Knight Foundation
Knights News Challenge Winners

Knights News Challenge Winners

The Networked Journalism NYC Community Resource Guide

Primary Contact Name

Ms. Duffie Cohen

Describe your project

Even in the digital age, red tape threatens to strangle the free flow of information. The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism wants to help New Yorkers cut through that bureaucratic tangle with the click of the mouse. We are proposing the Networked Journalism NYC Community Resource Guide, an on-line tool that would help journalists – professional and otherwise – more easily navigate a vast, labyrinthine bureaucracy in the search for what should be readily available public information. Our goals include:

* Creating one-click shortcuts to information on public websites, including nyc.gov, which, while valuable, does not always allow users to cut to the quick.
* Creating navigation tools that would let users to search for specific neighborhood-based information – such as by zip code or block and lot numbers.
* Making newly released documents readily available on-line – and promoting their release, lest they go ignored.
* Using public documents to create databases that could be easily integrated and searched/analyzed.
* Creating easy-to-use on-line data-analyzing programs and tools.
* Encouraging, using a wiki-inspired model, others to submit tips and web shortcuts.
* Creating a “place” where documents, such as public agency internal reports, could be sent anonymously – and be posted after guide directors confirm authenticity.
* Guiding crowdsourced networked journalism projects that would draw upon public documents and combine the ideas and legwork of professional and citizen journalists.
* Teaching citizen journalists how to file Freedom of Information requests, and offering legal support and journalistic guidance.
* Eventually expanding this project from city to city, state to state and ultimately to the federal level. The CUNY J-School firmly believes public information is public power, and that such a project would further the goals of creating more gatherers – and consumers – of local news. We also believe this project would eventually sustain itself through support from news organizations, public interest groups, advertisers.

Primary Contact Email

Duffie.Cohen@mail.cuny.edu

Organization or Business Name

The City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism

Who would want to use it and why?

The guide will prove a valuable resource to professional and citizen journalists, speeding the flow and analysis of public information, and allowing reporters to cut through numbers and bureaucratese to see how government affects lives. It also would prove of great use to citizens who want answers to seemingly simple questions: What are the latest test scores at my child’s schools? Where are my tax dollars going? What are the latest crime statistics for my neighborhood?, etc. In addition, the guide would be helpful to academic researchers in multiple areas of study – health, poverty, crime, public safety, education, etc – as they assemble comprehensive reports.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

The City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism is in a strong position to develop this project. The J-School has multiple resources – stellar facilities, faculty, and students as well as the New York institutional know-how – to help get this project running. Our full-time and adjunct faculty is comprised of seasoned journalists, including award-winning investigative reporters from such publications as the New York Times and Newsday. The J-School also has a comprehensive newsroom research facility staffed by two research professionals, and counts research and legal professionals from top news organizations among its adjunct faculty. All students are required to take the Research Methods course, in which they are taught how to find – and evaluate – information from a myriad of sources. As the only publicly supported graduate-level journalism school in the city – indeed, in the Northeast – the J-School has an additional mission of serving the 8 million people of the city through its reportage. The J-School is home to the innovative NYCity News Service, a multi-media, Web-based wire service, that focuses its coverage on the city’s many neighborhoods. Student work, in many media, is made available to media outlets – ranging from community newspapers to major publications – through the News Service, which is run by Jere Hester, former City Editor of the New York Daily News. Hailed by Crain’s New York Business as “leading the charge” in the development of a digital curriculum, the J-School also is home to the New Media Program, headed by Professor Jeff Jarvis, author of the influential Buzzmachine.com blog. The J-School’s dynamic and diverse students are being trained in digital storytelling while undergoing rigorous instruction in traditional hard-hitting urban reporting – all skills that would be valuable in assembling this guide.

U.S. State

NY

Country

United States

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

The best-case scenario is that The Networked Journalism NYC Community Resource Guide becomes the professional/citizen community journalism equivalent to Google: The place to quickly find the place to get answers. Imagine: a one-stop shopping site for local public information, organized and searchable in ways of use to journalists of all types and the general public. In addition to being a “go to” resource, The Guide will become just as much a “send to” site where government documents – public and internal – will be forwarded along with shortcuts and tools. The Guide will be come a fixture where consumers of media will be able to go deep into data, via links in stories, and produce new leads and journalism of their own.

The Guide eventually would be sustained via:

* Advertising: Local users will be drawn to the site by the resources offered and by journalism produced with The Guide. Advertisers will be drawn by the ever-growing audience.
* Media: News organizations – of all sizes and media – will recognize the value of having such resources readily available to their journalists, giving them an interest in supporting The Guide. The more farsighted news organizations also will recognize that actively engaging the public will generate more consumers of media and, ultimately, a greater demand for quality local journalism.
* Grants: Foundations with an interest in promoting the public good will be natural supporters.

The Guide will foster media cooperation on all levels as it grows, particularly in terms of networked journalism projects. The Guide also will foster competition in the race to break news. The net result will be an increase in investigative local news. This will help feed the 24-hour news cycle with a steady diet of meaningful reportage, and help focus the local debate –from radio stations to blogs to chat rooms to TV news gabfests – on issues of direct importance to New Yorkers. After proving a success in New York, the concept will be extended to other cities, states, etc. and add to the work being done on the federal level.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

The proof of success will be in the quality of the journalism we can demonstrate was produced directly with the help of The Guide – and any changes/results in public policy, etc., that the work brings about. In keeping with the open nature of the site, we will ask citizen and professional journalists to send any links to stories where The Guide and its tools were used. The staff also will keep track of such stories. In addition, we will encourage journalists to discuss – on the site, and in other forums, such as conferences – their methods, what they learned from their efforts and what new documents/search shortcuts, etc, they uncovered. We also will link to any followup stories – and/or assign follow-ups of our own through the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism’s innovative NYCity News Service, a web-based news service that feed professional-level student-generated community journalism to local media outlets. We also expect to expand the News Service’s partnership with community news outlets to seek their advice and help tailor The Guide to their needs – giving us direct feedback as they use The Guide as a resource to break news. Other signs and measurements of success: •When the public takes an active role in the site, contributing search shortcuts, and unearthing documents that otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to journalistic sunlight. •We will use Google Analytics and/or craft our own program to gauge which tools are being used, how often, etc. This information could be employed to tailor our efforts/concentrate on certain areas. •When city government starts (a.) adopting our methods into its own sites; (b.) seeking our help in organizing information; and/or (c.) trying to make sensitive information harder to find.

Web site

http://www.journalism.cuny.edu

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$400000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

While public information is seemingly more readily available than ever in New York City, via the Internet, there are few places where one can find a direct path to data of use to journalists and the general public. The government’s organizing principals in setting up information often do not echo the needs of the public, and certainly not those of journalists. With so much information going online, there’s a need to ensure that data is not carelessly – or purposefully – obscured. The Guide will strive to make it easier for citizen and professional journalists to work by putting information at their fingertips in a user-friendly format. There’s a thirst for quick paths to information, on many levels. Given the increasingly instant nature of news distribution, stories need to be turned around quicker. Yet we are operating in a new era where many news organizations have less time and resources to do extensive investigative reporting or even give daily reportage the depth and context it needs and deserves. We also are witnessing the advent of citizen journalism, which brings new energy, and, in many cases, expertise to newsgathering projects. But some no doubt will grow frustrated by time limitations and constant slamming into bureaucratic walls. Journalism needs quicker and easier access to public records to produce fresh, hard-hitting, meaningful stories to stem the flow of context-lacking top-down reporting. One great thing about the Web is there is a way to instantly go to the record and keep public servants honest. Writ large, easier access to, and navigation of public records will make people feel as if they are part of the process – by making them part of the process. Much like government, journalism should be a “we” – not an “us v. them.” The Guide could meet an important need by fostering more journalistic involvement on all levels – which would spur more civic activity and heighten a sense of community.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$500000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

The opportunity lies within the walls of the CUNY J-School, bursting with journalistically experienced faculty, a dedication to technology and innovation, eager young reporters and a mission to serve New York City through reportage. Our eyes and ears are our students who are each charged with covering one of the city’s 59 Community Districts. We see the roadblocks they are running into while gathering information – giving us a daily dose of ideas to tailor The Guide for local and citywide reporting. Our faculty and adjuncts have decades of experience working in New York, vast institutional knowledge and urban/government reporting know-how from years at The New York Times, Newsday and the Daily News, among other local outlets. Students contribute to the innovative NYCity News Service (www.nycitynewsservice.com), a multi-media wire service that feeds community news stories to local outlets. The News Service is run by former Daily News City Editor Jere Hester. The J-School also offers an Urban Affairs concentration, which gives students an even more in-depth experience. Research is key at the J-School: Two full-time professionals staff our Research Center. Each student is required to take the Research Methods course – a training ground to find information that will drive stories. In addition, the J-School is tapped into the citizen journalism movement. Professor Jeff Jarvis – Interactive program director and author of the influential buzzmachine.com blog – brought together the worlds of professional and citizen journalism to the J-School for October’s successful Networked Journalism Summit. Faculty members bring varied experiences, but all are dedicated journalists and educators. We think like journalists, not like bureaucrats who sometimes try to hide information – or, at best, have different organizing principals. We train our students never to take no for an answer in dealings with public servants and would bring the same principal to the pursuit of public records as we create The Guide.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

2years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

The word will spread – quickly – via:

* The J-School’s faculty and adjuncts, who have deep ties to both the established and new media communities in New York and beyond, as well as to the growing citizen journalism movement.
* The J-School’s NYCity News Service, which has forged relationships with local news media outlets – print and online, alike – throughout the city. The News Service supplies many of these outlets with stories of local interest. The Guide would be of great interest and use to such outlets. The Guide would have a prominent link on the NYCity News Service site (www.nycitynewsservice.com) as well as on the J-School’s main site (www.journalism.cuny.edu). The News Service, hopefully, will break one or more major stories using The Guide. Then, in the cause of transparency (and promotion) – publish on-line the story-behind-the-story, explaining how and where the information was found.
* An aggressive email and public relations campaign with goals of getting the word out in media stories, on blogs, etc. Prof. Jarvis’ widely read – and widely linked to – www.buzzmachine.com would be a natural spot for a mention of The Guide.
* A launch event at the J-School in the form of a conference that would bring together journalists of all kinds.
* Our students, past and present. By the time The Guide is up and running, the J-School will have graduated at least one class of students trained in new media. They will be our best ambassadors, giving us a great opportunity to spread the word through all levels of media.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism is committed to this project and has pledged to provide $100,000 in in-kind resources. We are seeking Knight's support/partnership to get this innovative project off the ground, and will strive to add other funders to build and sustain The Guide as we go forward. We fully expect we eventually will generate advertising revenue as well as support from other grantors and from media organizations that will realize it’s in the interest of their businesses to keep this resource going strong.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

We have no formal partners for this project at this moment. But we plan to informally call upon our many contacts at all levels of journalism for ideas, guidance and details on their own information-gathering experiences as we assemble The Guide. In a grander sense, anyone who contributes documents, shortcuts, punches in data, creates search tools, etc., will be working with us toward completing a venture that surely will have a very long life.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

The Sunlight Foundation and its grantees are doing some great work in this area, generating Congresspedia.org, OpenSecrets.org and FollowTheMoney.org, among other extremely useful sites. We certainly will find inspiration, tools – and vital links – through the Sunshine Foundation’s “Insanely Useful Web Sites” as we go forward in creating The Guide. The wiki formats, the displays of reporting, the networked journalism projects and the professional oversight employed by the Sunlight Foundation also would be hallmarks of The Guide. While the Sunlight Foundation’s tools can be localized – how your representative voted on a bill, campaign contribution records, etc – just about all the information stems from federal records. We plan to carve our niche in focusing very locally on New York City and its many neighborhoods. We also come at this project as journalists first, and not necessarily as an advocacy group. We plan to use the Sunlight Foundation’s work in many respects as a model – and hope in turn to create a model of our own that can be used by journalists of all types in municipalities, counties, states, etc. We will ultimately strive, to add to, on the federal level, the ongoing work being done by the Sunlight Foundation and its grantees.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

We can guarantee that The Guide will become widely used as a journalistic tool in New York City by professionals and citizen reporters alike. We have no doubt that given our faculty’s deep industry ties, our active student body, the thirst for such a resource and the fast flow of news in this this brave new media world that the word will spread quickly. We can guarantee that users will feel more empowered – and less frustrated – as they search for public information. And we fully expect that users will contribute back in the form of new shortcuts, and by posting important documents that otherwise probably would have gone unnoticed. We guarantee that The Guide will help journalists to do more in less time – increasing quality local journalism at a time when many segments of the industry are in downsizing mode. We can guarantee that those who use The Guide will give seemingly ordinary urban affairs stories more depth – and those who use The Guide for longer-term investigative projects will produce richer work. We can guarantee that anyone – professional journalist, citizen journalist, general member of the public – who has a hard time finding public information online through government sites or phone line will find a clearer path via The Guide. And if anyone ever tells us they can’t find a piece of pertinent public information, we guarantee we won’t rest until we track it down – and share our shortcut online.

Citizen investigation

Primary Contact Name

Paul Bradshaw

Describe your project

Citizens identify the stories they want investigating, vote on a winner, then pursue the story with editorial support from professional journalists and community managers. Addressing the lack of investigative journalism in mainstream media, as well as issues of public engagement with the news, this project seeks to hand over the editorial agenda to the public, giving them ownership of the story and therefore motivation to pursue . A website allows users to propose a story/issue they would like investigated, while a community manager seeks out offline or otherwise disengaged members of the community for their stories. Proposals can be made in any form, but video is encouraged, and a facility will exist to upload directly from mobile phone. This will then be seeded on YouTube and other social media. A regular vote decides which story is pursued, and the project community work together to gather and analyse information through blogs, wikis, databases, and repositories of raw material such as audio, video and documents. Because 'your' story could be next (the leaderboard is public), it is hoped a wider community will contribute. A 'karma' points system will help encourage this behaviour, while alerts help keep contributors in the loop and engaged. Central to the process is the editorial support provided by professional journalists, who will work with community members to identify sources, filter information, provide journalistic training, address legal issues and assist in structuring resulting stories. This also seeks to provide the 'self-actualisation' that is often identified as a key ingredient of successful citizen operations. Examples such as the Florida News-Press's investigation of utility rates have already demonstrated how such a crowdsourcing approach can empower and engage an otherwise disinterested community, while the pet food poisoning investigation carried out by blogs this year demonstrates how important stories can be overlooked by mainstream media but taken on by a committed body of people.

Primary Contact Email

paul.bradshaw@bcu.ac.uk

Organization or Business Name

Who would want to use it and why?

Community groups and individuals, while public bodies may also seek to become involved as part of wider 'outreach' initiatives. There is scope for selling content to and/or partnering with news organisations, although the project is envisaged as a non-profit operation.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

Paul Bradshaw has worked in editorial website management and magazine editing, and has lectured in online journalism for the past six years. As leader for the degree in Web and New Media and deputy course director for the Masters in Television and Interactive Content, so is well positioned to explore the possibilities of technology with students and industry. For the past three years Paul Bradshaw has been running the Online Journalism Blog, researching and analysing developments in new media and journalism. The blog has been described as "one of the UK's most influential journalism blogs" by UK Press Gazette; and as being "similarly insightful" to Jeff Jarvis by the Daily Telegraph, while investigative journalist Cleland Thom said: "you're one of the few people who writes about online stuff in a way that old fogeys like me can understand!" The blog has a global readership, including South America, Europe, the former Soviet Union, South Africa, Australia, and North America. It is planned that lessons learned during the project will be disseminated and discussed via the blog, while blog readers will be invited to help develop the project. Adrian Goldberg is a former BBC journalist and presenter, who currently edits The Stirrer, a news and campaigns website for Birmingham and the Black Country. He has a range of experience in investigative reporting and a deep understanding of local issues. The site currently features contributions from community figures and it is intended that this project will build on that experience, providing an infrastructure that other community media can benefit from. Nick Booth is also a former BBC journalist who left to worked in community media. He has a range of contacts in citizens' organisations and is experienced in podcast and citizen media production.

U.S. State

Country

United Kingdom

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

A significant investigation takes place that yields positive results. The processes and systems are rolled out to other areas. Organisations may shift their attitudes to disclosing information. They may grow to appreciate that disclosure is preferable to investigation - much like the citizens relationship to the Inland Revenue! It also turns the habits of investigative journalism on it head - up until now investigations have been instinctively helkd in secret - this requires them to be pursued in public allowing many more people to see the jigsaw and help provide the missing pieces.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

The number of completed investigations. The number of stories picked up by mainstream media. Growing use of the service by citizens looking for information and solutions (success breeds success) A review process before, during and after piloting will measure participants' engagement with news issues and feelings of empowerment.

Web site

http://onlinejournalismblog.com

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$200000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

Investigative journalism struggles for funding in a commercialised industry; crowdsourcing offers one way to support it, but is difficult to make work. This seeks to give users a stake and to show journalists how they can trust the audience on even the most technical aspects of their work. ON sharing the process of investigation it also harbours the potential to rebuild some public trust in journalism.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$200000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

Other crowdsourcing projects have relied on the 'build it and they will come' philosophy, or rely on top-down methods to set the editorial agenda. Another weakness is that people need to be online, or have a stake in the issues involved. This seeks to avoid those weaknesses by actively seeking out offline contributors, and using a vote/discussion system to strengthen feelings of 'having a stake'.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

2years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

The process will be covered on the Online Journalism Blog, which has a global readership across all five continents. I also write for Poynter in the US; Press Gazette and Journalism.co.uk in the UK, and Indian Online Journalism. From those it should be disseminated more widely through other bloggers, academics and journalists. The project should also attract some research coverage.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

No.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

Adrian Goldberg (details above) would provide the pilot website for the project. The Stirrer already pursues investigations outside of commercial operation; Adrian would provide experiences and contacts and a guiding hand in pursuing investigations. He would also be involved in producing some of the material to be included. Nick Booth (details above) would be involved in conceptualising the project and liaising with community organisations. He would also be involved in producing some of the material to be included.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

Jeff Howe is doing a lot of work with crowdsourcing; Jay Rosen is attempting journalistic projects using those concepts. This would attempt similar ideas in a UK context, while the bottom-up approach differs from that of Rosen.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

A pilot investigation suggested by, voted for, and pursued by members of the public and The Stirrer, with ongoing reports and analysis via the Online Journalism Blog.

A Sunlight Foundation Proposal for Providing Locally Customized Political Information

Primary Contact Name

Ms. Ellen Miller

Describe your project

Since our founding in 2006, the Sunlight Foundation has assembled and funded an array of databases and Web-based software tools to illuminate the interplay of money, lobbying, influence and government in Washington to a degree never before possible. We are now working on a new set of related applications we call Sunlight Media Services (SMS) to demonstrate how such congressional transparency data affects citizens and their congressional districts on the local level. SMS is an attempt to implement Tip O'Neill's famous aphorism that "all politics is local." Accordingly, SMS will offer to the mainstream media a complete package of information about the components of congressional politics germane to the communities they serve. Designed to be integrated into online, print and broadcast mainstream media news coverage, SMS will be a Web hosted, regionally customizable, ready-to-use array of political news and government information content compiled from all the data and tools developed by Sunlight and a consortium of its grantees. SMS can, thus, provide access to a robust array of graphical, interactive sources of information about local senators and representatives, their major contributors, those who lobby them, their earmarks and other legislative activities - whatever is most desired by the readership. SMS can also serve as a research tool for journalists to localize their presentation of national stories by plugging a draft article into a Web form which suggests relevant tags, graphics and additional lines of inquiry, and which could also automatically produce a sidebar of relevant data tied to keywords in their draft article. Because SMS will vastly enhance the capacity of traditional news media to provide coverage of the local area’s members of Congress, it should dramatically increase and improve the flow of continuously updated information so that communities can see how they and their representatives and senators and locally important issues are affected by lobbyists, major political donors and other influencers in their

Primary Contact Email

emiller@sunlightfoundation.com

Organization or Business Name

Sunlight Foundation

Who would want to use it and why?

The number of people who go online as their first source of political news and information is 60 million and growing, according to a January 2007 survey by the Pew Internet Center. However, few readers and reporters have the time or expertise to visit multiple sites to research what influences their politicians or to discover interlocking interests lobbying on an issue in the news. Increasingly, some in mainstream media (newspapers in particular, but also local TV and radio sites) and bloggers use the work of Sunlight and its grantees daily. SMS is a solution to the problem that it may be years before mainstream media sites invest in building up their own online infrastructures to deliver this kind of contextually relevant information.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

Better data-driven storytelling by journalists and wider distribution of congressional disclosure information has always been core to the Sunlight Foundation vision. Sunlight’s facilitation of databases of political information and the development of technologies to apply to them has freed billions of bytes of important data from their basements, paper or other non-digitized formats and even from digital silos. We are unique in this core work. Publication of the fact of Sunlight's progress in these efforts has created an unprecedented demand for more: more information, more transparency, and more easy-to-use tools. The now-online datasets we have made available now have downloads in the millions per month. To wit, since its launch in October 2006, FedSpending.org, a Sunlight-sponsored searchable database of federal contracts created by OMB Watch, has had more than 6 million cumulative searches. As we head further into our second full year, Sunlight intends to pursue several inter-related projects to further push the envelope. On a typical day, Sunlight’s array of initiatives to get members of Congress to be more transparent about how they spend their time every day is cited – from tech blogs extolling Sunlight’s mashup contest entries, to mainstream and inside-the-Beltway coverage of our review of how Congress can make better use of the Web to our analysis of earmarks from academic, conservative and nonpolitical points of view. Sunlight's information, and tools developed by Sunlight Labs and Sunlight grantees, are recognized as reputable source information by major media including The Associated Press, The Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, ABC, NPR, Bill Moyers Journal, as well as high profile political news blogs such as Daily Kos and TPMmuckraker.com. Sunlight's "Pop-up Politicians," a tool which surfaces aggregated data on members of Congress on Web sites, even received laudatory praise from premier technology news blog, Tech Crunch.

U.S. State

DC

Country

United States

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

The very big thing that Sunlight Media Services may help bring about, if all the stars align, would be a reinvigorated civic culture and a restoration of public confidence in our democratic institutions. Public approval of Congress, the President and the media are at historically low levels; public cynicism and disdain for government and the press have never been higher. By providing online readers with timely, accurate and accessible information on government, Sunlight Media Services would lead to a healthier public debate about the performance of our elected officials, one based on facts rather than slogans. Journalists who use the service’s multiple streams of data will be able to write better, more thoroughly researched stories, without having to leave their desks. Readers will be able to access that same information, finding out for themselves what is going on in Capitol Hill, and seeing how it affects them and their communities. And elected officials and their challengers will be able to run on a robustly documented and displayed public record, easily accessed by all citizens—whether the news organization that hosts it is The New York Times or the Smyth County News & Messenger. In that sense, Sunlight Media Services will be more than just a means for writing “gotcha” stories. Combining localized data on government spending, lobbying and campaign finance with information on legislation and votes would give citizens a vastly enriched baseline of information for evaluating their elected officials. Sunlight Media Services will provide a matrix of political information that will allow informed citizens and journalists to better understand and judge the actions of their elected officials.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

Obviously the key for us is to get this information before as many eyes as possible. We’ll closely monitor a number of metrics, including the number of media and other sites that carry Sunlight Media Services, the number of hits and unique visitors the data receives, the number of blog posts that link to it and the news stories written that rely on it. We’ll also look for evidence that readers are finding the information valuable, and signs that readers of media using SMS are better informed about politics as a result. As important as these measures are for quantifying the reach of Sunlight Media Services, we believe its true impact will come in ways we don’t as yet anticipate. When a community group uses data from Sunlight Media Services to make their argument in a petition or court filing, when an independent Web developer notices a pattern in campaign contributions from agricultural and banking interests to a particular lawmaker and publishes an interactive tool that lets anyone check their own congressional representatives for the same pattern, when individuals and groups spring up like mushrooms finding things in the data and using it in new ways (that will make us wonder why we hadn’t thought of them first), then we’ll know that the project has really made a difference.

Web site

http://www.sunlightfoundation.com

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$625000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

At a time when media organizations are struggling to find the resources to cover the news, Sunlight Media Services will provide a comprehensive and cost effective tool for covering Congress and the federal government. Reporters who no longer have the time to follow the money by wading through hundreds of pages of paper records looking for the sponsors of congressional travel or investments on financial disclosures and then match them with line items buried in appropriations committee reports will have all of that information—and more—at their fingertips. A few clicks of the mouse will replace the countless hours once required to mine federal data. And because that data will also be available to the news organization’s readers, displayed using customized graphics, visualizations and in other reader-friendly formats, Sunlight Media Services will serve as a model and catalyst for helping publishers, editors and reporters develop new formats for journalism. A few numbers, referenced in isolation in a story, do not always provide readers with sufficient context. Is the $70,000 given by employees of a special interest to the campaign of a member of Congress over the course of a dozen years a lot of money? Was a representative’s vote for a telecom tax break an anomaly or part of a pattern? Sunlight Media Services will be able to provide at-a-glance context for that kind of information. The news won’t always be a story or a photo or a video clip: sometimes a tag cloud or an interactive timeline better engages a reader. Sunlight Media Services will help media organizations discover and develop new methods of presenting information, a critical need in the future development of journalism.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$625000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

Since its inception, the Sunlight Foundation has made two of its core goals digitizing federal data, whether it be spending through contracts, grants and social safety net programs, financial disclosure information from members of Congress, legislative votes or earmarks, and then making those data sets compatible with one another—that is, moving them out of their silos. While there are multiple organizations that provide individual data sets, no organization has devoted as much time or energy into developing the infrastructure necessary to combine this information. Sunlight has a consortium of grantees (see list below) ready to contribute their own data to this effort, all of whom are following or adopting our technical standards for making their data compatible with the application programming interfaces that will make Sunlight Media Services possible. And Sunlight has the expertise to combine these data sets in a way that allows them to tell meaningful stories—taken together, these streams of information give any citizen with access to the Internet the ability to know as much about what’s really happening in Washington as a seasoned insider.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

2years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

Because Sunlight Media Services is not a destination on the Web but rather an element that will be hosted on already prominent media sites, getting word out to the general public will be relatively easy. In order to make media organizations aware of and eager to adopt the service, we will embark on a three-pronged strategy. We will begin by building a constituency for Sunlight Media Services among working journalists by launching an ambitious effort to train reporters across the country on the service and its underlying databases. The training would familiarize them with the wealth of information available through the Journalist’s Desk, a tool designed to enhance the content of written political or government news stories with additional, relevant data from Sunlight Media Services. We will conduct one-on-one training, training for groups of reporters and editors in newsrooms, starting with about two-dozen leading Washington bureaus and at journalism conferences like Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Institute of Computer Assisted Reporting. We will host regular classes at the National Press Club as well. Second, we will work with organizations like the Associated Press Managing Editors, which advocates best practices to daily and weekly newspaper editors at more than 4,000 papers, the Online News Association, the Radio and Television News Directors Association and the National Press Club Foundation to advocate adoption of Sunlight Media Services as a “best practice” for media Web sites. Finally, by reaching out to independent media, including bloggers and nonprofit organizations, through online “Webinars,” screencasts and interactive online training curricula, we will rely on the viral nature of the Web to draw public attention to Sunlight Media Services.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

In the early stages of development, Sunlight committed significant resources to the core development of this project. This included making grants to organizations like the Center for Responsive Politics and OMB Watch to digitize federal data, as well as developing the internal capacity (by creating and staffing Sunlight Labs) to undertake such a project. Since that time, the Pew Charitable Trusts has expressed some interest in the project, and is considering making, for each of two years, $150,000 investments in Sunlight Media Services.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

We have a consortium of grantees who will supply a good deal of the data. For the initial prototype of Sunlight Media Services (being developed for the site MinnPost.com, the nonprofit journalism enterprise, which has agreed to serve as a proving ground for the concept), Sunlight will work with three primary groups. The Center for Responsive Politics, the venerable transparency group that tracks campaign finance and political influence, will supply information on donations from individuals and PACs, lobbyists, congressional travel and conflicts-of-interest data. OMB Watch, creators of FedSpending.org, will provide data on all federal spending, including contracts to individual companies and grants to individuals and organizations. Taxpayers for Common Sense, the premier resource for information on congressionally directed spending, will provide earmark data. As we expand the array of data available through Sunlight Media Services, we will work draw data from sites like GovTrack.us and others, many of which we feature on our “Insanely Useful Web sites” page online at http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/resources. We will leverage their work to bring greater utility and prominence to their work by integrating their data.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

While we are aware of a number of groups (including members of our consortium) who digitize government data, no one else is currently working to aggregate and integrate the data in a distributed system that can be accessed at multiple points, in the way that Sunlight Media Services envisions. The Sunlight Foundation has already catalyzed an exponential increase in the amount of digital political information—all freely available to the public—and will integrate it and distribute it inexpensively. While some for-profit groups (CQ’s PoliticalMoneyline) offer for purchase some of this data, they do not have plans to make it as widely available as Sunlight Media Services.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

Sunlight Media Services will be a permanently available research resource created and used by our organization, our partner organizations, other organizations with an interest in transparency, good government, and specific policy outcomes, and the general public. It will give a huge boost to the journalism community by providing a treasure trove of resources and data that will change the way reporters research and write about government, and the way editors assign and evaluate stories. By saving innumerable person-hours once spent in dimly lit basements of federal office buildings or in front of computers downloading and building databases for local coverage, it will greatly ameliorate the budgetary hurdles news organizations have when they want to provide substantive coverage of Congress. It will raise the bar of expectations the public has of media organizations in reporting on the federal government while lowering the bar for journalists to meet those expectations—regardless of how large or small the organization might be. By providing both localized information and access to national data, it will enhance reporters’ ability to provide relevant and contextualized information to their readers. And it will point to the remaining gaps in our knowledge about the actions of Congress and government, inducing citizens, organizations and even members of Congress to embrace transparency and further open the workings of government to the oversight of an informed citizenry.

Chinese-language platform for community journalism

Primary Contact Name

Ms. Oiwan Lam

Describe your project

To transform Hong Kong's most influential Chinese-language citizen media website, inmediahk.net, into an engaged citizen reporter community with a hyperlocal environment and a full range of social networking tools so that users can collaborate on their citizen reports through a virtual and interactive newsroom. We expect the model will be promoted to other Chinese virtual communities, especially in Mainland China and Taiwan. Evaluations of the successes and failures of some prominent citizen websites (such as Backfence and newassignment.net) suggest that Web 2.0 social networking applications (like those provided in sites like Facebook, etc.) are crucial for building a hyperlocal conversation environment and sustaining an engaged-citizen community. Based on our own experience as well as observing other projects, we believe it is difficult to sustain volunteer involvement in citizen reporting and civic action without providing opportunities for participants to network and communicate with one another - both online as well as offline. Since inmediahk.net was launched in 2004, our networking and community-building features have not been well-developed. The project seeks to combine a citizen media content management system (CMS) with hyper-local interaction and social networking or “friending” tools, so that members of the community can go beyond individual reporting, to active social networking for collaborative reporting as well as facilitating dialogue with a wider internet community (including other media sites and blogs). As our website is in Chinese, the new model, once built, can be adapted to other Chinese communities easily. We already have strong connections with bloggers, wikimedians, and other citizen media communities in mainland China and Taiwan. We intend to take an active role to promote this citizen reporter community model to local NGOs and other Chinese communities via blogger conferences and international independent media networks.

Primary Contact Email

owlam@yahoo.com

Organization or Business Name

Who would want to use it and why?

The first group of users would be the 800 citizen reporters and 5,000 registered users in inmediahk.net. In the past three years, our membership has been growing and the website has become more influential with its engaged reports. However, its Web 2.0 features are limited, users cannot form sub-groups for collective reporting and discussion is not well-linked with the larger Chinese-language blogging and BBS community. A new platform can not only help users to form social network and ac hoc groups for collaborative reporting, micro contribution on news and information but also help to bring in ideas and discussions from other sources and create a diverse and open conversational environment. Upon experimenting with the new model, we would promote it to local NGOs and citizen groups in Taiwan and China.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

I am applying on behalf of a team which includes the executive members of Hong Kong In-Media and editorial members of inmediahk.net. The former is a local non-profit organization promoting independent and citizen media, well connected with local academic and civic circles. The latter, supported by Hong Kong In-Media, has become a most vibrant local citizen journalist site in Hong Kong and Chinese speaking world within three years. Its citizen reporting has inspired a number of new citizen media websites/initiatives within the greater Chinese community. Moreover, our engaged citizen reporters have actively combined citizen networks with civic action, which together with their reports, have prominent effects in formulating local social agenda and policy reform (such as policies on historical and cultural preservation). The idea in this proposal has been approved by both organizations as a most important undertaking in the coming two to three years and the organizations will mobilize resources to support the web development. Our technical support would come from computer science students and graduates from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and consultants from Taiwan and Mainland China, who are familiar with CMS (such as drupal and wordpress), mash-up applications, etc. In the past three years, we have developed strong networks within Chinese virtual communities (such as Social Brain Foundation in Mainland China, blogger communities as well as independent media groups in Taiwan and Malaysia). Such network will help us to promote the newly developed tool. Moreover with the help from globalvoicesonline.org, the new model and its generated content can be promoted to a greater global audience. As for myself, I am a founding member of Hong Kong In-Media and its present chairperson. I am also a member of the editorial in inmediahk.net and the Northeast Asia editor of globalvoicesonline. I have experience working in mainstream journalism, Asia based non-governmental organization and have studied and worked in Taiwan and Mainland China.

U.S. State

Country

China

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

We will start the process by bringing a community of citizen journalism leaders (active citizen journalists and programmers) in the Chinese speaking world to a workshop for discussing and working out a concrete plan for the new Chinese citizen media platform. The workshop team, acting as consultants, would test on the platform and give feedback to the programmers for developing the Chinese platform, to be implemented in inmediahk.net. This process would help to bring together a community of practitioners in Chinese citizen journalism and hopeful would become a network for promoting grassroots journalism practices and new tools in the Chinese speaking world. Moreover, inmediahk.net will serve as a show case for this collaborative and interactive citizen reporting tool. As Hong Kong In-Media will be developing its own NGO ISP service in Hong Kong this year, we will actively promote the new platform to local NGOs (such as labour unions, youth and student groups as well as woman organizations). Local universities, especially journalism departments would also be our potential targets for disseminating the new tools. We also expect our technical consultants from Taiwan to help upgrade the Taiwan NGOs and new media circle with this tool. We will also demonstrate and promote the Chinese platform via public functions such as Chinese blogger and new media conference and persuade citizen media with similar nature to share their data base for setting up a greater Chinese citizen media network. The promotion of the tool would also serve as advocacy for citizen journalism practice as a form of participatory and deliberative democracy. We would open our source code and set up a website (in English) to encourage the adaptation of the tool to other languages.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

The initial evaluation would come from our own website: inmediahk.net. Apart from traffic flow and growth rate of users, we would consult with our users through online questionnaires about the structure, interactive setting, friendliness, design, and etc. of the new interface. We would also organize face-to-face focus group meetings with our citizen reporters to get their feedbacks on the new platform. A consultation body composed of bloggers, internet entrepreneurs, programmers, media activists and professors from journalism and new media department would be formed at the very initial stage through a practical workshop to oversee the process and give regular suggestions on the project. As for the greater Chinese community, we would try to find out how many NGOs, websites have adapted the platform. And how many citizen media websites agree to share their data and form a citizen media network.

Web site

http://www.inmediahk.net

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$128000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

Professional journalism is usually individual endeavor. For citizen journalism, as most of them are amateurs and engaged in journalistic work in leisure time, collaboration would help them to do more in-depth journalistic work. Friendship within the circle would also help them to continue their work. However, most of the citizen media CMS, do not provide a good platform for interaction among individuals and formation of ac hoc group for a specific topic. A virtual newsroom among citizen reporters where people can meet, inform and work with each other on journalistic topics will help to develop a stronger and sustainable citizen reporters community for socially engaged reports. As there is already a long list of new media tools in the Internet, we need a platform that allows us to embed their resources for realizing a multi-media citizen journalistic practice. We also need a platform that can accommodate more micro contribution of news and information (for example via twitter). In Chinese speaking world, most of the citizen media initiatives are either individual effort or support by local grassroots NGOs. Most of them lack resources for adapting and localizing CMS or mashing up with other new media tools. If we manage to develop a Chinese platform, with flexibility for citizen media websites to adapt, it can help their works. Moreover, the development and promotion process can facilitate a network among leaders and practitioners of Chinese citizen media for other potential collaborations, such as data sharing and cross border citizen reporting.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$220000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

Firstly, in recent years, among the Chinese speaking world: Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and Mainland, citizen journalism has become a growing force to engage with social issues and policies. It has created a new space for social actor to realize participatory and deliberative democracy and expand the public sphere. In the recent 2007 Chinese blogger conference, grassroots journalism is a main topic. However, at present, much of the efforts are individual based. And among the citizen media organizers and practitioners in different Chinese speaking world, there are very few opportunities to share their experience. As a Hong Kong based organization, we are well connected with grassroots media organizations in China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia; and because of the “One Country Two System” we enjoy relatively more freedom in advocacy works when compared with our mainland counterpart. Such geographical and political position allows us to be a hub in connecting with the Chinese grassroots media organizations on new project, collaboration and regional advocacy. Secondly, with the development of internet multimedia tools like youtube, twitters, podcast, etc. citizen media have far more potentials than the past. However, for most of the existing citizen media initiatives, the platforms are usually orientated towards a single media. Influential sites such as coolloud.org.tw (in Taiwan), my1510.com (in Mainland China), min-jian.com (in China) and inmediahk.net (in Hong Kong) are all focused on written reports. Their strength come from their concern on social transformation, but they are usually fallen behind in technological upgrade for delivering their idea when compared with individual bloggers. With our concrete experience in citizen media work (for three years), our awareness of the needs of the Chinese citizen media community and our existing network with citizen media practitioners across different Chinese communities, our project has the potential of developing into a R&D section for the future development of Chinese citizen media.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

2years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

As our working team is consisted of members from Taiwan and Hong Kong, they have their own network for spreading the details of the new platform. Our consultants will also help to promote the project via their blogs, conference, teaching, etc. Moreover, our organization connection with websites and organizations such as coolloud.org.tw (from Taiwan), social brain foundation (from China) and globalvoicesonline.org would help us to spread words among bloggers, netizens and new media practitioners. If we get the newschallenge award, it would become a big event among the Chinese citizen media and blogger communities, and most probably it would catch the mainstream media attention. In the past few years, there are critiques about mainstream media’s practice, such as self-censorship and commercialization in different Chinese communities and citizen media has emerged as an alternative practice, the new citizen force hasn’t been formally recognized as a significant sector of the civil society among the mainstream general public. The award will be regarded as recognition and a vote of confidence on the development of grassroots journalism in the Chinese world. And the news will generate a lot of resonance and support from Chinese netizens and civil societies.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

We have just bought in a new server for hosting our various websites this month (Nov 2007). Pretty soon, we will start to do web-hosting and provide some technical support for local NGOs, grassroots organizations and individuals. The business is to sustain ourselves financially and help local NGOs and grassroots organizations to develop their own media. Our technical set up and our supporting staff and volunteers would also give back up to this project. At present, (although we haven’t announced our plan yet), two groups have approached us for consultation and technical back up for their website. One is a woman organization (Association for the Advancement of Feminisms) they have a local woman resource website: womenresources.org; another group is formed by professional reporters from Macau, they want to build up a new media website by adopting inmediahk.net organizing model. Once we have the new Chinese platform ready, we would actively promote it to local NGOs circle. We will announce our plan in December and start a public fundraising. This Chinese community media platform project would be a significant part of our citizen media R&D.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

We have discussed the projects with a number of individuals, organizations and websites. Below is a confirmed list of our working partners: Individuals: Chang Yu-chang (TM): a Taiwan blogger, consultant for esouth.org: he would be a major consultant for this project and give advice on multi-media mash up. Charles Chuang: a founding member of drupaltaiwan.org and help the open source to localize in Taiwan; he has help many NGOs in Taiwan to adapt a drupal CMS: he would be a major technical consultant. Isaac Mao: the Chair of Social Brian Foundation: he will be a major consultant for our “marketing” and “promotion” of the new tool in China. Rebecca Mackinnon: a founding member of globalvoicesonline.org and a professor in the new media and journalism department in the University of Hong Kong. Organizations and websites: Hong Kong In-Media and inmediahk.net (Hong Kong based) have endorsed this proposal and will give human resources and financial backup for the project. The interlocals.net, a project under Hong Kong In-Media, can help promoting the platform among its partner network (including: coolloud.org.tw from Taiwan, Roland Soong's EastSouthWestNorth [zonaeuropa.com], gyaku.jp from japan, Media Culture Action from South Korea [gomediaction.net], etc.). Globalvoicesonline.org will also help publicizing the project and promoting the platform through their network.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

When we formulate this proposal, we have taken into account of previous experiences in this area and try to get the practitioners involved. Chang Yu-chang and Charles Chuang have been helping Taiwan community websites, citizen media and NGOs to localize and adapt Drupal (e.g: http://www.coolloud.org.tw/). However, because of the lack of resources and the organization inertia in written media form, the adaptation is minimal; the multi-media settings and mash up of tools are very limited. It is rather difficult to experiment with an existing citizen media website on new technical tool, unless the organization is very conscious of R&D work. In this project, we have pulled in Chang and Charles, so that when we have the new platform ready, they can also adapt it in the existing NGOs circles that they have been working with. Isaac Mao has been helping individuals and groups in Mainland China to built and adapt new media tools. For example, he helps to push for the adaptation of wiki into a collaborative citizen webagazine: memedia.cn. We are glad to have him in this project. In Malaysia, there is an organization called SEACEM which has been helping NGOs in South East Asia to adapt new CMS. The organization is self-sustained and it gives very strong back up to the development of civil society in the region. Their experience is a very precious reference for our future development of the project.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

If we manage to get the award, we would form a new non-profitable company with a working team and consultation body to carry out the project. Apart from the project, the company will give support for local NGOs and grassroots organizations on internet media. We expect in the long run it can turn into a R&D section for the development of Chinese grassroots media in Asia. Inmediahk.net will become as a showcase for the new platform. We would also actively publicize the platform via our organization and consultant network and demonstrate the platform in Chinese new media and blogger conferences. We expect some organizations and websites from Taiwan and China will adopt the model through our consultants’ connection. A network of Chinese grassroots media practitioners would be formed and we expect that after the project, they can continue to exchange information and develop future collaboration on cross-border citizen reporting, advocacy and development of Chinese citizen media, etc.

Improving Access to Justice for the Poor in Nigeria through Journalist Information Communication Scheme.

Primary Contact Name

Mr. Patrick Dunkwu Att.

Describe your project

In Nigeria many innocent criminal suspects are arrested and charged to court and remanded in prison, most times without knowledge of their lawyers and family members The Court Journalist Information communication Scheme proposed under this project will seek to utilize the use of mobile telephone lines, e-mail services and network of journalist covering events in our courts to offer efficient, and easily accessible, early intervention communication support to indigent criminal defendants by linking them up with legal aid lawyers and their family members on being charged to court and before they are remanded in prison for early legal intervention. I will under the scheme mobilize volunteer and other free lance journalists, who will be provided with mobile telephone handsets with a full complement of e-mail services. These journalists will visit the courts on a daily basis. While in court the attention of the journalists will be drawn to the suspect early enough and information about his family members will be taken from him. The duty journalist will then make a call to legal aid lawyers or family members or send e-mails or SMS,to ensure quick legal intervention and prevent the suspect from being sent unnecessarily to prison on remand custody This will help check the rate at which suspects who are not supposed to be remanded are sent to prison. The scheme will focus on quick information communication/legal intervention which will prevent suspects being sent to prison thereby decongesting the prisons and reducing the death rate in our prisons. The project objectives are as follows: 1. To put in place a sustainable information communication/legal assistance scheme, in particular using Journalists and ICT to promote early legal intervention on behalf of indigent criminal suspects. 2.to build capacity and awareness among journalists on communication/legal support for their immediate communities especially for the indigent ones 3. to improve access to justice for poor criminal defendants

Primary Contact Email

patrickdunkwu@yahoo.com

Organization or Business Name

GERSUAAC AND ASSOCIATES

Who would want to use it and why?

Court Journalists will use the scheme for the benefit of indigent criminal defendants and their families in Nigeria. The need for the project is to help indigent criminal suspects establish quick contact with legal aid lawyers or family members, for prompt legal intervention. This is because the problem for criminal suspects who are charged to court and taken to prison on long remand custody is the lack of access to their lawyers or family members on being charged to court, due to lack of information, communication. From my experience, where a suspect is able to establish quick contacts with a family member or a lawyer, the lawyer will appear promptly in court and canvass arguments while the suspect should not be taken to prison without a formal charge, or have his family take him or her on bail

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

I am the best person to develop this project because I have worked since my graduation from law school as a legal aid lawyer, with two different human rights organisation. My work centre mainly on developing and managing projects on legal aid, as well as offering free legal services to indigent victims of human rights violation and awaiting trial prisoners. From experience I have come to appreciate that indigent criminal defendants without quick access to their families or lawyers due to lack of communication end up in prison and may remain there for decades without trial, most times without the knowledge of their family members who sometimes give up hope that there are alive. I have over the years garnered a lot of experience in the course of designing projects on legal aid and represnting indigent criminal defendants. The expereince I have gained over the years puts me in the best postion to implement this project. Please take note I have submitted this project a few minutes ago. I am re-sending it because of the error I detected in the amount requested. I wrote 350 instead of the sum of 350000 which I am requesting for the project. I regret the error.

U.S. State

Country

Nigeria

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

If everything went perfectly as envisaged, my initiative will bring about: (i). A drastic reduction in the number of indigent criminal suspects being sent to prison to await trials for years on frivolous charges. This will result in about 60 percent reduction in prison population among remand inmates, thereby reducing congestions, deaths and diseases in the prisons. It will also alleviate the conditions of overcrowding for those continuing in detention (ii) My project will also for the first time in Nigeria result in the creation of a quick intervention legal aid scheme dependent on the use of Information Communication Technology. This will lead to the institutionalisation and development of a model quick intervention legal aid scheme that other NGOS and Civil Society Organisations working on legal aid can replicate. In essence my project will provide pilot resources and expertise for any other organisation or legal aid scheme adopting my model (iii) It will bring about a strategic shift in legal aid delivery by NGOS and other legal aid bodies in Nigeria from offering legal assistance on adhoc basis to indigent criminal defendants who have spent years in prison awaiting trial, to a more sustainable quick intervention legal aid scheme which will prevent innocent criminal suspects from being unnecessarily sent to prison, thereby attacking the root cause of prison congestion in Nigeria. (iv) It will bring about a quick system of transmitting news and information between indigent criminal suspects, legal aid lawyers and their families and defeat the police practice of first charging criminal suspects to court and ensuring that they are kept in prison custody without the knowledge of their lawyers and family members while they gather evidence to prosecute them. (v) My project will also contribute to my organisation's broader advocacy programme aimed at establishing a sustainable, effective and accessible legal aid scheme to improve legal aid delivery throughout Nigeria.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

I will measure whether or not my project has made a difference through the following indicators (i) Through interviews and questionnaires to be administered on prison officals, as well as through prison records of number of persons admitted into awaiting trial prison custody during project period in comparison with numbers admitted in the years prior to the take0off of the project (ii) Through interviews and questionnaire to be adminidtered on court officials as well as through Court Records of number of criminal defendants either released or granted bail through the efforts of the Court Duty Journalists and lawyers working under the scheme, as against records of those sent to prison in previous years before the scheme (iii) Through prison records of number of deaths and diseases as a result of prison congestion recorded in previous years in comparism with the number during the project period (iv) Through records of project staff on the number of persons released by them during the project period (v) Through number of other legal aid organisations making positive comments on my initiaitve and seeking to adopt my strategy.

Web site

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$350000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

In Nigeria, the absence of a quick information communication legal aid intervention strategy that transmits quick news and information on arrested criminal suspects results in many innocent criminal suspects being sent to prison to await trial for years on frivolous charges.This is usually so because criminal suspects arrested by the Police are charged to court by the Police without bothering to inform their family members or lawyers. The courts in turn simply remand these suspects in prison custody to await trial, where they have no family member to take them on bail, or legal aid lawyers to address their case. The reason therefore why many indigent criminal suspects are languising in awaiting trial prison custody and prison congestion in Nigeria is due to the absence of a quick information and communication legal aid intervention strategy linking suspects with their families and lawyers on been charged to court by the police. NGOs and CSOs working on prisons and providing legal aid to the indigent have continued to offer legal support to awaiting trial prisoners to release them from prison based on their assumption that, that is a practical way of addressing the problem of prison congestion. Unfortunately as one prisoner is released by these groups, 5 more are brought in. A clear indication that this strategy does not answer or meet the need of criminal suspects or answer the problem of prison congestion. Again some volunteer lawyers and journalists working on legal assistance in our courts with willingness to assist through volunteer legal support in most cases do not know how to do so or find a platform for doing so. My proposal will answer the unmet needs of criminal suspects,their families and the legal aid community in Nigeria by creating a platform using lawyers and journalists who will use ICT for quick information communication legal aid support by linking suspects up with their familes and legal aid lawyers with a view to stopping them from being unnecessarily sent to prison thereby decongesting the prisons

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$350000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

The unique opportunity that I see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general need is the use of information communication technology, including telephones, computers and e-mails) to provide quick communication and to quickly transmit news and information on persons arrested by the police. This opportunity has not been tapped in the past. Another significant unique opportunity that I see that will make this project more successful than others is the fact that the project will draw on the good will and enthusiasm of the legal aid community to mobilise lawyers and journalists into the scheme. This is because there is apparently a common concern in the legal aid community and the press about prison congestion occassioning deaths of inmates and the unfair manner innocent criminal suspects are charged to court by the Police without the knowledge of their lawyers or family members. My initiaitive in this regard will be widely welcomed as a long awaited challenge (opportunity) for the law and legal aid community to solve the aforementioned problems

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

1years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

People will learn about what I am doing through report of my project activities in the electronic and print media. Interestingly volunteer journalists that will work under the scheme are affiliated with some media houses in the state and will help to publicise the work being carried out under the project. Also report of the project will be published in my organisation's print and on line newsletter which will be distributed to non governmental human rights organisations (NGOS), Civil Society Organisations (CSOS) and other stakeholders with whom we collaborate with. Lawyers and Journalists working under the scheme will submit periodic reports of their activities to the project coordinator, who will in turn issue periodic reports to members of the organisation and Knight Foundation. We also expect family members of released criminal suspects to inform others of our work.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

I do not have any financial funding in respect of this project. However volunteer lawyers and journalists working under the scheme will make in kind contribution to the project. This will be by way of committing professional time to the project (Pro bono Services)

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

Yes I will be working with some legal aid lawyers, volunteers, journalists and other social workers to complete the project. Those to be mobilised for the project are as follows 1. Comrade John Odion: He heads a non governmental, non profit human rights organisation specialising in offering legal services to indigent victims of human rights violation and awaiting trial prisoners. His duty under the scheme will include receiving calls, text messages and e-mails from Court Duty Journalists and Volunteers and mobilsing legal aid lawyers in his office to immediately attend court for quick legal aid intervention for indigent criminal suspects. 2. Barrister Nwabueze Ezeah: He is also a lawyer and heads a human rights NGO working on legal aid and prison reforms. He will also receive calls and messages from Court Duty Journalists and Volunteers and mobilise lawyers to the court to defend criminal suspects. 3. Barrister Paul Osarenkhoe: He heads a human rights organisation working on justice sector and prison reforms . He will also receive calls, e-mails and text messages from Court Volunteers and mobilise lawyers to court to defend suspects. 4. Ms. Evelyn Ejimofe: She is a legal aid volunteer working with our organisation; She works basically on collecting data on awaiting trial prison inmates requring legal aid. She will also work on collation of data base information on criminal suspects brought to court by the Police 5. Ms. Chioma Ohakelem: She will also work with the Court and Prison Officals in tracking number of criminal suspects benefiting from legal aid. 6. Mr. Slyvester Asoya. Mr. Asoya is a senior journalist with P.M News. He heads Court Journalists covering events in all the courts in Lagos. He will work with other court journalists mainly in identifying indigent criminal suspects brought to court by the Police, interview them to receive information on their alleged offences and families and transmit those information to lawyers and family members for prompt response 7. Olajide Tokunbo, same as Slvester above and many others

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

Some existing NGOS and and Civil Rights Groups advocate for prison reforms and decongestion and also offer legal assistance on adhoc basis to awaiting trial prisoners identified by them, with a view to releasing them from long prison detention. The general focus of these groups is to release awaiting trial inmates as a way of decongesting the prisons. Many prisoners have been released no doubt through the effort of these groups. I have also been involved in employing this legal aid strategy in releasing detained prisoners (See attached documents). However from experience, most of these efforts are not strategised, specialised and sustainable and have also failed to address the root cause of prison congestion, because as one prisoner is released by these organisation, many more go in. My work fit into the larger context of work in this area in that its goal is also to offer legal assitance to indigent criminal defendants as a way of reducing prison congestion. However under my project quick attention of the volunteer journalists and social workers will be drawn to criminal defendants who will in turn establish quick communication contacts with legal aid lawyers and transmit information to them to enable them quickly respond and offer quick legal intervention to the suspects as a way of preventing innocent and indigent criminal defendants from being unnecessarily being sent to prison on long remand custody. This will help to check the rate at which suspects who are not supposed to be remanded are sent to prison. My project will therefore focus on preventing innocent criminal suspects from being sent to prison to complement existing efforts of groups that work to get criminal defendants out of prison.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

I guarantee that if I complete activities under this proposal, there will: i. be a drastic reduction in prison congestion and associated deaths and diseases by up to 60 percent. (ii)I also guarantee that there will be increased capacity and awareness among lawyers and the legal aid community on quick legal intervention strategy in support of indigent criminal suspects using information communication technology. (iii). I also strongly feels that there will be a reduction in the number of innocent criminal defendants being sent to prison on long term reman prison custody. (iv) I also gurantee that there will be an advancement in the area of legal aid delivery, through the institutionalisation and development of a model ICT supported quick communication and intervention legal aid scheme in Lagos Nigeria and its replication in other parts of Nigeria (v). Increased number of lawyers and journalist trained in the use of ICT for efficient legal aid support to their communities.

Mobile News Coverage for Ethnic Minority Communities in Georgia (Post Soviet Country in Eastern Europe)

Primary Contact Name

Ms. Rusudan Tsereteli

Describe your project

The rights of the ethnic and religious minorities to maintain and develop their culture and traditions are not satisfied in Georgia. Starting life over in an unfamiliar country and culture is never easy, and ethnic minorities` arrivals have encountered their share of challenges in their new communities. The ethnic and religion minorities have settled in small communities around the country. But they tend to feel isolated, due to lack of social integration. The project aims to create mobile news and mobile video reports for minority communities in Georgia and distribute them via cell phones using 3G (Third Generation Network). This project will focus on Ossetian, Abkhazian and Meshketian Turks communities and will help to improve the lives of target communities where they live, work and vote. Within the frame of the project it is planned to create special mobile news for minority communities in order to strengthen them to participate in country’s social-political life more actively. The weekly news will be prepared by young adults from minority communities and will cover the issues that interest them. In parallel, the minorities will also prepare their own mobile video reports - ``My Mobile Story,`` where they will report on their culture and traditions and also identify priorities for their social integration with major population. The mobile reports - ``My Mobile Story,`` alongside with mobile news will be distributed on the wide used digital equipment, the cell phones. ``My Mobile Story,`` will be also voted on the public and the best will be rebroadcast on local TV channel. Meanwhile, the project will also have own webpage to arrange forum discussion - ``Internet Round Table`` with participation of representatives from target communities, and authorities. Objectives Promoting freedom of expression in the target communities: • Mobile News will be the tribune for minority population and NGO representatives; • Increasing the role of local media in ensuring the accountability of the government of the regions.

Primary Contact Email

rtsereteli@gmail.com

Organization or Business Name

Who would want to use it and why?

By using mobile coverage, the minority communities will strengthen the skills to represent themselves and integrate with major population.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

Ms. Tsereteli, the project author has 10 years experience in journalism and has covered ethnic communities’ issue. Meanwhile, she has been editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Rustavi-Info, published three times a week from 1997- 2004. She visited the United States several times, first as an intern at a small, local newspaper, the Times-Republican, in Iowa. She was also a finalist in the US State Department’s Community Connections exchange program. Upon returning to Georgia, She was accepted to the newly opened, first-of-its- kind graduate program in journalism, the Caucasus School of Journalism and Media Management at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs. This US-funded program has an American academic director and American curriculum. The program awarded Ms. Tsereteli a US-equivalent Master’s Degree in Journalism and Media Management in 2002. She also participated in the International Journalism exchange program in 2003, sponsored and organized by the American Society of Newspapers Editors and the international Center for Journalists, and was assigned one month to the Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio. During her participation in the International Journalism Exchange Program she initiated the idea to establish the International Editors Association (IEA) with its own newswire (IEA Wire), a unique source of daily coverage. In June, 2004 she had training in a public private program in Washington DC. The training course was focused on the role of mass media in the privatization process. In 2005 she was Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University. She was the first person from her country, as well as the Caucasus, to receive such an honor. In 2006 she completed World Press Institute Fellow in Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota. Moreover, Ms. Tsereteli has 3 years experience in project management. In 2003 she opened School of Journalism which is supported by the United States Embassy and also undertook several projects sponsored by the World Press Freedom Committee, Open Society – Georgian Foundation, and P

U.S. State

Country

Georgia

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

If everything went perfectly institutional capacity of ethnic minority communities would be developed and their social lives would be improved as well as involvement in the governance and decision-making process would be strengthened.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

Project director will create Logframe of Project Planning Process (PPP) where all implementing activities will be indicated in order to measure accountability, performance, quality standards and learning. Meanwhile, framework for Monitoring and Evaluation can be used for preparation of monitoring and evaluation plan, reporting and feedback, managing, surveys, field visits, data collection and analysis. The project will follow subsequent types of the evaluation: A self-evaluation (sometimes called a mid-term management review) will be conducted entirely by project staff involved in an operation/implementation. An external evaluation will be conducted with assistance of external consultant and involvement of target communities. All this will give the opportunity to measure the difference and conduct the project successfully. Moreover, the project director will receive monthly report in written form from target communities (each target community will have a local/team leader who will be able to report on differences, challenges and lessons learned) where the outcomes/impact as well as further steps for improvement (in case of need) will be described.

Web site

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$650000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

This proposal will strengthen the development and integration process of ethnic minority communities that help to response the need to break their social, religion and cultural isolation. In addition, the local problems specific for the minority communities will be identified in order to aware local authorities of these problems; women’s involvement in social-political processes and revealing women’s initiatives will be supported; religious and ethnic issues of the region will be publicized and the media accessibility will be ensured for these themes.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$650000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

To involve cell phone technology in project implementation is an innovation and unique opportunity. This project will be the first in all post-soviet countries that will use mobile phones for project activities as well as promote digital media participation in communities’ life. The cell phones are wide used in Georgia; 70% of the population has access to them and the success of the project is also depends on it. The information via cell phones will be spread fast, timely and cover the majority of the population which is essential to answer unmet needs. As a result, the project will attract more partners, stakeholders, international or local non-governmental organizations who will raise interest and support for this initiative. In parallel, the idea of this proposal (to strengthen minority communities) is also unique, specific and very crucial for minority communities as well as the country for its institutional developing.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

1years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

The special website will be created specifically for promotion of this project. At the same time, special field visits in the target minority communities will be planned. In parallel, promotion booklets and leaflets will be printed describing project goal, mission and activities. All these will be distributed free of charge. Meanwhile, the population of Georgia will receive special news on the project via cell phones. At the same time, close cooperation with media will be established. In addition, the minority’s representatives from target communities will also promote this project with ``My Mobile Story`` telling.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

The investment of this project is basic computer equipment, office space, and several vehicles, skilful, well-trained and professional human resources speaking in different foreign languages who will be involved in project implementation.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

Ms. Rusudan Tsereteli is a primary responsible person to complete this project; she also will be a project director. The special discussions are conducted with the following people who give suggestions around the project. These people are: Mr. George Kopaleishvili, has 9 years professional work experience. He was working at Press and Information Sections of Diplomatic Missions in Georgia such as the U.S. and British Embassies. Also at various USAID funded organizations, those were providing technical assistance for Georgian Businesses and people. He also worked for the Department of Information and Press of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia as a Third Secretary and Assistant to Deputy Foreign Minister. He already has both Bachelor and another Master in Public Relations from the Georgian technical University, Humanitarian-Technical Faculty. Currently, he is studying at Suffolk University in Boston to pursue master's degree in Public Administration. He will be consultant of the project in planning and monitoring. Mr. Tamaz Okropiridze, was a manager of the local newspaper in Georgia. He graduated Tbilisi State University and holds M.A. in Georgian Language and Literature, later he completed TACIS College of Management. He has been co-author of different projects funded by the U.S. Embassy’s grant programs, Open Society of Georgia and USAID/World Learning. He will be the project coordinator.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

In general, several local non-governmental organizations have been working there. At the same time, European Center for Minority Issues has also conducted practice-oriented researches from time to time. Our cooperation with them will be based on information sharing and promotion of our project’s goal and activities. Moreover, our activities will not be duplication of different projects which are currently conducted in target community due to this project’s different mission - to build stronger ethnic minority communities through innovation in digital media applied to journalism. This mission will give strong possibility to be successfully fitted into the larger context of working area.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

If the activates are completed in this proposal the communities will be empowered to be informed on the issues of that matter most in integration and in country’s social-political life. In parallel, project`s idea will affect people in target community. As a result, the purpose of the Knight News Challenge - to spur innovation in the delivery of information and news using digital media - will be also fulfilled.

OpenCongress Local Portals

Primary Contact Name

David Moore

Describe your project

OpenCongress Local Portals: empowering state and local bloggers to track the issues they care about in Congress, and collaboratively lobby Members of Congress, using customized information from the open-source public resource website OpenCongress.org.
OpenCongress.org is a public resource website that combines official government data with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind each bill. The problem we’re seeking to address is a lack of accessible information for local bloggers and membership groups about Congressional legislation and how it affects their issues. For example, it’s currently difficult for a local environmental group to keep track of bills in Congress that affect its concerns – the latest status of a given bill in the Congressional process, which groups support or oppose it, which industries have given campaign contributions to its co-sponsors, and how to coordinate their actions to collaboratively lobby Congress in timely and productive ways. OpenCongress.org launched in February 2007 and currently provides information about every bill, Member of Congress, over 4,000 issue areas, and more. The information we aggregate and create, however, could be of even greater accessibility and better targeted for local bloggers, membership groups, journalists, and individuals (both civically-inclined and not). Currently, while there are ways for local individuals to use OpenCongress to track information at the federal level, there is not an interface for them to log in directly to the information that affects them at the state or local level. In addition, OpenCongress does not currently have features such as “action alerts” that allow groups to create their own calendars for collectively lobbying Congress at crucial stages in the legislative process. The Participatory Politics Foundation proposes to accomplish this by partnering with the Knight Foundation to build on OpenCongress portals for every state and Congressional district, along with the ability for users to create highly local portals for their own cities or neighborhoods. Each portal would offer innovative features that would allow users of OpenCongress at the state and local level to get involved by subscribing to calendars and action alerts for collective lobbying and collaborative analysis of bills.

Primary Contact Email

davidrussellmoore@gmail.com

Organization or Business Name

Participatory Politics Foundation

Who would want to use it and why?

The first target audience is the current user community of OpenCongress, who would use these new features to connect more closely with their Members of Congress and other users in their district. Local membership groups would want to use these portals to facilitate issue-based collective lobbying. Local citizen journalists, activists, and political bloggers would want to be able to track Congress and have direct access to locally relevant information for their communities. Anyone could join groups within these portals for updates on her state, district, and even neighborhood. No other web resource offers comparable and customizable action alerts for collective lobbying, so this represents a significant step forward for anyone interested in connecting with Congress. These will bring OpenCongress down to the local level.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

First, OpenCongress is already a well-recognized public resource in making Congressional information more accessible to a wide audience. Already the site has received over 520,000 unique pageviews since launch on February 26, 2007, and over 10 million hits counting RSS readers. Second, the Participatory Politics Foundation is a small and agile non-profit that operates with virtually no overhead - resources made available will go directly into programming, design, and outreach for these user-friendly and innovative new portals. Our not-for-profit mission means that we are free to focus on core development that is best for empowering users, educating the public, building open-source tools using open standards of technology, and working with existing popular services such as Facebook, Digg, and others. Third, the Participatory Politics Foundation is the sister organization of the Participatory Culture Foundation, a separate non-profit organization that received a previous grant from the Knight Foundation in 2006 to build the online public resource MakeInternetTV (http://makeinternettv.org/), a guide with "step-by-step instructions for shooting, editing, and publishing online videos that can be watched and subscribed to by millions of people" -- improving citizen media through education. For this new project, the overall yearlong proposed budget of $240,000 will encompass all of the support needed to build these state and local portals. The sum of $20,000 per month for 12 months will make it possible for the Participatory Politics Foundation to hire two full-time web programmers, one part-time programmer, a design consultant, and one full-time outreach coordinator for these new features. Finally, along with these new portals, OpenCongress will continue its work in conducting wide-ranging outreach to individuals and groups who can make use of this information and features: local citizen and professional journalists, local bloggers, issue-based groups, activists, and anyone interested in easier ways of connecting with Congress.

U.S. State

MA

Country

United States

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

The ultimate goal of state and local OpenCongress portals is to foster a more participatory politics, one where individuals feel informed and connected to their Members of Congress, and feel that their opinions matter. Open web tools make this possible: such portals will empower anyone, at a highly local level, to easily track, comment upon, and act upon what’s happening in Congress. The proposed state and local portals will be of use for both “grasstops” activists (issue-based membership groups who already use e-mail, for example) and “grassroots” activists (who may only have a few minutes a day to catch up with the latest news from Congress, but wish to make their voices heard). If the stars align and these local portals catch on in popularity, the result will be an observable increase in civic engagement, in the form of citizens contacting their Members of Congress about the issues that are important to them and participating in the substance of the legislative process. For elected officials, these portals will immediately serve as a way of connecting with their constituents’ concerns. In a larger sense, these portals will remind Members that anyone using OpenCongress can track their latest votes and campaign contributions, and can easily share their findings with their online communities, thereby encouraging government transparency and discouraging corruption. Journalists, bloggers, activists and membership groups will all have an unparalleled tool for following the daily news from Congress and sharing the most useful information. A local environmental activist, for example, may visit her local portal on OpenCongress and read an interesting fact about her Representative in a blog post, then share the item with her friends, encouraging them to contact their Representative directly to voice an opinion. The vision is that by connecting people more closely to what’s really happening in Congress, we can foster peer-to-peer civic engagement, fight corruption in government, and combat political apathy about our democracy.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

The nature of open web-based projects such as these portals ensures that we will be able to precisely measure the difference that this project has made. First, as we do on a continual basis already, we will be able to track page views of every new state and local portal page using Google Analytics, following trends and preparing reports of site usage. Second, when new users register a free account with OpenCongress they will indicate their Congressional District of residence, meaning that we will be able to see geographically where the state and local portals are growing fastest. For any given local portal, then, we can see both how many views it has received overall and how many users have indicated they reside there. Third, as we do on a continual basis already, we will use existing services like Technorati and Google Alerts to track how many outside websites are linking to the new portals, what they’re saying about them, and how they are using our open tools. Fourth, we will observe patterns of site participation within the new state and local portals themselves, following what content and features are the most popular, and encourage users to send us feedback with their suggestions. Fifth, we will track the number of users who are subscribed to various action alerts from each state and local portal – how many users are connected to each portal through e-mail alerts, RSS feeds, iCal alerts, Outlook alerts, and other ways. Overall page views and site participation for OpenCongress will be other ways of measuring that individuals are viewing and connecting with the new state and local portals. In summary, the foundation for detailed measurements of these new state and local portals is already in-place, and we will be in a position to make subsequent decisions based on what we observe on a daily basis.

Web site

http://participatorypolitics.org

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$240000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

The overall problem we’re seeking to address is a lack of accessible information for local bloggers and membership groups about Congressional legislation and how it affects their issues. For example, it’s currently difficult for a local environmental group to keep track of bills in Congress that affect its concerns – the latest status of a given bill in the Congressional process, which groups support or oppose it, which industries have given campaign contributions to its co-sponsors, and how to coordinate their actions to collaboratively lobby Congress in timely and productive ways. There is no existing free and open-source website for the public that provides such services, though D.C. lobbyists and large membership groups currently pay for expensive private services that track the details of legislation in the pipeline. OpenCongress offers a first step for local individuals to track information at the federal level, there is not currently a way for them to log in directly to the information that affects them at the state or local level. In addition, there is a lack of free web services that allow individuals and groups to coordinate their citizen lobbying efforts on behalf of their Congressional district– that is, to create their own calendars for collectively contacting Congress and sending out “action alerts” at crucial stages in the legislative process. Individual membership groups may stage sporadic “call-ins”, and there exist some commercial services in this area, but there exists no site for this that is free, open-access, not-for-profit, and user-friendly. For small grassroots groups, many of which simply do not have robust presences online, these state and local portals would provide both the information and the action alerts for their membership to contact Congress and make their voice heard in substantive ways. Finally, there are no current resources that allow users to create portals for their own city, neighborhood, or block, connecting information about Congress to the issues affecting their very street.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$240000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

The opportunity present in state and local portals on OpenCongress is first and foremost that our website is free, open-source, non-partisan, and not-for-profit. These principles underlie our work and ensure that we’re focused on usability for a wide community of web users. The Participatory Politics Foundation’s open mission further means that, unlike proprietary commercial services for D.C. insiders, individuals and organizations across the nation will be inclined to support and use these portals widely with their membership. Second, OpenCongress has an existing reputation as a unique online resource for Congressional information and positive buzz with prominent bloggers. Our site launch in February 2007 was covered by major political, technology, and cultural websites, as well as traditional media such as NPR and thousands of local bloggers. Third, OpenCongress already has a dedicated user base (who come to us through site visits, e-mail alerts, RSS feeds, outside links, and online searches) that will provide the first wave of users of these new portals. We will be able to hit the ground running and thereby reach out to more new users through peer-to-peer outreach and social sharing features built-in to the portals themselves. Finally, no other website offers the specific and unique package of features described here: ways to learn about your Members of Congress, ways to track bills and issues, ways to share your findings with your friends and family, ways to join others in your state and Congressional district who care about the issues you do, and ways to sign up for action alerts that remind you to contact Congress and make your voice heard on a huge variety of issues.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

1years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

People will initially learn about new OpenCongress state and local portals through a wide-ranging online outreach campaign, in coordination with the Knight Foundation, that utilizes both peer-to-peer social sharing and mentions from prominent online writers. Subsequently, people will continue to learn about these state and local portals through their issue-based membership groups, links from political bloggers, and their social networks - but to return to the initial launch. Outreach campaigns are one of the core strengths of the Participatory Politics Foundation: our reputation for building user-friendly, open-source tools helps us to “spread the word” on some of the most-read sites on the web. The initial site launch in February 2007 was mentioned very positively in political blogs such as TalkingPointsMemo and Instapundit, technology blogs such as Mashable and SmartMobs, cultural blogs such as BoingBoing, social bookmarking services such as Digg, traditional media such as NPR’s “On the Media”, and many thousands of local bloggers. In addition, we are committed to working closely with the Knight Foundation program officers and your larger community in outreach surrounding these portals, as many of the citizen journalists and media activists in the Knight Foundation orbit are key users of such local portals. A full-time outreach coordinator has been budgeted for in this proposal, someone who will both acknowledge and further engage existing users of the portals and spread the word to targeted new users over e-mail and in-person when possible. On an ongoing basis, the portals are built and equipped with several ways of gathering new users on their own accord. Existing users will be able to invite their social networks to join local portals using peer-to-peer marketing: over e-mail, using popular sharing services, by republishing information from their portal on their own websites, and more. Groups will encourage their members to join to track their issues, receive action alerts on important bills and encourage others to get involved.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

The sole source of funding for OpenCongress has been the Sunlight Foundation, founded in 2006 with the goal of using technology to enable citizens to learn more about what their elected representatives are doing. OpenCongress is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation. As of this writing, we have not submitted any other applications for OpenCongress development to any foundations or individuals, other than this proposal to the Knight Foundation NewsChallenge. We are very interested in partnering with the Knight Foundation and its community to build these state and local portals on OpenCongress. We believe this partnership would be greatly advantageous: state and local portals on OpenCongress are directly suited to those people who seek to deliver information using digital media and connect with others in their geographic area. Citizen journalists and bloggers, as well as professional journalists and educators and more, would find that OpenCongress state and local portals would deliver them unique information and engaging ways of expanding the impact of their work.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

The Participatory Politics Foundation would work in coordination with the Knight Foundation and existing contacts in the open-source community to complete the project, but the Participatory Politics Foundation would complete all core web development and design. In other words, we have the experience and capacity to build the state and local portals on OpenCongress, as well as to conduct a wide-ranging online outreach campaign surrounding them, but we welcome feedback along the way, and look forward to engaging with other online communities in spreading the word. Our existing relationship with the Sunlight Foundation is valuable here – we will seek to work with their community in the initial launch campaign. In addition, the Participatory Politics Foundation has been a participant in conferences held by the Harvard University Berkman Center and the Sunlight Foundation’s “Open Data Open Government” group – these are additional contacts that we value in helping to spread the word. But overall, the core development of state and local portals on OpenCongress will be completed by the Participatory Politics Foundation, in coordination with the Knight Foundation.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

In the area of state and local portals for Congressional information, there is no other website that approaches the package of features that OpenCongress proposes to provide, though there are several sites similarly active in promoting government transparency. Many of these are projects of the Sunlight Foundation. Congresspedia is an online wiki-based citizens’ encyclopedia on Congress hosted on the Center for Media & Democracy’s SourceWatch wiki. While we wholly support their mission and link extensively to their pages from our site, Congresspedia pages are fundamentally a wiki – a useful resource, but lacking the social, “friending” features that we’re proposing for OpenCongress local portals. On an OpenCongress portal for any Congressional District, users will be able to track a Member of Congress’ latest votes, follow news and blog coverage, bookmark and share info, and more. In addition, OpenCongress offers comprehensive links to every single bill in Congress and over 4,000 issue areas, which Congresspedia does not. Coming before the end of 2007, users of OpenCongress will have access to a host of entirely unique new features: the ability to log in to the site and comment on any bill, vote their support or opposition for any bill, build “My OpenCongress” pages of bills and issues they’re tracking, become “friends” with other users and organizations on OpenCongress, and more. The collaborative-lobbying calendars and “action alerts” proposed as part of these state and local portals would be a crucial and unique feature that would increase civic engagement in innovative ways. Other sites active in this area include the following: GovTrack.us, which generously provides Congressional data for OpenCongress, but which is not equipped with the above feature set; Congress.org, a free service of two commercial companies that lacks usability and most of the above feature set; and other individual projects in the Sunlight Foundation community, none of which offer users direct access to how your local neighborhood is affected by Congress.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

We guarantee the following results upon completion of state and local portals for OpenCongress. First, the portals will receive an initial burst of links and mentions in prominent news and blog outlets. Second, the portals will experience an early spike of site traffic that will greatly expand knowledge of the project. Third, a significant number of new users will register accounts with OpenCongress in order to access the state and local portals and the new features therein. Fourth, these new users will increase overall site participation, as they comment on bills, subscribe to RSS feeds, become “friends” with other users in their districts, subscribe to “action alerts” from their issue-based membership groups, and invite others to get involved. Fifth, there will be a marked increase in links from outside sites to the new portals as local bloggers and activists make use of the targeted information and action alerts there. Sixth, issue-based membership groups will use OpenCongress alerts to coordinate call-in actions to Congress. Seventh, users will take advantage of the ability to create local portals for their city, neighborhood, or street, creating hyper-local ways of connecting Congressional legislation to the issues they care about. Overall, then, we guarantee a significantly expanded and more engaged user base for this open public resource. State and local portals on OpenCongress represent two innovative, exciting steps forward for bringing the business of Congress down to your street level, and building a more participatory politics.

Adaptive News Contextualization Framework and Rendering System

Primary Contact Name

Sergio Goldenberg

Describe your project

This project aims to construct a new journalistic workflow and an associated framework aimed at providing consumers with a contextualized view of news events. Our goal is to explore and develop methodologies of presenting news in a dynamic fashion that go beyond the timeframe and structure limitations of the editions (in newspapers), newscasts (radio and television), and postings (internet) . With the use of a more structured data and reporting framework for news gathering and with the use of computational systems and databases, this framework can help journalists and media organizations to offer a more adaptive, flexible, and contextualized product for all users. Specifically, this project includes three sections: The first one is to create new ways to structure reporting endeavors with the aid of computational tools. The second one is to get the data gathered into computational understandable structures (such as relational databases). The third one, and the more visible to the audience, is the creation of an adaptive story display that renders the news topic based on the timeframe, depth, geographical location, and many other related criteria. This project suggests that the actual storytelling structure of the news-story needs to evolve into a more adaptive and personalized experience for users. This approach is not aimed as a personalization system that filters stories, but a rendering system that can create news products with the depth needed by the user.

Primary Contact Email

sergio.goldenberg@gatech.edu

Organization or Business Name

Georgia Institute of Technology

Who would want to use it and why?

This paradigm change needs the involvement of all the aspects of the news information process: from reporters, to journalists, to designers, to editors, and to the audience. Traditionally, journalists have given the society a selection of relevant and important stories of what happens around us. But traditional media work is now surrounded by an enormous amount of other news outlets that have added more weight to the already overwhelming information load. The media diet of the people has grown, but the understanding hasn’t improved too much. There is still a continuing lack of connection between the stories, contextualization, and adaptation to the knowledge of each individual. Because of all these limitations, the people today are getting less information then they need, or at a depth not suitable for them.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

This project will be led by Sergio Goldenberg, a Ph.D. Student in the Digital Media Program at Georgia Tech. He is a student in the Language, Culture & Communications Program and is also a member of the GVU Center, an interdisciplinary center aimed at developing and enhancing computing technologies to support users in their daily tasks. Sergio is a unique individual with an uncommon profile, seldom found in the professional or academic world. He has formal academic training in journalism and communication in undergraduate level, and technology, computer science and media studies in graduate level. In 2001, he joined the Catholic University of Chile’s Journalism School, one of the most important institutions in Chile and the only non-US program accredited by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Only 25 % of the US Schools have achieved it. He has taught several courses related to new media development in the Internet era. He also leaded the Research and Development of Canal13.cl, one of the main TV networks in Chile, where he was responsible for the creation of over 50 websites and other digital products. After his efforts in Chile, he jumped to the technology side, and earned a MSc in Digital Media at Georgia Tech. Currently, he is pursuing Ph.D. in Digital Media where his goal is to create a bridge that can make technology and journalism work together. The only way to pursue this is to have training on “both sides”, and make a synthesis that does not exist today. At Georgia Tech, he is working leading experts in the area of Digital Media, namely Professor Janet Murray, Professor Jay Bolter, and Professor Ken Knoepsel. He is also a core member of Professor Essa's efforts on the study of Computation and Journalism and their related impacts on each other. Sergio's belief is that to make the journalism industry go forward, one deeply understand the challenges and advantages provided by the current and future IT infrastructure, and to create the skills set and tools to make this happen.

U.S. State

GA

Country

United States

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

The Digital Medium, the Web, and related technologies offer us today an enormous potential for journalism. After more than a decade of news organizations publishing their online versions on the web, is not too much that have changed. Although, we see more photographs, audio, and video, together with the text stories, we don’t see yet a radical novel way to present the news to the audience. The people feel overwhelmed with the enormous amount of information that they have to select, dissect, and understand every day. From the visionary views of Vannevar Bush in the forties to the current views of a Semantic Web (or Data Web) from Tim-Berners Lee we have been able to understand, at least in theory, the big potential of the Internet. However, neither the users, creators, nor technology have been aligned to make that potential be converted in reality. There have been numerous efforts to get this Semantic Web a reality, but is in the domain of media and journalism where the efforts have been insufficient. Probably this has been because media companies have not had the vision or knowledge to understand the technology available for them, or because the technologists have a difficult time understanding the humanists. If the claims and plans presented in this project succeeded, together with numerous other efforts, we will be seeing a new ways to offer information to the society which would be much tailored for each individual needs (without disengaging them from the society), acknowledging transparently their time and access constrains. As a result of that, the society will have more tools to make their decisions and know what is important and interesting for them. Moreover, if the paradigm and structure changes are assumed by journalists and media companies, their work can be done much efficiently giving them more time to focus on making sense of what happens in the society.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

This project proposes that journalists, editors, technologists, computer scientists, managers, and so forth, need to be involved on a radical paradigm change. One of the purposes of this project is to create a framework that will allow the involved individuals connect and create synergy. This change is not easy; it needs to break stereotypes and rigid definitions between and inside disciplines. This proposal is not only about creating structures and end user software. It is an effort to understand storytelling from the perspective of distant disciplines such as journalism and computer science. We believe that until now, practitioners (and academics) of these two worlds hardly speak, but one group has been using the tools created by the other group. In order to make successful new tools that understand the processes behind news delivery, these two groups needs to start talking. The approach of this project is somehow an experiment to create a truly multidisciplinary dialogue where its outcome will be the three aspects of the proposal: the structure of journalism reporting; the conversion of data gathered into computational understandable structures; and the creation of an adaptive story display. In terms of measuring, we believe that the start of the dialogue and the creation of the first prototypes will send a message to the academia and the industry that will show them the value of this dialogue in the actual technological context. Moreover, if we make the industry to adopt the proposed changes, we will be more than satisfied.

Web site

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$100000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

We believe that the traditional journalism industry have been unable to understand the current potential of digital media. The mix of computer technology and the Internet offers features that no other media could offer before. In this context, this project tries to offer a framework where the processing, structure, and dynamic display capabilities of digital medium are used to give the user a novel way to experience news consumption that meet their current expectations on the medium. Media companies efforts on the Web have not been able to deliver products tailored for individual needs. Active and passive personalization filtering, RSS feeds, news aggregators, have been examples of efforts to give the user a personal approach to news delivery. From the Daily Me (Negroponte, 1995) to collaborative efforts such as Digg.com, the ideal of a personal news delivery turned more a utopia than a reality. However, we believe that the focus should not be the crude personalization or segmentation found on previous efforts. This project aims to deliver a personal news consumption system, but one that starts from the same content of massive media that is expanded or constrained depending on the user context, usage, device, time, or interests. In one hand, a generic approach is needed as an effort to have a common denominator of what is important to society. On the other hand, we have individuals that might share this overall desire of common important issues, but their specific interest and knowledge is not the same. Some people probably have followed some news topic through the week, but someone else probably is the first time that reads about that topic. This creates different expectations on each individual. Moreover, mainstream media usually needs to present the stories in a generic language, avoiding going too specific on a topic. Time frame and depth are two examples of dimensions that will be used to offer a flexible rendering that fulfils the expectations and needs of each individual.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$300000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

Continuously, we have seen efforts that have tried to solve only one aspect of this issue of using the current digital media platform as a successful information medium. However, most of these efforts have oriented their work in specific niches without understanding that these problems need the involvement of all the participants of the process of delivering information. Some projects have aimed to solve only front end presentation or design problems without understanding the underlying processes, technologies, and people involved. Others have focused in reengineering published content to convert it into machine-understandable structures, which could be the only option for old content, but does not solve the way future content might be presented. Newer efforts focus on the data structure of the web, but fail to deliver novel forms of presentation to the user (more in q 12). The aim of this project is to have a broad view of the issues. We are convinced that only approaching the whole process it is possible to aim to successful answers. Moreover, that is the logic behind the organizational context where this project will be developed. As it has been stated before, the GVU center at Georgia Tech is a multidisciplinary endeavor where computer science, humanism, and communications blend. With the support of this center, its faculty members, researchers, and its industry connections, we believe it will be possible to approach this effort in a successful way. Specifically, we believe that working with the whole creation process it is possible to offer a significant value added product. For example, the source of the content presented on the front end, how flexible it can be, all depends on how much raw content is available. If the data gathering strategies of the journalist were not aligned with the whole process, the product will turn very limited. Computers science and journalism need to connect more than ever in order to start offering significant new information products, and this is a starting point.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

3years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

This project is part of ongoing efforts at Georgia Tech on the areas of Computational Journalism leaded by Prof. Irfan Essa and Digital Media studies leaded by Prof. Janet Murray. Therefore, the process and outcomes of this project will be part of the knowledge available to the academic community. Moreover, the project itself will have public visibility through a web space that will also serve as a place of discussion and collaboration. After some research is complete, the outcomes will be made public through publications and conference presentations. Finally, the relationship with the industry is vital, both media and technology sectors. Therefore, direct communication and collaboration with these organizations is also planned.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

This project is part of Sergio Goldenberg’s academic research as a Digital Media Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech, therefore is part of ongoing efforts at Georgia Tech on the areas of Computational Journalism and Digital Media. Specifically, the multidisciplinary GVU Center is deeply interested on this topic and it’s planning a future symposium on Computational Journalism in the near future. Sergio Goldenberg is currently funded by Georgia Tech for the duration of this Ph.D. in order to complete a dissertation based on the research presented in this proposal. Beyond the personal context, Georgia Tech’s Computational Journalism endeavors are currently seeking for further funding for this and other related research projects. Historically, the faculty and the institute have received funding from industry companies, such as Turner Broadcasting and Microsoft, and also from other sources such as the state and federal government.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

This project is part of Sergio Goldenberg’s academic research as a Digital Media Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech. Although this is a personal project, it will be closely guided and advised by this distinguished faculty members: Professor Irfan Essa: Earned his PhD from the MIT Media Laboratory in 1995 and is a leading expert in analysis and authoring of multimedia content. He has published over 100 scholarly publications and he is leading the Computational Journalism endeavors at Georgia Tech. Professor Janet H. Murray: Earned a PhD from Harvard University. An internationally recognized interactive designer, and director of Georgia Tech's Masters and PhD Program in Digital Media. She is the author of Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, which is widely used as a roadmap to emerging broadband art, information, and entertainment environments. Professor Kenneth Knoespel: Earned his PhD from University of Chicago in 1982. He currently is the Chair of the School of Language Communication and Culture at Georgia Tech and is a leader in the area of the study of institutions facing and embracing technological change.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

The general goals of this project have been explored from different perspectives in the last decade. However, most of the computer science and information sciences approaches has focused not on a journalism product, but using the Web as a general information platform. Adaptive hypermedia has its roots in the creation of the web. From the beginning, researchers understood that html pages needed to be more than just a static display. Most focused on how to create personalized versions of the content based on personal and context variables. Unfortunately, most of the work done focused too much on the limited technologies available at that time. Information abstraction, modality transformation, interface agents, information visualization, and so forth, are research focuses used during the last decade. Today’s research on these topics has assumed a more structuralist perspective using XML/XLS/RDS frameworks. Some call the current endeavors Open Hypermedia. Some other works have focused on the front end of the products. One of such is the research done by Roger Fidler who has worked on the development of new products using e-ink devices where users can have an enhanced control of the content consumed. Another related approach, in this case to the importance of structure and data, has been the work in the last two decades on Computer Aided Reporting. Mainly investigative journalists have focused on the use of computing tools to improve newsgathering. Although it might seem trivial, the paradigm change of understanding information as data structures is crucial. Today’s approach can be exemplified with the work of Adrian Holovaty. Some media companies have done tremendous efforts to create “interactive graphics or multimedia” as a way to help the users understand complex stories. Moreover, several Journalism related organizations have been focusing on the importance of new platforms and technologies: The Online News Association, the American Press Institute, The Poynter Institute, and the Society of News Design.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

- A written proposal of new ways to structure and aid journalism reporting and news gathering. - A written proposal of data structure designed specifically for news processes - A prototype of an adaptive story display that renders news stories based on timeframe, depth, geographical location, and other related criteria. - The establishment of a community of communicators and technology developers around the topics of Computational Journalism. - The research outcomes will be made public through academic publications, presentations, or similar outlets.

Nyou-Reporter : gets the news into, and out of, anywhere (and particularly e-excluded areas)

Primary Contact Name

Professor Frederic Baucher

Describe your project

While “online communities don’t need […] help”, what if key infrastructure (telecom, access to a computer) is missing? This project is to provide people living within e-excluded areas (whether rural or urban) with technologies for producing, broadcasting and reading digital content and news. The project reuses existing (open-source) techniques successfully applied in other contexts, and coordinates pilot projects in several identified/selected spots : * written web content in 1 village in Mali and 1 village in Burkina ; * radio and video content in Madagascar The project focuses on dissemination of Wikipedia : * for reading : to help civic journalists in e-excluded area get the latest information; * for contributing : to provide local communities access to contribute to the web, in their own language, and particularly with Wikipedia, one of the most visible part of the web. Dissemination of Wikipedia is a pilot project to check that the idea works. Once this is operating (in journalist HQ, schools, and/or local offline web café), people from e-excluded regions will be able to use the web to develop their communities as they see fit. To meet this goal the project will : * provide technical means for accessing web content in e-excluded area (by e-excluded is meant regions that do not have access to broadband or dial-up Internet) : use of satellite for receiving large amount of data (with a business-model that prevents from asking fee to subscriber), and USB key to transport content and local contributions (as a complement to satellite) to the nearest connected point (online cyber-café, university, etc.). * disseminate know-how to let local citizens and/or professionals (entrepreneur, teacher) operate and maintain the technical means. The dissemination will be orchestrated by local educational institution and/or NGO involved locally.

Primary Contact Email

frederic.baucher@insa-rouen.fr

Organization or Business Name

INSA-ROUEN

Who would want to use it and why?

The system and accompanying pilot sites targeted by this project are of interest to local associations, and to universities for didactic reasons. Even if the project remains very small, we hope that the results of this experiment would be of value for other locations to help civic journalists, radio and video amateurs, to reuse the technical means disseminated under open licences (Creative Commons for documentation, manual, getting started; and open source licenses for software). That is the reason why the budget includes a great part dedicated to communication and participation in exhibitions (with great emphasis on colloquia that take place in e-excluded area).

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

The project is hosted by INSA-Rouen, an engineering school based in France (similar to an American university), an organisation accustomed to the management of significant international projects. For instance, it has led for 3 years a project (UEFP) funded by the Tempus-Meda programme of the European Union, with an equivalent budget, involving 100 experts from the Mediterranean region. Pr. Frédéric BAUCHER, who is responsible for the Nyou-Reporter proposal, involved his students on numerous authenticable (real) projects in the framework of a Problem-Based Learning pedagogy (cf [1]). He is also working with engineering schools from other cultures (particularly in Morocco, during the last 5 years) to analyse how to improve global cooperation in geodistributed software projects. The Nyou-Reporter project is under the auspices of the NyouDihl initiative (hosted by INSA-Rouen) that gathers numerous organisations (associations, educational institutions and companies), a number of which will be involved in the Nyou-Reporter project for the following competencies * communities of open-source software : Moulinwiki (asso), Framasoft (asso), Wizzy Digital (asso) * educational institutions : ENSA-Safi (Morocco), ENSA-Safi (Morocco), University of Nouakchott (Mauritania), Lycée Eiffel (France) * provider of digital content : Wikipedia (through Moulinwiki), Videontv, Jamendo * network facilities provider : Telespazio (company), FON France (company) * accompany local dissemination of technical means (computers, network devices, …) and know-how : MDA (Madagascar), Kunnafoni (Mali), BiblioBrousse (Burkina)

U.S. State

Country

France

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

The project Nyou-Reporter depicted in this proposal uses :

* a network technology, named NyouDihl, to implement the exchange of information between local journalists and the Internet (NyouDihl broadcasts content like web pages to proxies that accumulate the pages from reception to reception to simulate the web on selected sites)
* and a tool (MediaWiki) to display some resources (Wikipedia for instance) and create news locally.

This technology is an alternative solution to online Internet access, to rapidly and easily disseminate news all around a region. The key functionality of Internet for local journalism comes from the ease and the low cost of publishing on the Web. The goal of Nyou-Reporter is to provide this ease and affordability to millions of people that do not have direct online access to the Internet (to date, according to http://www.internetworldstats.com, only 5% of Africans have access to Internet and therefore to the information published there and to the services that allow to contribute to the Internet ecosystem). With this it will be easy to make physical communities of writers and readers of news where Internet is not easily accessible. Conversely, the lack of liaison is a good opportunity to create physical communities since people have to move physically to make the information go round: go to a ProxySpot (that is, any place, like cyber café, schools, etc ... that hosts a NyouDihl proxy) to access the local web site of information, carry out the USB key to transfer local information to central servers (that will broadcast by satellite this data to all NyouDihl proxies) tuned to the channel (accessible without a fee).

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

Several indicators (that can be easily recorded) will help us to monitor the activity of the project and evaluate the achievement of our goals. It will also control the level of relationship between users from Southern countries :

* Number of proxies (relays) operating
* Number of Wikipedia pages visited in ProxySpot (from web browser computers connected via the LAN to local web server)
* Number of news web site created in ProxySpot
* Number of pages produced in each news web site
* Number of pages of the news web site read locally
* Number of pages of the news web site read remotely (in other )
* Percentage of pages written in local languages on the Internet coming from ProxySpot (for instance, how many web pages written in Safi, local language in Burkina and how many will be available in a few month, after , and out of that total, how many have been written in ProxySpot)
* Number of days between the writing of a news and its upload to the online replication of this website
* Ranking (number of references to) web pages written in ProxySpot from other pages available on Internet
* number of references from web pages written in ProxySpot to other pages written in other ProxySpot
* Number of days between the writing of a news in a ProxySpot and its availability in another ProxySpot (wether transferred from one to the other by satellite or by USB key)

web to an online replication of this website All the information related to the store of disseminated information (using the Relais cache open source software) will be uploaded to a central server by means of the USB keys that will carry logs of usage (for technical and statistical usage only).

Web site

http://blog.nyoudihl.org

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$750000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

The Nyou-Reporter solution will provide technical means for local journalism, with applications that can be installed and maintained by local technical workers, at cost adapted to the local markets. The project focus is on local constraints :

* energy : in the area where Internet liaisons are not accessible, the power (electrical) network is generally not very stable. A solution based on solar energy (photovoltaic, etc ...) will be provided as needed ;
* robustness : the solution must be able to cope with all the instability due to energy sources and to the asynchronous transfers of data (satellite, USB key). The current liaison and network protocol commonly used in Northern countries nowadays are mainly dedicated for synchronous transfer, that is, with live online Internet access.
* light weight : the software solution will be able to run on second-hand computer hardware (a lot of initiatives are now working to transfer used computers to Southern countries). The software solution will be adapted to these computer architectures or to small computers that are not heavy energy consumer (small form factors, embedded solutions, ...).

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$1100000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

The Nyou-Reporter project is focused on areas where deployment of landline connectivity (DSL over copper wire, optic fiber, etc …) is not expected within the next 5-10 years. For these areas, Internet access has been with bi-directional satellite : it has been tried for the past 3 years (VSAT, etc …) but the solutions are too expensive to be maintained once the fund raiser retires. NyouDihl uses one-way satellite broadcasting that can be received freely (to cope with the financial difficulties encountered with two-way sat.). Addition of USB key capabilities will extend the reach at very low cost. Another key feature of NyouDihl is that it involves local people by using technologies that are accessible both financially and humanly: Financially because all the elements of the NyouDihl are open-source software that work on second-hand computers and/or devices like satellite dish. Humanly because Nyou-Reporter offers a role to many players : journalists (amateur or professional), technologists, and other people like taxi-drivers that can carry the USB key.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

2years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

Contributors (journalists) and readers should be the first people to learn about the project. A local adverstisement will be done in each village where a ProxySpot (like an offline cybercafé) offers a NyouReporter web site. NyouReporter will be fuelled and consumed by people that visit the offline cybercafé => this is the primary place where NyouReported will be promoted. Schools : the news produced in ProxySpot will be made available to teachers as a medium of choice for schools to let pupils know how to access digital information. The online Nyou-Reporter web sites (a replication of any local site fuelled by local contributors and duplicated on the web) will be advertised to online communities that gather people from diaspora of the countries covered by Nyou-Reporter. For dissemination of Nyou-Reporter best practices, the project will be represented in colloquia of international programs : OLPC, UN WSIS, UN GAID, UNESCO IPDC, NEPAD eAfrica, ITU Connect Africa, TED, Europe with EuroAfrica partnerships, ...

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

To date, the work has been supported by academic funds to develop common projects between Europe and Southern countries. This has been particularly in the area of geodistributed software development that is a key platform for transfer and appropriation of technologies used in Nyou-Reporter, and which is installed and maintained by local technical skills.

* SCAC (french embassy in Morocco) about 10 000 Euro since 5 years (mainly for travel expenses) ;
* UEFP (european community) : 500 000 Euro since 3 years ; Key other fundings have been submitted for the next two years at OIF (french speaking countries organisation, 200 000 Euro) and at AUF (french-speaking universities agency 20 000 Euro).

These two proposals are now under evaluation and results will be published in 2008.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

The NyouReporter project involves several kinds of actors : Journalist (citizens, professionals) : local people or communities that write (or record) information for local wider audiences. To date, two radios (RESO in Burkina and VAHINIALA in Madagascar) play this role. A journalist (under recruitment) will travel in Mali to play this role in several towns. Multimedia Content Production Training : organisations with long experience of ICT and/or multimedia that can help new journalists to appropriate the tools. This role will be played by organisations already actively involved locally (BiblioBrousse, VideonTV) Offline Cyber-café (ProxySpot) : if not hosted in the radio HQ, organisation that will host and maintain the proxy (Cybertigi) Local technical operator : organisations that provide and maintain the local technical resources (BiblioBrousse, Zirasun, VideonTV) Central operator : organisations that provide a central server for data consolidation and satellite operations, and operate helpdesks (ENSA-Agadir, ENSA-Safi, INSA-ROUEN) Open-source (technical) developer : communities that develop the software run by local and central operators and used by journalists (WizzyDigital, Kunnafoni, Kiwix) Technical learning organisation : local organisations that can train technicians to install and maintain technical infrastructure locally (partnerships are under way with engineering schools in Mali, Burkina and Madagascar). Research center : organizations that provide prototypes and technical breakthroughs to be implemented by developers People responsible of the Nyou-Reporter project in organisations listed above : Cybertigi : Mr. COULIBALY (+223 6165653), RESO : Mr Kambou (+226 20 90 02 89), Vahiniala : Mr Mamy (+ 261 33 14 06 836), VideonTV : Mrs Randria (patounerandria@free.fr), Zirasun : Mr Keita (moussa@zirasun.com), WizzyDigital : M. Wood (dbwood@acm.org), ENSA-Agadir : Mr. Modar (modar@ensa-agadir.ac.ma), ENSA-Safi : Pr. Echchadi (saidech@gmail.com), Kunnafoni : Mr Gaudin (rgaudin@gmail.com), Kiwix : Mr Engelhart (kelson42@gmail.com)

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

Other organisation are working in providing contents to be reused by local journalists : • RFI: radio programs (fr) • GlobalVoicesOnline (en, fr), openDemocracy (en) : written content At this stage of the project, we do provide for : • general content (with Wikipedia) • tools, services and network The goal is mutualise the cost of the development/maintenance of software and satellite broadcasting, with other domains such as education and healthcare. The NyouDihl technologies will be reused by local universities to exchange learning resources, by local hospitals for collecting local data and to provide information from distant medical centers. Micro-finance is another area that will be particularly studied and implemented to help local entrepreneur to have a sustainable business activity (like cyber-café manager or local technical support companies). A partnership with Adapted Consulting is under study. It should be noted that the central services will be operated under the auspices of the teaching organisation.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

The project will : * provide a network of journalists from different countries of Africa with experience and skills in digital news creation ; * demystify the use of ICT for local journalists, to provide successful services and content beyond what we can predict today, as happens daily on the Internet with virtual communities ; * facilitate the creation of new business activities based on the creation of content designed and produced within Southern countries, particularly in e-excluded area at the time of writing.

Semapedia.org - Hyperlink Your World!

Primary Contact Name

Mr. Alexis Rondeau

Describe your project

Our goal is to connect the virtual and physical world by bringing the right information from the Wikipedia to the relevant place in physical space. We believe that bringing knowledge to where it matters changes minds and worlds. Our motivation to create Semapedia is to let everyone collaboratively physically hyperlink their world, thus sharing knowledge and making it accessible to others in a helpful and meaningful way. We strongly believe bringing knowledge to places and things that matter to others is a great way to help others understand our beautiful and complex world. To accomplish this, we invite you to create and distribute Semapedia-Tags which are in fact cellphone-readable physical hyperlinks to the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia (or any of Wikipedias' sisterprojects such as Wikibooks, Wikinews). You can create such Tags easily yourself by choosing and pasting a Wikipedia URL into our creation-form . Pressing the button will generate a custom PDF file to download and be printed. Once created, you put the Tags up at their according physical location. Others can now use their cellphone to 'click' your Tag and access the information you provided them.

Primary Contact Email

alexis.rondeau@gmail.com

Organization or Business Name

Brothers Of Invention LLC

Who would want to use it and why?

Users of the [tagging] system are the ones that have more knowledge about specific places or objects than others and who want to share this knowledge with others at the relevant place. Users therefore range from local neighborhood insiders, environmental activists to tourism boards of cities and countries. The people that use the taggers' provided infrastructure are interested (and triggered by their peer's Physical Hyperlinks) in learning more about their environment such as the building they are standing in front of, the fruit they are holding in their hand, the book they are reading, the waterhole they are using.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

Together with Semapedia.org co-founder Stan Wiechers we have started the project in mid-2005. Since we have been committed on pushing the idea of connecting knowledge with places that matter ever since. Semapedia.org has thus grown fast over the past 2 years and we would like to continue this development and reach out and support more specific communities where we want to promote the contribution and distribution of knowledge via Wikipedia and Semapedia. Please note that Semapedia was from the beginning based on open content, standards and protocols only. This makes it possible for the members of our community to adapt new technologies beyond 2D Barcodes easily. Since the idea is to connect the virtual and physical world - by any means necessary. We strongly believe bringing knowledge to places and things that matter to others is a great way to help others understand our beautiful and complex world. We are committed to that.

U.S. State

NY

Country

United States

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

We commit Semapedia to be a starting point for creating a physical world that is enriched by relevant knowledge by the people for the people. This accessability brings wealth to others by providing the right information at the right time at the right place in a bottom-up approach using an authentic and credible source. The shift from traditional PC/laptop-based information retrieval to full mobile access to the location and thing-related knowledge is in our eyes fundamental and we want to support and co-create this new, 'clickable' world by any means necessary. In this regard, especially in developing countries, we strongly believe we can create awareness that a.) one can share knowledge with others using Wikipedia, b.) that this information can easily be distributed to others using Semapedia Tags and c.) that documenting and distributing knowledge helps local communities as well as strangers to understand their physical environment. If all stars are aligned, Semapedia is the first step into learning a new set of expectations and behaviours towards technology in that it is available and reliable when and where it is needed. That technology supports the daily life and its' challenges as they happen. And that I as an individual can use and contribute to this new world with the simplest means.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

Most importantly our success needs to be measured by the value it creates for the individuals that distribute and use Wikipedia knowledge in the real world using Semapedia Tags. If Semapedia is employed and used in the daily life of people and is understood as a utility we have achieved what we have set out to do. Furthermore, in relation to the world we want to co-create using Semapedia as a tool, we see Semapedia as one very real example of what the combination of the physical world and mobile internet can achieve. We encourage and exemplify a.) using and contributing to Wikipedia as a knowledge base - which in many countries and even continents still has a long way to go - and b.) finding new ways, beyond 2D Barcodes, to create a simple-to-use connection between physical and virtual worlds. The education and rise of Wikipedia contributions in developing countries is yet another major goal to be measured and achieved (and in accordance with Wikimedia Foundation's strategy to promote Wikipedia use and contribution in such a way in these areas). The other goal, building on top of the first, is to support local innovations to create access-channels to this stored knowledge. Semapedia Tags can be seen as a prototypical example that it is not only possible to bring knowledge back into the world, but also that it can be practical and simple to do. Semapedia is about the people, not about one specific technology. We are a pioneering community of local innovators to augment technology, Wikipedia and the real world. We have made a difference once Wikipedia contributions in developing countries is stronger and Semapedia itself is heavily used by everyday people and other diverse forms of physical hyperlinking establish themselves.

Web site

http://www.semapedia.org

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$1000000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

We see the need to share information with others one of the greatest abilities and driving-force of man. On the other side of the spectrum, the need and ability to consume information is just as strong. While traditional media and the internet in general provides tools at our disposal that can be used to generate knowledge already, the missing link that we are introducing is the relation back to the real world where Wikipedia knowledge really matters and where it can help others. We want to provide and develop many tools to make this missing connection as easy to create and to consume as possible starting with the proposed 2D Barcode-based version.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$1000000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

We see the three main factors for Semapedia's success coming together: Wikipedia and it's sister projects have matured to a degree where they are reliable, authentic and multi-lingually accessible. Secondly, 2D Barcode technology has begun to emerge into the mobile mainstream in Europe, the US and China. It has proven itself as a utility in Japan and South Korea over the past years in many applications already. The mobile internet is becoming more and more wide-spread and considering global investment into broadband internet infrastructure for cellphones, mobile connectivity will be commonplace and considered a utility. For the specific application of all three described components we are unique and are trying to pioneer into the new world in which every physical thing will one day be clickable. We do however encourage - and wish to support - projects that are reaching for the same goals as we do, there are simply none out there yet. From a strategic standpoint it is important to say that being based on open content, protocols and technologies, Semapedia does have an advantage to be adopted with very low entry barriers. The system is decentralized in that anyone can participate and since Wikipedia is such a huge resource of knowledge, users can create their own and unique applications. We see Semapedia as a framework for physical hyperlinking.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

2years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

In it's heart Semapedia is bound to be spread by the people for the people and it is exactly what has been happening. From experience we have learned that through the playfulness of creating and using Semapedia Tags people can quickly understand the concept and are excited about the possibilities it provides them.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

No. We have not received funding or investments from other parties. We have received server infrastructure from Sun Microsystems in 2006 as a donation to our project.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

The Semapedia core team is Alexis Rondeau and Stan Wiechers, both based in New York City. Over the course of the project we have created a network of local Semapedia ambassadors in Europe (Hector Rinaldi) and Africa (Guido Sohne) who are helping to bring Semapedia to their communities.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

The larger context of our work is to make the world clickable by any means, create virtual connections between physical entities and provide the missing link to information that exists in todays web. There are cell phone based social projects like Socialight, Dodgeball and Jaiku who let you know where you friends are and what they are currently up to. There are game companies like area/code who aim to use those new territories as a gaming platform. Companies like Nike track your running performance while using an iPod to let users share the data and have virtual asynchronous competitions while doing real running. (Disclaimer: Stan Wiechers was a Nike+ Project Member) 2D Barcode provide not only a marking mechanism for locations but for for objects as well, we will see surge of 2D Barcodes on packages or in magazine that link to useful web content and services. Since that is a huge business opportunity, you see frequent announcements to from companies like orange, t-mobile and china mobile to create standards in that area. Note that 2D Barcodes have been heavily in use in Japan and South Korea for many years for many different applications. We believe the business interest will push those technologies more and more in the mainstream and create a true paradigm shift in information consumption. First signs of mainstream adoption can be seen in the new Pet Shop Boys newest video 'Integral' which uses 2D Barcodes to create links to issues of Privacy and Security within their video.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

We are used to a world where information placement in the public space is dominated by advertising. The public information space is hardly driven by the greater public, it is largely driven by business objectives. We are optimistic that providing tools and inspiration in physical hyperlinking will make the public understand that they can claim back that space. We want users not consumers. We want to raise the bar for information consumption in the public space with the deep, high quality and multi lingual content of the Wikipedia project.

Campaign Against Censorship Thailand

Primary Contact Name

Professor CJ Hinke

Describe your project

1) Banned Books Project: Celsius 233--some 1,500 books have been banned officially or self-censored unofficially in Thailand. FACT wishes to scan many of the relevant and historical titles to make them available as a public, searchable, mirrored library in an uncensored country. 2) Virtual Private Network (VPN)--FACT wishes to establish a VPN in an uncensored country and make free accounts available to all. Concealing one's IP address has been criminalised under the provisions of a new, draconian cybercrime law making use of circumvention software and anonymous proxy servers illegal as well as forcing Thai ISPs to become cybercops doing government's dirty work. VPNs require noconcealment and are thus completely legal but VPNs are reputed to require extensive support both on the server and client sides. 3) Free Thai Project--Extensive translation is required both from English to Thai and Thai to English in order to keep the public informed and the issues in the public eye. Per page costs are quite high and a typical document can cost $600-1000. FACT sends frequent press releases, information bulletins and postings to FACT's website. We also post the secret, official blocklists (from spies) on our site. We wish to continue to distribute our CD of public information, blocklists, proposals to government as well as circumvention software and access to anonymous proxies. We also wish to distribute a FACT booklet, t-shirts, buttons, stickers and black wristbands. 4) Taking Stock Project--FACT wishes to buy common shares in Thailand's 54 ISPs in order to put censorship on the agendae of their annual shareholders' meetings. 5) Keeping censorship in Thailand on the international agendae of international human rights, freedom of expression, privacy and civil liberties groups is essential both to our personal safety (forced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial killings are not uncommon) and contribute to the issue's visibility. We consider international support to be crucial and require travel to conferences.

Primary Contact Email

facthai@gmail.com

Organization or Business Name

Freedom Against Censorship Thailand--FACT

Who would want to use it and why?

Freedom Against Censorship Thailand has 700 signers since November 2006 as of July 2007. However, FACT has far more wide-ranging interest. Currently more than 50,000 websites are blocked by several government agencies. Users can be expected to be journalists, academics and their students, researchers, human rights, free expression and media activists. Nearly every Thai is thirsty for democracy and we think there could well be a groundswell for this legal use. VPN would accomplish communication with our other projects even if they are blocked by government. Media, book and film censorship are becoming victims to unofficial self-censorship as there are no legal guidelines in place, thus no transparency or accountability in government. FACT wants to offer an alternative to tyranny.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) was established in November 2006 to petition the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand over Internet censorship. Since that time, Internet censorship has increased more than 500% under the military coup d'etat government. The coup repealed the 1997 'Peoples' Constitution which guaranteed many human rights and civil liberties. Government censorship violates at least 11 articles of the Constitution and has been decreed illegal by the Council of State and rulings by the Administrative Court. FACT has also pursued its campaign through the freedom of information process and will pursue all legal alternatives to censorship. FACT has tendered proposals to the Constitution Drafting Committee of the military-appointed National Legislative Assembly as well as contributed recommendations to subcommittees considering the cybercrime law, the Printing Act and the Film Act. We see our role as an apolitical watchdog group, simply against censorship no matter who is in power. FACT has sponsored public information seminars, fora and debates at the US Embassy, Bangkok (cosponsored by the US Department of State), the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand, the Thai Journalists Association, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, Chulalongkorn, Thammasat and Kasetsart universities and even a mobilisation at Thailand's premier computer venue to launch our CD, "Beat the Censors--Unblock ICT!" FACT's CD is available via Torrent as well as from FACT's website, Archive.org, International Freedom of Expression (IFEX), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and others. In only six months, censorship is being hotly debated in Thai society. Censorship is the subject of news reports several times a week as a result of our efforts. FACT is relied on for providing the secret blocklists to the public and for the accuracy of our detailed analysis of them and other censorship in Thai society such as the lese majeste and defamation laws.

U.S. State

Country

Thailand

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) has submitted a challenge on censorship to all of the political parties participating in the first democratic elections in two years. Two years ago Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was elected with a great majority; he was deposed by a military coup d'tat on September 19, 2006. FACT had planned its challenge to Internet censorship under civilian government. But we did not back down when we were suddenly confronting a military junta under martial law. Our greatest success could be measured through political parties here battling over which were better defenders of rights, liberties and free expression as Thailand returns to somewhat more democratic administration. FACT would like to participate in Government decision-making on vital free expression issues. A) To amend the new Constitution 2007, to which drafting committee FACT submitted proposals. Many of the rights and liberties guaranteed by the 1997 'People's' Charter need to be restored to allow Thailand to become a functioning democracy. B) for repeal of the new Computer-Related Crimes Act. This law was the first and only passed by the interim military coup-appointed National Legislative Assembly. Since its passage, two Internet users have been arrested for posting anonymous comments regarding the monarchy. They were traced by IP address. Such laws make Thailand a police state and a surveillance society; they are unacceptable in a democratic system. It is widely expected that further arrests will follow, probably next for use of circumvention software or anonymous proxies. Further, the new cybercrime law is now being used by ISPs to block arbitrarily and independently with no public or even Government oversight as the ISPs are afraid of criminal sanctions for "illegal" content transitting their servers. C) to repeal existing lese-majeste and criminal defamation laws. These laws have been abused consistently for political ends in Thailand, to intimidate opponents and stifle dissent.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) intends to pressure the new Parliament on the several issues addressed in No. 5 above via a public campaign after December's election. Public and Government responce to these overtures will be some measure of our success. A) Amend the new Constitution 2007 B) Repeal of the new Computer-Related Crimes Act. Government considers the arrests to be a measure of the new Act's effectiveness. Certainly, one effect has been a further chilling of free expression. As the prosecution dropped these cases, there may be a fundamental flaw in the law which we can expose and exploit. It is widely expected that further arrests will follow, probably next for use of circumvention software or anonymous proxies. Further, the new cybercrime law is now being used by ISPs to block arbitrarily and independently with no public or even Government oversight as the ISPs are afraid of criminal sanctions for "illegal" content transitting their servers. Existing law is sufficient to deal with every situation used in the Act. FACT thinks we need to get rid of this law. C) to repeal existing lese-majeste and criminal defamation laws. These laws have been abused consistently for political ends in Thailand, to intimidate opponents and stifle dissent. One elegant solution we have proposed regarding lese-majeste is that His Majesty must sanction such a charge. These are merely concrete examples. Less tangible measures are greater openness in Thai media by seeing reporting on critical but sensitive and controversial issues. Many issues are presently completely unreported in the Thai language media. Another measure would be a refusal of Thai ISPs to block any Web content. Such a bloc would be resistant to Government intimidation. Already one large ISP and new International Internet Gateway are refusing to block content after negotiations with FACT; they have not been moved against thus far. We are hoping that our Taking Stock Project will put further pressure on ISPs and Gateways to refuse to capi

Web site

http://facthai.wordpress.com

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$150000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) is the only ACTIVIST group working against all manifestations of censorship in Thailand. Censorship has been allowed to become a pervasive part of Thai society. Many Thais don't even notice the daily self-censorship we impose. FACT, first and foremost, exists to raise public awareness of censorship and to raise public consciousness to accept and expect free expression. We hold and participate in public fora, organise mobilisations, tender proposals to Government, cooperate with both local NGOs and professional associations and international free expression organisations. This work has served to make people here cognizant that they are being constantly monitored and censored. FACT's work over the last year has ensured that the issue is in the news several days a week. Our efforts have also enabled cooperation with international organisations and made Thailand's censorship a world issue.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$150000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

Thai society and Thai politics are in a very fragile transitional phase. Our Constitutional process is being redeveloped and evaluated. Thai can ally with forces of repression, the military in parfticular, or forces of freedom. There has been greater open challenge through nolnviolent resistance to this coup d'etat than to any other. Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) thinks, hopes and dreams Thai people are ready to accept freedom. We are on an intellectual and moral cusp. Many activist organisations are to show the varied ways freedom can be expressed. Defending freedom in this time in Thailand affords great challenge and responsibility. It will take people trained and capable to develop creative strategies of resistance and able to offer alternatives. FACTivists all need to be fearless in resisting further repression. Internet censorship, in particular, affects public discussions, information and knowledge sharing, free exchange of opinions. Several of the wholesale Web-blocking currently practiced are the silencing of dissenting political opinions, anti-coup voices and commentary on Thailand's monarchy. However, perhaps most important, such censorship has silenced all voices from the deep Southern Muslim provinces. Such censorship is resulting in unparalleled divisions in Thai society and helps to encourage violence. Even Southern appeals to international bodies such as the United Nations have been blocked by Thai government. In addition, martial law has been in effect for more than one year using an "internal security" law. FACT is working against an update to this law which gives the military even more power.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

1years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) is making continuing plans to initiate and participate in further public fora and conferences both in Thailand and abroad. There are already so many subjects here which require public discussion and understanding. We already have a great media presence in Thailand and internationally; as FACT is on the cutting edge of censorship issues here, we have become best-known for our rapid responce in defence of freedoms and resistance to repression. We have always sought to be newsworthy! We also are planning further mass mobilisations. In June 2007, more than 500 people attended a FACT mobilisation to make its anti-censorship tools available to the public on CD. In August 2007, FACT participated in a mobilisation at the United Nations branch in Bangkok to raise public awareness of the Cybercrime law. FACT also has plans for a high-quality, well-designed booklet stating our platforms against censorship. Many brochures, pamphlets and leaflets are merely throwaways; we hope to make ours attractive enough to be saved for reference to these issues. CJ Hinke, as a Thai book publisher, is already a member of the Publishers and Booksellers Association of Thailand. PUBAT holds two major international book fairs every year, each attended by over two million ordinary Thais. FACT has been very active in defending all books recently banned here. However, we would like to have a booth at these book fairs educating the public about censorship issues and promoting our various programmes such as our "Beat the Censors" CD, Freedom Network VPN and Banned Books Project.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) was started out of the personal commitment of CJ Hinke. As a boutique Thai publisher and retired academic, there simply have not been sufficient funds available to accomplish all that needs our urgent attention here. In addition, FACT has a core group of about 30 activists all of whom have given unsparingly of their personal funds and time. The sad reality in Thailand is that vital NGOs are never able to be funded locally and always require international support. There are times when that makes us feel we're in no position to fight government (composed of, of course, fat cats in every country). However, we've been giving a good fight so far on nearly no funds--what a difference some support would make! In particular, FACT would be able to hire a full-time bilingual staff person to deal with our Website, scanning and translation. A staff member would also help to keep FACT's issues timely in the public mind. monitor and assess censorship issues and the effectiveness of our campaign.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

FACT's current advisory panellists are: Organisation and coordination: Supinya Klangnarong (Past Coordinator) - Campaign for Popular Media Reform (media freedom advocacy group) and Mahidol University's Office of Human Rights and Social Development CJ Hinke (Coordinator) - Thammasat University, Ruen Panya Books Arthit Suriyawongkul (Coordinator) - Siridhorn International Institute of Technology (SIIT), Thammasat University Thai and international law: Nakhon Chomphuchat - Internet law Dr. Pinai na Nakorn - Constitutional law, Faculty of Law, Thammasat University Phromlak Sakphichaimongkhon - Thai law Somchai Homlaor - Human rights law Media freedom: Chiranuch Premchaiporn - Prachatai.com (independent and progressive Web media) Dr. Jon Ungphakorn - Former Thai Senator, AIDS and free expression activist, columnist for The Bangkok Post Pravit Rojanapruk - Media campaigner, reporter for The Nation Roby Alampay, South East Asia Press Association (Bangkok-based international media advocacy group) Muslim voices: The Honourable Angkhana Neelapaijit - current member of the military-appointed National Legislative Assembly, prominent Muslim voice, wife of disappeared Muslim human rights lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit Thawatchai Piyawat - GotoKnow.org (Webblog provider, from Thailand's Muslim South) Internet freedoms: Dr. Jittat Fakcharoenphol - Faculty of Computer Science, Kasetsart University (academic computer professional) Sarinee Acharanuntakul - Fringer.org (popular bilingual Weblog activist) Sombat Boonngamanong - Sep19.org (prominent anti-coup activist, charged with criminal defamation by military junta's two top leaders, his websites blocked on many occasions, case pending) Dr. Somkiat Tangnamo - Midnight University (Chiang Mai University academic and founder of online university, took government to court over Web-blocking and secured an injunction against further blocking, case pending) Banned books: Dr. Charrnvit Kasetsiri - Southeast Asian historian, Thammasat University

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

At present, there are no organisations working specifically on censorship issues in Thailand. However, Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) cooperates with local freedom of expression groups such as the Campaign for Popular Media Reform, Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, Free Cinema Movement,Southeast Asian Press Alliance, Thai Journalists Association, Thai Labour Campaign, Thai Press Association. FACT is a member of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign and partners with its 68 international member organisations. FACT actively cooperates both locally and internationally with a variety human rights, civil liberties, freedom of expression organisations. We are especially active in information-sharing in order to issue appeals that work both ways. FACT also receives cooperation from: Academic advisors: Dr. Pirongrong Ramasoota - Faculty of Journalism, Chulalongkorn University Dr. Ubonrat Siriyuwasuk (Advisor Emeritus) - Faculty of Communication Arts, Chulalongkorn University and International advisors: Nick Cheesman - Asian Human Rights Foundation, Hong Kong Dr. Chintana Sandilands - Australian National University Bennett Haselton - Peacefire.org (Privacy activist), USA Dr. Dan McQuillan - Amnesty International, UK Danny O'Brien - Electronic Frontiers Foundation, USA Dr. Snea Thinsan - University of Indiana, USA Dr. Thongchai Winichakul - University of Wisconsin, USA Philip Zimmerman - Crypto-activist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology We feel it vital that Thai people come to realise not only their freedoms are under threat but that people in nearly every country can say the same. It is also important for people overseas to see how we are fighting the Campaign Against Censorship in Thailand, our successes and our setbacks.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) guarantees that Thai people will understand issues of censorship, free expression, media freedoms, freedom of communication, freedom of association, academic freedom, freedom of opinion, thought, ideas, human rights and civil liberties. We want Thai people to expect these attributes of a free society and to act when these freedoms are violated. Our banner attached below reads, "Stop blocking the Internet". FACT's campaign is under the banner of "NO COMPROMISE! NO CENSORSHIP!". We are also attaching FACT's electoral proposals; FACT's opinion on Internet censorship; "Dancing with Martial Law"; FACT's mission statement; and most current banned book analysis, on "Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party" for your review.

Online Collaborative 3d Story and 3d animators Resource.

Primary Contact Name

Mr. Antonio Profetto

Describe your project

Online Story Collaboration; This usually fails because there isn't a good infrastructure in place. I am hoping to use Drupal to create a site where people have the resources to create a story online. It would have a storyboard creator/editor, database of assets such as textures, 3d objects, tutorials, and a selection of different genres to work on. Most importantly it would have levels of Roles assigned by a moderator. Roles are basically levels of commitment by users who have joined the site. By completing certain tasks users advance to higher positions and or unlock more advanced tutorials. The benefit is increasing control over particular Stories. People interested in say a sci-fi story would contribute scripts(written stories), 3d objects, images, 3d sets, 3d props. They would create storyboards, complete shots, etc, adding additional points allowing them to increase their roles in the various online projects. Roles can be overridden by an Admin moderator if certain people display a lack of interest or zeal or take a project in the wrong direction, but in a way that is helpful and not negative. Most online collaborations fail because people don't like the idea of not having control of a project. I think if there is a very easy laid out Rule set, people will feel comfortable enough to contribute their time to Short 3d films. More and more Anime is making it's way to the U.s.. More and more of that style is being generated using 3d. This means there is a growing base of 3d artists wanting to learn how to make anime and how to make 3d animations. By giving people a site that allows them to learn 3d programs in a fun way and possibly learn and create their own anime show, or episode in an orderly way, I think this is a great resource using the internet and only possible using the internet. It could even become an online school, with full time staff creating tutorials, and or helping aspiring animators.

Primary Contact Email

Antoniovp@gmail.com

Organization or Business Name

Who would want to use it and why?

I think all aspiring 3d animators would like to use it. I myself scour the net for free objects, tutorials, and textures. Some are actually of good quality. I've seen tons of websites where talented people post images they have done for fun. It would be great to foster that into an online 3d community where artists could join in online projects and actually have some control of the outcome. The end product might be small 3d shorts produced by artists from all over the world. More adept people might become mentors, helping people starting out. I also think having a prize structure of some sort for completed work might be an incentive for people to complete their ideas. This might be from sponsors in the industry, or access to better on-site tutorials, or access to higher role functionalty.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

I have been running nyclightwave.com for several years. It's a user group where a bunch of Newtek lightwave 3d users congregate to learn how to better our skills. I've been using drupal for several months and migrated our user group site over to that platform. I maintain the website, and contribute to our online community. But I also have a vision, to help people learn by doing projects. I feel this is the best way to learn. Our user group has several people "in the industry" and their insights on politics, technique and artistic style have helped all our members become better artists.

U.S. State

NY

Country

United States

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

I would say the worlds first Collaborative full length 3d animated movie, where the plot, animation, and overall production were all driven by the website. It could even become an online school, with full time staff creating tutorials, and or helping aspiring animators. The mission statment would be "Learn by doing". 3d Software could be sold via student discount, creating revenue for give aways, contests, tutorials. (most 3d software today also give their software away for 1 month as a free download. (An example is newtek lightwave) This might be enough time for someone to do a few tutorials, and decide if they want to do more.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

This is easy. If even one animated story gets created, I would consider this project a success. I would consider it a partial success if at least some story or stories were created, and some shots completed. At the very least it would become a 3d resource for people wanting to learn 3d animation.

Web site

http://nyclightwave.com

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$30000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

A place for animators at home to network together in a digital environment for the purpose of making 3d animated shorts in a controlled and easy way.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$45000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

I think that this project can be created using drupal. I think that it's robust database structure and taxonomy features will be critical. It's use of "roles" and "groups" are also critical. An example of the roles of drupal would be the ability to assign roles like levels in a video game, completing certain tasks unlock others that give you more control of your story, and also allow you to learn more complicated 3d techniques; sort of like a prerequisite type of structure.)

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

2years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

The main way people will learn about the site, will be forum posts on sites where 3d users hang out. Also SEO positioning on google. Post's left on the Newtek forums, cgchannel, cgsociety, flay, and any other 3d sites I can find will generate traffic to the site. Also solicitations to authors who provided free quality 3d assets. For example, locating and finding free models are fairly easy on the web. Asking the authors permission to collect and distribute their public domain models on the site might generate interest for them to participate in a story, at the very least a strong collection of quality 3d objects would be created for the community.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

I will be hosting the site, Buying the domain name, installing Drupal, and investing my time on making all the drupal parts fit the project. I will also be emailing sponsors for prizes. Emailing the creators of public domain 3d assets for permission to host thier objects on the site for the purpose of helping create stories. I will collect links to tutorials, and hopefully have some written for the site. I will also be the Web Admin for the site. I will also contribute 2d and 3d assets to the site.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

No. I will need to hire freelancers to help me get past certain drupal obstacles. I also plan on using Adobe Flash for the storyoboard section. This also I think I would have to hire someone. I do have skills in both drupal and Flash, but to overcome sticking points I would have to get help from the drupal and or flash communities either by using user group forums, and freelancers. I think in this area any grant money would be most useful.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

As far as I know there are no other people working on a project like this. I think the reasons are complex. In today's day and age, there is tons of time being wasted on video game playing. There are statistics that show that kids get better hand eye coordination, but not much else. If people have time to play, they might want to contribute to a group project instead. Instead of playing a video game with cool 3d graphic cut scenes, they might want to try and make one if they knew there was a place they could learn how to do it.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

A website where people could start collaborating on a 3d animated story. It is my hope that if this is done correctly, people will create hundreds of 3d animated shorts over the years.

Drupal Advanced Survey Module with Geo-specific Result Reporting and Mapping

Primary Contact Name

Mr. Ryan Szrama

Describe your project

Drupal Advanced Survey Module with Geo-specific Result Reporting and Mapping: Bringing real survey support to the most cutting edge platform for online news outlets and citizen journalism communities.

The Drupal Advanced Survey Module (hereafter DASM) is the answer to a long standing void in the Drupal website development community. There is currently no decent solution for surveys in Drupal powered community or journalism websites. The Drupal project itself has to rely on third party survey applications to survey its users and developers! DASM will allow content administrators on Drupal powered websites to post simple to complex surveys with survey item types ranging from multiple choice and select box questions to the more complex item rating and ranking questions. DASM surveys may be posted to the general readership or to targeted audiences with variable run length times and notification options. Quality assurance features will prevent abuse and restrict survey access where appropriate. DASM survey results may be displayed in any number of formats to either administrators, readers, or both. Default options will include simple text based result summaries, graphical representations using pie charts and graphs, and maps with plotted survey responses. Survey results will be filterable based on any particular survey item, like a zip code text field. For example, a Louisville, KY based newspaper could survey its readers on a local political issue and plot the percentage of responders in favor of or opposed to the issue on a Google map by zip code. IP address lookup also makes it possible for locations to be stored automatically, and integration would be provided with other existing geolocation modules. A major benefit of DASM is the fact that it will be developed as a Drupal module. This makes it instantly available to every Drupal powered journalism or community site in the world. It also enables simple integration with many awesome Drupal modules pertaining to drawing, mapping, workflows, locations, and more. See the proposed feature list on page 5 of DASM proposal.pdf for more information.

Primary Contact Email

ryan.szrama@gmail.com

Organization or Business Name

By Wombats

Who would want to use it and why?

DASM will be useful to any Drupal powered news or community journalism website, whether it's a high profile site like Now Public or a smaller site targeting a specific geographical regions or community. Localized sites may specifically take advantage of the module to poll their readers on local issues and events. Results may then be displayed simply in any number of formats to best represent the data collected. Until now, no decent, native survey module has been available to these sites. Developers will be inclined to use this module because of its integration with the core Drupal APIs and other applicable contributed modules. Administrators will have a simplified user interface for creating and publishing surveys and results, while responders will similarly have a hassle free time completing the survey or poll.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

I have been developing websites and modules with Drupal for over a year and a half, and I totally love it. I love being a part of a global development community, and I love taking opportunities to contribute to it. I certainly have the motivation to produce this module and the devotion to the community to see it adopted and made useful for as many people as possible. Furthermore, for the last year, I have been the project manager, community spokesman, and lead developer of the Ubercart project, an extensive e-commerce suite being developed for Drupal. Through the process, I have become well acquainted with the various Drupal systems and APIs necessary to create powerful modules in Drupal. I have also honed my eye for usable interfaces as we constantly work to make Ubercart an easy to use application. In terms of experience, I have all the technical knowledge necessary to create a survey module that conforms to Drupal coding standards, integrates with the appropriate popular contributed modules, and most importantly, is easy to use for both administrators and responders. Finally, as the lead developer of the Drupal coding group, By Wombats, I have a growing talent pool of interested developers who are (almost) as passionate about Drupal development as me. This includes other core Ubercart developers and the contributor of the drawing API (known as snufkin) who has experience integrating his module with Drupal systems to produce various types of charts, graphs, and maps. There will be no lack of talented associates to make sure the work gets completed, tested, and publicized! Finally, as an active member of the Drupal community, I have received valuable feedback on module implementation strategies in the past. My developer blog is aggregated at Planet Drupal, so posts related to this project will reach a wide audience of developers who will then put this module to use for their clients.

U.S. State

KY

Country

United States

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

Assuming everything falls into place with the module and its development, we would be able to publicize it and make known its feature set to journalism sites. Many sites would start to use this in conjunction with their reporting to get visitor feedback on articles and issues and incorporate the results into future stories or site changes. This would be a valuable feedback tool for site owners trying to gauge the effectiveness of their sites in reaching their target audiences and having a real impact on local communities and issues. The architecture for the module would support plugins for new question and reporting types, so as sites and developers get on board they can start contributing back to the module set to extend the survey module's features. Furthermore, Drupal install profiles could be setup that would allow people to include surveys and polls in their sites or even develop an entire site just around a survey. This would facilitate one off survey sites like the Drupal site used to track the success of Radiohead's CD barter for In Rainbows. It would also make it easier for independent bloggers and journalists to incorporate reader feedback into their articles and site development plans. Integrating with tools like Google Maps could have huge implications for citizens of a specific community to see how people nearby feel about surveyed issues. It can help those involved assess the impact of a survey participant's location and demographic on their viewpoints and survey responses. Eventually, we'd like to see modules organizing results into things like trends over time periods so community groups can gauge the effectiveness of their activities and change their approaches to better achieve their goals.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

This is very simple... first, we look for "market" penetration. In other words, are the sites that we view as likely candidates for survey capabilities taking advantage of the module? Are other Drupal applications that would benefit from offering advanced surveys to their users (like CiviCRM) integrating the module into their basic feature set? Since we're not looking to sell a product but increase Drupal's viability as a platform for journalism sites, we would see how many sites take advantage of the tool and use it regularly. The community will also offer up feedback on the usability of the module and its interfaces and the usefulness of it on their sites. This has happened with other modules such as Tagadelic and can surely happen with a much more powerful module like this. We want to know that site administrators are able to incorporate this into their sites and that site visitors are taking part in the polls and spending time viewing the results. There will be no way for us to directly monitor this, since we won't have access to everyone's servers, but having developed this module it would be simple for us to then create a survey on our blog site where people can give us valuable feedback on how to make this a better tool for their communities and sites.

Web site

http://www.bywombats.com

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$45000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

Currently, there is no good, robust survey solution for Drupal. The Drupal project itself is forced to use third party survey tools when it wants to run a community wide survey. If a good solution exists, surely Drupal.org of all websites would be using it. This means that existing and future journalism sites developed in Drupal will be lacking functionality that has become widely used and expected in outlets providing statistics, accepting reader feedback and opinion, and reporting on community activity. This module would meet that need and do it in such a fashion that 95% of cases would be addressed. For the fringe, a plugin system would be built into the module to support whatever custom modules need to be developed. Furthermore, only the poll module built into Drupal (which is for single questions) offers any sort of result reporting. However, it is severely limited and does not offer any sort of data filtering or breakdown like I envision for the geo-specific reports generated by our advanced survey module. Data doesn't just need to be gathered... it needs to be stored logically and accessible to administrators and users to view and digest. The simple inclusion of survey results in articles and on pages in admin specifiable formats will facilitate this. For example, a news article related to a councilman's public policy may be accompanied with a survey polling users on their approval of his job.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$60000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

Basically, it will be more robust than the existing solutions, provide a better user interface for administrators and users, and actually handle the organization and display of data. This project is quite ambitious in its goals, and I believe they are all attainable with the developers and experience we have at By Wombats. If we simply put an initial release up, it will immediately be more useful than the current Drupal offerings! By simplifying the construction and reporting of polls and surveys, we're making a module that will get wide exposure. By focusing specifically on the needs of sites targeting geographical communities, our module and therefore Drupal will be one of a kind in allowing small, medium, and large journalism sites a free, easy to use survey program fully integrated in a CMS.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

1years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

The project will be managed through Drupal.org, so it will be immediately visible to anyone who visits the site. Furthermore, I and and the team will blog about our activities through the By Wombats site. Drupal posts here are aggregated to the Planet Drupal and then dispersed to many sites and feed readers aggregating the content there. In short, a single post to our personal blog will be delivered to hundreds of other developers and made visible to thousands of potential users. Community interaction is key, as I'm sure many people have ideas about how this can be most useful. As such, we will open a section of our Ubercart forums specifically related to the Advanced Survey Module and link to it from the project page at Drupal.org. The issue tracking capabilities of Drupal.org will be used to track feature and support requests, brainstorming, and bug reports.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

Aside from those who have expressed interest in using the advanced survey module in their community and journalism sites, we are going to seek sponsorship from members and developers of the Ubercart community for the support of the development. Ubercart has a growing e-commerce community with people using e-commerce for a variety of needs, and many such sites incorporate surveys for customer feedback. We're sure there are people willing to sponsor development to get customer feedback surveys and product use surveys. As such, we'll also donate paid Ubercart developer time to manage the community aspect and publicizing of the project.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

The current plan is to have developers from By Wombats focus on developing, supporting, and maintaining the module for the years to come. We have a network of other developers who may or may not lend their expertise to the project. There are bound to be members of the community who are willing to blog about, use, and write tutorials for the advanced survey module. Furthermore, if we find an area where our knowledge is not enough, we have a network of friends and developers from the Drupal community at large that we can tap into for free and paid development support where need be.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

Since we're looking at Drupal, the alternatives are the built in poll module, the outdated survey module, and a webform module. These are maintained by core maintainers or other contribution developers, but there is no aggressive plan for improvement on these modules. They mostly focus on e-mailed results or simple one shot polls, and the core module in particular is more likely to be cut from development in future versions than extended. While others have focused on creating customizable forms, there are no projects actively working handling survey type form questions and result reporting like we have outlined in the advanced survey module proposal. There are third party tools that provide survey functionality, but none are integrated with Drupal or a similar CMS. We'll be blazing a new trail here and providing Drupal an edge in the competitive open source CMS world as the premier tool for local community and journalism sites.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

I guarantee that the module will be published with full documentation and examples of use. The module will be published with the GPL license as an open source project through Drupal.org so other companies, developers, and one shot site owners will be able to use this in their site development. The tool will be easy for people to use, and the result reporting will be useful to a broad range of survey and site types. The module will be blogged about, discussed in forums, and publicized over the web through the Drupal community (esp. Planet Drupal). This means the creative genius of potentially dozens of developers and site administrators may come to bear on the project. At the very least, people will know the module exists and know how it may be used. A demonstration site will be put up so people investigating the module for us on their sites will be able to test drive all aspects of the module package - from survey participating to viewing results to creating new surveys and reports. The functions and modules developed in this project will be extensible and reusable. The developer APIs will be documented through Drupal.org so as many people as possible can access the documentation and write other modules to interface with the advanced survey module. We will do everything within our power so that the community is empowered to use and participate in the development and usefulness of this module.

MyRadio: an online comminty radio news and programming exchange platform.

Primary Contact Name

Mr. Martin V Att.

Describe your project

MyRadio in an online (internet based) and mobile ( cellphone) news exchange and delivery platform. It targets community based journalist. The ser vice will allow community radio stations to exchange interviews, news reports, debates they produced in their communities. The online plaform will allow journalist attached to community radio stations in South Africa to subscribe to the service free. The online platform is a unique opportunity to axchange stories by uplowding daily stories/current affairs programmes, and this will allow stations throughout the country to exchange programmes using an internet portal. Stations will further be in position to access press releases and press audio clips by National Government and Provincial Government and other national breaking stories. An online platform will give community reporters to have free email address and access to a dedicated news-chartroom . In this chartroom reporters will have an opportunity to discuss story lines and other challenges faced by community based repoters MyRadio Mobile: The launch of Electronic Communication Act 2006 in South Africa, further allowed different communication industries to establish new content delivery platforms. This platform will help community radio stations to access this new technology and ensure that they maximise their community reach. Each station with a dedicated unique code that they will use to encourage their listerns to subscribe. The mobile unit will be used to deilvery sms (breaking local stories) by individual station. This is an interactive service listeners will use this number to alert journalist about issues in their communities and participate in programming through comments or ask questions. Most of community reporters dont have any acedemic background. Myradio will establish partership with the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism to offer a 12 months national journalism qualification to all participating reporters with a special module to online journalism. Each reporter will receiver a field recorder& la

Primary Contact Email

martin@conceptsmobile.co.za

Organization or Business Name

Concepts Mobile Solutions

Who would want to use it and why?

Community Radio Journalist in South Africa. The project will identity rural and urban based station in all South Africas 9 provinces. Each province will have 4 stations, (36 stations will participate and 36 community journalist will participate in a project). Each reporter will be given an opportunity to attend a National Journalism Qualification. Community Radio in South Africa has a mandate to deliver community based programme, and further develop programme exchange strategy. The lack of proper structure , skills and resources posses a challenge. Therefore bridge that digital devide gap and improve the minimise the shortage of skills Community Radio sector is currently the biggest listened form of radio medium is South Africa. Most people in SA have mobile phones,this is a new content delivery platform

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

•Concepts Mobile Solutions was formed in 2005 by Nkopane Maphiri and Martin Vilakazi. •Both share more than 13 years of radio broadcasting experience, having extensively worked throughout the Sub-Saharan region on radio production, management, marketing, advertising and programming •They also bring together vast knowledge in broadcasting having worked extensively in assisting different communities to setup their own radio stations. •Both Directors are graduated with Telecommunications Policy Regulation and Markets Management Certificate, from Wits University Link Centre •Our philosophy is one that encourages innovation that drives us to achieve breakthrough results for our clients. At all times we break the boundaries and challenge conventional thinking and explore new, untried possibilities. •A philosophy that constantly considers new perspectives and continuously develop unique solutions that set us and our clients apart. •A philosophy that challenge us to create strategic positioning in the market that will differentiate our clients as a market leader. •A philosophy that takes an objective and interpretive approach to help our clients understand market trends and factors influencing changes in the market in order to help them develop effective and creative solutions •The convergence of communications industries is redefining the Telecommunications industry landscape in South Africa today. Cellular phones are now no longer telecommunication tools for making voice calls but they also allow the sending and receiving of text messages, picture messaging, video and audio material. The multi-media functionality of cellular phones provides a unique market opportunity for telecommunications, information technology and broadcasting/content service providers to discover new audience delivery platforms. This opens spaces for new product enhancement role players to enter the industry and provide unique services.

U.S. State

Country

South Africa

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

This idea has a potential of shaping many aspects of community journalism 1. The establishment of a community radio news satellite that will use see the convergence of satellite, terrestrial broadcasting and shit towards the use of new content delivery platforms (internet and mobilephone) by braodcasters in Southern Africa Region. 2. Qualified community reporters, that never had an opportunity to receive academic training in media studies, by affording them a chance to register with an academic partnering institute for a journalism qualification. 3. A first online and mobile phone news and programs platform that will be centre for news development and sharing for reporters across the continent. 4. A resource for international news/media agencies to receive first hand stories from people staying within war torn areas, HIV and AIDS highly affected regions, areas with political unrest. This project will offer an opportunity to citizen journalist to engage with mainstream media.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

The project will have the expected outcomes: - A stable web-portal, to host residencies to gallery of interviews, speeches and news reports, for community journalist to have access to past and present braking stories. - To explore creative expressions within a resourceful and collaborative professional environment that provides links to other media interactive and web portal that will offer audio exchange platform, blogging capabilities, text exchange platform, active chartroom and free email to individual journalist registered - Training of 36 community based journalist link to community radio stations. Journalist will receive an 8 months skills program, which is national qualification with a specific focus on digital news reporting - At least in the first year 36 community radio station all over the country , must have their newsrooms linked to each other via broadband network that will allow them to share stories and programs daily. - Each station must develop its own news break audience mobilephone database, each station should have a database that will reflect their listenership at least each station should have 50 000 people subscribed to their database - MyRadio Mobile, should have 50 000 x 36 stations = 1 800 000 people subscribed to mobilephone news distribution portal. Which individual stations will use on everyday to distribute news via SMS and mms.

Web site

http://www.conceptsmobile.co.za

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$600000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

The project aims 1.To stage multimedia projects that promote dialogue, nurture and educate diverse audiences about the role of community media/radio sector in the creation of a vibrant civil society. 2.To provide daily news updates to different communities. 3.To host residencies to gallery of interviews, speeches and news reports, for community journalist to have access to past and present braking stories. 4.To explore creative expressions within a resourceful and collaborative professional environment that provides links to other media innovations. 5.To be a direct link to other community radio station journalist throughout the country

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$600000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

The new Electronic Communications Act 2006, in the Republic of South Africa allows the converged media platforms. Community radio sector in South Africa is well resourced to undertake or participate in this process. Community journalists always seek better ways to share and get new stories, unfortunately there is not forum that allows them to interact easily. Stations are already linked via a satellite that allows them do share syndicated programs on various topical programs e.g HIV/AIDS, Agricultural programs etc. The liberalization of ICT's is allowing communities to access new technology, currently mobile telecommunications industry has the highest penetration in the country. There are more than 30 million cellphone subscribes in South Africa , mostly concentrated in rural -peri-urban areas. Also there is high increase of internet penetration, most community reporters have access to internet via mobile internet (GPRS/3G) Mobile Broadband (satellite) and ISDL high speed broadband (fixed line). Also cost lines are coming down because of open market and regulations that seek to ensure there is universal access to information via USA Act

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

2years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

We will follow the following steps 1. Form a stakeholders committee that will be chaired by the National Community Radio Forum 2. Provincial News editorial Teams, that will ensure station coordination of newsroom in all South Africas 9 provinces 3. Radioshows visiting participating stations and other stations that have established newsrooms 4. Electronic newsletter to community radio stations. 5. We will release a memorandum inviting interested parties who what to use a site to contact us. 6. All participating stations (36) will design a call to action Public Service announcement, calling its audience to subscribe to a news alert and content delivery platform.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

Concepts doesn't have any funding for this project. However will continue to bring different parties that might add value to the project

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

Project Team 1. Martin Vilakazi (Project Manager) He will be responsible for an overall strategic and business management of the project. 2. Nkopane Maphiri (Stakeholders Liaison and Promotions) His major responsibility is to develop partnerships with the community media sector and promote the product both with community reporters and pubic. Also develop join programmes with different parties (Universities, content partners etc) 3. Sello Ditjoe (Portal Manager and Engineer) 4. Jacob Ntshangase ( Training Coordinator) 5. Paul Moeng ( Designer and Webmaster) 6. Nomusa Vilakazi (Portal Editor) 7. Athena Koopman (Project Coordinator) 8. Sibongile kubheka (Financial Officer

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

We are the one Company developing this service. There is news exchange or any satellite programming exchange is South Africa. We will also be the first to introduce new content delivery platform in South Africa

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

1. A sustainble news exchange and distribution portal. 2. 36 web-blogs for 36 community radio newsrooms. 3. A mobile news distribution portal with 1,8 million subsribers from 36 different communities recieving breaking stories in their respective communities 4. 36 Qualified communit reporters. 5. 36 community radio stations will have established and strong newroom 6. Improved community reporting , particular on community based stories by community radio stations, with each station meeting its licence conditions on local news quotes.

The People's Times

Primary Contact Name

Richard Wyles

Describe your project

The People’s Times is initially focused on Wellington, New Zealand, a city of approximately 180,000 people. The newspaper component will use an open source platform (Drupal) specifically designed and configured for a community of users to easily publish, manage and organise a wide variety of content. The platform will be highly configurable and feature rich including collaborative authoring environments, podcasting, picture galleries, blogging etc. This is not just another ‘citizen journalism’ proposal however. While the act of citizens playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, and disseminating information for and beyond their communities is core to the People’s Times there are two other key components to the platform that demonstrate significant innovation and an understanding of what underpins successful online community initiatives. Firstly, clubs, societies, sporting teams, community groups, resident’s associations and other forms of non-profit organisations will have free access to a simple and intuitive Interactive Noticeboard where local information can be placed and read – e.g. cancellations, things to do, club meetings, children’s sport results, local events etc. This is achieved through a combination of simple to use web authoring technology, a taxonomy for entries, tags and RSS to syndicate the information to different web locations. Secondly, the Community Hub section of the People’s Times will support a range of Web 2.0 functionality that empowers each community to manage their own online communication suite, including forums, Chat, Blogs, Document management, member management, Request a Community etc. An additional benefit is that local communities are provided with opportunities to establish horizontal (peer to peer) linkages regionally, nationally and even globally for information sharing and collaborative initiatives. My People’s Times will enable Users to create and configure their own page layout on a dashboard interface. Software components will be open source meaning the platform is replicable.

Primary Contact Email

richard@flexible.co.nz

Organization or Business Name

Flexible Learning Network Limited

Who would want to use it and why?

To understand the need for this development, consultation with a broad range of community groups was considered essential. In addition to desk-top research, a survey and correspondance with specific communities was undertaken. Registrations of support have been far higher than expected, indicating a real need for the service. Analysis of the responses shows a good cross section of community groups are supportive of the project. The survey results illustrates that this project appeals to both rural and urban community groups. Hobbies, clubs, resident associations, and sporting bodies are well represented. Many of the responses urged quick development (“We need this now!”. In summary, The People's Times will be used by a very wide cross-section of our local communities focused on Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

Richard Wyles has vast experience at project managing large innovative web based projects. Richard is leader of eNetwork Education project the conceptualisation and implementation of a network of provision across the tertiary education sector. The scope of this initiative has the potential to deliver a revolutionary impact to the education sector and knowledge economy throughout New Zealand and internationally. Previously Richard led the New Zealand Open Source Virtual Learning Environment Project, involving a consortium of 20 universities, institutes of technology and polytechnics. His work with the Moodle Learning Management System, since early 2004, has gained Richard international recognition as a thought leader in eLearning technology circles, and speaks regularly at international conferences. Moodle is now one of the most widely deployed LMSs internationally and is firmly established as a key eLearning platform in New Zealand, both in education and corporate training environments.In early 2004, Richard led the development of Eduforge (www.eduforge.org), to support the sharing of ideas, research outcomes, content and e-learning software for e-learning. Eduforge now hosts in excess of 200 projects from throughout the world. In addition to his work with eLearning, Richard has been at the forefront of New Zealand’s use of digital technologies for the past decade including being Internet Business Planner for Fairfax’s award winning newspaper website – Stuff.co.nz. His work here was recognised at the highest levels – please see attached letter from Rupert Murdoch. The project partners provide the organisational capacity that underpins Richard’s ability to lead this project. Catalyst IT (www.catalyst.net.nz) specialises in open source developments and have some 80 programmers. The Open Polytechnic is supporting the project in the areas of information literacy, community support and training materials.

U.S. State

Country

New Zealand

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

The bigger thing that we intend to happen is that the People’s Times takes the concept of citizen journalism to a new level of maturity, delivers an easily replicable model and one that is civic centered. At a fundamental level, the People's Times is designed for shared outcomes, learning across other organizations, communities and individuals. Increased intra and inter-community connectedness is a major goal of the project. The platform and model is entirely replicable and we believe the People’s Times will be a reference model for other geographic communities to adopt. We have had similar experience when in 2004, we started further development on Moodle, an open source learning management system. Moodle installations have grown from 350 to over 30,000 worldwide in just three years. The People’s Times will leverage the successful open source content management system Drupal. At this stage we have already secured funding for $120,000 further development of this open source platform. We believe a similar revolutionary impact is possible with the People’s Times and Drupal. Many citizen journalism initiatives are attempting to be disruptive to main-stream media. In contrast, the People’s Times will certainly support citizen journalism publishing but it is the Community Hub and Noticeboard that differentiates this initiative from others. It might be argued that citizens are already creating, accessing, using and sharing digital content using commercial social software sites such as MySpace and Facebook. However these sites focus on the individual as the centre of orbit, and are not designed as fit-for-purpose to support grass-roots communities. The People’s Times framework embraces the power of Web 2.0 technologies to deliver services around the community grouping as the focal point, not the individual. The Noticeboard area will leverage RSS extensively to provide free feeds of important community content. We believe the stars may well be aligned in that a fit-for purpose platform is available to be extended to meet our goals.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

The most robust evaluation method possible is for the communities themselves to evaluate the project, and for the aggregated survey results to be published on the People's Times itself and made available to other communities and other similar projects to learn from. The People's Times will offer a fully featured online Survey tool freely available for use by any community, including for their own evaluation purposes. Evaluation ultimately belongs with community peers and it is their degree of satisfaction that will drive the uptake and growth of communities on the People’s Times. Our plan to measure whether or not the People’s Times has really made a difference includes the following: - At the outset of the project, the objectives and evaluation criteria will be clearly published on the People’s Times and any documentation made available to potential and participating community groups using the Creative Commons Share Alike license. - A fully featured online survey tool will be offered as part of the People’s Times suite of services. - The People’s Times Evaluation Survey will list the aforementioned published objectives and ask users to score how well from their perspective the People's Times meets each one, plus give an opportunity to provide comments. - Survey responses may be anonymous as it will be made clear that analysis and comments will be published and openly available on the People’s Times. This level of openness will be an underlying ethos for the management of the People’s Times. - Surveys will be made available at regular quarterly intervals for the timeframe of the project and beyond. In addition, a Non-User Evaluation paper based survey will be sent to community groups not using the People’s Times. The intent of this survey is to uncover whether there are latent requirements not being met, levels of awareness regarding the service and any other factors to be noted in overall project evaluation.

Web site

http://www.flexible.co.nz

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$400000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

There are numerous tangible and intangible barriers to community groups leveraging online communication and publishing tools. Lack of resources, training, knowledge and experience, awareness and know-how of possible open source applications all create a situation where the broad-based need for our citizens to be active participants in the digital society is currently largely unmet. To fully understand the need for this development, consultation with a broad range of community groups was considered essential. A letter asking for feedback on the project was developed and mailed to a very wide range of community organisations . The letter outlined the project objectives and discussed some of the areas of development being considered. It included an opportunity for feedback and suggestions plus the opportunity for community groups to receive regular updates if the project is successful with seed funding.Registrations of support have been far higher than expected, indicating a real need for this service. Alpine Clubs, Anglers Clubs, Astronomical Societies, Brass Bands Association, Businesswomen’s Network, Camera Clubs, Car Clubs, Embroiderer’s Guilds, Genealogy groups, National Sporting Bodies (e.g. Athletics NZ and NZ Orienteering Federation), Neighbourhood, Community and Residents Associations, Outdoor Pursuits, Stamp Collectors Club / Philatelic Societies, Tramping Groups are types of community groups who have have indicated formal support for the People's Times. 56% of survey responses were from resident's associations, indicating a very high uptake in this category. While Web 2.0 and open source technologies are the enablers for the People’s Times framework, it is confidence and support that are the key critical success factors of the project. Therefore a key focus of the project is to build confidence across as broad a base as possible. Community groups registering to use the platform will receive an Information Pack for each of their members, online support, and step-by-step guidance on how to utilize the tools available.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$800000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

The People’s Times is at once both micro and macro focused and it is the combination of elements in the overall model plus the skills and experience of the team involved that presents a unique opportunity. We believe the best way to dig for news and act on it is to engage and leverage the collective possibilities of existing community groups. "Many voluntary groups are unable to enter the world of web technology for a variety of reasons usually due to cost and/or inexperienced personnel". "This (The People's Times) intends to assist in avoiding unnecessary duplication of services, especially when competing for government, charitable and philanthropic funding. We believe that a project such as this will allow this to happen." Frances Russell, Executive Director, Community Trust of Wellington. By supporting multiple community groups with the applications that are vital for creating, discovering, using and sharing content, we then have the foundations to collect, prepare and distribute news and information that is meaningful. While communication of opinion and comment are important, the definition of news as information the public expects to be factual and accurate, is a central theme of the People’s Times. Blogging already achieves the online equivalent of a soapbox and this is not the general need we’re trying to address. In contrast to the norm in social software and citizen journalism initiatives where individuals are the focal point, our primary building blocks for identifying, gathering and distributing news are community groups that already exist in physical space. We will be strongly encouraging community groups, clubs, environmental groups etc. to add their distinctive, collective voices to the People’s Times. Increased intra and inter-community connectedness is a major goal of the project. The unique opportunity is to address the needs of specific local communities in a replicable way in order to increase interconnectedness and thereby define, set and reach common community goals.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

1years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

Communities that already exist in a physical sense are our primary audience. Our initial engagement and communication plan includes “old-fashioned” but proven techniques such as direct marketing mail-outs, telephone contact and seminars. Community groups registering to use the platform will receive an Information Pack for each of their members, online support, and step-by-step guidance on how to utilize the tools available. Many of our stakeholders that are active in our communities are from an older demographic with, on average, lower levels of ICT literacy. Therefore, the development and distribution of excellent ICT literacy materials to participating communities is identified as a key success factor to this project. The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand is a major center of learning resource design. This capability will be utilized to produce high quality, tested materials to support the community engagement. Please note that the materials will take the form of self-paced "How to" Guide brochures and online tutorial styled Help tools, not formal educational courseware. The Flexible Learning Network will provide specialist advice on the development of the online support material. A key focus of the project is to build confidence across as broad a base as possible. We have also planned a strong engagement model with a pilot group to ensure fit-for-purpose outcomes. The People's Times platform will be developed with a building block approach, using open source modular design and feedback loops at each step from community stakeholders. In other words, the People’s Times will be delivered in an adaptive manner, from an existing, mature open source application (i.e Drupal). Sport and recreation is important to New Zealanders. By engaging with all of our sports communities and providing a useful service with Noticeboard.org.nz (a module of the People’s Times), we are confident of very high levels of awareness. In summary, our communication strategy is underpinned by grassroots engagement rather than the need for overt marketing campaigns.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

We have secured other funding and in-kind contributions from four sources. Firstly, under the auspices of the New Zealand Digital Strategy (www.digitalstrategy.govt.nz), we have secured NZ$200,000 from the New Zealand Government. Secondly, Catalyst IT (www.catalyst.net.nz) have agreed to provide NZ$80,000 in software development, NZ$100,000 in hosting and technical support and NZ$5000 in multimedia design. Even looking globally, Catalyst is a rare organization in that they have a long-held commitment to open standards and open source technologies. Catalyst is the largest New Zealand owned company specializing in open source development and mobile technologies. Catalyst has a diverse and skilled group of around 80 ICT experts and a purpose built hosting facility. Thirdly, the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand (www.openpolytechnic.ac.nz) is supporting the project primarily through providing appropriate training materials and personnel. The Open Polytechnic is a leading centers of expertise in learning design – the creation of learning resources in a variety of media for use by individual students, other providers and organisations. Providing appropriate resource packs for the People’s Times has been identified as a critical success factor for engagement with the communities. Their contribution totals $NZ128,000 in pro bono value. Fourth Richard Wyles, from Flexible Learning Network (www.flexible.co.nz), has identified the need and conceptualized the project. Richard will project manage the people’s Times project and his time on the project to date and into the intermediate future is entirely pro bono. In total, contributions exceed $NZ500,000 or approximately $US400,000. While this is enough to get started, a successful outcome with the Knight News Challenge will ensure that we have sufficient resources to provide professional management, editing, content moderation, and community liaison services. In summary, the additional funding from the Knight News Challenge will help ensure the full potential of the People’s Times is realized.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

We have brought together a team of highly talented individuals and partners to ensure we have the skills and experience to successfully deliver this project. Catalyst IT (www.catalyst.net.nz) is the software development partner. We have selected Drupal as the best platform to extend to meet the functionality requirements for the project. Catalyst has 80 skilled open source developers, multimedia design and delivery plus expertise in mobile services serving the country's leading telecommunications provider. Their combination of skills and capacity provides us with complete confidence on the technical aspects of the project. Our second project partner is the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand (www.openpolytechnic.ac.nz), a state-owned not for profit educational institution that specializes in the provision of open and distance learning support in technical and vocational training. The development and distribution of excellent ICT literacy materials to participating communities is identified as a key success factor to this project. The Open Polytechnic’s capability in learning resource design will be utilized to produce high quality, tested materials to support the community engagement and guide good practice citizen journalism. Please note that the materials will take the form of self-paced "How to" Guide brochures and online tutorial styled Help tools, not formal educational courseware. The Flexible Learning Network will provide specialist advice on the development of the online support material. The remainder of the team will be brought together by the Project Leader, Richard Wyles. Key team roles include the Editorial Team, Community Liaison, Data Feeds and Content Moderators and System Administrator. Additional to the core project team are the community groups themselves. The core philosophy of the People’s Times is that Users are Contributors – a parallel to the bazaar model of open source development. This is a community newspaper managed by the communities for the benefit of their communities.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

The People's Times will provide a key and unique part of New Zealand's digital landscape, by lowering the barriers to entry for multiple organisations to harness the benefits of web technologies. In that sense, this project is inter-linked as a strategy that complements and strengthens existing and planned initiatives underway in New Zealand, but also more broadly as we appreciate there are many, and more up-and-coming great citizen focused news and civic participation sites globally. By leveraging previous investments, best-of-breed open source software and the lessons from others working in this area, it is possible to propose this project with its relatively modest budget given the new areas of innovation and their potential for far-reaching impact across all our communities. New Zealand is a small and geographically remote country with citizens that take pride in being pragmatic and helping others. For example, open source Mambo Foundation President, Lynne Pope set up www.disastersearch.org initially as "Katrina Evacuee Help Center" within 48 hours of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. This was undertaken from New Zealand and is a cogent example of how through the use of digital technologies people can better understand one another in geographic communities, share our know-how and help problem solve. In addition to appreciating how the People’s Times can extend and contribute to citizens playing an active role in informing each other, we will be reaching out to similar initiatives and organizations to create an open and synergistic environment. For example, open content from NZ citizen radio (www.accessradio.org.nz) and partnering with our journalism training communities (e.g. www.journalism.aut.ac.nz). Technologies such as RSS and podcasting will be used to interlink with others working in this area both domestically and internationally. At the technology level, we will work with the Drupal community (used for sites such as www.theonion.com, www.nowpublic.com) , and contribute all software enhancements back to the community.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

When our team first began working with Moodle, an open source learning management system, there were about 350 registered sites worldwide. Fast-forward four years and there are now around 35,000 registered sites including government departments, the UK's Open University, the University of London, California's UCLA and many more big names. We believe the same massive growth is possible with lowering the barriers to adopting innovative platforms for creating, managing and disseminating news. We will do this by establishing an easy to use configuration that is extended specifically for the purposes outlined in this proposal. We have expertise to guarantee that the People’s Times scales well to support an expanding variety of media. The modular architecture makes Drupal a flexible and extensible tool. For us, it is comparatively easy to guarantee success at a technical level. The level of uptake and the level to which people adopt new ways to create and use information are inherently more difficult. However, we believe it is reasonable to guarantee widespread adoption because we have undertaken solid research indicating an extensive need for the People’s Times plus we have a large number of pilot partners and supporters including Wellington City’s local government. 56% of survey responses were from resident's associations, indicating a very high uptake in this category. Athletics New Zealand alone has 220 clubs wanting to use the platform and when including other sporting codes we expect the People’s Times to be highly used by sports clubs. Over 30% of survey respondents represented hobby groups, clubs and music organisations that were supportive. We expect upwards of 50,000 unique users in the first year of operation. It is reasonable to state that support from the Knight Foundation would mitigate the project’s risk as we would have sufficient resources to manage our stakeholder requirements and fully deliver all elements of the project. Thank-you for the opportunity to submit this proposal. Yours sincerely, Richard Wyles.

Flash Storytelling Templates

Primary Contact Name

Mr. Russell Chun

Describe your project

Flash is an authoring platform used to create interactive, multimedia features on the web. However, independent, freelance multimedia storytellers, new graduates from Journalism schools, and students often lack the Flash programming and development support required for them to create their stories. Although they may possess the conceptual skills and an understanding of the multimedia tools and processes, actual hands-on production within the Flash application is limited—and for good reason, as their focus is on the narrative and not the tools. But for the independent multimedia journalists, hiring a Flash programmer is prohibitively expensive. Subscription-based commercial services that enable template-driven Flash content (such as Brightcove’s Storymaker) is difficult to access. Many rely on an assortment of free online widgets to integrate media, such as YouTube for video, or Picasa for slideshows, which are not specific to the journalist. Other online tools that are marketed for the journalist, such as SoundSlides or SlideShowPro, offer limited solutions to the problem. We propose to address this need by establishing an online site for Flash storytelling templates that is free, open-source, specific to the needs of the multimedia journalist, and based on community participation and collaboration. The templates will be geared for the journalist with a working knowledge of Flash. Users will not create Flash content from a web interface or from a stand-alone application, but will download source files to manipulate and use directly in the Flash environment. The site will provide opportunity for the community to comment on existing templates, suggest new ones, contribute their own templates, and showcase work that was created with the templates. Although the site will be national in scope, the templates would be used and modified at a local level, allowing journalists within specific communities to have access to multimedia storytelling tools and bring to life those “smaller” stories.

Primary Contact Email

russell_chun@yahoo.com

Organization or Business Name

Columbia U. and CUNY Grad School of Journalism

Who would want to use it and why?

Independent journalists and journalism students would benefit most from this online resource. Smaller community news sites and ethnic presses would also use the resource. They don't have the Flash development support that comes with working in a large corporate setting or newsroom.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

As Adjunct Professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, I teach multimedia storytelling and online skills. I've also taught at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, trained mid-career journalists at the Knight-sponsored new media workshops, and have been a multimedia consultant and Flash trainer for News21 2007, a nation-wide initiative to improve journalism education. Based on this extensive teaching and consulting experience, I know the kinds of interactive and media templates that students and new graduates need, and the form in which it could best serve them. Moreover, I've written five technical books on advanced Flash, so I have the knowledge to develop the templates.

U.S. State

NY

Country

United States

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

Two outcomes would happen. First, as more journalists and budding journalists use these Flash templates, I expect more sophisticated, interactive, and media-rich stories that otherwise would not have had a chance to see the light of day, be developed and posted on the web. Smaller, community news sites or ethnic news sites would now have access to tools to explore the issues that interest their readers, and give them a voice in the multimedia sphere. Second, as the site aggregates the feature needs and desires of the community, we can advance the functionality of multimedia templates—moving beyond the standard staple of preloaders, audio players, and slideshow tools—to explore novel ways to tell stories.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

We would measure success by the number of visitors to the site, the number of downloads of our templates, the number of comments on the templates, and the amount of postings that showcase the use of our templates in real stories.

Web site

http://www.russellchun.com

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$90000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

Independent, freelance multimedia storytellers, new graduates from Journalism schools, Journalism students, and smaller news sites do not have access to Flash programming and development support required for them to create media-rich stories. This proposal answers this unmet need. This proposal provides the multimedia templates that help the smaller, independent, and local organizations and individuals.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$90000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

There are no other initiatives trying to fill this need. Sites that provide Flash templates are expensive subscription-based Flash content generation and hosting sites that serve larger corporations (National Geographic, Showtime, Discovery Channel, etc.). Other sites that provide templates and tools are not free. The remaining templates that are free are not geared specifically for the journalist or storyteller. Moreover, the sharing and community-feedback model that we propose will make our solution unique.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

1years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

Primarily through the academic community, as I teach at the Journalism schools at Columbia and CUNY, and have connections with other major Journalism schools (Berkeley, Northwestern, USC). My students would be the first user group.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

I have no other funding or investment.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

Currently, I am working alone to start this project.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

There are many journalists and news organizations using Flash, as it is the de facto standard for presenting multimedia packages, video, audio, and slideshows. However, very few journalists are adept at the programming and design aesthetic required to build custom projects from scratch. At many journalism schools, including the ones I’ve taught (Columbia, Berkeley, and at CUNY), we’ve recognized the importance of learning the Flash application, but struggle to maintain the right balance of conceptual new media skills (the mind-set) and the technical information (the skill-set) while still providing core journalistic practices. This proposal addresses this larger question of “how much Flash does a journalist need to know?” by providing a “middle-ground” solution—templates that can be used, understood, and modified by journalists that have a basic knowledge of the program.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

I guarantee that there will be a website established with free, downloadable Flash templates for journalists (primarily students, freelancers, and small local or ethnic organizations) to use to produce multimedia packages. The website will provide opportunities for the community to comment, rate, and share their own templates, showcase uses of the current templates, and make suggestions for improvements and new templates.

Chris Csikszentmihályi

[MIT Media Lab/Comparative Media Studies]
shared with Mitchel Resnick Henry Jenkins
photo_chris_csik.jpg

Chris Csikszentmihályi (pronounced Cheek-sent-me-hi) is the Muriel Cooper Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences and directs the Computing Culture Group at the MIT Media Lab. A 2007 Radcliffe Institute Fellow, he has worked in the intersection of new technologies, politics, media and the arts for 15 years, lecturing, showing new media work and presenting installations in four continents and one subcontinent. His work aims to create a new technology to embody a particular social agenda. For example, he designed his piece “Afghan Explorer” to defend the First Amendment by creating a tele-operated robot reporter to bypass American military censorship. Csikszentmihályi has lectured and presented to government agencies and arts, humanities and science and engineering departments across the globe. He served on the National Academies’ “Information Technology and Creativity” panel, and has recently won fellowships from the Langlois and Rockefeller Foundations. (MFA, UC San Diego; BFA, Art Institute of Chicago)

Project Summary The MIT Media Lab will create the Center for Future Civic Media, a leadership project designed to encourage community news experiments and new technologies and practices.
Goals We are moving to a Fifth Estate where everyone is able to pool their knowledge, share experience and expertise, and speak truth to power.
Contact csik@media.mit.edu

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Mitchel Resnick

[MIT Media Lab/Comparative Media Studies]]
shared with Chris Csikszentmihályi Henry Jenkins
mitchel_resnick_150px.jpg

Mitchel Resnick, Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab, explores how new technologies can help people (especially children) learn new things in new ways. His Lifelong Kindergarten research group developed the “programmable bricks” that were the basis for the LEGO MindStorms and PicoCricket construction kits. Resnick co-founded the Computer Clubhouse project, an international network of after-school learning centers for youth from low-income communities. Resnick’s group recently developed a new programming language, called Scratch, which makes it easier for kids to create their own interactive stories, games, music, and animations — and share their creations on the web. Resnick earned a BS in physics from Princeton, and an MS and PhD in computer science from MIT. Before pursuing his graduate degrees, he worked for five years as a science and technology journalist for Business Week magazine. He is the author or co-author of several books, including Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams.

Project Summary The MIT Media Lab will create the Center for Future Civic Media, a leadership project designed to encourage community news experiments and new technologies and practices.
Goals
Contact

Henry Jenkins

[MIT Media Lab/Comparative Media Studies]
shared with Chris Csikszentmihályi Mitchel Resnick
photo_henry_jenkins.jpg

Henry Jenkins is the director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of nine books on various aspects of media and popular culture, the newest books of which include Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. Jenkins recently developed a white paper on the future of media literacy education for the MacArthur Foundation, which is leading to a three year project to develop curricular materials to help teachers and parents better prepare young people for full participation in contemporary culture. He is one of the principal investigators for The Education Arcade, a consortium of educators and business leaders working to promote the educational use of computer and video games. He is one of the leaders of the Convergence Culture Consortium, which consults with leading players in the branded entertainment sector in hopes of helping them adjust to shifts in the media environment.

Project Summary The MIT Media Lab will create the Center for Future Civic Media, a leadership project designed to encourage community news experiments and new technologies and practices.
Goals We are moving to a Fifth Estate where everyone is able to pool their knowledge, share experience and expertise, and speak truth to power
Contact henry3@mit.edu

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$5,000,000

to Center for Future Civic Media

Awarded to Chris Csikszentmihályi Mitchel Resnick Henry Jenkins [MIT Media Lab/Comparative Media Studies]
To create the Center for Future Civic Media, a leadership project designed to encourage community news experiments and new technologies and practices.
photo_chris_csik.jpg
mitchel_resnick_150px.jpg
photo_henry_jenkins.jpg
Our mission is to build stronger communities through innovation in digital media applied to journalism.
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