Yesterday, the Knight Foundation Journalism Advisory Committee (JAC) and guests met at the Newseum.

Video from the meeting is below; the full Flickr (a photo-sharing service) set of images and video is here.

Follow the conversational threads about broccoli, business models, and content markets with JAC members Marty Baron, Dianne Lynch, Rosental Alves, Michael Maness, Eduardo Hauser, Geneva Overholser, meeting guests, and Knight Foundation staff:

What do you think the JAC should discuss at their next meeting?

Last night was the fourth of the Knight News Challenge North American meetups, this one in Chicago, hosted by Columbia College’s Barbara Iverson. (If you didn’t know, the Knight News Challenge is in the third year of a program that gives away $5MM a year to digital innovations.)

With about 30 curious innovators attending last night, The Knight Foundation’s Kristen Taylor led the BarCamp-style workshop, clarifying the Knight News Challenge mission, requirements and finally taking questions on the application process.

Past KNC project winner ChiTownDailyNews, represented by Community Manager Frank Edwards, showed up and shared an update on how that project is progressing–now ChiTownDailyNews has expanded to 75 reporters representing 45 Chicago neighborhoods and hosts workshops on video, radio and photo journalism in an ever-expanding training program.

Also, Brian Boyer, who was recently awarded a Knight scholarship as part of a program to train software developers to become journalists, shared his experiences as a developer pursuing a Master’s degree in journalism at Medill.

And there were a lot of questions! The group was highly engaged and ready to shape their own applications. A few of the questions that came up, with the answers:

How do you define “news,” and how timely does it need to be?

Kristen pointed folks to the list of past winners for examples of what could be considered “news,” including projects like Dan Pacheco’s Printcasting and Alexander Zolotarev’s Sochi Olympics Project; she also pointed out that if you’re submitting a mobile application, the definition of “timeliness” might be different than, say, for a blogging idea.

How does activity in the Garage affect the application process or outcome?

The judges don’t specifically consider activity in the Garage as criteria for winning the Knight News Challenge; you don’t get points for page views.

Is participating in the Garage mandatory?

No, in fact, keep in mind that while the Garage is for incubating your application, remember that you must eventually apply directly from the News Challenge site. However, the benefits of participating in the Garage are still the same: you can sign up to have a mentor help you shape your application, you can get feedback from the community and other applicants, and you can network to fill any talent voids in your application through the job list.

Why can we only use 300 words?

In general, we’ve discovered that if you can’t clearly explain your vision in 300 words, you probably need to spend some time honing it down. A clear elevator speech is the first step to a viable idea.

Is there overlap between judges and mentors? Who are the judges and what is their background?
Mentors are past winners who have been through the process and are putting their winning ideas into motion. Mentors aren’t judges. There are about 15 Knight News Challenge screeners whose job is to take the approximately 3,000 applications to about 64, and those screeners are rock stars of digital innovtion and social media, like Andrew Hyde of StartupWeekend, Brian Oberkirch, Chris Messina, Mary Hodder, Debbie Mobile Jones and George Kelly. The judges are a smaller team that take the applications to the final round and make the final determination of winners, and they have similarly diverse backgrounds in digital innovation.

Thanks to all who attended and participated for making this a great interactive meetup!

Reminder: the deadline for application is November 1st, follow this link to apply now!

The 2008 Communications Network Conference, a group of philanthropy professionals who work in communications, began last night in Chicago.

Chair of the Network, Larry Meyer (pictured below at left) and Senior Communication Officer and Secretary at Knight Foundation, introduced Ira Glass, who explained how his wildly successful NPR (and Showtime) show This American Life uses narrative hooks to “cunningly” engage listeners around issues they might not otherwise care about.

Everyone was still abuzz about his talk this morning at breakfast;

to follow the events, the conference Twitter tag is #comnet08 and the conference blog has more details about sessions and speakers.

Editor’s note: Senior Communications Officer and Secretary Larry Meyer details how Nancy Hicks Maynard was related to Knight Foundation’s Journalism program and the Maynard Institute.

Nancy Hicks Maynard – a significant pioneer in journalism – was a long-time member of Knight Foundation’s Journalism Advisory Committee. Along with John Dotson Jr. – quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle obituary – Maynard did much to ensure that our journalism grantees valued diversity.

Nancy and her husband Robert Maynard owned and co-published the Oakland Tribune starting in 1983. They practiced the diversity in staffing and coverage they had been preaching earlier in their careers. The paper remains the only major metropolitan daily to have ever been black-owned.

Knight’s Eric Newton was the last managing editor under the Maynards. He recalled that Nancy Maynard successfully reoriented the circulation and advertising departments to focus on Oakland and Berkeley. As a result, circulation was growing in those urban areas even as financial problems forced a sale.

The Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, now based in Oakland, has prepared thousands of graduates to enter the nation’s newsrooms, including at the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. Nancy Maynard was the institute’s first president and served on its board until 2002.

What are your memories of her?

So, we’re trying to go out in the community, somewhat BarCamp style, and do more hands-on sessions with people interested in applying to the Knight News Challenge this year. We have a set of sessions planned around the country, and we’re running them al in a similar way–Talking about the program, explaining the guidelines and key criteria (like having a geographic focus and being innovative), showing a couple of little seesmic videos.

Last week we did two sessions in New York, one at Coumbia Journalism School for faculty and students, and another, that evening, at CUNY (thank you, Professor Jarvis!) for the public and the school. We had about 40 people at each session, many of whom took part on the extensive and detailed Q&A after the brief talk (and that cute David Cohn seesmic video).

Questions ranged from “Can a project make money and be commercial?” (Yes), to “Will you fund something that might just exist for a year or two as an experiment?” (Yes) to “If it’s something that will help all local communities, so I don’t want to limit myself to one, will that fit your guidelines?”
(Probably not.) At the end of each session, I felt like many of the people in the room might apply.

We did another session a few days latter at the much revitalized ONA conference in DC. There Gary Kebbel, Kristen Taylor and myself shared program plans and detailed with about 75 conference attendees, including some past winners. he audience was focused and engaged, again with lots of questions and comments. I left that meeting feeling like perhaps half of the audience would apply,

If you’re interested in a meet up for your area, check the schedule we’re posting; if you need connection, come to the News Challenge garage and post and comment, just as you wish others would do for you.

If you’re debating applying for the Knight News Challenge this year, but haven’t done anything yet AND you live in the Chicago area, you might want to come to the meet up on Thursday of this week. We’ll have two KNC team members and a local winner there to share info about the program, the mentoring program and peer review in the Garage and what kinds of projects KNC08 supports.
Check out the Facebook event invite for KNC’s Chicago meetup!

Thursday, September 25th, 6:30-9:30 p.m.
Columbia College, Room 219
33 E. Congress, Chicago, IL

Here’s what the notice says:

The Knight News Challenge is in the third year of a program that gives away $5MM a year to digital innovations. Do you have a big idea for informing and inspiring a geographic community using social media, Web 2.0 tools or OpenID? How about exchanging information via video, photos or text messaging? A way to integrate game theory with web browsing to support local community engagement? Come on, push the edge - we’re seeking true innovation!

Come to this meet up to find out how to apply, share ideas, and get a chance to talk to KNC evangelists to find out how to apply and improve your chances of winning funding for your great open source idea.

Check out www.newschallenge.org for more information or http://garage.newschallenge.org to start your application now.

Note: You need to RSVP to be able to attend, via Facebook, phone (847-942-6732) or email (miller@knightfdn.org).

This is a truly innovative program to push the edge of what digital democracy and discourse can look like and I hope to see online journalists, media folks, technologists, activists, educators and others I’m not naming here all apply.

(Cross posted to Susan Mernit’ Blog)

Editor’s note: Scott Piepho is an Akron blogger; below, he walks us through the new Akron headquarters of the Knight Center of Digital Excellence. The video was shot by Knight V.P. of Communications Marc Fest and edited by webmaster Robertson Adams.

High tech gear and a fruit salad of furniture colors meet turn-of-last-century architecture as the staff of the Knight Center of Digital Excellence settle in to their Akron headquarters. Three weeks ago the center took over the seventh floor of renovated downtown office building, hosting a grand opening event that brought together Knight Foundation program officers from around the country.

The Knight Center offices serve as work space for the staff of the online Resource Center and as a home base for the members of the Connected Communities Team (CCT). Two of the CCT Program Managers – Todd Adams and Jim Nice — work out of Akron. Team director Karen Archer Perry works from her home in New Jersey and Lynda Goff, the newest member of the team, works out of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The center headquarters gives the team space to meet and collaborate. This week all four were in town to touch base and share ideas.

“We are doing something new; we are trying to create a new model,” explains Ms. Perry. In each community the team is trying to encourage connectivity projects developed and ultimately owned by the community. Team members take time to compare notes on how that model works in different communities with different needs, assets and cultures.

In any organization with a strong field staff, calling them home can be a challenge. The new Knight Center offers an appealing place to come home to. The building retains much of its classic interior. The elevator opens into a hallway wainscoted in marble – complete with a built-in drinking fountain. Original wood-grained doors (metal as it turns out – first of their kind in Akron) include textured glass and still-functioning transoms.

But beyond a hallway which could double as an Eddie Capra movie set, the office space is funky modern. Two-drawer filing cabinets on casters double as ottomans topped with brightly upholstered pads. Meeting room chairs and cabinet tops were ordered in each color offered – a first, which prompted the manufacturer to visit and take pictures of the prismatic cheeriness.

Most of all, the office is full of light, with gaping window offering views of northern downtown and beyond, across the Cuyahoga River valley. “It’s a big difference being in this building,” notes Perry. “We had no windows in the Cleveland offices.”

The center continues settling in and melding the old and the new. The latest delivery is a state-of-the-art smart board that staff are now learning to use. The next should be a map cabinet – Program Manager Jim Nice still likes paper maps.

Editor’s note: Susan Patterson is the Knight Program Director for Charlotte, North Carolina. Below, she details Knight winners at the inaugural Charlotte Chamber Innovation Awards.

The Charlotte Chamber launched its first ever Innovation Awards Tuesday night, and Knight grantees were winners.

The McColl Center for Visual Arts received the Innovative New Product or Service Award for its Innovation Institute, which received a million-dollar grant from Knight in June. Executive Director Suzanne Fetscher was quick to thank Knight for its investment, and Institute alumni scattered around the Westin ballroom cheered.

With more than 400 folks in the room, the Institute is likely to have a waiting list for its next class where artists help business folks tap into their creative side for more effective leadership on the job and in the community.

Michael Marsicano, CEO of the Foundation for the Carolinas (also a Knight grantee and often a partner with Knight in major initiatives), was named Innovator of the Year.

As he said, in this business town, having non-profit winners was remarkable. He’s right.

Tuesday, Macon.com posted this story about future planning for Macon roads, mentioning Knight Program Director for Macon, Beverly Blake, and an e-mail she wrote to community leaders.

From the Macon.com article:

With funding from the Knight Foundation, a disinterested third party, Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture IMAGINE Lab (www.coa.gatech.edu/imagine) is being employed to look at the proposed project and present a 3-D rendering that should show the community what the project will actually look like. There are all sorts of rumors of the project’s height and width and how it will interact with the Ocmulgee River. In the letter informing community leaders about the Tech project, Beverly Blake, the Knight Foundation program director, said, “Will it (the I-16/I-75 interchange) provide an orderly set of feeder streets to bring more folks into downtown/intown Macon? Will the time for construction effectively choke off all life to downtown? Are the alternatives worse than the proposed plan?”

The computer generated visuals, she said, will let us “see just exactly what the proposed interchange will look like when completed from different perspectives…”

Blake’s original letter concluded:

They [Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture IMAGINE Lab] are pleased to provide us with a proposal for their work to bring to us the three dimensional view of the proposed interchange; they will need info from Bibb/Macon and also DOT. If the scope is within the financial parameters of the grantmaking of the Knight Fund for Macon at the Community Foundation of Central Georgia, we will ask the Board of CFCG to consider funding of this visual presentation.

I wish to be clear that Knight Foundation does not have a position on this plan-our only position is to support projects and ideas that move forward Macon as a vibrant, progressive community. Our goal is to assist in providing accurate information to our citizens and policy makers.

I welcome your comments and ideas. Kindly respond to all so that we can each be a part of this conversation.

Do you have comments or ideas? Please leave them in the comments below.

Today, celebrate Constitution Day by learning more about the First Amendment.

Take the quiz, find ways to protect student journalists, and nominate a school for the First Amendment Press Freedom Award (deadline December 1st).

How else might we celebrate Constitution Day?