Zimbabwe novelist Chengerai Hove will be calling Miami home for at least the next two years. As a guest of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Hove will give guest lectures to Miami Dade students, and also interact with the general public by attending a variety of community events. His stay was coordinated by the Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College.

This is the first time the city of Miami takes part in the International Cities of Refuge Network—an organization that provides a safe haven to writers who are persecuted in their home countries.

In Zimbabwe, Hove is ranked No. 17 on the government’s Enemies of the State list and his life has also been threatened several times.

Hove is working on a memoir examining how violence came to be such a regular part of Zimbabwe’s political system.

He is best known for his 1989 novel, Bones, which tells the story of a poor farm mother who loses her son in the Zimbabwean war of liberation.

--Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger

Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation

A new online journalism program will be launched by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and The Poynter Institute. The partnership will provide better journalism education around the world.

The initiative makes the most out of ICFJ's global reach and experience in training journalists around the world and Poynter’s e-learning experience through NewsU.

Read more here:  News University International.

Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation

The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas enrolled its 2,000th student. The center offers online training classes in Spanish, Portuguese and English. Courses range from Mathematics for Journalists, to Journalism 2.0, and Advanced Digital Tools for Investigative Reporting.

The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas is leading journalists into the digital age. The center teaches journalists the latest digital techniques, and uses the latest digital techniques to teach great journalism throughout the Americas.

To learn more about the Knight Center click here.

Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation

Knight News Challenge winner, Tony Shawcross and the staff of Denver Open Media, had a session titled "NonProfit & Your Startup" at the SWSW Interactive Festival in Austin, TX.

The main focus of the session was to discuss why they thought structuring projects as a 501(c)(3) was the best choice for anyone doing online publishing. The main reason for DOM was that a nonprofit organization is organized to achieve a purpose other than generating profit.

That is one good reason for structuring your enterprise as a nonprofit, but there are many more considerations that have to be made when deciding how to incorporate your online publishing project. The legal structure chosen will have an impact on the organization's liability for defamation and other legal claims. It will also have an impact on the organization's tax obligations, its assets and its management.

Many of today's digital journalism sites have structured their operation as a nonprofit. Examples of this are ProPublica, MinnPost.com, Voice of San Diego, St. Louis Beacon and Chi-Town Daily News.

Choosing a legal structure for your online publishing site is important. You can learn more about how to set-up the legal framework for your organization on the Creating a Business page on the Citizen Media Law Project Web site.

If you prefer one business structure over another, please tell us why and comment below.

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

This entry was originally posted on the infoneeds.org blog for the Miami seminar on Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. Find more on the site; the seminar continues until this afternoon.

Moderated by Paula Ellis, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Knight Foundation, three community foundation leaders shared their experiences.

Andrea Bazán of the Triangle Community Foundation talked about balancing history and future with community foundation strategy:

Josie Heath of the Community Foundation Serving Boulder County talked about a shared future if not a shared past:

Paula Ellis talked about the current conversations about journalism in service to history:

An audience member talked about the upcoming launch of the game Ruby's Bequest about community and donorship:

Emmett Carson of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation talked about ageism and its detrimental effects:

And all the panelists talked about where their leadership journey has taken them:

Comments or thoughts for the panelists or other attendees?

This was first posted on the event site, infoneeds.org. Find more video and previous posts there. The event continues until this afternoon.

Last night, Kati London and Kevin Slavin of the serious game development firm area/code talked about how games can change how we live in the real world.

Kevin talked about the "fundamental cognitive shift" games have produced:

He also talked about the role of games in culture in response to an audience question:

and making games social:

Katie presented three projects addressing specific information needs, including this one, called "Ant City":

And Kevin reminded everyone that games have to be fun:

What did you think about the panel?

From the infoneeds.org blog for the Information Needs event today and tomorrow in Miami, video from this afternoon's session with media experts Amy Webb, Bryan Alexander, and Richard Cardran below.

Amy Webb of Webbmedia Group was part of an afternoon panel on current trends in media.

Here she talks about why not to just go by demographics when evaluating the potential audience:

And fellow panelist Bryan Alexander on how to deal with disinformation and use media to draw the community together:

Richard Cardran, Bryan, and Amy on how to find staff to implement media strategy:

This is Amy Webb's presentation link; links from other panelists will be listed in the comments later.