Not only is Facebook a great place for social networking, it's also a great tool for transferring news.

A NewsCloud experiment proves young people will participate in and contribute to a news and information community that goes where they live and share.

Jeff Reifman, founder of NewsCloud, created a Facebook site to distribute environment news from Grist, a site that provides environmental content daily, and another to distribute daily campus news from the University of Minnesota's newspaper, The Daily. .

The environmental news site, Hot Dish, allows users to read, rank, annotate, post, create, share and discuss climate change topics.

The application also includes an Action Team feature where users can earn points for prizes by meeting specific challenges. For example, users can earn points by sharing a story, posting a blog entry, being active in their community through volunteering, recycling, taking part in an environmental event, etc.

The grand prize winner won a trip to Greenland by persuading their gym to start recycling plastic bottles, having three letters to the editor published, and recycling an old washing machine.

The Hot Dish site had about 2,000 registered users and 346 agreed to be part of the research project.

Nearly three-quarters of the group surveyed said they used the Hot Dish site to interact with like-minded people. According to a NewsCloud report, users saw the site as a place where their views and contributions were more welcomed than in other Web sites.

According to Reifman, more than two-thirds of the content was contributed by users of the site during the two month period.' More than 2,300 comments were written, 1,500 stories were written, 4,500 stories were shared and about 1,200 eco-challenges were submitted.

This study indicates that social networks are a good way of getting young people involved with current events and community issues. Not only did the study inspire users to post articles and write comments on environmental issues, but also to actually do something about those issues.

This could definitely be a stepping stone for publications and other media that want to increase user engagement and interest.

The study also tested the distribution of news using University of Minnesota's student newspaper, The Daily. Although the outcomes were not as successful as Hot Dish's, the lesson learned is that timing and good marketing for a campus audience are essential for obtaining enough data for a study.

Follow the link to learn more.

 

When the Berlin Wall fell, optimists happily predicted 'the end of history.' The'post-Cold War world would see unparalleled freedom, with a wave of media development unrivaled in human history. Well, it didn't happen that way. The world remains an erratic, unsure place, by both press freedom and media development measures. 2009 sometimes looks suspiciously like 1989.

'The world needs new media development leaders. Knight Foundation's biggest international grantee, the International Center for Journalists, is becoming just that. ICFJ's president, Joyce Barnathan, is the chair of the Global Forum for Media Development, with 500 members in 100 countries.

ICFJ runs the Knight Journalism Fellows Program. Its tightly target approach is attracting many new partners. Gates Foundation funds Knight fellows, $4 million so far. Other funders support $3 million in Knight fellows.

What makes the Knight Fellows so important? They do more than just train journalists. They accomplish specific things: producing high-impact stories, or new investigative reporting organizations, or new journalism schools or new freedom of information centers.

How does ICFJ know where to work? An international group of advisors identifies the world's best media projects,'ones that will create lasting, visible change, and matches fellows from anywhere in the world to those specific opportunities.

A little money can go a long way. $200,000 for a training fellow for one year in Kenya equaled $7.5 million in new government spending on health care because the stories done moved the community to action. In Indonesia, great reporting helped stop the dumping of medical waste. In Uganda, it saved lives with better vaccinations, in Bangladesh, it helped save more lives with cleaner water.

Why care about all this outside America? Because the modern world is turning into one very big city. Bad health reporting on one side of the planet can lead to a killer flu coming right into this room. Journalism in a connected world matters. Here's the press release announcing $6 million over three years to extend the Knight International Journalism Fellows. And here's where you can suggest a project or apply for a fellowship.

-- Eric Newton is the vice president of the journalism program at Knight Foundation.

Knight Foundation will give $6 million for the high-impact Knight International Journalism Fellowships program run by the International Center for Journalists. Eric Newton, vice president of Knight's journalism program, explains what's unique about the Fellows this way: 'The fellows train the journalists who write the stories that move societies to improve the lives of their people.' And they do it all over the world.

Next year, Knight Fellows will launch:

• New investigative units at leading news organizations in the Middle East.
• A Web site that will map citizen reports on corruption so that Panamanian journalists can expose abuses.
• A new online association in India dedicated to improving transparency, making government data easily available to journalists for the first time.

ICFJ's news release is here. And more information about the Knight International Journalism Fellowships is here.