Photo credit: Flickr user Rain Rabbit

Today we’re excited to announce 40 semifinalists in Knight News Challenge: Health. We received 686 submissions in the contest, which is focused on the question “How can we harness data and information for the health of communities?” Related Link

“Reviewers gather to discuss News Challenge: Health semifinalists” on KnightBlog

We reviewed ideas from all over the world, focused on everything from diabetes care to farmers markets to environmental data. We think these 40 semifinalists demonstrate the diversity of ideas we received and the sort of innovative approaches we’re seeking with this contest. 

We hope you’ll look at these entries and add your comments, questions and suggestions. For the next week, until Oct. 2, the semifinalists will be part of our “refinement” phase, where they will add a brief video, respond to community input and give additional detail about their ideas. We also selected one entry that was submitted to us privately, so it will not be visible on the site.

Following the refinement phase, we’ll enter a period of offline, private review aimed at selecting the final group of winners, which we’ll announce in January 2014.

While today’s announcement means many proposals aren’t moving forward in the News Challenge, our interest in news and information innovation extends beyond this contest. Please check out the full range of our work at KnightFoundation.org. In addition, like last year, the challenge has helped us identify ideas that might align with our Prototype Fund, which supports media innovators taking projects from idea to demo.

Thanks to everyone who’s joined us in the challenge so far, and thanks to our readers, who advised us on this process. We’re looking forward to the next stages and to continuing the conversation, which you can follow here or on Twitter at #newschallenge.

Chris Sopher, journalism program associate; Chris Barr, media innovation associate; and John Bracken, director of journalism and media innovation, at Knight Foundation