Saunt's USNewsMap wins NEH prize

The National Endowment for the Humanities announced the winners of the Chronicling America Data Challenge, and among them is Claudio Saunt from the department of history for his USNewsMap.com. The project maps patterns, explores regions, investigates how stories and terms spread around the country, and watches information go viral before the era of the internet:

This site argues that newspapers better capture the public discourse because of their quick publication schedule.  For example, users can track “miscegenation,” a term coined in 1863 by a Democratic Party operative to exploit fears about Lincoln, and “scalawag,” a recently arrived term that quickly gained currency after 1869.  Other examples for use are tracking regional differences in language, tracing the path of epidemics, and studying changing political discourse over time and space. 

The NEH contest:

challenged members of the public to produce creative web-based projects using data pulled from Chronicling America, the digital repository of historic U.S. newspapers. The Chronicling America database, created through a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, provides free digital access to over eleven million pages of historically significant newspapers published in the United States.

Great recognition for a valuable tool that has already garnered significant attention and is helping researchers around the world. Congratulations to Dr. Saunt and the Center for the Virtual History.

Image: screen cap from USNewsMap.com