Project leader Christina Xu writes about the 2011 Knight News Challenge winner the Awesome Foundation News Taskforce Detroit.

Last night, the Awesome News Taskforce Detroit announced its first $1,000 grant winner: the Detroit Journal, a series of beautifully-shot, short documentaries produced by two Detroiters about the complex, wonderful people with whom they share their city. It was the Taskforce's official public debut in the city, and represents the start of what will hopefully be a long-term and fruitful relationship.

The Awesome Foundation concept was born in Boston in the summer of 2009, when 10 trustees committed themselves to setting aside $100 each every month to make awesome projects happen. In less than two years, this concept has spread to more than 35 cities around the world - Detroit is the 30th. Every month, the 10-20 trustees of each Awesome Foundation chapter get together and pick a project out of a public submissions pool to be the recipient of a $1,000, no strings attached grant. When everything aligns, the money pushes the project to the next level and the publicity and feedback that comes with the grant take it even farther.

Eight projects were recently announced as fifth-round winners of Macon's Knight Neighborhood Challenge, which seeks to improve the College Hill neighborhood between Mercer University and the city's downtown. Program Director Beverly Blake provides an update:

In 2009, Knight Foundation and the Community Foundation of Central Georgia partnered to create a five-year, $3 million Knight Neighborhood Challenge, a new type of grantmaking that funds the ideas of individuals and organizations to improve College Hill and nurture new and existing community leadership at all levels.

The Knight Neighborhood Challenge has been a catalyst to support “everyday leaders,” to fund great ideas that have probably always been here but lacked investment. More importantly, it has allowed us to create the opportunities to build new friendships through the common goal of improving Macon.

We’re halfway through the initiative, and the community foundation has awarded $1.3 million to 70 projects.  Two of the recent grantees exemplify Knight’s aspirations for Macon and Maconites:

Friends of Tattnall Square Park’s Cooling the Square project will plant 100 trees in our “shared living room,” Tattnall Square Park.  This is the first planting of trees in this historic urban park in 100 years. What is so gratifying about this effort is that the friends group was formed just a few months ago by people who know that it is those of us who use the park that are the stewards of its continued vibrancy.  The "friends" have already painted the gazebo, have a strong and positive relationship with the city’s Parks and Recreation Department and will be the catalysts to bring people together to nurture the park for generations to come.

A new, interactive map reveals interesting data about broadband adoption rates in communities across the country.

The map describes what it calls “the poverty divide:” data illustrates that wealthier households subscribe to broadband at a rate of 80 to 100 percent, while low-income areas of cities (some which exceed a 50 percent poverty rate) subscribe at much lower rates of 40 to 60 percent.

Produced by The Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the map is based on government data collected from 2008-10. It reveals which specific metro areas had the highest and lowest broadband subscription rates and provides insight into why people in certain communities either can’t or choose not to connect.

In a blog post “Poverty stretches the digital divide,” the project’s director, John Dunbar, highlights the findings from the survey which concluded that 40 percent of households did not have a broadband connection as of December 2010.

What can possums and fire hydrants teach us about government and citizenship? Ask Jennifer Pahlka, founder and executive director of Code for America, a Knight-supported organization working to bring the people and power of the Internet into government.

In her recent TED talk, featured below, Pahlka gave some insight into the Code for America fellowship program, which pairs startup-style teams of developers with cities throughout the country to help them engage with citizens. 

Jeff Ubben, chairman of The Bay Citizen’s board of directors, addresses Bay Citizen staff after a merger between The Bay Citizen and the Center for Investigative Reporting was approved. Photo Credit: The Bay Citizen 

Two leading nonprofit news organizations, the Center for Investigative Reporting and The Bay Citizen, have formally agreed to merge their operations, creating one of the largest nonprofit organizations in the country focused on watchdog and accountability journalism.

In a blog post about the planned merger, the Center for Investigative Reporting wrote:

“[We] are thrilled with the potential going forward to deliver high-caliber, high-impact journalism on all platforms – print, video, radio, data, multimedia and social media....We will be creating one of the largest newsroom tech teams in the country to build news apps around data, expanding our video and digital unit, and putting into place one of the most unique public engagement teams in the business.”

Last week, I was invited to speak to some of South Florida's top nonprofit leaders in education, community development, the arts and public health as part of the Philanthropy Miami conference.

The (impossible) task: to do an overview on measuring social impact - in 60 minutes. 

I think I've sat through workshops like that before.

First we learn about 'Theory of Change', review what goes into a 'Logic Model', and then debate the differences between short and long term outcomes, with a brief interlude to touch on contribution versus attribution.

All important stuff no doubt, but fairly dull material to have to present.

Instead, it seemed like more fun to talk about these topics:

·      Why measure in the first place?

·      What big lessons have we learned at Knight? (with a few stories drawn from others), and

·      What three emerging trends will affect how all of us measure and analyze our work in the future?

You can see the answers in the slides from my presentation, below. 

Mt. Elliott Makerspace, one of the nine projects receiving support from Knight in partnership with CEOs for Cities for accelerating citizen participation across the Detroit

When was the last time you visited your town square?

While many of us in the engagement field often wax poetically about the “public square,” and the importance of engagement in it, most of our towns actually consist of a range of smaller squares, spaces, and contexts through which we engage. And in our digital age, the list of venues is endless.

This is especially true in Detroit, where citizens are participating in contemporary public life in bold ways, bringing together the best of entrepreneurship, creativity and civic action. It’s why we at Knight Foundation invest in projects that allow more people to engage, support, and partner with the city’s growing movement of social entrepreneurship.

Today, along with CEOs for Cities, we’re excited to announce a range of grants to nine organizations that are accelerating citizen participation across the city in creative, modern ways.  I’m thrilled to see the kind of engagement and impact these initiatives will propel in courses and at restaurants, through contests and city maps, and on the Internet and new “makerspaces.”

Thank you, Miami. As of last week’s deadline, we received more than 1,000 applications to this year’s Knight Arts Challenge Miami - which shows just how much this city’s arts community has grown both in numbers and creativity.

We started the Knight Arts Challenge as a way to inspire boldness, innovation and creativity. After five years, it’s clear: we live in a community full of talented and passionate people, and you can feel it everywhere. It takes a full range of engagement – from artist to audience, amateur to adventurer – to make art general in a community. Regardless of where you fall in that spectrum, you are integral to the experience of art. What we do as a community, we do together.

For the first time this year, too, as a way to fully represent the diversity of our community, we began accepting applications in both Spanish and Kreyol. We got a great response, receiving several dozen applications in these languages (Gracias! Di ou mèsi!),http://knightfoundation.org/staff/tatiana-hernandez/

Photo Credit: Flickr user wvs

A new set of resources will help communities become more digitally inclusive places to live. An estimated 100 million Americans lack a broadband connection at home, putting them at a disadvantage when it comes to schooling, job searching and more.

As access to broadband becomes increasingly important, communities are looking to develop technology plans that address the needs of all its residents.

A recently released report is designed to help communities address these issues. It identifies specific areas where communities may want to focus their digital inclusion efforts, for example in economic and workforce development, education and digital literacy. It also provides strategies that organizations and individuals can use to help them implement these efforts.

“Building Digital Communities: A Framework for Action” acknowledges that every community needs to take its own path to becoming digitally inclusive, depending on its own unique assets, needs and the structure of its institutions. As an accompaniment to the report, the Institute for Museum and Library Services also released a guide which explains possible pathways to digital inclusion.

The accompanying guide, is a toolkit intended to help galvanize community conversation and actions specifically around increasing broadband adoption. “Building Digital Communities: Getting Started,” offers key steps for communities on how they can get started with respect to initiating a community action plan, finding ways to carry out a plan, and how to evaluate it moving forward.

The report and guide are the culmination of 18 months of research done by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, together with the University of Washington and the International City/County Management Association. The organizations consulted with hundreds of community members and experts to identify the action steps and frameworks around how to build digital communities.

Judith Kleinberg, program director for San Jose/Silicon Valley at Knight Foundation, was a member of the national team that worked on the development of the report over many months, helping to anlayze and edit the drafts as it evolved into its final form. Kleinberg said she hopes the report will be an important tool for helping communities increase their levels of digital access:

Over the weekend, Mercer University hosted a student recruitment day, and included in the group of over 220 students were 44 high school juniors and seniors who were interested in coming to Mercer to be a part of the Center for Collaborative Journalism. I attended the luncheon for the students and their families, and Center Director Tim Regan-Porter (@timreganporter), Jon Hoban, VP for Radio at Georgia Public Broadcasting, Sherrie Marshall, Executive Editor of The Telegraph and I talked about our aspirations for the center.

What impressed me was that these students were attracted to Mercer because of the unique mission of the center - the medical school model of journalism education and the opportunity to work aside seasoned journalists in a shared newsroom to transform this community through information exchange.

The center is a bold experiment, in reporting the news, in telling the stories of our community and in shared learning. Students will learn from seasoned journalists, and the journalists from the students about gathering information and reporting it in the digital age.

After being with these bright young people who want not only to learn how to be great journalists in the 21st Century, but how to make a difference in their communities, I believe more than ever that quality journalism, delivered on all platforms, continues to be the foundation of our democracy and critical to building strong communities. People require accurate, timely and actionable information to make informed decisions to build vibrant communities and a strong democracy.

Two Knight partners are coming together in a webinar next week designed to get everyone on the same page with the State of the News Media 2012. It’s the latest Webinar from Poynter's NewsU, and features Tom Rosenstiel, who founded and directs the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The one-hour webinar, costing $10.95 and set for 2 p.m. EST Wednesday March 28, will cover journalism and the mobile market, changing audience habits and local TV news, newspaper pay models, Facebook’s impact on news, nonprofit news sites and more. You can sign up for State of the News Media 2012.

Knight investments co-founded and then helped expand NewsU as it has grown into the nation’s premiere online journalism training site, with more than 210,000 registered users.

Those books by Knight grantees just keep on coming. The latest from Jeff Jarvis, entrepreneurial journalism guru who runs the Tow-Knight Center at the City University of New York, looks to be one of the best so far. It’s ‘Gutenberg the Geek,’ a Kindle Single – and it connects the media technology dots in a highly readable, relevant way.

The book’s been getting great reviews from all over - because it places Gutenberg in a modern frame as the Steve Jobs of his time. The inventor of movable metal type had trouble raising money and basically had to bootstrap the venture that ushered in the mass media age. It does remind you of Steve Wozniak and Jobs launching the digital age from their garage.

This post is one of a series focused on how community foundations are investing in news and information projects to make an impact on issues they care about. The following video was filmed during Knight’s 2012 Media Learning Seminar, where five community foundations gave brief, TED-like talks on how the projects they launched are impacting their cities. Here, Clotilde Dedecker shares her experience with Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo.

The role of community foundations shouldn’t be limited to giving grants, says Clotilde Dedecker of the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo.

In the video above, Dedecker shares how her foundation has taken a leadership role in addressing public health and environmental issues in Western New York by investing in a news and information project: “We have found that as a community foundation we are most effective in improving the lives of our communities not by giving grants, but by co-creating structures that bring people and organizations together in new ways to drive change.”

She cited their website Growwny.org - which stands for Green Renaissance of Western New York. The site has united over 150 environmental nonprofits working on water, air and land issues in the community, connecting them to each other and to the general public, Dedecker said.

This year, Grow, with support from Knight, will increase its ability to engage low-income communities that are disproportionately affected by environmental contaminants. This includes building out a network that will let people text in environmental threats in their neighborhoods and map them on the site, in turn providing a record and opportunities to visualize the data. Dedecker hopes that this will provide a basis for future policy and advocacy work.

We announced last week that the five News Challenge applications that receive the most support from the public will advance to the second round of consideration along with the 100 or so projects identified by our review process.  Some applicants have expressed confusion by what we meant by public support, so I wanted to clarify our plans.

First, as I mentioned in the previous post, we’ll be selecting those five based on the total number of likes and reblogs on Tumblr. In addition, in our evaluation of the proposals, we will take into account the conversations taking place on the Tumblr comments page and on Twitter. Tracking more than that is difficult for us. However, if you feel like there are other conversations happening on other networks, please mention and link to them in the comments of your application page - we’ll take them into consideration too.

Knight Foundation is bidding farewell to three key board members this month, and honoring their legacy of service with $50,000 each in support of nonprofits in Miami, Boston and Chicago.

Stepping down are Cesar Alvarez, executive chairman of international law firm Greenberg Traurig; Paul Grogan, president of The Boston Foundation; and John Rogers, chairman and CEO of Ariel Capital Management.  Alvarez, Grogan and Rogers served as the chairs of the Audit Committee, the Program Committee and the Investment Committee, respectively.  All were term-limited, after serving two, successive six-year terms as trustees.

In honor of their service, Knight Foundation will award $50,000 each to an organization recommended by each of the retiring trustees. Cesar Alvarez proposed support for El Memorial Cubano, a monument dedicated to victims of the Castro regime.  Led by a small group of former Cuban political prisoners, the project will create a stone wall in Southwest Miami engraved with names of those who have died. Alvarez immigrated to the United States from Cuba with his family as a teen and now heads the country’s seventh largest law firm.

Paul Grogan asked Knight to create a donor-advised “Opportunity Fund” at The Boston Foundation to build the capacity of nonprofits that focus on producing upward mobility for low-income minority youth in Boston. Throughout his career, Grogan has been a champion of American cities. Knight will miss his insights as chair of the Program Committee, which oversees all of the foundation’s investments in communities, journalism and media innovation and the arts.

Recently, YouthMovements.org launched to more efficiently amplify the role of young people in creating positive social change.

“The new site will aggregate and coalesce youth-led movements around the world to share data and to collaborate more effectively. But it will also inspire new youth to become more involved in what matters to them,” Jeff Coates, strategic initiatives associate at Knight Foundation, said.  

The video above explores Knight’s support for the site and shares what kinds of information it makes available to users. The interview also provides tips on how young people can draw inspiration from successful projects and provides resources that helps them replicate these projects in their own communities.

The video features key members of the team behind the site, including Jennifer Corriero, co-founder and executive director of TakingITGlobal, which hosts the site. Corriero describes how it allows young people to discover more about opportunities to get involved in issues that matter to them, both in their own communities and globally.

The newly released 2012 State of the Media report provides an in-depth look at how community news sites are faring.

The report, released by Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism interviewed key experts in the industry, including Knight’s Eric Newton and Michele McLellan, journalist and Knight consultant.

Here are some highlights:

Revenue Streams

Community news sites need to develop multiple revenue streams, the report said: “The most successful (and therefore sustainable), sites are those with a range of revenue streams, which can include local foundations, advertising, subscriptions, special events and membership campaigns, for example.”

Newton told Pew: “The more varied the sources of revenue, the better.”

The emphasis on diversified revenue streams expands on a Knight Foundation on how nonprofit news ventures seek sustainability. The report looked at some of the country’s leading online local nonprofit news ventures, and concluded that successful news organizations – even the nonprofit ones  - have to act like digital businesses, particularly making revenue experimentation an important piece of the mix.

Photos by Teru Kuwayama

Basetrack, a social media reporting project that accompanied a marine battalion on a deployment in Afghanistan, will be adapted into a series of theater performance next week at Juilliard in New York.

The multi-media performances will include projections of photos, videos, Facebook transcripts-as-dialogue, tweets and live performance.

The project, a 2010 Knight News Challenge winner, built on its director Teru Kuwayama’s nine years of experience working as a freelance journalist in Afghanistan.

Knight recently interviewed Kuwayama and Edward Bilous, the director of the new Center for Innovation in the Arts at Juilliard, to learn more about the story behind the performances and what viewers can expect.  

Knight Foundation: What's the story behind how Basetrack was adapted for the upcoming theater performance?

Edward Bilous: When I saw Teru's work last year, I was so moved by not only the power of the story and images but by the newness of the experience.  While journalism and art have always shared some common terrain - conveying, sharing and expressing human experiences - Teru's work is somehow both journalism and art.  I am fascinated by this concept.  I believe Basetrack has opened the door for many other creative artists.

2011 News Challenge entries on Tumblr

Over the weekend, we stopped accepting entries in the Knight News Challenge on networks.

The challenge closes with more than 1,000 applications - a number higher than we expected. About two-thirds of those were submitted in the last 48 hours of the contest, which was expected.

Among the applicants are some recognizable names, as well as ideas from people you may not have heard about before, such as PressLab Uganda, Project W, CASH Music and the Open Watch Project. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) submitted five entries, besting former News Challenge winner and current MIT Media Lab student and Knight Mozilla fellow Dan Schultz, who only managed to submit four times.

Most - or 88% - were posted on our Tumblr. Through March 29, you’ll be able to comment and like the ideas you see there. The five applications that receive the most support will move into a second round of consideration, along with 95 or so others.

The challenge on networks is more competitive than in years past. This year, we’re running three contests, which means that instead of 12-15 winners per contest, we plan to select 4 or 5. As a result, we will only be funding about  .05% .5% of applications before us. (By comparison, last year Harvard admitted 6.2% of the applicants to its freshmen class.)

Media fluency just took another step forward with the launch of the Knight-funded Daily Download, with quick video tips explaining digital tools to help citizens navigate cyberspace.

The Baltimore Sun reviewed the new site well. 

Examples of the videos (syndicated nationwide by public television stations) are here. One video, which explores the future of Google+, is featured below. 

Earlier this week, the New York Times Room for Debate forum asked the following questions:     

“Fans are busy filling out their N.C.A.A. brackets this week, but for student-athletes, the madness is year-round. How can we once again emphasize the "collegiate" part of the National Collegiate Athletic Association? How can the Association, the member colleges and the sponsors of the men's basketball tournament look out for the interests of student-athletes?”

Amy Perko, who has served as the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletic’s executive director since 2005, responded with the following published commentary:

Promoting Academics

Advocating policy change to emphasize the "college" in college sports has been the mission of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics for more than two decades. Two core principles in its most recent report, Restoring the Balance: Dollars, Values and the Future of College Sports, are to treat college athletes first and foremost as students - not as professionals - and to reward practices that make educational values a top priority.

Today, find out which students have won a $5,000 scholarship for using social media creatively to celebrate the First Amendment through the #FreeToTweet scholarship competition.

More than 17,000 messages with the #FreetoTweet hashtag flooded Twitter and other social media on Dec. 15, sent by people sharing how they enjoy their right to free expression. The competition was part of a celebration of the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights.

Students ages 14 to 22 who tweeted their appreciation for the First Amendment using the hashtag were automatically entered into the competition.

Here’s a sample of a winning tweet from 20-year old University of Albany student Nicholas Creegan:

Note: To apply for the News Challenge, and read our FAQ, visit NewsChallenge.org.

As we enter the last 48 hours of the Knight News Challenge on Networks, I want to share some news and tips.

First, we’ve mentioned that one of the challenge’s criteria is the ability to leverage networks to generate interest in your proposed project. To make that more concrete, the five applications that receive the most likes and reblogs will automatically become semi-finalists. While we will close the contest for submissions at midnight (EST) on Saturday, you will still be able to drum up support for, and discussion about, your proposal.

Over the last week I’ve spoken with a lot of potential applicants. Some things I’ve heard, and how I’ve responded:

Some 15 million books have been scanned and made at least partially available immediately to someone walking into a library or searching on the web, as a result of the Google Books Library Project.

“Libraries are no longer limited in what they can make available to their patrons by what can fit within the four walls of their libraries,” says James Crawford, engineering director at Google Books.

The project fits within Google’s larger mission of organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful.

In the video above, Crawford describes what he believes this at times controversial project brings to community libraries, and talks about what other Google products might benefit the library community, including Google Scholar and Google +.

The latest cookbook for nonprofit news ventures comes today from the Investigative News Network, supported by Knight, is an eclectic mix of big, small, old, new, national, local, digital, print, neutral and progressive nonprofit news organizations. As you might expect, its recipes for success are as varied as sushi and Boston baked beans.

The white paper, Audience Development and Distribution Strategies, was written by digital news expert Elizabeth Osder. It is similar to our earlier reports on nonprofit news success, but also offers new advice, excellent context and fresh views from the nonprofit news leaders themselves.

Its thrust:  the story is not the only thing that matters in news. Explains Margie Freigvogel, editor of the St. Louis Beacon: “We started with a passion for journalism coming out of a newspaper background and we found ourselves running a business and technology enterprise.” The Beacon started in 2008 to create “a better St. Louis powered by journalism” and is still going strong.

These folks are, in my mind, heroes. Many started their new digital news ventures just in the past five years, as print newspapers have been shrinking and a lack of creative change in public broadcasting has so far failed to fill the gap. These new news leaders really care about informed and engaged communities.  Suddenly, through their own web sites and their traditional media partners, they are reaching many millions of people. Someone should add up that number: It’s big.

A visualization of Funf. Design: Cody Sumter

Last night, Funf, an open sensing framework, won the 2012 SXSW Accelerator Competition for the News Related Technology track.

Funf, which launched in October, explores how mobile phones can be used as sensor platforms to track the location, movement, app activity and extended networks of its users and communities.

With Funf, users can contribute anonymously to creating data sets for themselves and their communities. For example, during a disaster, Funf would use the data from the sensing networks in people's cellphones to create real-time maps of which roads are clear or blocked, where there is a cell phone outage and where people are trapped. Funf also collects data about the surrounding environment,  including levels of light, pressure and temperature.

Researchers may be able to predict small changes in individuals’ behavior - like changes in sleeping and waking patterns and communications - that could have important implications for predicting diseases.

Collected data can be measured by the Funf framework and configured in a variety of ways, including in data visualizations, notifications and other applications.

Knight Foundation, a sponsor of the Accelerator Competition, sat down to interview key members of the Funf team - Nadav Aharony, Alan Gardner and Cody Sumter - to learn what winning the competition meant for them and what’s next for the project.

Video: The Urban Innovation Exchange is chronicling small-scale community projects making a difference in Detroit.

“One big question we constantly ask as we think about community grantmaking is how do we go from pockets of impact to real strategic change?” Rishi Jaitly, program director/Detroit at Knight Foundation, asked this morning at a SXSW panel.

He posed the question during a discussion focused on the new face of philanthropy and community grantmaking, and how it can best engage new people to contribute to local projects.

Citing Knight Foundation-supported initiatives like Kiva Detroit, the BME Challenge, Urban Innovation Exchange and Hatch Detroit, Jaitly shared that in his experience, the best community philanthropy projects have the potential to create strategic change if they focus on and are successful in the following three key areas:

Today’s is the final of three posts looking at the media, data and elections. This time, Russia is the topic.   

First, it’s hard to know if last week’s election numbers are solid. The western press writes of election fraud. Some problems are admitted. Other reports say all was well. Yet we have the numbers we have, mapped in this post by Knight News Challenge winner Aaron Presnall and his nonpartisan Jefferson Institute, so let’s take a look.

President Vladimir Putin’s victory was substantial – but here’s an interesting point: the data seem to say that his results were related to Internet penetration levels.  Here are two rather extreme examples: In the North Caucasian Federal District, Internet penetration is a low 34 percent and the pro-Putin vote was a high 83.1 percent; In Moscow, Internet penetration is strong at 64 percent and Putin is weak at 47.3 percent.

I’m not arguing that the Internet by itself caused Putin’s lower total in Moscow. It was one of several factors.  Elections are complex. You have candidates, issues, process, existence of or lack of peace and prosperity and the general mindset of the people.

Note: To apply for the News Challenge, and read our FAQ, visit NewsChallenge.org.

Improve your Knight News Challenge application and your chance of becoming a finalist by doing some basic research.

Make sure you do the necessary research to show that you have a unique idea or a project that combines things that already exist to provide a product, process or service in a totally new way. You want to demonstrate that your project is better, more efficient or different from what already exists. The main goal is for you to know and be able to convey that you are not reinventing the wheel. And in this round of the challenge you want to demonstrate that you are using networks and tools that already exist to inform and engage users.

You will have a great advantage in the contest if you are able to show that:

• You know the landscape of the field and the project you are proposing to do.

• You are able to explain why your idea/project is different or better than everything else that is out there.

SXSW Accelerator Judges for News Related Technologies Track (l to r): Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger Network, Tony Conrad, co-founder about.me and partner, True Ventures and Adam Ostrow, SVP content & executive editor Mashable.

Today, three innovative, news-related technologies were selected as finalists in the SXSW Accelerator Competition.

Of the eight startups vying, three - Ad Glue, the Funf Project and Umbel - were selected to move on to the second and final round of judging, scheduled for tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m.

Here’s a bit more about each of them, from their morning pitches and materials:

• Ad Glue is an advertising platform that allows publishers to instantly “glue” or place advertisements next to content they like.  It allows users to reach customers  in three steps - by creating an ad, choosing when it gets seen and seeing it stay put for a full 30 days. There are no dashboards, no need for graphic designers and publishers can change their messaging and artwork as often as they need. 
• Funf Project is a social and behavioral sensing framework for Android devices. It provides an open source, reusable set of functionalities, enabling the grassroots collection, dissemination, and sense-making of rich data about individuals, their devices and their environment. It can be used by researchers, self-trackers or anyone interested in collecting and exploring information related to mobile device, its environment, and its user’s behavior. The project was developed at the MIT Media Lab.
• Umbel empowers publishers, advertisers and agencies with a deeper understanding of audience engagement, by using large amounts of aggregated, real-time social data. The knowledge and insights it provides to clients helps them research and plan their media placements more effectively. The company says that selling inventory with Umbel data yields eight times more return when compared to ad network revenue.

Joel Chandler believes that open government is not an accident – and he should know.  Chandler – a businessman, not an attorney – has filed and won more than two-dozen lawsuits forcing governments to comply with open records laws. Along the way the Lakeland, Fla. resident has helped keep school districts from selling the personal information of their employee’s minor dependents, fought excessive fees for residents seeking public records and helped South Florida residents fighting a private prison planned for their neighborhood by exposing contract violations.

Today, for his efforts, Chandler is being named the winner of the 2012 Sunshine Week Local Hero Award, honoring people using publically-available information to make a difference in their communities. The honor is announced at the start of a week-long initiative on government transparency at all levels.

The American Society of News Editors and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press co-sponsor the event, with support from Knight Foundation.

Today’s post is the second of three looking at the media and elections. It is a wild hunch that our great political scientists will not agree with – still, I think it needs study from journalism and mass communications scholars.

Take a look at the graphic. From George Mason University, via Wikipedia, it shows presidential election turnout in the United States for the past two centuries.  

There are four interesting upward spikes in U.S. election turnout: 1820s-1850s, which just so happens to coincide with the rise of the mass circulation newspaper;  1920s-1940s; which matches the rise of radio; 1950s-1960s, during the time of the rise of television, and from the mid-1990s to today, which coincides with the rise of the World Wide Web and digital media.

Drawing upon my years co-creating the Newseum, the international news and freedom museum in Washington, D.C., I would also throw in a couple of 19^th century mini-spikes. After American magazines rose just before the Civil War and after the rise of big city papers before the turn of the century, there were also presidential voting spikes.

So I repeat:  The historic upticks in American presidential voting happen to match the rise of new forms of mass media.

Is this just a coincidence? I don’t think so. But don’t get me wrong. I am NOT saying that the rise of novel forms of popular media caused the spikes. I am theorizing that the rise of media is an ingredient in a complex recipe that in the end results in more presidential voting. In fact, the same underlying social conditions that caused the rise of the new forms of media might also be the things that caused the rise of presidential voting.

In just one week, 22 high school and college students will be named the winners of the 1ForAll campaign’s #FreetoTweet competition - and receive $5,000 to continue their education.

More than 17,000 tweets with the #FreetoTweet hashtag flooded Twitter on Dec. 15, sent by people sharing how they enjoy their right to free expression.

Students ages 14 to 22 who creatively tweeted their appreciation for the First Amendment using the hashtag were automatically entered into a nationwide scholarship competition.

Knight Foundation funded the 22 scholarships - one for every decade since the Bill of Rights’ ratification.

Photo Credit: John R. Rogers

I and several of my Knight colleagues will be at SXSW Interactive in Austin through next week, where we will be involved in more than a dozen events and looking out for experiments helping to move society forward.

At Knight, we believe information is vital to communities - and that new technologies are essential to delivering the information communities need on important issues. Four years ago, when we started coming to SXSW, we were seeking journalism and media innovation entrepreneurs. Today, we are expanding our search to community builders interested in using technology for engagement, in addition to artists and entrepreneurs looking to inform and engage communities.

We'll be demoing projects Monday and Tuesday at our trade show booth, supporting the accelerator competition and are excited by the Knight-funded projects presenting this year. Here are a few:

Tonight at 5 p.m., Knight Foundation Trustee and MIT’s Media Lab director Joi Ito will participate in a panel and demo of some of the most exciting projects at the Media Lab. Also at 5 p.m., PRX CEO and Knight News Challenge winner Jake Shapiro will give a keynote on the Future of Public Media. (His talk follows yesterday’s announcement about the Knight-funded Public Media Accelerator's new director.)

Saturday night, we are partnering with Mozilla and MIT’s Media Lab for a media innovation fair at Brush Square Park, showcasing exciting projects. The innovation fair will close with a performance by Filastine.

On Sunday, Knight News Challenge winner Kara Oheler, from Zeega, will participate on a panel on public media as transmedia from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.

A panel on Civic Media Projects in Latin America will be held at 3:30 p.m. Monday, and will be led by Knight News Challenge reviewer Luisa Ortiz and Knight News Challenge winners Yesica Guerra, from Crónicas de Héroes, and Miguel Paz from Poderopedia.

Monday kicks off the SXSW Accelerator from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Be there to hear the pitches made by this year’s semi-finalists in the News-Related Technologies category. Learn which projects will move to the final stage of the contest on Tuesday, when winners will be announced at 6 p.m.

Torchbearers Board members at their Community Leaders Reception at the Akron Civic Theater.  

Knight Foundation recently awarded $50,000 to Torchbearers, an organization dedicated to attracting and retaining young professionals in Akron.

The funding supports a new program called “Be The Change” in which members identify their passion and create a plan for initiating community change while building strong relationships with community leaders.

Knight’s focus is to promote an informed and engaged Akron by developing and engaging the next generation of talent. This program is a chance for emerging leaders to identify opportunity and environments for change, embrace risk and receive guidance from local seasoned mentors.

The Akron Beach Journal profiled the launch of Torchbearers noting: "the funds [will] allow the group of about 95 members to build a curriculum with professional facilitation to empower participants to spark positive change for Akron."

Note: To apply for the News Challenge, and read our FAQ, visit NewsChallenge.org.

We’ve spoken to some potential applicants over the last week who have worried that their projects may not be “newsy” enough for the News Challenge.  

The idea might not be in the strictest sense - but that shouldn’t stop them from submitting.

Sure, “news” is in the challenge’s name. But over the course of running challenge, we’ve learned that many interesting ideas for informing and engaging communities may not, at first blush, be easily classified as news. In the recent past, we’ve funded data visualization projects and data scrapers, for example.

In this current contest, our focus is on projects that use networks to help communities get the information they need. We’ll fund projects that use existing software and platforms to deliver news and information.

Knight funds The Civic Commons to build on existing citizen engagement efforts to provide new ways for citizens to learn about local issues. Here, Dan Moulthrop from The Civic Commons, writes about its impact.

Sam Bell is an auto mechanic in an inner ring suburb of Cleveland. He calls himself an "eco-conscious" auto mechanic, and what that means, practically, is that he recycles everything he can at his garage (The Lusty Wrench), and he rides his bike to work every day. It also means that he takes a very active interest in his community. As the Cleveland Heights-University Heights school district began public engagement on their proposed strategic plan, he grew worried that the district's commitment to sustainability was little more than "lip service." He had tried to raise this at public meetings but to no avail. So, in late December, he turned to The Civic Commons and invited the community to join in a conversation about his ideas.

At first, no one seemed to be paying attention.  Since then, though, a few hundred people have accessed the conversation and almost 30 have participated in some fashion. The real success, though, lies in the fact that as a result of his efforts online and in the community, Sam recently got a meeting with the district superintendent. Here's what he posted on the Commons about that meeting:

"We wound up spending nearly an hour together, instead of the 20 minutes I had asked for.  I think neither of us was unhappy about having spent so long....I invited him to call the Cambridge MA Supt of Schools, whom he turns out to know through involvement in a committee on which they both serve, to ask about their experience.  He is willing to do so, and has asked me to furnish him information from other school systems which have managers of sustainability in place."

Today we serve up the first of three election/media blog posts. They’ll range from serious data analysis (today), to a story tip and a wild hunch about media history.

This season’s Super Tuesday primary races were covered by the full-fledged data-mapping project Patchwork Nation, founded with Knight funds, and now run through the nonpartisan Jefferson Institute.

Patchwork Nation’s creator, journalist and author Dante Chinni, has mapped America, diving it into 12 “voter communities” – ranging from tractor country to monied burbs – each a social-demographic type, each a different color in the embeddable maps.

Using Patchwork Nation, instead of red states and blue states, we see all the colors of the American political scene. The widely used mapping system has become a book.  

This post shows the Ohio map generated by Super Tuesday. Hover over the voter type and see how the Republican candidates did in this key race, narrowly won by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Last week, I described our approach to open source software in the News Challenge. We support open source and strongly encourage applicants in the contest to use it.

Similarly, we think ideas are strengthened, and society most benefits, when they’re shared and discussed publicly.

As such, we’ve set the default for the Challenge to public: you post an idea on the News Challenge Tumblr. You, and your networks, can promote it. Others can critique it, suggest collaborators or point you to similar ideas. In the future we hope that the News Challenges will be seen more as a platform for the exchange of ideas than as a source of funds.

Someone recently mentioned to me that her company is eager to enter, but that they were apprehensive about possible negative reactions to a public proposal. We realize, however, that some (mostly organizations, but some individuals, too) do not want to share their ideas in public. That’s why we do allow you to skirt the public Tumblr should you choose. To keep your idea between yourself and us, email your answers to the 7 questions to us at newschallenge@knightfoundation.org. We will evaluate your application just as we will the other ones, albeit without the benefit of public discussion. (You may want to use this News Challenge collaborative editor from Charlie DeTar to compose and copy your entry.)

Ever wonder what libraries will look like in the future? And how they’re partnering with people in their communities to address information needs?

During a Knight conference exploring the role of libraries in the digital world, we interviewed library directors from eight communities - Philadelphia, St. Paul, Macon, Charlotte, Miami, Akron, San Jose and Detroit - to ask these questions and more.

Hear what library directors from these communities say are their biggest successes and listen to insights in how they’re addressing challenges.

In these videos, library directors also share what projects they’ve developed to help better serve their communities. The Free Library of Philadelphia, for example, was able to involve itself more deeply in communities by creating hot spots in areas with limited digital access.
 

Meet Julie Jones, a second-grade teacher with a big idea. She was the winner at the first annual social entrepreneur competition, organized by Charlotte's Social Venture Partners and supported by Knight Foundation. Eighty-two organizations applied. Twenty finalists were selected, and then 40 volunteer coaches worked with the 2012 class to hone their messages and their 3-minute TED talk-like presentations. All were terrific, but Julie especially so.

Her idea: a grub composting program that uses a bioconversion process to divert food waste from our landfills while producing protein-rich chicken and fish feed. 

And how did she come to this idea? By watching her students dump food in the cafeteria trash cans each day.

JumpStart has invested $250,000 in an Akron-based company that uses an adhesive pad to dissipate heat generated in computers and electronics. The adhesive was inspired by the properties of the footpads of geckos, the small lizards that are able to climb walls. JumpStart, in part funded by Knight Foundation, has invested $2.75 million in Akron-based companies.

The news was featured in the Saturday edition of the Akron Beacon Journal in an article "Gecko feet inspire startup business, attract money." 

Last month, Knight Foundation announced a $1 million grant to Jumpstart to support an effort to bring a new model for engaging residents in fostering entrepreneurship to 20 cities across the country.

The following, written by 2011 News Challenge Winner iWitness, is crossposted from PBS Media Shift.

By Jesse James Garrett:

Let's face it: The great promise of citizen media has not really been fulfilled. News organizations have struggled to find ways to supplement their coverage of news events with contributions from citizens -- and finding citizen media related to a news event is currently difficult at best.

Keyword searches and hashtags provide partial solutions, but still do not differentiate between first-person accounts and other kinds of content. And although more and more services allow their content to be geotagged, few tools take advantage of this data in meaningful ways.

That's where we come in. My company, Adaptive Path, is a user experience design firm based in San Francisco, and with funding from the Knight News Challenge, we're building a tool that we call iWitness.

At an event last year at Columbia University, Knight Foundation President and CEO Alberto Ibargüen says he hopes the new FCC report on community information needs engenders a vigorous debate, and action.

A new report explores the ways that non-profit and commercial media organizations can partner to strengthen investigative reporting, reach a broader audience and increase their impact.

“From Outsourcing to Innovation” gives practical tips for creating an effective partnership, which it says can ultimately help the nonprofit’s bottom line. Produced by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program, the report also explores the role of the government and technology sectors in supporting the media hybrids.

The study is one of 11 funded by Knight and the Carnegie Corporation of New York in an effort to take action on the Federal Communications Commission’s landmark report, “Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age.”

Knight and Carnegie dedicated more than $800,000 to help implement the report’s recommendations, including this series and other projects that examine how tax law is affecting nonprofit media, how to develop reliable metrics on media philanthropy, and more.

There's something in the air in Detroit. 

It seems all of us, especially young Millennials, are leading an initiative, a project or a company that aspires to strengthen our city. There are countless examples, including many anchored in Knight grants, that showcase our city's "do-er" spirit. This spirit of urban innovation is advancing economic opportunity, quality of life and civic engagement across Detroit.

But real data also hints that a movement is underway. Between 2000 and 2010, there was a 59% increase in the population of young adults living downtown. A recent Knight-Gallup study discovered a striking level of community "attachment" among young Detroiters. Quicken Loans Founder Dan Gilbert, an advocate of offering young innovators the spaces they need to thrive, is now our city's third-largest landlord. And last summer, 1,065 black males shared their own stories of civic engagement through BME Detroit.

What's next? 

While many observers have begun to take note and ponder whether Detroit is the "Silicon Valley of Social Entrepreneurship," what are practical things we should do on the ground to accelerate this movement?

Any parent of tweens and teens knows it’s tough to talk with them about important issues. This makes one of the results of the Knight-funded real-world social game, Battlestorm, even more surprising. The game results showcase the power of youth as catalysts for conversations about hurricane preparedness among families, friends and communities along the Gulf Coast, which is still struggling to heal from past disasters.

A combination of dodgeball and freeze tag, Battlestorm was played by members of the Boys and Girls Clubs in communities throughout the region. The game used preparedness-related terms, symbols and game mechanics to promote the importance of hurricane preparedness through activities focused on youth as leaders. For example, in the course of the game, the “Town” team transports resources (balls) from one side of the court to the other while “The Storm” team plays and “shelter” power tokens offer players safe haven on the court from Hurricane players.

An evaluation of the game found that as a result of being involved with Battlestorm, players started conversations with parents and friends about hurricanes. 

• 68% of Battlestorm players started/continued talking with parents about the topic vs. 38% in a control group.
• One third of Battelstorm players’ parents reported learning something new about hurricane preparedness from their teen.
• By the end of the game, 64% of Battlestorm players had spoken with friends about hurricanes, and 40% of players spoke with friends about the elements of a hurricane prep kit.

For example, on the way home from an after-school program, a girl from the East Biloxi Unit told her father that she was playing a game about hurricanes called “Battlestorm.” This reminded her father that the family’s flood insurance needed to be updated.

Innovation happens quickly: there’s just 12 more days to submit your Knight News Challenge application on the theme of Networks.

Still thinking about how to best formulate your idea? Have a question that isn’t answered in the FAQ?

This week, at 12 p.m. EST Wednesday, join us for a Google+ Hangout with Knight Foundation's Michael Maness, vice president for Journalism and Media Innovation, John Bracken, director/Journalism and Media Innovation and Jose Zamora, Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation. 

Can’t make it to the hangout on Wednesday? You can reach us anytime at @knightfdn on Twitter or via e-mail at newschallenge@knightfoundation.org.

Heading to SXSW? We’ll be holding “Office Hours” for those who have questions related to the challenge. Stay tuned @knightfdn for times and locations.

Partners and supporters of the BME Challenge gathered Wednesday night to celebrate the 10 winners of the BME Detroit Leadership Award, honoring exemplary black men who step up to lead and engage others in our community.

Detroit City Council Member James Tate greeted the crowd and former NBA star and charter school founder Jalen Rose made a surprise appearance.

Each of the BME Leadership Award winners is receiving funds to advance work they are doing in our community - from helping plant gardens in vacant lots, to giving new fathers parenting skills, and exposing young people to greater literacy, cultural and career development opportunities. Each talked about their projects on video.

But this wasn't just a special night for our winners; it was a special night for Detroit. These men represent hundreds of BMErs, and thousands of Detroiters, who are blending economic livelihood, creative pursuit, and civic action in imaginative ways. It's because of people like them that Knight Foundation invests in initiatives that help citizens lead and engage with the city's growing movement of social entrepreneurs.

Clay Johnson argues for infoveganism at the Center for Civic Media. Photo Credit: Flickr user J. Nathan Matias.

Noteworthy journalism and media books by Knight partners keep coming. These two made me want to flash back to two previous blogs:

Killing the Messenger: Thomas Peele of the Bay Area News Group has written a story that cries out for a movie deal. It’s about “radical faith, racism’s backlash and the assassination of a journalist.”  In vivid detail, Killing the Messenger gives you the big picture around the death of Chauncey Bailey, the Oakland Post editor shotgunned in 2007 on a street corner for investigating a troubled local business called Your Muslim Bakery. Bailey was the first journalist murdered for trying to do journalism in this country since Don Bolles was killed in 1976 by a car bomb for exposing mafia ties to Arizona land deals.

Peele tells the history of Black Muslims, leading you to Oakland where the movement became a cover for a violent cult run by Yusuf Bey, who beat and raped dozens of women he claimed were his wives and fathered more than 40 children.  Bey’s 21-year-old son, Yusuf Bey IV, took over the bakery after his father’s death. It was Bey IV who was convicted of masterminding the Bailey murder. Bey IV and an accomplice are looking at life without parole. The trigger man, who confessed, got 25 years.

Knight Foundation’s role was to grant the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education $125,000 to create the Chauncey Bailey project – so nonprofit, commercial and student journalists from all media could investigate the murder. Thomas Peele was an important member of that project.

Did the project matter? Said District Attorney Nancy E. O’Malley: “I would especially like to recognize and acknowledge the Chauncey Bailey Project (which) worked diligently and tirelessly to ensure that the defendants responsible for these senseless murders were brought to justice."  A public official speaks highly of journalists! Even so, you won’t find those words in Peele’s book. Like many good investigative reporters, he does not like to put himself into the story. I spoke about this issue at last year’s investigative reporting convention. My question: If investigative journalists don’t explain their impact, who will?

Youth filmmakers from the Picture the Possibilities program

Starting today, the Cinequest film festival in San Jose/Silicon Valley will showcase films created by young people, using their stories as a way to inspire positive social change.

Picture the Possibilities empowers young people from all over the world with the innovative tools, mentors and training necessary to produce the films. The program also connects them with leaders around the world to share ideas and gain a better understanding of community.

Today, at a private event for participants,  the films will be watched by media, business, cultural and political leaders. Participants will engage in conversations with the young filmmakers and suggest means to transform their visions into tangible plans to effect change, both locally and globally.

The event takes place not only in San Jose/Silicon Valley, but also simultaneously in five other cities where the teen filmmakers are from: Beijing, Shanghai, New York City, Los Angeles and Mexico City.

Approximately 150 young people were part of the program and were helped by a team of filmmakers who offered advice in writing scripts, shooting and editing as part of a film boot-camp. In total, 19 films were shot and focused on issues of immigration, obesity, living in post 9/11 New York City and more.

Tomorrow, the Picture the Possibilities website goes live. The site will be accessible at www.cinequest.org and feature the top films as well as personal profiles of the filmmakers and other e-learning opportunities.