Welcome to the final week of the Knight News Challenge’s application period. We’ve a few more posts planned to aid you with your applications and are available on email (newschallenge at knightfoundation.org) and Twitter (@knightfdn, @jsb and @jczamora). I can’t promise we can answer every question, but we’ll try.

Meanwhile, I wanted to give you an idea of what comes next.

We’ll close the application form sometime after midnight on Wednesday the 1st. (Don’t worry, procrastinators– we’ll define midnight as GMT -12.)

We’ll spend December reviewing the applications we receive. In addition to Jose Zamora and myself, as in years past we’ll be enlisting outsiders to help us ensure that each application is read by at least two sets of skilled eyes. Represented among this group will be journalists, scholars, students, entrepreneurs, investors and funders. (We’ll share the names at the end of the review period.) Maria Thomas, formerly CEO of Etsy and head of digital for NPR.org, is taking on the heaviest workload– she’ll review each and every application. (Marshall Kirkpatrick posted background about Maria a few days back.) Maria will be sharing what she’s seeing in the applications here at Newschallenge.org. (She will *not* be commenting on or answering questions about specific applications– that’s my and Jose’s job…)

We intend to have word to all applicants by the end of the first week in January. At that point, some applicants will move onto a second round and we’ll be asking for more detailed information about their ideas and backgrounds. By mid-March, we plan to have a set of finalists that we will examine even more closely. We expect to recommend a group of winners for consideration by the Knight Foundation Board at its mid-June meeting. Finally, we plan to unveil the winners in late June at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media conference.

I hope that helps you plan your next few months. In the mean, good luck with your applications!