• Article

    News for high schools: Digital media plus teaching equals support for freedom

    Published September 17, 2014 by

    Report summary: A Right to Speak Out/Our Business is None of Yours. Credit: Column Five. Some experts say smartphones make young people stupid. Others say technology makes them smarter. Still others say the tool is not important; it’s how we learn to use it. A new survey of more than 10,000 high school students lends support to that last view. Amid an explosion in social and mobile media – their media – high school students are supporting freedom of expression in record numbers, and are even more likely to do so if they also have had a class in the First Amendment. During the past 10 years, Knight Foundation has funded five “Future of the First Amendment” surveys, each probing what American high school students know and think about our most fundamental freedoms. This year, for the first time, American high school students show a greater overall appreciation for the First Amendment than do adults.
  • Article

    News editors group expands efforts to encourage digital adoption

    Published September 16, 2014 by

    Arnie Robbins is the executive director of the American Society of News Editors, which Knight Foundation supports to establish long-term sustainability and advance excellence in journalism. Above: Neighborhood Explorer by The Dallas Morning News. It’s not like there’s a great manual for this stuff. There’s not a rich tradition or history of what works and what doesn't work. It’s just crucial that we move as quickly as we can, learn as much as we can, and adopt a digital-first mentality as much as we can. Which is why, at the American Society of News Editors, we know that whatever we can do to hasten the speed at which news organizations adopt digital tools in newsrooms the better. Because we know that some of these digital tools will change as quickly as they are adopted. Some will work; some won't. It’s why we know that we must include a variety of tactics to help one another: from strong digitally focused sessions at large annual conventions to smaller conferences with a sharp focus on digital news and what works to webinars offering training on topics to our changing news landscape. It’s why we experimented with our Hacking News Leadership conference in May at the University of Texas in Austin. By all accounts it was a terrific conference.  ASNE’s first regional conference in recent memory, Hacking News Leadership attracted more than 70 attendees from around the country, including editors, reporters, technology specialists, educators and other members of news organizations. 
  • Article

    Some crosstown art action

    Published September 16, 2014 by

    Detail from Nellie Appleby. The artist-run downtown space Dimensions Variable has decided to throw a show across the causeway in collaboration with ArtCenter South Florida in the main Lincoln Road gallery, cleverly called “On Location.” The three featured female artists, Nellie Appleby, Allison Matherly and Cristina...
  • Article

    Worth over wealth: Hacking h(app)iness in the Magic City

    Published September 16, 2014 by

    Social Good Summit Miami, 2013. Photo by Anusha Alikhan.  John C. Havens is the founder of the nonprofit H(app)athon Project and a principal of Transitional Media Consulting. He will deliver the keynote at the upcoming Social Good Summit Miami, sponsored by Knight Foundation. The summit will examine the impact of technology and new media on social good initiatives. You’re in a convertible Mercedes, dressed in an Armani suit, ushered in to one of the most exclusive clubs in Miami.  Your wallet is jammed with cash, plastic and more phone numbers than you’ll ever use. You have the perfect tan and the perfect life.  So let me ask you a question:  Are you happy? Your response, “Are you an idiot? Of course I’m happy.” Great.  Now here’s my next question: What are you worth? I’m not interested in the aggregate value of your bank accounts and worldly possessions.  I’m wondering about your sense of wellbeing.  Cars rust. Clothing attracts moths or goes out of style.  And whether you’re able to maintain a lifestyle based on the accumulation of money and stuff, science shows this quest for hedonic happiness won’t improve your intrinsic sense of worth.  In fact, pursuit of ephemeral or mood-based happiness for the sake of it can actually lower your wellbeing over time.
  • Article

    Global Detroit expands efforts to retain and attract immigrant talent

    Published September 16, 2014 by

    Steve Tobocman is the director of Global Detroit, which Knight Foundation supports to accelerate talent and advance opportunity in Detroit, one of 26 Knight communities. Photo: A Detroit neighborhood soccer team reflects and benefits from the diversity of the community. Credit: Global Detroit.  Southwest Detroit is frequently discussed as the one working-class neighborhood in Detroit that is revitalizing. It’s blessed by some of the most innovative and sophisticated nonprofit arts and community development corporations in the nation.  While the community (as defined by the new Detroit City Council districts) is 39 percent African-American, 39 percent Latino and 18 percent white, it accounts for about half of the 35,000 foreign-born residents in the city. The neighborhood’s emerging success and its demographic makeup are not a coincidence. I first started working on neighborhood revitalization issues in Southwest Detroit—the neighborhood where my immigrant grandfather once lived—through the AmeriCorps national service program in 1995. Eight years later—after helping to start campaigns against illegal dumping and graffiti, leading local zoning battles as a lawyer, serving as a volunteer hockey coach and devoting my life to the neighborhood’s revitalization—I was elected to represent Southwest Detroit in the Michigan House, where I served for three terms—the maximum allowed.
  • Article

    Knight Cities Challenge offers $5 million to uncover ideas to make cities more successful

    Published September 16, 2014 by

    Today we’re announcing the Knight Cities Challenge, a broad effort to uncover innovative ideas to make our cities more successful, and we’re investing $5 million to support projects that do this. Our question: “What’s your best idea to make cities more successful?” Related Link Knight Cities Challenge  We don’t have preconceived notions on what winning ideas will look like, but the research on what matters to the success of cities is clear. Cities that want long-term success should stimulate increases in talent, opportunity and engagement. Why? Talent is critical because the percentage of college graduates in your population explains 58 percent of your metro area’s success (if you measure success by per capita income).  And talented people, who are among the most mobile groups in society, want to live in vibrant, diverse communities. Opportunity is critical because it is fundamental to getting more people on the ladder of economic success. Cities that break down economic divides and provide opportunity to people from different backgrounds stimulate ideas and connections that enable their communities to thrive.
  • Article

    Miami symposium helps preserve memories of the Great War

    Published September 15, 2014 by

    WWI soldiers training in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Photo from the Boston Public Library on Flickr.  David Lawrence Jr. is president of The Early Childhood Initiative Foundation, a former publisher of the Miami Herald and a past trustee of History Miami. Knight Foundation and History Miami are co-sponsoring the symposium “World War I: A Century Later” on Saturday, Sept. 20 at New World Center. It was a war of machine guns and aeroplanes and tanks and trenches and chemical weapons and poison gases that gagged and suffocated. All these implements of war were either introduced in those years, or perfected in, under and over the killing fields of France and Belgium and Germany. It was a war that shaped the Middle East, leading to today’s terror. It led to fascism and communism – and Hitler and Lenin and Stalin (and evils that ensnarled a century). Sixteen million people died in those four years, 1914-18, 116,000 of them Americans. It was an accidental war. Shouldn’t have happened. But did. Its cause was way more complicated than the Archduke of the fading Austro-Hungarian Empire getting assassinated in Sarajevo. Subsequently, we – all of us, vengeful winners in Europe and naive statesman in the United States – botched the peace. It all looked so promising at the time, but looking back now we see the almost inexorable pathway to the next world war (the one we remember). If only we had really remembered the great lessons of the great war….
  • Article

    #6WordsMiami

    Published September 15, 2014 by

    This year the Miami Book Fair International (MBFI) is looking for six-word stories inspired by life in Miami. The genre is up to you: fiction, nonfiction, fantasy, romance. All you have to do is conjure up a story and submit it for the challenge. #6WordsMiami. My...