Idea Lab

52 Applicants Move to Next Round of Knight News Challenge

by Desiree Everts

The Knight Foundation has selected 52 applicants that will move onto the next stage of its News Challenge. There's a theme you'll see running through the proposals that have made it thus far -- namely, networking. That's because networks are the focus of this year's first round. (The Knight News Challenge now offers three rounds instead of one competition per year.) What sort of networks? "The Internet, and the mini-computers in our pockets, enable us to connect with one another, friends and strangers, in new ways," Knight's John Bracken wrote in a release when the round was first announced. "We're...

• April 25, 2012
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Four Women-Led News Projects Pick Up Prizes from McCormick Foundation

by Desiree Everts

The changing media landscape has closed a lot of doors for many journalists over the years. But, it's also opened them -- creating opportunities for people to build their own, new forms of media. That's particularly true for women, which is why J-Lab and the McCormick Foundation launched an ambitious effort in 2008 called the New Media Women Entrepreneurs grant program, which aims to fund women-led projects that are changing the media landscape. "As you look at newsrooms downsizing, a lot of women have taken buyouts, and those are very accomplished women," said Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab. J-Lab...

• March 19, 2012
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How Knight Improved Its News Challenge Grant Process

by Desiree Everts

It seems so obvious that a contest to further innovation would itself innovate, so few were surprised when the Knight Foundation recently announced they were changing the rules of the Knight News Challenge and offering three rounds instead of one competition per year -- especially since we got the first whiff of it back in October. But as the first round gets underway, it's become clear that there's a whole lot more going on beyond changing the number of rounds. There's a new focus on speeding up and simplifying the whole process -- and that could be a good thing...

• February 29, 2012
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Idea Lab: Year in Review 2011

by Desiree Everts

It's been an eventful year on MediaShift's Idea Lab, marked by mergers, beta releases and site redesigns for the many innovators in digital media. This past year also saw the Knight Foundation announce 16 winners of its News Challenge contest, up from 12 grantees in 2010 -- and the total prize money hit $4.7 million, thanks in part to a $1 million contribution from Google. A couple of themes that ran big among the winners this year were data and mobile. We saw the rise of the hacker-journalist, and many projects were focused on making sense of the stream...

• December 28, 2011
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Open Source Meets Mobile in Ashoka's Citizen Media Competition

by Desiree Everts

As world events like Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and the Japanese tsunami disaster have shown, YouTube and social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook have the capacity to turn just about anyone into a journalist. It's a trend that leaves some traditional media outlets skeptical, or even downright disgruntled. But when media has the chance to spread out to include more voices, particularly in regions where it's a challenge to get the news out, citizen journalists can offer news and insight on critical events that would otherwise go under-reported. That's why Ashoka Changemakers came up with a...

• November 10, 2011
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What You Need to Know to Win a Knight News Challenge Grant

by Desiree Everts

As the media industry continues to be upended and traditional publishers search for ways to survive, those of us who've chosen journalism as our craft are left wondering what the future holds. The Knight Foundation, as it happens, appears to be one of those entities exploring that very question. So it's no wonder that many in the industry look to Knight for answers. When it comes to the Knight News Challenge grants, of course, the first question that pops up is, so uh, how do you go about nabbing one? I get to read a lot about the winners, but...

• October 4, 2011
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Knight Announces 2011 News Challenge Winners

by Desiree Everts

Not so long ago, journalists were playing catch-up in the digital media space. But at this year's MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference, it's become evident that journalism 2.0 is growing up. Alberto Ibargüen, CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, today announced the winners of the Knight News Challenge at the annual conference held in Cambridge, Mass. This year, the contest focused on four categories: Mobile, Authenticity, Sustainability and Community, and winners ran the gamut from popular tools like DocumentCloud to a mobile platform that will help people in Hubli-Dharwad, India find out when water is available. The...

• June 22, 2011
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