Editor’s note: Bud Meyer is Senior Communications Officer and Secretary of Knight Foundation. He asks below what you, our readers, want from a Knight newsletter.

Heads up, folks.

We’re sending out Knight News – our revamped electronic newsletter – this week, and we want to know what you think. It will make a monthly appearance and goes out to some 6,000 recipients.

We intend to offer a mix of stories and multimedia features. If you have ideas for future stories, send ‘em my way: meyer at knightfoundation dot org.

KnightBlog readers know there’s an opportunity to check in frequently there to see what we’re up to. The newsletter links to the blog with some new features, including a 5 Questions interview by Lee Oglesby, communications intern, with News Challenge/Young Creator David Cohn about his novel approach to funding investigative journalism.

Knight News is also different because it responds to our readers. We surveyed a sample of newsletter readers and asked them what they wanted to see. They said: News about upcoming funding opportunities. So you’ll see Opportunities in the upper right corner detailing things in the pipeline.

We’re seeking comments, too, to make sure we’re connecting to readers and they to us.

No need to wait, though. What do you think?

Editor’s note: Paula Ellis is Knight Foundation’s vice president of strategic initiatives. She is currently traveling in Singapore. Below is a dispatch she sent in last night.

Singapore, one of the world’s most admired economies and a leader in Asia, has identified digital media as an emerging economic sector that could propel its continued growth. I met Friday with Sng Cheng Hong Dennis and Ngiam Shing Shian of the Media Development Authority. They oversee the Interactive and Digital Media Program. Like most Singaporeans I have met, they are imaginative about the future and pragmatic about the now.

Just imagine this. Early in my visit, I toured the Singapore Botanic Gardens to see if the varieties of orchids and ginger were similar to those back home in Miami. The walk was lovely, but it would have been so much nicer if I could have shared it with my husband. Today, I could call him while walking or send streaming video once home. What if, the cloth of my garments was woven with fiber that allowed me to transmit the sights, sounds and smells of my stroll through the lush gardens? What if, I could touch the bark of a tree and it would send back home a piece of the experience?

What if? What if?

That doesn’t seem far off when visiting with Shing and Dennis. Shing is excited about the developments in language mediation and it is one of the several areas of focus for which they are bringing some of the best universities from around the world together in Singapore. If you’ve played Gambit, then you’ve benefited from their boundary-spanning approach to creative collaboration. Gambit was developed here with Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There are six other games here on path to be commercialized. And they’ve just announced a contest for games that can be played across platforms: on the computer, the game console and mobile phone. This grant program is intended to popularize games outside the current hardcore user market.

And who could go shopping in Second Life without their gold card from FirstMeta bank, invented here. As anyone who has scoured Orchard Road for bargains knows, Singapore is first in all things shopping. So it’s no wonder it was invented here first.

This is just a taste of what’s in the works here. Later this year, the digital media initiative, will move into new digs at the Innovation and Research Hub where Biopolis now pursues biomedical research. This new research cluster for infocomms, media and sciences will be known as Fusionopolis. These entrepreneurial, idea hubs are located in a planned community known locally as One North in Buona Vista. The education department is located nearby as is Wessex Estate, a residential community filled with parks, cafes and other amenities. Here Singapore is building a work, live and play community to attract creative, knowledge economy workers. I checked it out earlier in the week as part of the World Cities Summit for Liveable and Vibrant Cities.

Why call it One North? Singapore is one degree north of the equator.

What do you think of Singapore?

In a recent speech, Knight CEO and president Alberto Ibargüen announced a new media innovation strategy and four projects that are part of this strategy.

You can read the entire speech here; abbreviated descriptions of the four projects (they share similar names) are below.

Knight News Challenge (newschallenge.org)

The Knight News Challenge funds ideas that use digital media to deliver news and information to geographically defined communities.

This is a yearly contest about the future of local news delivery (and includes projects in a range of media areas such as mobile, video, and microfunding).

Knight Commission on Information Needs (knightcomm.org)

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, in partnership with the Aspen Institute, will propose public policy that will facilitate meeting those needs.

This is a new group with fifteen members that will make recommendations in 2009 about core community information needs.

Knight Center of Digital Excellence (knightcenter.info)

The Knight Center of Digital Excellence is a not-for-profit consultancy to help communities across the United States ensure digital access to every citizen.

This is sometimes called “universal access,” and the goal is to accelerate digital access projects across the U.S.

Knight Community Information Challenge (informationneeds.org)

Community Foundation initiatives to meet the information needs of their communities are matched by funds from Knight Foundation.

This is to help community foundations use media and technology to deliver information to their communities.

Questions? Leave a comment below.

Editor’s note: Lee Oglesby is interning in Knight Communications department this summer. Below, she shares her thoughts about the first amendment and her high school newspaper. Look for a few more posts from Lee in coming weeks.

This week I’ve been reading up on the Future of the First Amendment survey – a Knight-sponsored survey that reveals how little high school students know about the first amendment – and the High School Journalism Initiative, a program that hopes to fix this problem while encouraging students to love journalism.

I graduated from Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High (a public-magnet school in north Dade) a year ago and, frankly, I’m not surprised that kids my age don’t know about the Bill of Rights. Sure, they’ll use “free speech” as an excuse for just about anything. But actual knowledge is limited and few kids think it actually applies to them as students. If you told an average student from my high school that the rights of the First Amendment had been extended to secondary students in 1943, they’d be shocked.

With that said, first amendment awareness at Krop wasn’t all bad. The school newspaper, The Lightning Strike, is pretty good. Actually, it’s really good. Readership went up dramatically in the span of a few years and several of the students I knew who took the journalism classes will go on to be great journalists.

As I was writing this and browsing the newspaper’s online site, I spotted the Knight Foundation logo in the corner. Turns out my high school paper had some help from the High School Journalism Initiatives. Go figure.

What was your high school newspaper like?

On Monday, the first round table for the new Knight Center of Digital Excellence, was held in Miami. The new center was formed to accelerate digital access projects across the U.S.

The Miami round table group included representatives from local nonprofits, Knight Foundation staff, and members of new Knight Center team, which is staffed and operated by OneCommunity. (Details on the KCDE’s creation in the April press release.) Round table events in other cities will introduce the new center and its goals to those areas.

Lorenzo Lebrija, Knight Foundation program director for Miami, shared how communities can start to be involved with the new center:

And lively questions from the audience followed a panel presentation:

Find out more about this media innovation initiative here, and look for more information on this blog in coming months.

What questions do you have about the new Knight Center? What needs do you think it should address first?

Youth digital culture scholar danah boyd is one of the fifteen members of the new Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy.

Today, she is at the Newseum for the Commission’s first meeting; below, she talks about her work and the information lifestyle she hopes to voice for the group:

Video by V.P. of Communications Marc Fest

You can watch the Commission’s live webcast until 5 pm ET today here.

What questions do you have for danah and the other members of the Commission?

Today, the fifteen members of the Knight Commission on Information Needs of a Community in a Democracy meet for the first time at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. to discuss democracy, economics, human behavior, and technology.

A joint project of Knight Foundation and the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program, the meeting will be webcast live from 10 am to 5 pm ET from the Commission Web site. Go to the webcast >

Yesterday, Michelle P B Ferrier of MyTopiaCafe wrote a post for Poynter Online’s E-Media Tidbits about social capital and research she hopes the Commission will build on:

I hope that this commission examines the groundwork already done by the Saguaro Seminar folks, as well as research by the Saguaro short-form survey instruments could be adapted to be deployed on hyperlocal online communities and blogs to test whether the content, functions, design, architecture and personalities create a rich exchange — and growth — of social capital.

What do you think the Commission should discuss today on the topics of democracy, economics, human behavior, and technology?

(The next meeting, August 9th, will focus on journalism.)

Today, Knight Foundation announced at $24 million initiative for community foundations to use media and technology to better inform their communities.

To apply for the grant-making challenge, submit a project idea in no more than 200 words between June 30th and September 15th on the initiative site, InformationNeeds.org (you can sign up to be reminded when the application process opens).

The FAQ is here.

What core community information needs do you think should be addressed first?

One of the really exciting Knight Foundation projects is the News Challenge, a yearly contest to fund ideas about the future of local news delivery.

On May 14th, we announced the 2008 winners; for the 2009 round, we’re seeking a social media marketing ninja to increase visibility, manage deliverables with media partners, track metrics and encourage community growth, conduct e-mail and blog outreach campaigns, and help plan amazing events.

The right person will have a developed network of contacts and expertise in promoting through social media channels.

The contact job is 25 hours a week from July 1 to September 30, 2008, and the search begins today.

For all the details, the job description is here.

To apply, e-mail Marc Fest (fest {at} knightfoundation {dot} org).

Below, links to projects and news around some of the Knight News Challenge winners, their local news delivery projects, and other journalism items from this week:

News Challenge winner Dan Pacheco asks for feedback on the Printcasting (a project to “make it possible for anyone to create a local print newspaper, magazine or newsletter with local ads”) interface:

Does the drag-and-drop interface work for you? Let Dan know here.

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Fellow News Challenge winner Ryan Sholin (whose project Reporting On is “the backchannel for your beat”) reports that WiredJournalists.com and BeatBlogging.org are merging now exploring “cross-promotion” (per Ryan’s comment below).

Pat Thorton is taking BeatBlogging editorial reins from David Cohn, who has started working on his News Challenge project, Spot.us; find out how Cohn addresses his early Spot.us critics in this IdeaLab blog post.

BeatBlogging.org is part of News Challenge winner Jay Rosen’s distributed reporting project NewAssignment.net, and he talks about Beatblogging progress here.

(Recent buzz on Rosen has been around an OffTheBus experiment with Huffington Post; you can join the OffTheBus Special Ops team.)

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Earlier this week, New York Times writer Lawrences Downes bemoaned the lack of copy editor presence at the Newseum; journalist David Sullivan offered an answer.

And this list of current newspaper jobs was posted (and pointed to from Ryan Sholin’s Twitter (a microblogging service) stream).

Items to add? Leave a comment below.