"Public and Other Noncommercial Media in the Digital Era" was the focus of an FCC workshop in Washington D.C. today. Eric Newton, vice president of Knight Foundation's journalism program, participated in a panel on new funding strategies. Click the video below to watch Eric's opening statement.
Journalism VP Eric Newton Testifies Before FCC from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.
Jose Zamora, a Miami-based journalism program associate for Knight Foundation, is in Washington, D.C today, participating in an invitational gathering of the White House and Case Foundation. The one-day program, Promoting Innovation: Prizes, Challenges and Open Grant Making, is being billed as a public-private strategy session hosted by the White House Office on Science and Technology Policy, the Domestic Policy Council and the Case Foundation.
More than 200 participants are representing several dozen federal agencies and more than 20 corporations and organizations.' Knight is one of two foundations invited to the roundtable to give advice on how contests and open grant making are driving innovation.
The meeting is designed to encourage citizen involvement in matters that affect them. That goal merges with the Obama Administration's Open Government Directive, which seeks to elicit ideas from top American thinkers and doers to address the nation's problems.
Knight Foundation has committed millions of dollars to a range of contests it sponsors to encourage innovation in journalism, the arts and community information and engagement. There's the Knight News Challenge, the Knight Arts Challenge and the Knight Community Information Challenge.
Watch the live stream, Tweet your questions to #opengov.
We found this video to be fascinating piece of history:'the vision for delivering a richer news experience using tablets.'It only took 20 years for these things to finally come to life with the Kindle and iPad. Would be cool to watch it on an iPad.
Congratulations to David Kempa, a Carnegie-Knight News21 reporter from Arizona State University who won a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in the college print category.
Kempa's story 'Crossing Lines,' illustrates one man's goal to help impoverished Mexican farmers.
This is the second consecutive year a student at ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism wins the award.
The RFK Journalism Awards program honors outstanding reporting on issues that mattered to Robert F. Kennedy, such as human rights, social justice and the power of individual action in the United States and around the world.
Kempa was part of a team of Cronkite students who participated last summer in News21, a national journalism education initiative funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.
To read more about Kempa, visit here.
For more awards received by News21, follow the link.
Knight Foundation is sponsoring the live web streaming of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy in Denver, Colo. April 23-25.Three rural counties in Georgia are one stop closer to getting free digital Internet access through the creation of a high-tech mobile library supported by a Knight Foundation grant. This morning, the Chattahoochee Valley Libraries (CVL) announced the $258,400 grant and their plan to take broadband technology to people in underserved rural areas near Columbus.
Beverly Blake, Knight's Macon-based program director, was on the road when the news broke in Georgia. She's attending the invitation-only FiberF'te in Lafayette, La., learning about that community's innovative fiber optic infrastructure and municipal broadband network, already in place. Before she left, she commented on the impact the mobile library will have when it takes to the road in 2011. 'Digital access is essential to first-class citizenship in our society. Without digital, you lack full access to information; you are second class economically and even socially. While the mobile library will benefit families and individuals, the staff of CVL will also benefit as they learn more about the people they serve and how CVL can provide those customers access to computers, the Internet and materials that they wouldn't otherwise be able to obtain.'
The grant to CVL is part of a $5.7 million Knight Foundation initiative benefiting library users in 20 communities across the United States. The effort reinforces the recommendations of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, a project of the Aspen Institute. In a report issued earlier this year, the Commission concluded that democracy in America is threatened by the lack of equal access to quality information. Funding public libraries as centers of digital and media training is one key to fill the gaps.
Knight Foundation hosted the recent Ashoka Future Forum and induction ceremony at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., marking 30 years of support for the social innovation organization. About 280 social innovators from around the country gathered to envision a future built by social entrepreneurs. They work to make collaborative, large-scale change happen.
Eight Knight fellows were among 23 inductees celebrated during the event, which also included' remarks from Knight Foundation President and CEO Alberto Ibarügen.
The forum featured roundtable discussions on such topics as how to convert social capital to financial value for growing social enterprises. Two of the daylong tracks explored facets of Knight's informed and engaged community work. One group took a look at entrepreneurial approaches to news and knowledge, with participants trying to imagine a future media ecosystem and its core values. Another track sought to develop strategies for entrepreneurial solutions in cities and communities.
Two Knight grants support Ashoka and helped spawn these sessions.
The first grant was to find and support 15 fellows in Knight communities who could both continue their innovative work while inspiring other social entrepreneurs. Take a look at the accompanying map that identifies the Knight fellows and where they work (including a 16th person who has not graduated to a fellow.) Seven inducted at the forum were: Christa Gannon, John Danner, Conchy Bretos, Bernard Amadei, David Castro, Connie Siskowski and Amory Lovins.
The second Knight grant was to identify and invest in 30 social entrepreneurs in journalism. So far, 23 news and knowledge fellows, 19 with stipends and four senior fellows without stipends, have been elected from around the globe.'One news fellow ' Nicholas Reville ' was among the inductees at the Ashoka Future Forum.
NPR.org recently won a Peabody Award for general excellence.
'I can tell you unequivocally that this would not have happened without the Knight digital training,' said Vivian Schiller, President and CEO of NPR.
NPR's Afghanistan reporter, Soraya Nelson, also won a Peabody Award, along with Diane Rehm, who won an individual excellence award.
Here's a link showcasing the work of NPR's Knight trainees.
''''' --Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger
With one of the top contemporary art collections in the US and experience leading local and national philanthropic efforts in the visual arts, Dennis's passion and energy for the arts makes him particularly well-suited for his new post at Knight. He has also ventured into the role of creator as writer and co-producer of a short film, Sunday's Best, which was just shown at the Aspen Shortsfest 2010. Besides his broad involvement in the arts, Dennis co-founded Betts & Scholl, an international wine venture, and has practiced law, worked as a CPA and restored Art Deco properties on South Beach. We at Knight are looking forward to continuing to transform communities with Dennis's leadership.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt speaks to the American Society of News Editors on April 11, 2010 in Washington, D.C.
In Washington D.C., a convention of leading newspaper editors is underway that in very few ways resembles such gatherings of the past. 2010's 'News Now Ideas Summit' features more than 20 Knight Foundation grantees on the program. The conference is hosted by the American Society of News Editors. (The N in ASNE used to stand for newspapers, but in a move that reflects this year's major conference sponsors ' Google, Yahoo!, Bloomberg and Knight Foundation ' the N now just stands for News.)
Google's CEO Eric Schmidt opened the program Sunday night by encouraging the editors to keep experimenting and congratulating such efforts as Politifact and DocumentCloud, both Knight grantees. Other grantees on the program include SnagFilms, Sunlight Foundation, News 21, National Public Radio, Voice of San Diego, the Poynter Institute, Northwestern University, Minnesota Post, the Media Standards Trust, University of Southern California, Printcasting, News Cloud, The Project for Excellence in Journalism, J-Lab at American University, News Literacy at Stony Brook University,
Knight chairs on the program are Jacqueline Banaszynski (Editing) at the Missouri School of Journalism, Rich Beckman (Visual Journalism) at the University of Miami, Brant Houston (Investigative and Enterprise Reporting) at the University of Illinois and Pam Fine (News Leadership) at the University of Kansas. An afternoon panel, moderated by Knight Foundation's Jose Zamora, is featuring six innovations the editors can start using right away in their newsrooms, nearly all of them projects that emerged from the foundation's Knight News Challenge.
Big successes in the J-Lab/Knight Networked Journalism project will be spotlighted at this year's ASNE convention. Check out the 3 p.m. Monday workshop, where speakers from the Seattle Times, Miami Herald and Charlotte Observer will discuss how they have launched ' and grown ' new partnerships with local blogs and niche sites in their communities.
For a preview of the project, see what the Seattle Times is doing:
The convention is meeting at the J.W. Marriott, in Washington, D.C.
J-Lab, with Knight funding, has provided some support for a project coordinator at the newspapers and honoraria for the first five partners in each of the networks. But more partners have come on board since the project launched late last summer. Other partners are in Asheville, N.C., and Tucson.
Speaking at the workshop: "From Competitor to Collaborator: New Content-Sharing Networks Pairing Old and New Media" are:
Twitter: If you tweet this event please tag it #netj. Also look for'#asne10, and'#jlab
Because the Haitian community is such an integral part of South Florida, Knight Foundation explored what it could do to help. After meeting with local Haitian leaders, Knight decided on a proactive strategy that addresses both long and short-term needs. We hope that the plan, announced today, will not only help South Forida Haitians help family members, but give them a stronger voice in issues and ultimately help them to rebuild Haiti.
For example, in just one part of the plan, Knight Foundation is funding a census outreach campaign. This is what we mean by a long-term investment. We hope the campaign, conducted by Sant La/The Haitian Neighborhood Center, will help ensure an accurate count and ' ultimately - appropriate levels of federal funding and representation that will strengthen the community.
This morning, the leaders of five South Florida nonprofits gathered to talk about the local challenges in the wake of the earthquake.
For context: Knight Foundation promotes informed, engaged communities. To engage with critical issues, a community needs strength and resources. This is why we make these grants to the South Florida Haitian community.
Read more about the plan.
New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and an esteemed panel of judges, including our own Eric Newton, have announced their list of the ten best works of U.S. journalism of the past decade.' Among those recognized are Knight Foundation grantees NPR and Walter V. Robinson, who directed the Boston Globe's Pulitzer-Prize winning coverage of the Boston Catholic archdiocese cover-up of sexual abuse.
To see the complete list of winners visit: http://journalism.nyu.edu/decade/
Four journalists from the University of Maryland completed a month long study of racial and ethnic trends. The study was done by interviewing multiracial Americans who shared stories on what it means to identify as a mixed race in America.
These four reporters were part of News21, a national journalism program funded by the Knight Foundation and the Carnegie Corp.
See the interviews here.
--Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger
As the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics prepares to release a report on the issues of money, athletics, and higher education in the 21st century this summer, USA Today continues their own examination into college athletics financing with a cover story in today's edition. The newspaper repeatedly looks to the expertise of the Knight Commission to help tell the story of covering the gaps in athletic operating budgets with student fees and university funds.
"There are pressures that one would predict would keep [spending] going up if nothing is changed, and I think it's clear that for at least two more years, expenditures for the academic sector are going to go down," says [Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics] co-chairman Gerald Turner, president of Southern Methodist University. "I think that is not a position most universities want to be in ' or that they'll find sustainable, either operationally or politically."
In an accompanying article, USA Today contends:
'The nation's highest-profile college athletic programs drew a greater percentage of their revenue from student fees and their schools' general funds in 2009 than they had in any of the previous four years.'
Covering the growing gap in athletic department budgets with University funds is an issue that co-chair Turner believes needs public support to achieve reform:
"It's important that these issues about athletic expenditures be brought out to where there is some public support for more rational approaches to this."
Look for the forthcoming report and policy recommendations about reforming the financing of college athletics from the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics in May or June of this year.
Learn more about the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and their mission to 'spur reforms that emphasize academic values in an arena where commercialization of college sports often overshadows the underlying goals of higher education' at http://www.knightcommission.org/
Yesterday, Knight Foundation was honored to host innovators in new media who helped us review final entries in the 2010 Knight News Challenge. It was a terrific experience to work with these inspiring and passionate people. Here's a look at who was in the room:
Click image to launch slideshow from the meeting
Many of the reviewers are on Twitter (you can follow them here). Also, you can watch a slideshow from yesterday's meeting.
' Alberto Ibargüen, President and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Could you last a week without touching a computer? How about longer? 'Disconnected' is a documentary by film students at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., in which three of the film students attempt life without a computer for a month.
The documentary, released in 2008, illustrates how connected our lives have become and how access to the Internet is no longer a luxury, but a requirement for college students.
Would you be willing to try this yourself? What would you miss most?