The course consists of five “classes”, each with tips and commentary from editors on best practices for online newsrooms. There are also interactive activities that simulate running an online publication and respond to news events: class participants choose which staff members to send to cover a story, and learn how to adjust their workflow for breaking news.

It also features a “Case Study Showcase” of seven online news organizations’ successes and challenges. Participants can also add their own newsroom to use as an example.

The NewsU team is working on its third course, which will be on innovation in community news, and will hold two webinars this month. Check out a list of NewsU courses (.pdf), which are free for everyone who registers on the web site.

Journalists from 25 nonprofit journalism organizations formed the first-ever investigative news network at a three-day gathering at the Pocantico Conference Center this week.

Pledging collaboration on both editorial efforts and business operations, the network created a steering committee to immediately pursue funding for a grant to develop plans for shared operational resources and for collaborations on major investigative projects.

The group also issued a declaration outlining the need for the network in a time of diminishing resources for investigations by the mainstream media.

Report from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Convention, where my panel discussed business models… The most popular new models were niche advertisements, paid content, public contributions and foundation support.

The panel was moderated by Frances Robles, foreign correspondent for The Miami Herald. Among the panelists were Patricio G. Espinoza, an Emmy Award winning journalist who runs espiMedia.com; Eduardo Hauser, CEO of DailyMe.com; and Calvin Sims, Program Officer at The Ford Foundation.

Patricio Espinoza talked about niche digital media as a new business model. He caters to niche audiences in specific neighborhoods and finds local merchants who want to reach them. Bartering is also a good way to enter local advertising markets, he says. Content is vital, but so is a great sales person.

Eduardo Hauser explained the importance of knowing who is interested in the content you want to produce and figuring out who is willing to pay for it.

Calvin Sims explained that Ford Foundation is interested in projects that fill a void in reporting and have impact. As an example he talked about Ford’s efforts in supporting foreign reporting.

I explained how Knight Foundation is experimenting with different models through the journalism program and the Knight News Challenge to find out which models works best. Knight is experimenting with nonprofit models, like voiceofsandiego.com and ProPublica.Other models include niche publications, hyper-local blog aggregators and reverse publishing like EveryBlock.com, Placeblogger, Printcasting and VillageSoup.com. And there are hybrid models between journalism schools and media organizations like the New England Center for Investigative Reporting and with crowd-funding through Spot.US.

If you have a project that combines new models with news and information for specific geographic communities, please apply to the Knight News Challenge. The contest opens again Sept. 1, 2009. And if you are interested in learning more about these and other projects keep tuned to Knight Blog.

Ford and Knight Foundation partnered to support the participation of 76 journalists and students at The National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) convention.

Recognizing that the media landscape is in flux, the theme of the 27th annual NAHJ conference was: “Evolve.  Embrace. Reinvent.” And the focus was on multimedia and digital journalism.

The program was designed to help journalists acquire the multimedia and technological skills they need to keep their jobs, find new ones or grow professionally.

There were thirty-three sessions offering multimedia skills that ranged from how to Blog and use Twitter to how to Podcast, stream live video and create Mashups.

The Knight Digital Media Center held a Multimedia Bootcamp, where conference attendees could learn the basic skills needed for multimedia storytelling and get hands-on training on how to record audio, take photos and shoot videos for the Web.

David Ardia, the director of the Citizen Media Law Project, moderated a panel on online media law and ethics that focused on legal issues that might arise from the daily practice of online journalism to legal and ethical issues related to user generated content and the bloggosphere.

If you are interested in learning digital media skills and on getting hands-on training, please start by visiting:

Knight Digital Media Center

J-Lab – The Institute for Interactive Journalism

Knight Citizen News Network

Citizen Media Law Project

Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas

Scott was a Fellow for the News Entrepreneur Boot Camp, the Knight Digital Media Center’s week-long program held in May in partnership with the Online Journalism Review and the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, and Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

The boot camp taught 12 digital entrepreneurs selected by Knight such topics as developing a sustainable business plan and marketing and audience development.

The Knight Digital Media Center will hold a Multimedia Reporting and Convergence Workshop from July 12-17 at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The next boot camp for news entrepreneurs will be announced by the Knight Center when a date is set. Express interest through the center’s web site.

FUERZABRUTA is an interactive visual spectacle that packs six to eight hundred people into a dark room for an hour. Eight cast members manipulate the dynamic set pieces with their bodies and engage the audience with disposable props and pumping music. A giant treadmill and a plastic pool suspended over the heads of the audience make up most of the set. 

It’s easy to get swept up in the sensory show; audience members touch, throw, dance and move from place to place like the actors do. In a recent performance, one audience member got carried away and was kicked out for repeatedly punching the plastic pool.

The show has been touring for three years, debuting in Argentina and traveling across the U.S. as well as to countries like the U.K., Brazil and Mexico. One cast member noted contrasting energies between audiences in New York and in Miami. Another performer said that in Argentina the show is considered more a theatre piece than a work of conceptual art. Apparently the experience changes from city to city and from night to night, but everyone agrees the real party happens on the weekends.

Printcasting lets people become their own publishers by creating a way to package stories and generate advertising revenue. Anyone can create a “printcast” about their interests or community.

Printcasting will be beta tested with the MediaNews Group, which owns 54 daily newspapers.

Pacheco, a 2008 Knight News Challenge winner, is currently expanding his project to such cities as Denver and Los Angeles.

Knight Foundation awarded the Bakersfield Californian a Knight News Challenge grant to develop Printcasting, which ties online content to publication templates.

Printcasts update themselves when the selected web sites and blogs are updated, and can be printed or sent to a mobile device. People who make printcasts can also make money from targeted ads by local businesses.

The Knight News Challenge hopes to speed adoption of digital innovations in community news.

Printcasting is one of several Knight News Challenge platforms that, once completed, will be released to everyone as open-source software.

The Web was thought to be the great leveler, but how about for people who don’t have a computer, or can’t read web site text?

In one BarCamp session on media and information in the developing world, 2007 Knight News Challenge Winner Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices said the developing world is better wired for mobile technology than it is for Internet use on computers. His smart phone works faster in Ghana than it does in the U.S.

Knight News Challenge grants have supported such programs as Mobile Media Toolkit and News on Cell Phones. Knight Foundation Director of IT George Martinez and his team are also working on universal digital access in U.S. communities.

Below, 2008 Knight News Challenge winner Jessica Mayberry of Video Volunteers explains how illiteracy contributes to the digital divide.

The video with students telling their own stories about challenges of being different (race, gender and sexual preference) was created. It’s incredibly powerful and very well done and received a national Telly Award. You’ll not be surprised to learn that I’ve cried every time I’ve seen it.

I’m proud of this project because of the vision it took to create it, the courage of our school superintendent to put it into our public schools and the tenacity and know-how of the faith leaders to see the need for it and give it legs to succeed.

Knight’s unique community of other funders, academics, journalists and new media innovators may know of organizations or projects where teaching the value of differences and diversity would be helpful, and this is a wonderful tool available to you.

“Are you looking for a great diversity training program for your business leaders? Are you searching for an inspiring diversity video and curriculum for your Youth Group or adult Sunday School Class, your high school classroom? You can now obtain, Souls of Our Students, an award winning DVD and curriculum for your congregation or business or school.

This documentary features 9 local high school students sharing heartfelt reflections on the realities of life in Charlotte, and how it feels to be ‘different’ in a community that is becoming increasingly diverse. It is being incorporated into Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools 9th grade curriculum to address issues that continually affect every high school student in our city. It is also part of the CMS Teacher Training Academy.

Beyond the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School system, the video will be offered to companies, congregations, and independent schools in Mecklenburg County and beyond to be used as part of their diversity training. The Levine Museum of the New South is incorporating this documentary into its new exhibit, “Changing Places.”

Three different facilitators’ guides are available with the Souls of Our Students DVD: a congregational guide, an independent school curriculum (sponsored by Providence Day School), and a business guide. Curricula include questions for discussion, interactive exercises and additional resources..”

“Souls of Our Students” can be ordered from the homepage of Mecklenberg Ministries; facilitators are available for groups requesting the program.

Wednesday evening brought a plenary called “Nerds, News, and Nabes” with Knight Foundation President and CEO Alberto Ibarguen, Henry Jenkins, principal investigator for M.I.T.’s Center for Future Civic Media (C4FCM), and N.Y.U. Professor Eric Klinenberg.

At Thursday morning’s plenary session, Chris Csikszenmihalyi, co-direcotr of the C4FCM, talked about bringing communities near natural gas fields the news and information they need to preserve their communities and their health, and M.I.T. grad student Ben Fry helped us visulaize data.

One example of data visualization from Martin Wattenberg was Wordle, a program that generates images based on word frequency. The more times a word appears in a given text or blog, the larger it is in the image generated. Here’s one for a press release on the KNC winners.

On Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, KNC winners and M.I.T. grad students and employees explained their digital media projects. Notable demos included Virtual Gaza, Sourcemap.org (in beta version) and a digital community storytelling effort.

Friday morning, we all voted on the best idea for collaboration among KNC winners developed over the course of the conference using Selectricity. TweetBill, a project linking constituents to one another and alerting them to bills and their representatives’ contact info, won the $3,000 first prize.

Check out live tweets from the conference at #kncmit, #knc09, and #fncm09. Other information is available on the conference’s wiki.

2009 marks the 12th year the Knight International Journalism Awards have been given to “media professionals worldwide who have taken bold steps to keep citizens informed despite great obstacles.” This year’s winners — Cao Junwu of China and Chouchou Namegabe Nabintu of the Democratic Republic of the Congo — “were selected for their ability to tell important stories that others have shied away from despite the risks.”

Read more about the award, which was presented at the Knight Foundation Conference Center at the Newseum.

The Knight Community Information Challenge helps U.S. communities meet their information needs by offering matching grants to community foundations to fund news and information projects.  If you’re a community foundation, or someone looking to start a news and information project, you may be eligible for funding through the challenge. Applications will be accepted beginning Aug. 10. Find out more at informationneeds.org.

“It was a great honor, but I have to say at 44 years old, I thought I was still young,” said Adele in an e-mail. “Seems in the Coast Young Professional’s eyes, I am older than I thought. Yet, wiser. Seriously, it was nice to be recognized.” (Photo courtesy of Coast Young Professionals.)

You can read the press release, great coverage from Nieman Lab, and follow the tweets on hashtags #knc09, #fncm09, #kncmit (all of them are aggregated in this CoverItLive that Greg Linch posted on his personal site.

The audience was encouraged to adapt music performance so that indeed the art form does not die, but instead persists in a digital medium enhanced by greater communal accessibility. Find his speech here.