Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation

Last week Development Seed released new open-source code in preparation for part of their Knight funded mapping project. This piece of software allows anyone to switch between mapping providers without writing any code.

Development Seed received a $195,000 grant to add a mapping tool to Drupal. With it, people will be able to geo-tag stories and see their location on a map. The developers are also creating a news monitor that allows people to aggregate multiple local news sources based on topic or issue to the open and free Drupal platform.

Knight Foundation’s grant to Development Seed is one of a package of six grants that made up the Knight Drupal Initiative, a contest that tapped into a massive network of computer programmers to get their recommendations for speeding media innovation. In separate posts I will talk about each of the grants.

The Drupal community is a group of more than 350,000 members, mostly computer programmers who write free software together, collaboratively, on the web and the individuals and organizations that use the software to publish content online. You can learn more about Drupal at: www.Drupal.org.

A video on how this new piece of software works is available on Planet Drupal TV.

Do you have innovative ideas on how to use this mapping tool to improve the way you receive, share and understand news about your community?

Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation

The Knight News Challenge contest has allowed Knight Foundation to partner in digital media projects around the world. The contest provides a global view of new media trends and helps Knight Foundation discover some of the information needs communities have in the digital age.

In the second year of the Knight News Challenge Knight discovered two major trends:

1. The use of Drupal open-source software as the base for many projects that intended to bring digital journalism to local communities; and
2. The need for local online news sites.

Out of the Drupal trend, Knight created in partnership with a massive community of programmers, the Knight Drupal Initiative. This initiative led to the funding of six projects that aim to speed media innovation and lower the barriers to online publishing.

Out of the trend that demonstrated the need for local online news sites Knight hosted a digital journalism meeting. The meeting led to the funding of four online only community news sites. The Voice of San Diego, MinnPost, Chi-Town Daily News and the St. Louis Beacon. Last week the Voice of San Diego received recognition from Investigative Reporters and Editors for bringing citizens in their community the information they need to lead informed lives and hold their governments accountable.

Is there an online news site in your community? Do you think online news sites are the future of news and information? Please comment below.

Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation

Is there a Knight News Challenge Project in your community?

View Knight News Challenge Projects in a larger map

The Knight News Challenge projects are designed to be replicable in any community. If there isn’t one in yours, please contact us to determine how we can help you bring one of these projects to your community.

The Knight News Challenge seeks to speed media innovation by funding projects that meet three criteria:
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Judges have recommended at least eight innovative community news projects, for a five-year total of 48, in the New Voices program. New Voices is a Knight Foundation-sponsored incubator for such ventures. Each project will receive a $17,000 start-up grant and may qualify for an $8,000 matching grant in the second year. Run by J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism, New Voices “spotlights independent, citizens media initiatives.  And it provides technical support with online training in creating, developing and sustaining web sites grounded in journalism ethics.”

Three hundred and four projects were reviewed. Discussion focused on the fact that four years ago, these local news projects were started by civic-minded people, often with no journalism experience, who thought their communities needed more information about community life, laws and problems. These early grantees often had no idea how to publish information on the web. But they were dedicated, so they taught themselves. Often, to great success. For example, The Forum, in Deerfield, N.H., noticed that after they started publishing in 2005, and became the only public source of local news, voter turnout rose, more people were challenging incumbents in elections and there were fewer uncontested political races.

Now, however, sites like voiceofsandiego.org, MinnPost.com, St. Louis Beacon, Chi-Town Daily News and the New Haven Independent are staffed with professionally trained journalists, so the quality bar has been raised significantly. Local news sites staffed by professional journalists are showing more and more users what kind of sophistication to expect on local news sites. Judges discussed the need to better inform New Voices winners about training modules at J-Learning, Knight Citizen News Network, Knight Digital Media Center and NewsU.

The New Voices program has reached a critical mass where the concern no longer is finding good applicants – there are plenty – but, instead, is the sustainability of the projects, and learning what models work best. Some of the key models in the program now are projects 1) affiliated with university journalism schools, 2) from concerned citizens, 3) associated with libraries, library associations or community non-profits, 4) working with community cable access television, 5) working with local radio stations and 6) that are niche sites.

Lessons learned so far are that 1) frequent content updates are vital, 2) projects built on the backs of students don’t work when the semester ends, 3) projects that outsource web development aren’t sustainable because none of the principles knows how to fix things and 4) if the founder of the project for some reason has to stop working on it, that missing vision and drive often dooms the project.

Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab, will announce the new winners.

– Gary Kebbel, Journalism Program Director

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: Lorenzo Lebrija is the Program Director for the Knight Foundation community program in Miami and manages the Knight Arts Partnership, a new experimental art contest for South Florida, where the Knight Foundation is based.

The Knight Arts Partnership began with a simple premise: we don’t know all the answers, and great ideas are in the community. So, let’s ask for them. In the end, we received 1,643 applications with ideas for the arts in South Florida.

Yesterday, we announced to the community the 77 finalists for the Knight Arts Partnership. Our next step is to see whether the ideas, when explained further, are as good as the quick descriptions. Are the groups or individuals right to carry them out? Do they have a plan to raise the match of our funds? We’re excited to find out.

Not all 77 finalists will secure grants (we only have $4 million!), but we have a good pool from which some ideas, when fully developed, will stand out.

It’s going to be an interesting summer!