
Kyle Finck News Strategy[5:2] Apple News, Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated
Brian Huh Moderation and Operations[5:3] White House, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Oracle, Morgan Stanley
Loree Lewis Media Relations[4:2] Stanford Health Care
Abdel Shokair Engineering Organizer[5:4] Silo, TalentSpace
Linda Yang Designer[5:5] Tom Steyer 2020, Intercom
Kevin Zeidler Senior Developer[4:3] Adaptive Dynamics

  1. Lin, J., & Gilmore, T. (2020, June 18). Covid Wire. MIT Solve. https://solve.mit.edu/solutions/26991 ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. About. Covid Wire. Retrieved January 27, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20220127163458/https://covidwire.news/about ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. CovidWire: Your neighborhood coronavirus news aggregator [UPDATED Apr 16]. Help with COVID. Retrieved August 16, 2020, from https://web.archive.org/web/20200816083706/https://helpwithcovid.com/projects/14-covidwire-your-neighborhood-coronavirus-news-aggregator-updated-apr-16 ↩︎

  4. Lewis, L. (2020, September 9). Covid Wire Launches, a Platform Easing Access to Local COVID-19 News. Cision PR Newswire; Covid Wire. http://archive.vn/2025.02.14-011603/https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/covid-wire-launches-a-platform-easing-access-to-local-covid-19-news-301125865.html ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  5. Covid Wire - Team sample. Notion. Retrieved February 14, 2025, from http://archive.vn/2025.02.14-013032/https://covidwire.notion.site/8b44c95778cd4a61aa1590ab3f458d08?v=db69966883e949e7bfd58b4a259aa518 ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎