Photo Credit Flickr user Koen Vereeken

The Knight News Challenge is being offered three times this year in short, focused rounds to better mirror the pace of innovation. Winners of Round 1, which focused on networks, will be announced June 18. Here, Journalism and Media Innovation Program Director John Bracken writes about the Knight News Challenge: Data.

Today, we are opening the Knight News Challenge on data. We are asking just eight questions - and 500 words - for your share of $5m. And you have three weeks to enter before the challenge closes at noon EDT June 21.

We’re looking for ideas that help make data more useful, by collecting, processing, visualizing or otherwise making it available, understandable and actionable.

We don’t have a vision for what we hope to fund through the contest-- if we did, we wouldn’t need a contest.

Here are some examples of data being useful: 

Photo Credit: Flickr user TEDxHonolulu

Knight Foundation is convening its first summit today on the theme of Technology for Engagement, bringing together leaders and innovators to “think together” about lessons learned and what’s next.

Co-hosted by MIT Media Lab and Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the “unconference” is designed to give thought leaders in the field a rare platform to compare experiences, speak openly about successes and failures and identify areas for collaboration. Participants will collectively set the agenda and goals and define topics for discussion for the 24-hour event.

The summit marks a new milestone for Knight’s Technology for Engagement Initiative, launched in 2010 to fund better ways to harness the power of technology for community engagement. The initiative asks: Beyond clicks and comments, how can people use the Internet, online social networks, apps, and mobile devices to take “real life” action and improve their communities?

Over the last two years, Knight Foundation has funded more than a dozen organizations to experiment with possible answers. Initial grantees included Code for America, a “Peace Corps for Geeks” and Community PlanIt, a platform that uses gaming to involve citizens in community planning efforts.

Many of the fund’s grantees are attending this week’s summit, including Jennifer Pahlka of Code for America, Eric Gordon of Community PlanIt, Lee Fisher of CEOs for Cities, and Nancy Lublin of DoSomething.org.

Joining them in the unconference are Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab, Ethan Zuckerman, director of MIT’s Center for Civic Media, Urs Gasser, executive director of the Berkman Center, Benjamin Stokes, co-founder of Games for Change, and others.

While the discussion topics have yet to be decided, they are likely to address key themes emerging in the field:

Starting Friday June 1, Mobilize.org is bringing together close to 100 community college students from across South Florida to discuss the challenges they face in completing their degrees.

During the three-day summit, the organization’s first in Florida, college students will work collaboratively to propose ways to increase the number of people finishing school.

On the third day of the summit, students will compete to win a share of $25,000 to implement the most innovative of their solutions. Winners also participate in a 12-month fellowship and skill-building curriculum intended to help them successfully implement their projects.

The Target 2020 summit is supported by Knight Foundation, as part of its efforts to expand Mobilize.org’s model of millennial-led engagement in five communities: Detroit, San Jose, Miami, Charlotte and Philadelphia.

At the summit, Sen. Bob Graham and other local leaders will release the Miami Millennial Civic Health Report. The report found that Miami’s residents ages 18-30 ranked lower than their counterparts across the state and nation on issues related to civic health like volunteering and voting. The report also shows that young adults without any college experience were particularly cut off from civic life.

The weekend summit will be webcast live. To join the conversation on Twitter, follow @mob_org and use the hashtag #T2020.

Photo Credit: Flickr user slidingsideways

Here’s a news flash: Hockey fans like donuts. Dunkin Donuts, to be more precise. And to be even more specific, a significant portion of the 2.5 million fans who visit the Boston Bruins web site every month also like Dunkin Donuts. Earth shattering, I know.

Here’s the thing: What if I were the Boston Bruins, and you were Dunkin Donuts and I could actually prove this to you? I could show you precisely how many of my monthly visitors were fans of your product, and give you a really clear picture of who those fans were, and how they matched up with the types of fans you were trying to reach with your advertising: wouldn’t you be more likely to buy advertising directly from me and pay me a decent price for it?

Most online publishers are unable to easily gather granular data about their audience. According to Pew, less than 4% of newspapers’ digital ad revenue today comes from targeted ads. It is difficult and expensive to get the granular market research that advertisers require to make buying decisions. Data-driven ad networks that can provide some of this information buy ad inventory in bulk, driving down ad revenue for original publishers by 5-10x.

Today, Knight Foundation named the 57 finalists of the 2012 Knight Arts Challenge Miami, offering an array of ideas that will help bring South Florida together through the arts.

The group of finalists is largely made up of individual artists, small artist-led organizations and local cultural groups whose innovative ideas will help push the boundaries of artistic engagement. Their diversity reflects the growth of the community’s artistic talent and speaks to the emergence of a new generation of cultural leaders whose ideas to bring art into people’s everyday lives blend creativity, talent and technology.

This year, for the first time, the community will get to have a say in which projects will receive funding, thanks to a “People’s Choice Award.”  

In the fall, Knight will select several of the up-and-coming cultural organizations listed below and the public will be able to vote via text message for one to receive an additional $20,000 in support.

The full list of finalists and their projects are listed below. The winners of the challenge will be announced in early December in Miami.

2012 marks the fifth year of the Knight Arts Challenge Miami, which has offered $20 million in matching grant money to the best ideas that help weave the arts into the community. The winners of the 2011 Knight Arts Challenge received $2.9 million.

Here is the full list of this year’s finalists:

As soon as Solomon Jones reaches the podium, he begins reciting the lines of a poem he wrote back in 2005. He poses a question, both to the audience in attendance as well as anyone willing to confront the issue: “Why can’t Johnny read?” Is it the neighborhood he grew up in? The school he attends? Jones, bestselling author and founder of Words on the Street, thinks that despite what the media says, there are a lot of people in the education system doing a lot of good work. His program is definitely proof enough.

On Tuesday, May 22, Marathon Grill in Center City hosted the awards ceremony for Words on the Street, an initiative that seeks to partner parents, schools and businesses to engage students in writing and literacy. The program is funded by the BME Challenge, created by  John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Open Society Foundations’ Campaign for Black Male Achievement to recognize, connect and invest in black men and boys who engage others in making their communities stronger.

Literacy is the pinnacle of skills, because it allows us to learn most anything else we set out to study. That is why Solomon Jones is utilizing it as his focal point. The program has a few components that seek to encourage writing and literacy in the Philadelphia area. Words on the Street presents role models whose achievements are based in literacy, encourages parental involvement and makes literacy relevant through experiential learning and rewards creativity.

The real stars of the evening, however, were the students who were honored for their writing. Overall, 28 young people completed the program and wrote a short story to culminate the process. Everyone has a story. The difficult part is learning how to tell it, make it relevant and make people want to hear it. These students are definitely up to the challenge.

One student from each of the six schools that participated in Words on the Street received special recognition. As a reward, all six winners will have their stories published in the Philadelphia Inquirer through the Newspapers in Education program. The students are: Ahkeel Timothy – Mastery Charter /Shoemaker Campus; Anibal Velez – Samuel Fels High School; Chaya Cleveland – Randolph Technical High School; Destiny Martins – South Philadelphia High School; Jabril Sawyer – Camden High School; and Naila Khan – Bartram High School.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Sebastiaan ter Burg 

A new national initiative to survey, rank and recognize corporations that demonstrate leadership and investment in civic engagement issues launched this week. 



The Civic 100’s inaugural survey of S&P 500 companies is designed to better understand how they engage the communities they serve and how they institutionalize practices as part of their corporate cultures. The initiative is taking a scientific approach to measuring and evaluating corporate civic engagement.



Led by some of the country’s leading experts on civic engagement, The National Conference on Citizenship and Points of Light, the initiative hopes to recognize companies that are making a difference in communities across the country. Bloomberg News is serving as the media partner for the initiative. 



Knight Foundation’s Vice President/Strategic Initiatives Paula Ellis says she's glad to see the survey is built on the recognition that the business sector plays a "key role in promoting community engagement." 



We’ve gotten so much reaction on my recent journalism education reform speech, that my colleagues created an infographic to explain the new degree system I’m suggesting would make professionals and scholars equal. 

My basic argument is the “teaching hospital” model is the best for journalism and communication education in the digital age. To have a good teaching hospital, you have to have not just researchers but doctors. 

This system would have a professional master’s (as some schools do already) but also a professional doctorate (kind of like an MD).

The main feature of a new degree system would be to honor people who can do both scholarship and excellent journalism with a “higher doctorate” and a “higher master’s” that would outrank the other PhDs and Master’s degrees.

Knight Foundation announced today its support for Voice of San Diego's new membership program - which includes the perk of a new print and digital magazine - as part of its efforts to support sustainable local news models. As a nonprofit, the organization relies on contributions from individual members, major donors, corporate/community partners and foundations to maintain operations. With this support from Knight, the news organization is crafting a diverse revenue strategy that places greater emphasis on building a community of individual members who see the value in its awarding-winning investigative reporting. Voice of San Diego's CEO Scott Lewis writes about the launch in a piece first published in a member newsletter.

So we're launching a magazine.

That caught a few people off guard, I know. We're the digital news team. That's the point, right? To save all the money spent on print and use that for reporting. Make news more efficient.

Don't worry, the core philosophy that was part of the founding of Voice of San Diego still reigns: Don't build a radio station, don't build a printing press. Use the Internet. All you need is a connection and some software.

But the Internet is so amazing, it even made print possible for us.

Let me explain. Last year, it was an actual face-to-face conversation (and then the Internet) that led me to MagCloud.   

The Connecticut Mirror is a Knight Community Information Challenge Winner for its website which provides news, information and analysis about Connecticut state government and public policy. Donna Jolly, vice president for communications and marketing at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, writes about its progress. Above: the Connecticut State Capitol, photo credit: Flickr user J. Stephen Conn.

I don’t have any children graduating this year. But, I do feel a little like a proud parent. Let’s start at the birth:  On Jan. 25, 2010, Connecticut Mirror, an online news site was launched to provide professional, unbiased news and analysis about state government and politics for residents of the state. The Hartford Foundation was a proud funder, along with Knight Foundation and The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. 

This spring, at the ripe old age of three, the Mirror broadened its efforts from informing the public to also engaging the public. And, we were right there with them. In March, the Mirror, with funding from the Hartford Foundation, hosted a forum on early childhood education. 

Nearly 200 people attended the event, which featured experts who discussed how high-quality early childhood education can have a profound impact on a child’s academic success and on society as a whole. In partnership with the Mirror, the foundation also hosted a pre-forum event with the speakers and key community leaders from the Capital Region.

Photograph © 2012 The Barnes Foundation

Knight Foundation supported the building of a new Philadelphia facility to house the Barnes Foundation collection, and a mobile app to provide more access to the world-renowned  works. Knight's Vice President/Arts Dennis Scholl writes about the opening.

It was a star-studded night as the Barnes Foundation opened the doors to it new 93,000-square-foot facility on museum mile in Philadelphia. The building, designed by Tod Williams and Billy Tsien, glowed in the setting sun as 875 patrons descended.  Luminaries included Ellsworth Kelly, caught posing in front of his 40-foot-tall sculpture in the garden entryway. I also saw most of the Sotheby’s contemporary art contingent, including North and South American chair Lisa Dennison and executive vice president Anthony Grant.

Master of ceremonies Brian Williams of NBC News kept the evening moving, even when technical issues got in the way. The crowd was also entertained by a short five-song set from Norah Jones and a rousing gospel moment by a local choir.  But it was more of a see-and-be-seen crowd, as all of Philadelphia and beyond showed up to celebrate the Barnes’ new home. And what a home it is.

I had the good fortune of visiting the Barnes in Merion before it closed and when I entered the identically replicated rooms in the new space, it was an odd feeling of deja vu. The main difference is the new space’s exquisite lighting, designed by Paul Marantz. The use of diffused light bouncing off of silver leaf ceilings gives the work a luminous feel. For the first time, you can see the postimpressionist works in all their glory.

Miamians Susan Amat, Brian Breslin and Davide Di Cillo are spending 10 days traveling in Latin America as part of “Geeks on a Plane,” a tour for start-ups and entrepreneurs to learn about global technology markets. Knight Foundation funded the trio’s trip, as part of an effort to foster a greater culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in Miami. Here Amat, co-founder of the University of Miami’s center for entrepeneurship The Launch Pad, writes about the experience.

For the past week, Brian Breslin, Davide Di Cillo and I have been traveling with 30+ other tech entrepreneurs and investors to Mexico City, Sao Paolo, and Buenos Aires to learn about the local start-up scenes and companies. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to deep dive into markets with strong similarities and shocking differences from our own in Miami. The experience is enhanced with insights from our fellow passengers, most of them Silicon Valley veterans who represent 15 other countries. To share this with Brian and Davide has had an even greater impact, as we reflect on each discussion through the lens as leaders in our South Florida community. 

St. Paul is on the national radar this week as The Central Corridor Funders Collaborative’s annual stakeholder event made the HUD Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities update.

The collaborative is a group of local and national funders that strongly support the Central Corridor Light Rail Line that will connect Minneapolis and St. Paul because it offers opportunities to strengthen the regional economy and makes the surrounding neighborhoods better places to live, work and access opportunity.

An excerpt from the HUD update notes:

“In the Twin Cities the HUD team joined a gathering of 200 community leaders and foundations to celebrate the progress of the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative. Mayors Coleman and Rybak joined Sue Haigh, chair of the Met Council, a HUD regional grantee, to spotlight efforts to support local businesses and create strong neighborhoods throughout the corridor.”

As the Central Corridor light rail project moves closer to completion, the Corridor’s “beyond the rail” initiatives are beginning to take shape and are transforming into action.  This was reinforced by presentations during the event from working groups that focused on issues like affordable housing, business development, contractor and workforce inclusion, a public/private investment framework and job access.

The 2012 Progress Beyond the Rail report, which focuses on how trends are taking shape, is available online. The Central Corridor light rail is now halfway complete, a milestone covered earlier this week by CBS Minnesota, Fox9.com and the Star Tribune. The project is scheduled to be completed and fully operational by 2014.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Koen Vereeken

The Knight News Challenge is being offered three times this year, in short, focused rounds to better mirror the pace of innovation. Winners of Round 1, which focused on networks, will be announced June 18. Here, Journalism and Media Innovation Program Director John Bracken gives a preview on the upcoming Round 2.

We’re excited to announce that the next Knight News Challenge will focus on data.

Starting May 31 through June 21, we’ll be looking for ideas that help unlock the power of data, by collecting, processing, visualizing or otherwise making it available, understandable and actionable. Applicants - whether for-profit startups or non-profit ventures - will have 21 days to submit their projects.  

We had planned to make the second round a completely open call for innovative news ideas. But we received feedback from the advisers we gathered last month to review News Challenge applications that themes encourage sharper proposals and better ideas, and we decided to take their advice.

So, why data?

The world has always been complex, but we are now challenged with making sense of the rapidly increasing amounts of information that we are creating. According to IBM, nine-tenths of the world’s data has been created in the last two years. Cisco predicts that information generated by mobile devices will hit 130 exabytes in 2016 -  that’s the equivalent of 520,000 Libraries of Congress in one year. A report from McKinsey anticipates that the amount of data we generate will increase 40% annually. Facebook users alone add a billion pieces of content every 24 hours.

Knight News Challenge: Data is a call for making sense of this onslaught of information. “As data sits teetering between opportunity and crisis, we need people who can shift the scales and transform data into real assets,” wrote Roger Ehrenberg earlier this year.

Feet In Two Worlds at the Ippies. From left: Von Diaz, Lan Trinh, Cristina DC Pastor, John Rudolph, Mohsin Zaheer.

Four participants in the Feet in Two Worlds project, which was funded by the Knight Community Information Challenge in 2010 via the New York Community Trust, won Ippies, which recognize excellence in ethnic media. 

Reporters from Feet in Two Worlds, which provides training for journalists from ethnic media and helps them find greater exposure in public radio, won more awards than any other single organization. 

Cristina Pastor won an award for her commentary on how cases like the one against Dominique Strauss-Kahn can play out in the asylum hearings of accusers. Lan Trinh won in the video category for her coverage of coverage of how Chinese-immersion schools are attracting both parents with Chinese heritage and those without who believe that the NYC language programs will give their children a leg up.  

Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska won an award in the audio category for her wonderfully atmospheric piece on rooftop pigeon-tenders in New York, which aired on NPR.  Von Diaz's story on the struggles of immigrant LGBT youth, which originally aired on Publig Radio International, also won an award. 

This summer, a new program focused on tapping into and better supporting mentorship opportunities in Philadelphia is set to launch.

Backed by a $400,000 investment from the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, the program is led by several people involved in the BME Challenge, an effort to recognize, connect and invest in black males from all walks of life who engage others in making communities stronger.

Philly Roots aims to scale up the quality of grassroots mentoring by making sure mentors who work with young people are best equipped to help them achieve their goals.

Philly Roots brings together those already working on issues around mentoring in the Philadelphia community, like Rising Sons, an after school program where recent college graduates and college students 18-25 mentor young boys. Alex Peay received a BME Leadership Award earlier this year to help strengthen its operations. Rising Sons’ principal operations officer Mubarek Lawrence was brought in to co-chair Philly Roots. Brandon Brown, director of Youth & Family Services at Nu Sigma Youth Services, which advocates for improving the lives of young people in the community, is also a member of the Philly Roots Steering Committee.

One of the biggest factors for a young person’s success is having caring adults in their lives, said Steve Vassor, senior manager for quality assurance at the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, who serves as Lawrence’s co-chair for Philly Roots.  It’s why the organization he works for provided support to help launch the program. Vassor says the BME Challenge was crucial in helping bring the right people together to help build the program. He says it’s one of the few opportunities he’s been a part of that brings black men together from across different backgrounds:

“We need more of these opportunities for black men to come together and collaborate across their affiliations. BME is fantastic, it is one of the best networks and collaborations I have seen in a long time that provides such opportunities.”

In recent years, we've seen how sites like Kiva.org and Kickstarter have allowed people around the globe to give life to creative and personal pursuits, fueling our ability to support one another. 

In Detroit, we've been making the global truly local - by using the web to engage local supporters in the success of our growing movement of young, civic-minded entrepreneurs.  Kiva Detroit, Detroit4Detroit, Hatch Detroit, and the Urban Innovation Exchange are just some examples.

Today, we’re delighted to announce another initiative harnessing the power of the web: Design in Detroit.

Recently at the annual meeting of the Georgia Arts Network in Macon, a Random Act of Culture™ surprised the National Endowment for the Arts' Chairman Rocco Landesman and the 200 people gathered to hear his remarks.

Above,  Chuck Leavell, the musical director and keyboard player for the Rolling Stones (and a tree farmer and environmentalist to those who know him best in Macon), performed "Georgia on my Mind" for the crowd.

Beverly Blake, program director/Macon at Knight Foundation wrote a piece published yesterday in The Telegraph about the day and the chairman's visit titled "Hidden in Plain Sight."

Blake focused on the unique history of Macon, its vibrant arts scene and what she hopes the chairman’s visit will inspire the community to accomplish:

A student journalist with The News Outlet has won a top award for investigative reporting in Ohio.

The News Outlet is a two-time winner of the Knight Community Information Challenge. The project, based at Youngstown University, partners student journalists, who report important local stories, with established media organizations that publish them. It is also funded by the Raymond John Wean Foundation.

Christine Keeling won the Ohio Associated Press Best Investigative Reporting annual award on May 6.  Keeling won the award for her reporting on the troubled financial dealings of a local church that was holding a large tract of land needed for neighborhood revitalization.

The stories appeared in The Vindicator newspaper and news site. They included: “Influential church battles back taxes” and “Idora idleness frustrates residents.”

Each year, with support from Knight and its partners, students in the News21 program study a topic in-depth during the spring seminar and then follow with a 10-week reporting fellowship. Here, Kristin Gilger, associate dean at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, writes about this year's expanded program. Above: Leonard Downie Jr. teaches a spring seminar for students around the country. 

On May 14, students from journalism schools all over the country will begin arriving in Phoenix for this year’s expanded News21 program.  They have spent the past semester immersing themselves in the topic of voting rights and they’ll spend the summer reporting and producing a national investigative project on voting rights in America.

Leonard Downie Jr., the former executive editor of The Washington Post, who taught the spring seminar that teleconferenced in students from a dozen universities, said the goal is to release the voting rights project before the first national political convention in August. Downie will be working this summer with an editing team that includes Sharon Rosenhause, former managing editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and Steve Doig, Knight Chair in Journalism at Arizona State University.

Downie said the time is right for a project on voting rights because of recent extensive changes in election laws and voting procedures in many of the 50 states.  Students will consider whether voting fraud is a serious problem in American elections, whether new identification requirements at the polls disenfranchise prospective voters among minorities, college students or the elderly, whether ex-felons who have served their sentences should be allowed to vote -- and even whether voting machines are reliable.

Students will be based out of a newsroom at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and will travel the country to report their stories.

Knight Foundation funds The Civic Commons to build on existing citizen engagement efforts to provide new ways for citizens to learn about local issues. Here, its curator of conversation, Dan Moulthrop, writes about its new and improved website. 

Last month, we released version 2.0 of our website theciviccommons.com. It may be too lofty and overreaching to say this is the coming to fruition of months and months of work, dreaming, and something in between the two, but on our good days, that's kind of what it feels like. There's a little bit missing, though, to be sure, and we need some dreamers and doers in different communities to help us get it to the next level. 

So what's new? Well, ever since we launched the website eighteen months ago, we've been saying over and over that we were giving community members a chance to turn talk into action. Thing is, while we said that a lot, we hadn't really given anyone the tools to do so. Until now. In our new and improved website, Commons activity has three basic steps--conversation, action and reflection.
 

Knight Foundation and Mozilla announced today a $1 million investment in Amara, which makes video more accessible around the globe by simplifying the way to caption and subtitle it. Here, Amara's Nicholas Reville write about the service:

The famous (and maybe infamous) KONY 2012 video from March was a global sensation, both in viewership and in production. The video is about Africa, it was produced by a team in the U.S., and was looking to spark global activism-- and yet it was posted exclusively in English. That means the audience it could reach was dramatically restricted.

Using Amara, volunteers translated KONY 2012 into more than 34 languages in just four days. Look at the language list:

And KONY 2012 is just a microcosm of online video. Video is the most popular medium in the world, and the online video revolution has made everyone a potential global video publisher. But when a video is posted in language that we don’t speak, how can we enjoy it?

To truly have access to video around the world, we need a way to watch and understand it. For people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, the challenge is even greater -- without captions, all videos are inaccessible.

At Amara, we want to solve this problem at a mass scale -- we want to remove all the barriers that have made subtitling and captioning so rare online. We’ve built the simplest subtitling interface anywhere online. We are making it easy for companies and organizations to manage subtitle workflows, and most importantly, we’re involving viewers in making videos accessible. And inviting viewers to subtitle is the key to reaching hundreds of millions of online videos. Without their help, the problem becomes impossible.

(l to r): Bill Drayton, Matthew Bishop and Alberto Ibargüen discuss social entrepreneurship 

If social entrepreneurs have learned anything over the past several years, it’s that collaboration is the key to advancing social change. Success in the field will only come through partnerships between the social sector and the business world, Bill Drayton, CEO of Ashoka, told a crowd of leaders gathered in Miami this week.

The three-day Ashoka Support Network’s Global Summit, funded by Knight Foundation, is part of a larger discussion on how to best move social entrepreneurship forward, both locally in South Florida and also globally.

During an opening conversation on the future of social entrepreneurship, panelists focused on how teams, and also “teams of teams,” can ensure a brighter, more successful future for the field. By doing so, social change leaders can help build a world where everyone has the ability to become a changemaker.

Knight Foundation’s President & CEO Alberto Ibargüen welcomed the crowd by saying that Miami is a “fantastic” place to talk about where the field is headed, citing its unique diversity as central to the conversation around entrepreneurship: “75 percent of us were born someplace else and over 50 percent of us are from another country.” It’s a community where people express their opinions freely, where debate is constant and the discovery of other points of view is commonplace, he said.

The first issue of Dakotafire, a 2011 Knight Community Information Challenge winner, is online.

Dakotafire works with eight local newspaper partners to produce a quarterly publication that explores important regional issues in the James River watershed area of North and South Dakota. The project is funded by the South Dakota Community Foundation.

“Dakotafire’s alliance of reporters and editors work together to produce in-depth, regionwide coverage of issues vital to the sustainability of the area’s rural communities,” the site says in describing its mission. “This alliance, which connects these journalists online, allows them to cover topics they could not address as successfully alone.”

The inaugural spring 2012 issue of Dakotafire focuses on an issue that is dear to editor Heidi Marrila-Losure, a co-founder.

“Learn, then Return” explores “Seven ways to help rural youth see a future back home.” In the issue, Marttila-Losure shares her own story of return:

After spending nearly three years boosting social entrepreneurship in the Americas, Ashoka’s Lorena García Duran is setting her sights on South Florida.

In addition to launching the Miami office for the international group promoting social entrepreneurship, García Duran is busy preparing for its upcoming Miami Ashoka summit, scheduled for May 9-11. The event will bring together business people, journalists and the social sector to network and collaborate on ideas. The conference, supported by Knight, looks to connect social entrepreneurs based in South Florida like Connie Siskowski, whose Palm Beach County-based organization helps empower students who are the primary caregivers to elderly, ill or disabled family members.

Today's opening session "The Future of Social Entrepreneurship" will be livestreamed starting at 1:30 p.m. EST. The session features Bill Drayton, CEO of Ashoka, Alberto Ibargüen, President and CEO of Knight Foundation and Matthew Bishop, editor of the Economist.

In a conversation with Knight, García Duran described the opportunities for changemaking in South Florida.

Knight Foundation: Why did Ashoka decide to open an office in Miami? What were some of the opportunities? 

LD: Our researchers gave us four cities to explore: Chicago, L.A., New York and Miami. In Miami, we found a region that not only had significant ties to Latin America, but also had a broader perspective and more potential for impact. Of course, South Florida is more than just Miami and we found that the larger community was becoming a hub of successful young business people from all over the world. There were strong ties to the Latin American community, the Jewish community and the Indian community. When we started meeting and connecting with successful business and professional people, we learned they wanted to be part of change, but that they weren’t necessarily attracted to common philanthropy or charity, even though they wanted to be involved in social change. We started to build that hub of people as we continued to learn about what was really going on in the community. We found the community was an interesting hub that has huge potential for growth. We want to grow that hub, to connect successful business entrepreneurs and professional people with the concepts around social entrepreneurship.

What do you hope to accomplish here?

Today I’m in Oklahoma at the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation to meet with our informal journalism and media funders group. Because the event is at Ethics and Excellence, this meeting feels like a milestone. I’ll explain that, tell you who we are and why we meet and wonder out loud a bit about our future.

I came to Knight Foundation in June 2001 from The Freedom Forum, which was phasing out grant-making to focus on its successful news museum, the Newseum.  Nonprofit journalism groups and j-schools were worried about “traditional journalism funding” drying up. I wanted to get a handle this, and recruited Vivian Vahlberg at the then-named McCormick Tribune Foundation and Roz Stark at the then-named Radio and Television News Directors Foundation because they’d held previous funders meetings.

That started our movable feast. It had no budget, no staff, and after a decade, it’s still going strong.

At first we only invited foundations with annual journalism investments of at least $5 million. Charles Overby came from the Freedom Forum; Jon Funabiki, from Ford Foundation; Gordana Jankovic, of the then-named Open Society Institute;  Don Kimelman came from Pew Charitable Trusts, and Vivian and Roz. We met in Miami in January 2002. Hodding Carter, then Knight president, had OK'd a world-class facilitator, David Sibbet of Grove Communications in San Francisco, whom I knew from my Oakland Tribune days. As we talked, David drew a wall-sized graphic that recorded and focused our conversation.  

The Center for International Media Assistance recently released the second edition of its Empowering Independent Media report.

The report is one of the most comprehensive reviews of the media development field, covering developments like digital media and citizen journalism as well as business assessment including funding levels and sustainability issues.

The Center for International Media Assistance recently released the Empowering Independent Media report.

In essence, the report recommends the following on:

·      Funding: expand it, commit to longer-term projects and increase collaboration.

·      Training: embrace digital, teach business, modernize education and include citizen journalists.

·      Policy: support an enabling environment, specifically support investigative journalism, support anti-impunity efforts and build assessment into everything.

The summary of U.S. media development funding is particularly interesting:  U.S. government spending on international media development jumped 56% between 2006 and 2010 to $222 million – which is still just 0.4% of total U.S. foreign assistance.  Media development funding by private U.S. foundations increased 27% in the same period, to a total of $76 million in 2010.  The report provides a detailed analysis of all major donors to media development.

The Central Corridor Funders Collaborative and its many partners are looking forward to the arrival of Charles Landry in the Twin Cities this week.  Creating 21st Century Intercultural and Creative Cities is taking place all this week (May 6-11) and will include a series of events and activities featuring Landry.  

A prolific author, engaging speaker and hands-on consultant, Landry has worked with cities across the globe to provide expertise on building intercultural and creative capacities. He has advised communities on topics such as green urbanism, using imagination and creativity for urban change and tapping into ethnic and cultural diversity for economic development. The creative city concept from his highly acclaimed book, The Art of City Making (2006) along with The Creative City: A Toolkit for urban innovators, has spurred a global movement to rethink the planning, development and management of cities.

The public is invited to understand how art, culture and diversity can accelerate both economic and social growth ­– critical elements in strengthening the Twin Cities as world-class region. Most of the events are free but may require an RSVP.

Shaka Senghor, a BME Leadership Award Winner

Detroit's BME Leadership Award winners met recently with Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder to talk about the most pressing issues facing both the state and the city.

The small, invite-only group discussion, which included the city’s Deputy Mayor Kirk Lewis and other business and civic leaders, focused specifically on how to identify and help solve some of residents’, biggest challenges. BME is an effort to recognize, connect and invest in black males from all walks of life who engage others in making communities stronger.

All 10 BME Leadership Award Winners from Detroit were invited. Those able to attend included Emu Michael Kumane, Miguel Pope, Brook Ellis and Shaka Senghor. Reflecting on the forum, Senghor, who with support from BME will coach young people on how to fully express life stories across media, says he considered it an honor to participate. Senhor also says that he was impressed there was a good mixture of people from diverse backgrounds who participated in the meeting:

“Going in I didn't know what to expect, so I was very open to exchanging ideas about Detroit's future with those who are working hard to make a difference. Mary Kramer did a good job introducing the topic of how to turn Detroit around. [Gov. Snyder] sounded like he is really committed to seeing a better Detroit although we'll have to wait and see if his actions line up with his words...I took an opportunity to engage him in a brief discussion and told him about the work we are doing in the community and he appeared to be impressed by what I shared.  One of the things I pointed out was the importance of resources being allocated in underserved communities outside of Midtown and Downtown. When Gov. Snyder was finished speaking, each table was asked to identify the things they felt were important when it came to moving Detroit forward.”

The new University Park YMCA in Akron has exceeded membership expectations by 46 percent.

By the end of February 2012, the $11 million University Park facility, funded in part with a $3 million grant from Knight Foundation, had sold 3,510 memberships, which represents more than 7,000 adults and children. 

The YMCA had anticipated to sell about 2,400 by the end of 2011.  Douglas Kohl, the Akron Area YMCA president and CEO calls the facility "a giant, diverse melting pot," engaging residents of all ages in activities.

The Akron Beacon Journal noted the recent boom in membership in a recent article, highlighting several new programming opportunities including a teen night, swimming instructions for kids and silver sneakers, an exercise and social activities program for seniors. 

The Stomp percussion exhibit at the Young at Art Children's Museum.

The ambitious and extraordinary Young At Art Children's Museum is about to be a hot summer ticket for South Florida families with kids. The cavernous and bright building is a riot of bright color and art at every turn, yet clearly organized with space for quiet time too. Art is organized into themed areas for everything from surrealism (René Magritte) to street art (Keith Haring). 

Young At Art will be offering day camps as well as summer camps that include ceramics, painting and other diversions for kids. Based on my own price-shopping of summer camps in the area, their summer camp weekly rate is quite affordable. 

I visited Young At Art with my daughter - who's five, attends kindergarten and has taken some art classes. She was most interested in the Stomp percussion room, the Hokusai wave climbing sculpture, and the Edouard Duval Carrie interactive art exhibit.  Carrie's installation was funded by a 2011 Knight grant and the museum itself was a Knight Arts Challenge first-year winner. 

Funders, nonprofit journalists and academics gathered this week at the Council on Foundations convention in Los Angeles to discuss challenges nonprofit news outlets face in getting charitable 501c3 status. It’s part of a project called the Nonprofit Media Working Group, a partnership between Knight Foundation and the Council.

The working group is chaired by Steve Waldman, senior media policy scholar at Columbia University. Waldman was the lead author of the first major government report in a generation on the state of local news. Among the findings of that FCC report are that IRS nonprofit media rules appear out of date and thus unhelpful to the growing field.

On Monday night, Waldman moderated a foundation convention panel to discuss the issue. Attendees watched a HDTV segment from Dan Rather Reports outlining the story of Public Press, a small San Francisco news outlet that has been seeking nonprofit status for more than two years.

The Rather segment reported the growth of nonprofit media. It speculated that the IRS may be confused or overwhelmed by the nonprofit digital media requests, noting that the rules under which the IRS grants nonprofit media status were created long before the internet. Rather’s story did not interview any IRS officials; the service issued a statement saying it could not comment on the specifics of any single case. It said when it receives “novel” applications, they get special consideration.

A map showing 2012 World Press Freedom Day events around the world

Freedom of expression advocates are gathering over the next few days to consider the state of media freedom and its future as part of the annual World Press Freedom Day.

This year’s focus is on bringing new voices to the efforts around media freedom. The events, taking place all over the world but hosted in Tunis, Tunisia, are organized by UNESCO – United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It includes partners such as IREX, the U.S. Department of State and the Open Society Foundations.

Knight Foundation's role this year includes helping five World Press Freedom Day Fellows attend events in Tunis so they can participate, blog and tweet.

“These are people who persevere in the face of limited resources, personal danger, and bad laws to make a difference in citizens’ access to information – but who don’t regularly get to interact with international counterparts and gain skills and strength from sharing their experiences,” said Drusilla Menaker, senior media advisor at IREX.

Here’s more information on each of the fellows. Check back over the next few days as we’ll be embedding links to their live blogs from Tunis.

·      Justin Arenstein, South Africa, @justinarenstein

Each year Silicon Valley Reads hosts dozens of free public events at libraries, schools and community locations. This year, the program engaged more than 8,000 residents who collectively participated in nearly 104 public events and 12 additional events held at local schools.

The video highlighting the kickoff event for 2012 is available above. This year’s theme was “Muslim and American – Two Perspectives.” The featured books were Butterfly Mosque, by G. Willow Wilson and The Muslim Next Door by Sumbul Ali-Karamali.

Knight Program Director in San Jose/Silicon Valley Judith Kleinberg with author G. Willow Wilson at the Silicon Valley Reads kick-off event

The events are intended to spark conversations that lead to exchanging perspectives. They also help build a sense of community through open dialogue, support educational goals and promote lifelong learning.

Silicon Valley Reads is sponsored by Knight Foundation and other community organizations. It is presented by The Santa Clara County Office of Education, the Santa Clara County Library and the San Jose Public Library Foundation.

The Mercury News recently cited the success of the three month-long series noting its major supporters “must be pleased with their investment.” Earlier this year, it also wrote an editorial, noting how this year's theme was helping to tackle prejudices against Muslims.

This year’s event marks the program’s 10th anniversary.

Raina Kumra, CEO of Juggernaut and co-director of innovation for the BBG (along with Robert Bole), was one of 19 readers who helped decide which of the 52 projects moved to the next round of the Knight News Challenge on networks. Here, she provides her thoughts on trends that emerged from the entries considered. 

Knight's News Challenge is one of the few events in the foundation world that I can think of that makes foundation funds accessible to real people with big and small ideas. This was my first time as a reviewer for the News Challenge (its sixth one to date) and I walked away with an appreciation for each of the ideas put forth, as well as the design of the challenge itself.

This challenge had over 1,000 submissions. That’s an indication alone that there are few mechanisms in the foundation world that are as widely publicized and instantly accessible for those looking at apps that help media help people. The reviewers were made up of an impressive and diverse group of journalists and other media-centric folk including: Olivia Ma from YouTube, Ethan Zuckerman from MIT's Center for Civic Media and Harvard’s Berkman Center and Dan Greene from the Gates Foundation to name a few. Lucky for us, the Knight team along with another group of advisors whittled down the entries to about 50 for us to review before the full day session began.

Since the focus of this round of the challenge was networks, a variety of themes emerged from the proposals we reviewed: