This morning, the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy presents its report – “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age.” (You can watch a livestream of the proceedings at KnightComm.org, and follow tweets about the event with the hashtag #knightcomm.) The findings of the Knight Commission have already prompted $7 million in grants from Knight Foundation, as Alberto Ibarügen will announce in his speech at the Newseum this morning. The investments already underway as a product of the Knight Commission’s work include:

• A $3.3 million Library Initiative to go to the libraries of 12 communities.
• $2.28 million in new broadband access projects in underserved neighborhoods in Miami, Detroit and Lexington.
• $1 million to National Public Radio for Project Argo, to set up web-first reporting projects and improve member station web sites in a dozen cities, from Boston to San Francisco.
• A $250,000 grant to help TexasTribune.org promote civic’engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government,’and other matters of statewide concern.
• A grant to the Knight Digital Media Center at UC-Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism to support the Bay Area News Project, a new nonprofit news organization in California.
• $250,000 to the New America Foundation to establish Knight fellows to track what others are saying and doing to follow up on the commission’s recommendations.

These are some of the ways Knight Foundation is putting the report into action. Stay tuned for highlights from the report itself.