Claire Austin is a Journalism Program Intern at Knight Foundation.

Information is the electricity of the 21st century, underlying everything.

In an Aspen Institute report “Civic Engagement on the Move: How mobile media can serve the public good” (.pdf) J.D. Lasica writes “more than 80 percent of Americans ages 5 to 24 will use mobile digital media by next year.”

In another of Lasica’s Aspen Institute publications, “Identity in the Age of Cloud Computing: The next-generation Internet’s impact on business, governance, and social interaction,” (.pdf) William T. Coleman explores how mobile media will make civic engagement much easier by providing the user with access to the cloud computing network at any place or time while still protecting the user’s identity. 

And for journalists, Mark Glaser at Media Shift is wondering lately if Twitter will change the world and Michele McLellan at the Knight Digital Media Center has blogged about ways for journalists to engage social media users.

Facebook can be used as a reporting tool too with the new NewsCloud Facebook App,

which builds a youth audience through two publications with new approaches to outreach and marketing. One focuses on environmental issues and another is geared toward college students in Minnesota.   

Other good examples of mobile digital media in journalism?

Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, gave the opening remarks at the SWSW Interactive Festival at the Austin Convention Center.

Hsieh talked about how a genuine customer service culture and setting core values extended the reach and strengthened their brand.

How can Knight Foundation translate this into better grantmaking? Would our grantees improve the self-sustainability of their projects by developing a set of core values and focusing on customer service? We expect these two elements from every grantee and we ask questions that cover these elements in general, but are they something that we should specifically ask for in our application process?

The craft of journalism is all about core values and public service. How can core values and public/customer service improve the flow of news and information in communities and increase readership and civic engagement?

Please share your thoughts with us.

The graphic below is a visualization of this post. It was created using a program called many eyes.

Today, Knight News Challenge (the ~$5 million yearly contest to find innovative ideas for news delivery) winner Everyblock announced a partnership with the New York Times to add political news items to the NYC block pages.

When an elected official representing your neighborhood is mentioned in the NYT, you’ll find the mention on Everyblock as well.

Congrats to the Everyblock team on the new feature, and please leave comments and feedback for them on their announcement post.

Knight Commission member danah boyd posted to Twitter from the Chicago Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy meeting:

You can watch the live webcast by clicking the top link on today’s Commission agenda page.

Do you have thoughts to share with the Commission? Leave a comment below or Twitter @knightfdn.

As of now, there are nineteen days left to apply for the Knight News Challenge, the yearly $5MM contest to find innovative ideas about delivering information to specific geographic communities.

To find out more about how to apply and win funding for your idea, join me, Kristen Taylor, this Thursday at one of two meetups in Austin:

This Thursday, 3:30pm at the University of Texas at Austin (Burson Conference Room at the College of Communication building–Room 4.128 in the CMA Building) Map

This Thursday, 7-8pm at Pluck (200 Academy Drive, plenty of parking) Map

Here’s the Facebook invite and the Upcoming invite.

I’ll also be at the Austin Maker Faire on Saturday and Sunday (details).

Any questions, please let us know in the comments below. And if you would like to work through your idea before you apply, please go to the News Challenge Garage and request a mentor (remember that you still need to apply through the main News Challenge site here).

Thanks to the News Challenge winner Lisa Williams of Placeblogger and the Berkman Blog Group for a great Boston meetup last night where we talked about the history of the News Challenge (the $5MM yearly contest to find innovative digital delivery ideas), the Garage site for working through ideas before applying, how mentoring in the Garage works, and brainstorming ideas for this year’s contest.

You’ll see Steve Garfield and Jason Pramas (Open Media Boston) in the group below as well as developers and thinkers from MIT, Harvard, and Somerville organizations.

Next Thursday, we’ll host meetups in Austin and we’ll also be at the Maker Faire during the weekend. After that, we’ll talk in San Francisco (Facebook invite). We hope to meet you then–

Remember that the News Challenge contest closes November 1st; you can apply here and work through your idea before applying here with a mentor who has won the contest in the past.

Until 5 PST today, you can watch the live webcast of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy from Google HQ in Mountain View, CA. Videos from yesterday’s Knight Commission Community Forum are on Flickr here.

If you’re in the NYC area this evening, there is an informational event tonight from 7 – 9pm at CUNY Journalism School, Room 308, about the $5 million this year in the News Challenge, a yearly contest about innovative digital news delivery. The Facebook invite has more details. Future News Challenge events will be listed on this blog soon.

Questions? Thoughts? Let us know in the comments–

Until 5 PST this afternoon, you can watch the live webcast of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy Community Forum at Google.

Archived video will live on the Knight Commission site, and smaller clips are in a Flickr set and below, some highlights from the media panel that just finished a few minutes ago:

Linda O’Bryon, Chief Content Officer, KQED Public Television talks about QUEST content collaboration:

Knight Commissioner Andrew Mooney asked about journalism business models:

And Jim Bettinger, director of the Knight Stanford Fellows answered:

Knight Commissioner Michael K. Powell brought up “information snacking”:

And Raj Jayadev, Founder, Silicon Valley De-Bug talked about the internet as a gateway:

Posts on the speakers are on the new Knight Commission blog.

What do you think about journalism business models and information snacking based on the videos above?

Knight Commissioner danah boyd asked the distinguished guests of first community forum panel at the Knight Commission meeting at Google about push/pull strategies:

How do you think push/pull works in local news and information dissemination?