Knights News Challenge Winners

$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.
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Our mission is to build stronger communities through innovation in digital media applied to journalism.

$1,100,000

to EveryBlock

Awarded to Adrian Holovaty [Journalist/Web developer]
To create, test and release open-source software that links databases to allow citizens of a large city to learn (and act on) civic information about their neighborhood or block.
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I want to create an easy way for people to answer the question What’s happening around me?

$885,000

to Open-Source Community News

Awarded to Richard Anderson [VillageSoup]
To create an open-source version of VillageSoup’s successful community news software, combining professional journalism, blogs, citizen journalism, online advertising and “reverse publishing” from online to print.
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$700,000

to Mobile Youth Journalism (08 Election)

Awarded to Ian Rowe [Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and Public Affairs MTV]
To put a ‘Knight Mobile Youth Journalist’ in every state. These young people will create video news reports for distribution on cell phones. Viewers will rate the videos and those with the highest ratings will be broadcast on MTV.
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“I want to empower young people to be informed on the issues that matter most in the 2008 elections."

$639,000

to Digital News Academic Program

Awarded to Rich Gordon [Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University]
To create an academic program blending computer science and journalism, designed to fill a staffing void at many digital news sites. By offering scholarships to Medill’s graduate journalism program to people with education and/or expertise in computer programming, the goal is to turn out students who understand both journalism and technology, connect one to another in ways that build audiences and also enhance and protect the civic functions of journalism in a democratic society.
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“A democratic society in the digital age needs people who understand both journalism and technology.”

$552,000

to Knight-Kauffman Center (ASU)

Awarded to Christopher Callahan [Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University]
To support the development of media entrepreneurship and the creation of new digital media products through the establishment of the Knight-Kauffman Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University.
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$340,000

to Chi-Town Daily News

Awarded to Geoff Dougherty [CEO, PublicMedia, Inc.]
The Chi-Town Daily News will recruit and train a network of 75 citizen journalists – one in each Chicago neighborhood. The journalists will work with editors to produce a professional, comprehensive daily local news report.
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$250,000

to Citizen Journalist Resources

Awarded to David Ardia [Citizen Media Law Project, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School, and the Center for Citizen Media]
The Citizen Media Law Project, a joint venture between Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Center for Citizen Media, is creating a set of online resources for citizen journalists. This will include state and federal legal guides; advice on business formation; and a database of lawsuits, subpoenas and legal threats involving citizen media.
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$250,000

to NY News Games

Awarded to Gail Robinson [Gotham Gazette]
Gotham Gazette will develop games to inform and engage players about key issues confronting New York City. Gotham Gazette will hold forums on the games’ issues, report on what solutions the players developed and relay those ideas to city officials.
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$250,000

to Playing the News

Awarded to Nora Paul Kathleen A. Hansen [School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota]
Playing the News is a news simulation environment which lets citizens play through a complex, evolving news story through interaction with the newsmakers.
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$244,000

to Rising Voices

Awarded to Ethan Zuckerman [Global Voices, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School]
Over the past two years, Global Voices has introduced readers around the world to the brilliant, funny, insightful and touching voices of bloggers from developing nations. Rising Voices is our new effort to introduce thousands of new developing world bloggers to the world, helping students, journalists, activists and people from rural areas to the blogosphere.
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$222,000

to Placeblogger

Awarded to Lisa Williams [Placeblogger]
To make it easier for people to find hyperlocal news and information about their city or neighborhood through promotion of “universal geotagging” in blogs.
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$150,000

to Wireless Philadelphia

Awarded to Todd Wolfson [Media Mobilizing Project of Philadelphia]
To develop online digital newscasts for Philadelphia’s immigrant community and to distribute them via the new citywide wireless platform.
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$90,000

to Web Journalism (Boulder, CO)

Awarded to Amy Gahran Adam Glenn [Co-founders of I, Reporter]
Create a citizen/professional journalism project using innovative web tools and citizen journalism practices to track Boulder, Colo.’s, implementation of a carbon tax.
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$60,000

to Oakland Jazz Scene Game

Awarded to Paul Grabowicz [University of California – Berkeley]
Re-creating Oakland’s once vibrant jazz and blues club scene as an online video game and virtual world. The game will allow players to experience the club scene as it was in its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, before it fell victim to redevelopment schemes and urban decay.
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$60,000

to "Ideal Newsroom" (Duke University)

Awarded to Chris O’Brien [The Chronicle, Duke University’s student newspaper]
To plan an “ideal newsroom” for the digital news era and create an online resource for student newspapers and other news organizations looking to bring their facilities up to date with new media trends.
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$230,000

to Digital News "Incubators"

Awarded to Dianne Lynch Angela Powers Ann Brill Ardyth Broadrick Sohn Jane Briggs-Bunting Kimberly Sultze Pam McAllister-Johnson []
Create ‘incubators’ at seven academic institutions to foster creative thinking about solutions to digital news problems. The schools are: Michigan State, University of Kansas, Kansas State, Western Kentucky University, Ithaca College, University of Nevada-Las Vegas and St. Michael’s College.
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$15,000

to "Related Items" (for Drupal)

Awarded to Benjamin Melançon [Co-founder, Agaric Design Collective]
Blog: About “Related Items,” a module for the community-oriented and open-source content management system, Drupal, which enables people to quickly and easily connect any item (news, idea, group, event) to any other content they consider related.
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$15,000

to "Related Items" (for Drupal)

Awarded to Dan Schultz [Carnegie Mellon University undergraduate student]
Blog: Giving all individuals a voice within their local and global communities through a centralized, user-maintained news system. The idea currently combines Geotagging, user driven aggregation, and community-oriented design to allow news media consumers to see the information that matters most to them.
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$15,000

to "Related Items" (for Drupal)

Awarded to Dori Maynard [President and CEO of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education]
Blog: About creating and maintaining diversity in digital media.
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