Thursday, October 11, 2007

The Knight News Challenge: $5M Funding for Big Ideas

"Up for the Challenge?"
The Knight Foundation is setting aside 5 Million Dollars for innovative ideas on digital news media. Referred to as "Digital Experiments in Community News", anybody anywhere are encouraged to submit cutting-edge concepts for technology backed community news projects with the potential of making an impact on real communities.

Last years Knight News Challenge awarded grants to 25 change advocates with prizes ranging from $15,000 to half-a-million dollars. The projects varied from innovative blog series to academic scholarships, from simple web applications to establishing entire media centers. Even MTV got a piece of the action with a $700,000 grant for the Knight Mobile Youth Journalism project which aims to place youth reporters in every state producing video news reports on their mobile phones in relation to the 2008 US elections.

Alberto Ibarguen, President and CEO of Knight Foundation said, "The Knight News Challenge hopes to discover innovative ways of using cyberspace to bring communities together." The foundation will invest some $25 million over a span of five years to fund exceptional community news experiments worldwide. The program is in line with the Knight Foundation's mission to "seed and inspire great journalism everywhere".

Note the following criteria for submission to the Knight News Challenge:
  • Use of digital technology - computers, cell phones, the Internet, etc.
  • Innovative - It must be different from what others have previously done.
  • Access to News and Information - It must provide people what they want to know in a timely manner.
  • Community-centered - The project must affect real geographical localities and create a sense of community in people.
There are three categories for the Knight News Challenge contest namely, General (open-source, open standards), Commercial, and the Young Creators Award which is for the 25 years and younger age group.

One can submit as many different ideas as they can come up with. Be sure however not to submit the same proposal on different categories.

Make your mark. You invent it, Knight Foundation will fund it. Deadline for submissions of proposals is on October 15, 2007. Winners will be announced in the Spring of 2008.

Register now at http://www.newschallenge.org and take the challenge.

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