• Article

    New tool tracks performance of federal court judges

    Published November 17, 2014 by

    Greg Munno is a research professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. “The strength of the courts of law has ever been the greatest security which can be offered to personal independence.” – Alexis De Tocqueville The courts are perhaps the least understood, studied and transparent branch of the federal government. Article III judges receive lifetime appointments and are not subject to elections or the Freedom of Information Act. Electronic access to court documents, unlike the Congressional Record, costs money. Here at TRAC (the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a joint program of the Whitman and Newhouse Schools at Syracuse University) we’ve long wanted to build data tools that provided insight into how the judiciary works. TRAC has been building such tools for 25 years, relying on extensive knowledge of the Freedom of Information Act, database construction and data mining to provide unique insights into the practices of federal agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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    Knight Cities Challenge receives over 7,000 ideas for making communities more successful

    Published November 14, 2014 by

    The first Knight Cities Challenge is now closed. We received over 7,000 entries representing all 26 Knight communities, places where the Knight brothers once owned newspapers. Applications came from as far afield as Brazil and the Philippines. Now we’re entering the review period of the challenge where Knight program staff, augmented by a panel of readers, will review and discuss all of the entries. In early January we’ll announce the ideas that show the most promise for accelerating talent, opportunity or engagement in one or more of the 26 Knight communities. We will ask those applicants to give us more detail on their proposals, including budgets. Each applicant will need to answer seven questions:
  • Article

    Miami Book Fair International opens Sunday

    Published November 14, 2014 by

    Shoppers during Miami Book Fair International. Miami Book Fair opens Nov. 16, and for the 31st year in a row, the streets of downtown Miami will fill with books and the people who love them. With more than 600 authors in town, our city, for the next eight days will be not just “The Magic City,” but a magical city where stories and ideas are celebrated, and where everyone – young and old, black, brown and white -- can come together and find literary common ground. Thirty-one years ago I believed a fair of this kind was possible, and I wanted to prove that Miami was a literary city. And I was right. And the fair is still here, growing and maintaining vitality because the people of South Florida, and the many who travel here to enjoy it, keep coming—more and more of them each year. Just as Knight Foundation’s goal is to make art general in our city, my goal, the fair’s goal, Miami Dade College’s goal, has always been to make books (and reading) ubiquitous. Such closely aligned values have led to this year’s powerful new partnership between the fair and Knight Foundation. Their investment of $440,000 will fund programs that will continue to bring new audiences to the fair, and the fair to new audiences.
  • Article

    Radiotopia sets record for publishing and radio funding on Kickstarter

    Published November 14, 2014 by

    This post has been updated. The “Radiotopia” collective set a record of more than $600,000 when it closed its Kickstarter campaign Friday, Nov. 14,  ranking as the most-funded Kickstarter project in the publishing and radio and podcast categories. A project of award-winning nonprofit public media company PRX, Radiotopia brings together story-driven shows that can all share “editorial, business and emotional resources.”  Launched in February, the collective includes shows with topics ranging from design to the people we meet to stories of ordinary life. Last year, Knight Foundation provided a $200,000 grant to Radiotopia for its first year. To keep the momentum going, the collective raised $620,412 on Kickstarter – crushing its $250,000 goal. While captivating story-driven content is helping drive this success, there’s also a reemergence of awareness of the audio podcast. Though audio storytelling has been around for centuries, the iPod popularized the digital podcast in the 2000s. Enter 2014, and the podcast has made a comeback: the “Serial” murder mystery podcast has become a viral sensation this fall; and “StartUp,” a podcast about starting a podcasting company, is renewing conversations around the business of audio storytelling.
  • Article

    Creative interventions form new social connections in Akron, Ohio

    Published November 14, 2014 by

    Members of the Akron League of Creative Interventionists. Photo by Eileen Matias. Without fear, what would you accomplish? The Akron League of Creative Interventionists debuted a Bus Stop Confessional in October to encourage people to think and talk about fear in a way that can inspire personal growth. The league members armed themselves with sidewalk chalk and wrote provocative questions near Akron bus stops. They asked, “Without fear, what would you accomplish?” “Can fear be positive?” and “What do you fear?” This group of artists – amateur and professional – has been fearless in building connections by growing the group and by networking with other Akron organizations in person and on social media. The Oct. 31 Bus Stop Confessional wasn’t the only opportunity the Akron League of Creative Interventionists used to fulfill their mission of creating shared experiences in public spaces to break down social barriers and build connections. Each month the group builds an event around a theme set by the league’s founder, San-Francisco-based artist Hunter Franks.  Knight Foundation gave Franks more than $55,000 to create leagues in four Knight cities: Akron, Detroit, Philadelphia and Macon, Ga. October’s theme was Fear. November’s theme is Gratitude.
  • Article

    At the Bridges: some terrific offerings

    Published November 14, 2014 by

    Casts of body parts in Duane Hanson's "Ghosts" exhibit. Duane Hanson might be the most famous artist to have lived and worked in South Florida, and who may be more familiar elsewhere. His eerily life-like figures and busts have been shown in museums across the world,...
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    Charting a course of the future

    Published November 13, 2014 by

    By Peter E. Leggett, Walker West Music Academy This October, Walker West welcomed five new members to the Walker West Music Academy Board of Directors. Greg Finzell - Rondo Community Land Trust Harold Minor - Wilder Foundation Dameun Strange - Bush Foundation Nesret Shu-Ankh Theba - Kingfield Dental Karen Welle...
  • Article

    Selby Avenue Jazz Fest kick-off

    Published November 13, 2014 by

    By Peter E. Leggett, Walker West Music Academy For the past 14 years, on the 2nd Saturday in September, people of all ages and backgrounds have gathered at Selby Avenue and Milton Street in Saint Paul for the Selby Avenue Jazz Fest. Founded by Golden Thyme Coffee Shop owner Mychael...
  • Article

    New apps engaging arts audiences in Philadelphia

    Published November 13, 2014 by

    Two Philadelphia cultural institutions are using mobile technology to engage visitors and provide a deeper understanding of the arts. The Barnes Foundation and Philadelphia Orchestra recently released apps that enrich the audience experience. “The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of only a few in the world to create an in-concert mobile app that augments the concert experience. The orchestra seeks to create compelling concert experiences for both new and experienced concertgoers,” said Allison Vulgamore, president and CEO. In October, the orchestra, a 2011 Knight Arts Challenge winner, debuted LiveNote, its interactive concert guide, at the annual Free College Concert and deployed it again later in the week at its “Stunning Slavic Mass,” both at the Kimmel Center.  Sirmina Dremsizova, a sophomore economics major at the University of Pennsylvania, used LiveNote at the Free College Concert. “It was really user-friendly. I enjoyed the historical bits about composers like Rimsky-Korsakov.  The ‘West Side Story’ was nice. I was sitting with a friend that never watched the movie or the musical.  It really helped to give a context to what was going on, made things clear and why things were happening.”
  • Article

    What 100+ Challenge Fund experiments taught us

    Published November 13, 2014 by

    ONA’s Irving Washington presents “Challenge Fund: Lessons Learned” at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute’s Green Shoots in Journalism Education program at the University of Missouri, Columbia. This article is cross-posted with permission from ONA.  It’s been a full year since we launched the Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education, a $1 million competition encouraging universities to create teams to experiment with new ways of providing news and information to their communities. The 2014 Challenge Fund winners are in their first six months of experimentation and we look forward to sharing what they’re learning, but it’s already time to look for the next batch of innovation happening in schools across the country. Last year, we saw so many promising ideas that our partners — the Excellence and Ethics in Journalism Foundation,the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund and the Rita Allen Foundation — expanded the fund to support two additional winners, bringing the total to 12, and recognizing 13 honorable mentions.