Yes, if you have more than one proposal. But you may not submit the same proposal in multiple categories.

You
may even enter as an individual in one category and as part of a
nonprofit or company in another category, providing that the proposals
are different.

The Young Creators Award is one of the three
categories in the Knight News Challenge (the others are 'general' and
'commercial').  If you enter the Young Creators Award, you may not also
submit the same idea in another category.  (You may, however, submit a
different idea in any of the categories.)

Yes, if the company is uniquely positioned to test or develop a new technique or technology and is willing to share the results of that test with everyone. We see the challenge as a kind of flexible research and development fund, open to anyone.

Anywhere from zero to a large number.

It depends on the number of quality proposals we get.

Yes. The applicant holds the intellectual property rights, subject to
Knight Foundation’s requirement that the intellectual property be
shared with the world. By entering the contest you agree to share those
rights with the world in line with open-source, open-standard
philosophy. If you enter your idea as an “open” idea, others can
comment on it. They are freely giving you their wisdom, and by doing
that, they are agreeing to let you incorporate their ideas into your
project. If you win, however, under the open-source rules you’ll have
to share your software code and other know-how with everyone.

That could happen. It’s the trade-off of that
category. You can seek the wisdom of the crowd and use it to improve
your entry. It would be possible for someone to read your idea and
submit a similar one in the open or closed category. If someone
submitted a similar proposal to yours and did so in the closed
category, you probably never would know that your idea had been copied.
Submitting in the closed category would avoid this situation but would
prevent you from getting ideas from others that might improve your
application. During Knight Foundation’s process of reviewing
applications, we might be able to identify ideas that appear to be
copies and to decline applications that appear to be copies but we
cannot promise to do that. 

Entering
“openly” means you are either confident enough in your own abilities
and track record that you’ll be chosen to do the work even if others
have similar ideas, or that you don’t really care who does the work as
long as it gets done. If someone copies your idea and then submits a
“closed” application, you might not ever know that happened. The only
way to avoid that situation is to submit your entry as a closed entry.

Can
I claim a piece of someone else’s prize if I give them the idea (in the
open entry) that propels their project into a winning category?[top]

Only
if you are a co-applicant. Otherwise, if you comment on an entry you
are doing so freely and voluntarily with the knowledge that you are not
creating any ownership rights for yourself.  It is theoretically
possible for a technology expert with a good entry to meet up through
the comment process with a community expert and want to invite them to
join in as a partner in a revised entry. But that’s up to the original
applicant.

No. Knight Foundation will select an intermediary who is not a family member to manage the money for you.

f you are awarded a grant, Knight Foundation will work with you to help
you succeed. We will bring our resources and experience to your aid,
where feasible. Nonetheless, sometimes ideas still don’t work out. If
that happens, the important thing is to learn from the experience.
That’s why we call these projects “community news experiments”.
Experiments fail all the time, but at least if you are rigorously
honest, you learn what didn’t work.

Because individual situations vary, you need to consult a professional tax adviser with this question.

We don’t have a problem with blogs. But paying someone to blog about
the local school board is not a digital innovation. A person can do
that right now, without this contest. The blogs we support are for the
purpose of publicly developing new ideas of how to create community
news experiments using digital innovation. We also ask all winners to
blog about their projects, as part of their obligation to share their
knowledge.

The award money would be distributed to both of them. Each person would
have equal claim on the money unless they agree between themselves, and
tell us clearly, that they wish a different distribution because of
different contributions to the application.

We face IRS restrictions in giving to the Miami Herald, the Akron Beacon Journal and the Detroit Free Press because these former Knight-Ridder newspapers once gave contributions to the foundation. But employees of those papers may still apply for individual news challenge awards. There are, however, exceptions, including officers or directors of those newspapers or their parent companies. The best way to find out whether or not you are eligible is to apply. When employees apply, they must apply as individuals, and not propose to use any company resources, time or intellectual property rights.

Contact us.