Knight Foundation announces 2009 News Challenge winners

Published originally at newschallenge.org

News Experiments to Help Transform Community Life

With $5.1 million from Knight Foundation

MIAMI — Nine projects that use crowdsourcing, mobile technology and digital investigative journalism to bring news and information to communities in new ways have been named winners of the 2009 Knight News Challenge.

“The future of news is being tested, strengthened and advanced everyday by News Challenge experiments and the innovators behind them,” said Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation president and CEO.

The winners make up the third round of the five-year, $25 million News Challenge, an international contest to fund digital news experiments that transform community life.

The largest winner is DocumentCloud, a project conceived by journalists from The New York Times and ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative newsroom. DocumentCloud will create an online database managed as an independent nonprofit where the media, watchdog groups and the public can find, share and analyze source documents.

Among other winning ideas:

  • Helping citizens around the world use cell phones to report and distribute news, using the wisdom of the crowd to accelerate investigative reporting and enhance breaking news reports;
  • Developing a mobile media toolkit where media organizations and citizen journalists worldwide can easily download mobile applications to create and broadcast local news;
  • Launching a digital space where the public can report errors in media reports and track the ensuing dialogue and possible results.

This year the Knight News Challenge is funding $5.1 million in news projects, including investments in 17 winners from 2007 and 2008 who continue to receive funding.

The winning projects were announced at the Future of News and Civic Media Conference at MIT in Boston. More than 45 past and present Knight News Challenge winners attended and participated in BarCamp workshops to help spur more news experiments and collaborative projects.

Several ongoing Knight News Challenge projects are about to launch their open-source software – including Everyblock.com and VillageSoup.com – and are working with media outlets considering adopting them for widespread use.

“With now more than 45 projects launched, Knight News Challenge winners aren’t just individuals with a prize, but a community of innovators working together on improving news and information for communities around the world,” said Gary Kebbel, Knight Foundation journalism program director.

The Knight News Challenge will accept applications again beginning Sept. 1.

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