Congratulations to Lisa Williams and her team on the relaunched Placeblogger site:

Placeblogger is a 2007 Knight News Challenge winner (the $5 million yearly contest to fund innovative ideas in local news delivery).

The 2008 Knight News Challenge Screening Team is in Miami today to work through all of your great applications. Here’s some of the energy in the room today:

Just some of our incredible team of screeners led by Susan Mernit: Debi Jones, Brian Oberkirch, Andrew Hyde, George Kelly, Chris Messina, Beth Kanter, Rosental Alves, Dianne Lynch, Joyce Barnathan…

Analyzing Knight Foundation’s efforts in the Mississippi Gulf Coast, reporter Dick Polman writes,

Today, nearly three years after the storm, and with expenditures thus far totaling roughly $10 million, Knight Foundation can rightly point to a string of achievements - most notably, its crucial role in bringing world-class planners and architects to the afflicted region, and prompting citizens to chart new communities in ways they had never before imagined. Yet at the same time, political, cultural and financial obstacles have impeded recovery on virtually all fronts. In the words of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who is praised for his recovery efforts even by political foes, “It’s all been way too slow to suit me.”

Here’s a recent comment on the article by James W. Cromwell:

…After reading your article I have a different perspective of some of your good intentions that your foundation had for the people of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. But I think you have been hoodwinked by the business men of these communities into believing that your monies were being used to help the citizens when it was really being used to help big business…

Adele Lyons, Knight Program Director for Biloxi responded:

…A long-term recovery after a hurricane like Katrina takes many organizations working together. We have worked with several of the funders you noted including the Twenty-First Century Foundation, OxFam, Ford Foundation and Foundation for the Mid South. We work together as part of the Gulf Coast Funders for Equity. Several of us helped organize the Funders’ Forum for Sustainable Gulf Coast Transformation held in September 2007.

We wanted to know what happened after Katrina. In the first few days, Knight Foundation made emergency grants to the Salvation Army and the Red Cross totaling $1 million to help with the relief efforts. Relief was slow to reach the East Biloxi citizens. Additional emergency grants totaling $110,000 went to several small, local nonprofits. And, of course, many of our grantees continue to work in East Biloxi…

See the East Biloxi grantee list and both comments in their entirety here.

Find more of Knight’s “Stories of Transformation” here.

Leonard Witt posted an interview today with Knight Foundation consultant Mike Maidenberg on the new Knight Community Information Challenge.

Here’s an excerpt:

Leonard Witt: Tell me a little about the Knight Community Information Challenge, why is Knight involved and for what end?

Mike Maidenberg: Knight Foundation is deeply interested in how information flows in physical communities. We know the power of the web in specialized fields. What we are trying to understand and experiment with is how the web can be used to tie local communities together, with the newspaper a model from the past.

Read the entire article on PJNet, and find out more about the challenge on the official site.

What other questions do you have for Mike about the Community Information Challenge?

Nathaniel Whittemore of the Do Good Well blog on the new Knight Community Information Challenge:

“…the implication for the Knight grant might be that smart community foundations find ways to help their communities tap into existing citizen-led or socially concerned news networks and become human filters and hubs for the information most relevant for their daily lives.”

The rest of the post offers distinctions between communities, networks, depth, and breadth.

Do you think community foundations should tap into existing networks or develop new ones?

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.

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?