This post was originally published by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas blog.

During the wave of violence in Kenya in 2008, that stemmed from conflicts among rival political factions, a group of friends created a system in which persons in various locations could send and share, via the Internet, news about attacks and killings. The Ushahidi (witness in Swahili) online platform, a Knight News Challenge Winner, became a model of success for participative coverage of news worldwide. Now the system has come to Brazil, with Voter 2010, an unprecedented election monitoring tool for citizens.

One of the more interesting aspects of the site is the visual depiction on a map of complaints or irregularities, using Google Maps. See below an interview with those responsible for Voter 2010: The creator, journalist Paula Góes; and her colleagues Diego Casaes and Thiana Biondo. They spoke with the Knight Center from London and Sao Paulo, where they work as editors for the international network of news blogs, Global Voices Online:

Where did the idea for the project come from?

Góes: I followed the use of Ushahidi in the elections in Mozambique (last October) and I had heard talk of other similar experiences in other countries. The idea of using it for elections in Brazil came at the end of last year, when I remembered, when I was working as a TV producer, the craziness of covering an election period -– we received a lot of complaints from the public but we never have the equipment to investigate all of them, not to mention the limitations from personnel, time and space on television, which resulted in frustration as much for the voter, who felt as if his testimony was irrelevant, as for the journalist, who felt useless in the face of so many complaints.

What is the main objective of Voter 2010?

Góes: The main goal is to observe the elections of 2010: to collaboratively create a picture of the electoral process in accordance with the voter's point of view, something that has never been seen in Brazil. Also, we want to create debate about the elections, especially among youth; to awake anti-corruption values; to promote citizenship and freedom of expression; and to serve as an information source for the media and authorities, like the Ministry of General Elections.

Why use Ushahidi?

Góes: To me, the platform seems like the perfect solution to satisfy the longing of the public to more actively participate in monitoring elections, giving voice to those voters who mostly live far from the capital, in places where the press doesn't reach or the media are dominated by certain political interests. Also for its crowdsourcing resources, the gathering and visualization of data, and for how simple it is to use. Of course, it counted a lot that it's free for us (besides being non-profit, Voter 2010 has no sponsors.)

How does the process of receiving and investigating complaints work?

Casaes: The Voter sends a report to the site to relato@eleitor2010.com via email, an sms message (although still not implemented), a hashtag on Twitter, messages on our social network sites, or on our own site. The reports are evaluated by a moderator that marks them as confirmed or not before publishing them. The moderator also will give a credibility grade to the source (for example, witness or victim). After publication, these reports will appear on a map and they can be searched by region or category. The information will be available to the whole world, in a transparent manner, even for the authorities and the mainstream media. Users also can confirm or deny reports through commentaries and positive/negative indicators.

Ushahidi has been used in various countries, under diverse circumstances. What are the most successful experiences?

Biondo: First on the list would be Kenya in 2008, for having created the platform, which now is being used in the whole world. Ushahidi returned to the action in Kenya this month with a platform christened Uchaguzi, that was used to cover the referendum on the new constitution, with a success that surpassed even the first time. We also can cite Madagascar, where the platform was installed to denounce violence by the government, which was selling land to South Koreans without revealing its true value and also promoting an increase in the price of food. The case drew the attention of the United Nations and Amnesty International.

Other successful cases were the coverage of the natural disasters in Chile and Haiti. Ushahidi was used to map areas affected by the earthquakes, which helped in the rescue of survivors, in the distribution of humanitarian aid, and reconstruction of the most affected cities. There were more than 1,000 reports. The platform is considered an excellent vehicle for collaboratively reporting tragedies, since there is a great effort from the public wanting to do its part.

And as for monitoring elections?

Góes: It was already done in Sudan, in Mexico, in Mozambique and in Bolivia, even though none of these was considered particularly successful and some were not open to the public (that is, it was done for official observation purposes). The expectation is that Brazil will be the first success case.

Have there been any especially interesting complaints so far?

Góes: I really liked the case of Coari, a city in the interior of the Amazons, maybe for being one of the first to be interesting and complete. The day Brazil debuted in the World Cup, the mayor handed out green and yellow shirts (the colors of the Brazilian soccer team) with the number of candidate that he supported on the back. His actions were reported on Voter 2010 the next day, with photos and everything. It's amazing the number of complaints about spam being spent to users who have not subscribed to receive those kinds of communications, which demonstrates that email addresses are being bought.

In another interesting case, we received a complaint about email propaganda. A member of a candidate's campaign team left a comment on the complaints page apologizing for sending the email to the person who filed the complaint, and that ended up being a confession to electoral fraud, as the database of emails had been obtained illegally: "Our emails are sent through a list provided by people from churches to charitable institutions that make up our database." Meanwhile, the law prohibits the use, donation or transfer of electronic records of customers, for candidates, parties or coalitions.

How does Voter 2010 interact with traditional media?

Góes: Voter 2010 can be a great source of information for the media, which can have access to the public's complaints in the zones they cover, and can carry out their own investigations to verify the complaints. Supplementing the work of the mainstream media, the platform is available to voters of all Brazilian cities, including those who do not receive a lot of space in the press, either because of distance or other factors. Journalists who are interested can register to receive alerts in their email specific to they the areas they cover.

Student News21 teams are getting their work published in national papers.  Outlets like the Washington Post and New York Times are running stories, photos and video from the students who are part of the program revitalizing journalism education at 12 universities.

Just last week, Columbia’s News21 team’s work was featured in the Washington Post.  Fellows produced “Brave Old World,” a report package on aging in America.  Their contributions ran in the Health and Science special section.

Video from North Carolina’s News21 fellows was featured on the washingtonpost.com homepage a few weeks ago. Their work “Powering a Nation:  The Truth About Energy,” was used in reporting the oil spill.

Other News21 fellows have had work published on the LA Times Photo Blog, in the Baltimore Sun, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among many others.

The News21 project is funded by the Carnegie-Knight Initiative.  In addition to improving student journalism skills, one anticipated outcome of the project is to show that journalism students can do stories at the highest levels.

Having reports published in the national presses is added motivation for these students, and allows them to develop an area of reporting expertise.  It demonstrates the quality of their work and helps them build portfolios.

Journalism schools are still pioneering new forms of news, with a role to play in shaping the future of news and information through their students and contributions in the field.

News21 launched a web-based resource center to share tools colleges and universities can use to advance the way they teach journalism.

Resources include class syllabi and materials from the 12 participating universities, as well as training sessions and guidance on encouraging innovation.

News21 is a program of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education. The initiative is an effort to improve student skills in reporting and digital media.

Student work from the program is available online, as well as an ‘Explore and Compare’ feature where visitors can view and comment on different presentation methods of the same story.

News21 entered its fifth year, and Kristin Gilger, executive editor of the national program and associate dean at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, said “we’re ready to share what we learned with other schools.”

This entry was originally posted on the Council of Foundation's blog.

What role do funders play in the future of community news and information?

It's a question the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy asked in its big national report last year, and one the Knight Foundation has been posing annually to community and place-based foundations, the local funders with the pulse of their neighborhoods and cities.

This year, more than half of the 135 foundations that responded to our survey said they were funding news and information projects - for a total of $165 million. Interestingly, more than a third said they had increased their funding in the area in last three years - and expected it to increase in the future.

Foundations also viewed this funding as a critical ingredient to effecting meaningful social change, the survey, conducted by FSG Social Impact Advisors in conjunction with the Council on Foundations, found.

The portfolio helped foundations reach their objectives in areas like health, education and economic development.

We'd heard similar perspectives from winners of the Knight Community Information Challenge, a matching grant program to encourage community and place-based foundations to invest in news and information projects.

The views of the wider field suggest that local foundations are an increasingly important component in helping communities meet their information needs.

Knight funded the Lex Mundi Foundation to create a web site that provides free legal support and resources to non-profit organizations.

Lex Mundi is dedicated to linking social entrepreneurs to pro bono legal services from law firms across the country and abroad.

If you are a social entrepreneur, or your organization is working on social innovation, we hope you take advantage of the Lex Mundi network and their new site.

Jose Zamora is a journalism program associate at Knight Foundation.

This week Webbmedia Group held a chat for journo-entrepreneurs, providing business models and use cases for journalists hoping to launch media start-ups.

Here are eight tips and a few examples of entrepreneurial journalism projects you can launch or replicate in your community. You can also find these and more tips on twitter: #kwchat.

Tip #1: Don't be a generalist. Create highly-specialized content that you're  an expert on.

Tip #2: Content producers must syndicate across platforms, but the RIGHT platforms.

Tip #3: Try to fund your new entrepreneurial jurno venture alone. Projects have launched for less than $10k.

Tip #4: You must create a business and marketing plan, regardless of how small your new venture is.

Tip #5: Find a few people whose opinions your trust to serve as advisers as you start your new venture.

Tip #6: "If you are passionate about your idea, find some people you trust and then go talk to people you don't know."

Tip #7: Remember, if you're going to record a demo of your product, make it good. Bad demos can doom great projects.

Tip# 8: Remember, most ideas fail. A vast majority of ideas fail. But, get to that point quickly.

Patch.com is an example of an entrepreneurial model that can be run with a low budget in any community.

Spot.us is another innovative model that includes crowdfunding and most recently a new sustainability model based on advertising through surveys.

Other journo-entrepreneur efforts include projects like WindyCitizen.com and its NowSpots advertising model and Front Porch Forum among other Knight Foundation grantees in this field.

If you are a journo-entrepreneur the Knight News Challenge, the Knight Community Information Challenge and J-Lab’s New Voices are great opportunities to launch your start-up to inform and engage communities.

For grant application tips and and other resources for freelance and entrepreneur journalists visit: knightchallenge.net. And to learn about Knight funded innovations that are ready for you to use, please visit Knight Apps.

Jose Zamora is a journalism program associate at Knight Foundation

How can data be used to fuel positive social change? Knight Foundation recently brought together a panel of three expert data wranglers at the 2010 Future of News and Civic Media Conference at MIT to discuss the answers. 

Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, Laurel Ruma, editor at O’Reilly Media, and Nick Grossman, director of Civic Works at OpenPlans, each gave a brief speech and answered topical questions. Although each speaker expressed different ideas about how to foster civic engagement and social change, their strategies all revolved around a similar theme: transparency. The speakers agreed that social change can be fostered by increasing the amount of quality data available and correspondence between residents and their governments. Watch to find out more.

Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Michael Vitez says that being a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan taught him storytelling skills, which he used to write a series of articles on end-of-life issues that won a Pulitzer Prize.

Knight-Wallace Fellows spend eight months living and studying in Michigan. Director Charles Eisendrath leads the group and helps them build skills to advance their careers. Some fellows find new jobs after their time at Michigan by starting new programs. At least one fellow has launched his own company: Chris Carey was a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and now runs shareslueth.com, a for-profit investigative news site about stock fraud.

The University of Michigan, Stanford University and MIT host many of Knight Foundation’s fellowships for professional journalists. Knight has endowed a Batten professorship at Davidson College, Latin American fellows as part of the the Nieman Fellowship program at Harvard University, and Knight Chairs at journalism schools throughout the country. The foundation also supports the fellowship program run by both the International Center for Journalists and the Carnegie-Knight Initiative's News21 project.

How did this story on a group of atheists putting up a billboard in Charlotte - along Billy Graham Parkway no less - end up on the front page of the Charlotte Observer?

The controversy was first publicized through a post on the Observer's new Facebook application, Insight from the Charlotte Observer, which uses technology developed through a Knight Foundation grant.  Charlotte Insight allows residents to not only comment on the news but also post original stories and blogs. The issue then became a giant local debate with full bore coverage on the Observer's front page and main website, and on local television stations.

While there are more than 400 million Facebook users worldwide, most news organizations lack the knowledge, technical capacity - and often funds - to engage them directly on one of the largest social networks in the world. Jeff Reifman and NewsCloud developed the application to help engage readers in the news. They are now working with 12 outlets to implement it.

Previously, NewsCloud used a Knight grant to test ways to engage youth in news and information through Facebook applications for a student newspaper and an environmental newsmagazine.

We caught up with Reifman at the Future of News and Civic Media conference last week, where he talked about how the application works.