• Article

    Knight Foundation president to graduates: ‘Go forth and accelerate disruption’

    Published May 16, 2014 by

    Almost every commencement speaker urges graduates to change the world. Knight Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen went further in addressing Arizona State University journalism graduates, not only urging them to disrupt the status quo but offering money to help. Ibargüen, addressing 255 graduating students of ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, announced a $250,000 grant to be used for Cronkite alumni to accelerate newsroom innovation. Ibargüen, who leads the nation's leading funder of journalism and media innovation, said the opportunity grant would offer up to $15,000 to any Cronkite graduate working in a newsroom who proposes an innovative way to advance digital reporting and storytelling,” according to a release on ASU’s website. “We’ve been waiting for your generation of digital natives, driven to tell stories, to become the leaders of newsrooms in America,” Ibargüen said, “and maybe this will help that generational turn go even faster.” With funds in hand, it will make it harder for a “crotchety” editor to reject an innovative idea on the basis of cost, said Ibargüen, the former publisher of the Miami Herald. “So, go forth and accelerate disruption.” Ibargüen’s remarks came the same week as a report saying most newsrooms were too busy “feeding the goat” to adopt digital tools. Even the nation’s digital leader in journalism, The New York Times, was shown in a recent leaked report to have cultural issues holding back innovation. Knight Foundation is not relying on journalism school graduates alone to bring transformational change; we’re adding a director to our Journalism and Media Innovation team to help newsroom leaders adopt digital tools and manage the disruptive impact of the Internet. Free Speech on the Internet In his address, Ibargüen made clear that digital tools were only one part of promoting informed communities. Graduates are going forth into a world where free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment and defended by newspaper companies was no longer a given in the digital age. “It is troubling that we could end up with a licensing of speech on the Internet, unless we firmly establish, while still at the beginning of Internet, that the applicable law should be like that of newspapers,” he said. “In other words, that we are free to speak, not free to be allowed to speak.” Illustrating how high the stakes are, Ibargüen said the editor of The Guardian told him he could not have published Edward Snowden’s revelations if The Guardian U.S. did not exist and enjoy First Amendment protections. With newspaper companies in retreat as the digital age dawns, “who will support the broadest notions of free speech? Who will speak with the community in mind?” Ibargüen asked. Related links: News21: Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education Searchlights and Sunglasses: Field notes from the digital age of journalism New digital tools every journalist should try
  • Article

    Smart Chicago’s Civic Works Project aids in health plan enrollment

    Published May 16, 2014 by

    Daniel X. O’Neil is executive director of the Smart Chicago Collaborative, a winner of the Knight Community Information Challenge and recipient of a grant from the Knight Prototype Fund. Below, he writes about the Civic Works Project, which is funded through the challenge and the Chicago Community Trust. Photo credit: Flickr user Jims_ Photos. Open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act began in October 2013. Across the country, hundreds of agencies worked  to get everyone eligible enrolled. Smart Chicago and our longtime partner LISC Chicago, saw that there was an opportunity to make the outreach, enrollment and follow-up processes as smooth as possible and to use it as a springboard for sustained resident engagement for years to come. Through the use of the ACA SMS Outreach app, LISC Chicago was able to contact 27,000 residents leading to the enrollment of over 2,900 Chicagoans. LISC and its partners received a grant from the State of Illinois to perform outreach and enrollment for the Affordable Healthcare Act in 20 Chicago community areas. Field organizers went door to door and canvassed public events to achieve their outreach goals. These field organizers then directed residents to Centers for Working Families in each community area to become enrolled. Using a combination of tools such as Wufoo and Twilio, Smart Chicago aided LISC with its outreach by building a tool that enables organizers to send text reminders to sign up for health insurance to residents. We also open sourced this tool to help other organizations with similar needs.
  • Article

    Some fine art at Miami Light

    Published May 16, 2014 by

    Juan Carlos Zaldivar's "Shiva." It would be a real shame to miss this year’s Knight Emerging Artist series Here & Now at Miami Light, now in its 15th year. This unique event highlights local artists working in a variety of media, with commissioned pieces that are...
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    Insights from the Knight News Challenge: What does it mean to strengthen the Internet?

    Published May 16, 2014 by

    Priya Kumar is a researcher and writer who unlocks the stories in data. She recently served as a reader for the Knight News Challenge. Photo credit: Flickr user Damon Styer.  We access the Internet through computers, mobile devices, tablets, eyeglasses and even fridges. How do we strengthen something that seems ubiquitous, so tightly integrated into our daily experience that it feels unnecessary to distinguish between “online” and “real” life? RELATED LINK "Insights from the Knight News Challenge: Applying design thinking" by Emi Kolawoie on KnightBlog The variety of projects this Knight News Challenge received speaks to how broadly the Internet touches our lives. We use it to buy products, learn new information, share our views and connect with others. Many projects offered novel ways to engage in these activities, but the ones that stood out to me went beyond using the Internet to do something interesting. They proposed an idea that improved the experience of logging on; they equipped people to take advantage of the Internet’s unique abilities to store and send data quickly and to reach large numbers of people. They defined a target audience and described what demand exists for their proposal. They made me think, “We as Internet users need this.” As a reader for the challenge I reviewed about 90 of the more than 650 submissions. The best projects I saw aligned with one of four categories: Internet access Education Improving the architecture or experience of the Web Promoting or preserving online freedom of expression These themes broadened my interpretation of what it means to strengthen the Internet. Last summer I researched and wrote about global Internet censorship and online freedom of expression for the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. I also followed news coverage of the U.S. National Security Agency’s surveillance practices and hoped the news would help spur conversations about our relationship with the digital footprints we leave online. This particular Knight News Challenge represented one way to jump-start not only conversation, but also action.
  • Article

    TU Dance celebrates its 10th anniversary

    Published May 16, 2014 by

    By Alan Post, TU Dance 2014 marks the 10 year anniversary of TU Dance – a powerful and inspiring dance company located in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In celebration of this tremendous milestone, several events occurred throughout the community connecting back to TU Dance. This included a series of three open...
  • Article

    La Belle Isabel

    Published May 16, 2014 by

    By Sebastian Spreng, Visual Artist and Classical Music Writer Although La belle Isabel could well be the title of a European film, this article is about the beautiful Isabel Leonard, who, as her last name suggests, is also a young lioness of the opera world. At 32, Isabel is as...
  • Article

    LocalData, currency of change in cities of tomorrow

    Published May 15, 2014 by

    Above: A previous Matter Demo Day. Photo credit: Vignesh Ramachandran. Alicia Rouault is CEO and founder of LocalData, a winner of the 2012 Knight News Challenge: Data. This May, LocalData, a mapping platform that supports decisions with dynamic data, has joined the third cohort of the Matter.vc accelerator program to help drive informed and empowered communities across the globe. Since founding LocalData in 2012, we’ve successfully proven a hypothesis that governments, nonprofits and researchers need better ways to gather and understand data in real time. Matter will help us scale this vision toward a sustainable, healthy business guided by empowerment and quality of information. Community engagement and quantitative data analysis don’t usually end up in the same sentence. By improving both the format and quality of information gathered by local institutions, we support the seamless flow of information between communities and decision-makers. As cities push to get smarter, LocalData will power that effort from the bottom up.  
  • Article

    Announcing … Matter Three!

    Published May 15, 2014 by

    The following blog post, written by Corey Ford, is cross-published from matter.vc. Just three days ago, six brand new teams walked in our garage door ready to start their journey with us. After a rigorous application process with hundreds applying from all over the country and across the world, we are now proud to announce Matter Three! This week, the teams are immersing themselves in the design thinking bootcamp that begins each and every Matter class. We’re all working together to establish the culture and community that makes this program so valuable. Following in the footsteps of the previous two cohorts, Matter Three brings an interesting mix of individuals and teams. Half the teams are lead by female cofounders. We have team members joining us from Matter Partner Jake Shapiro’s hometown of Boston as well as from SOMA right here in our own backyard. Although the teams are all technically from the United States, don’t let that fool you. We’ve got people hailing from Scotland, Detroit, Hong Kong, Texas, and beyond.  But the diversity of the group is not limited to the individual level. We’ve got some really amazing mission-focused companies that are really focusing on empowering society. Check them out below!
  • Article

    Lenelle Moïse

    Published May 15, 2014 by

    Lenelle Moïse returns to Books & Books Coral Gables this Friday, May 16th at 5 p.m. to read from her new book, Haiti Glass. Moïse, who has been to Miami several times over the last few years working with teens in Tigertail’s SpeakOut project, is known for her performance poetry...
  • Article

    Studio produces trove of ideas to improve civic engagement

    Published May 15, 2014 by

    Photo credit: Tom Clark.  Overview: Knight Foundation hosted 100 civic innovators at a Civic Innovation in Action Studio in Miami May 12 -14 to explore ways to harness talent, advance opportunity and promote robust engagement.  Participants in the “Robust Engagement” discussion at the Civic Innovation in Action Studio produced five remarkably concrete ideas to drive civic participation. The ideas crystalized during the second and final day of the session, after the participants largely took control of the idea-generating process to leverage their expertise. The ideas ranged across the spectrum from foundational research to plug-and-play civic action, with a psychology experiment in between. RELATED LINKS "Putting ideas into action to build better cities" by Carol Coletta on KnightBlog "Learning Lab gathers ideas on promoting community engagement" by Carol Coletta on KnightBlog "Learning Lab gathers ideas on making the most of talent in our cities" by Carol Coletta on KnightBlog "Innovators develop ideas on advancing opportunity" by Michael Bolden on KnightBlog.org "Boston adopts new tools to engage residents in civic life" by Nigel Jacobs on KnightBlog "Scaling an Etsy Economy for a changing workforce" by Dana Mauriello on KnightBlog "Harriet Tregoning, identifying ideas to expand opportunities in cities" by Carol Coletta KnightBlog "Encouraging more robuts acts of citizenship" by Adam Royalty and Scott Witthoft on KnightBlog "Studio explores ideas for successful cities" by Carol Coletta on KnightBlog "Civic innovators gather in Miami to build ideas for successful cities" by Michael Bolden on KnightBlog "Innovators embrace broad themes of robust engagement" by Andrew Sherry on KnightBlog "Studio developing ideas on harnessing talent of a changing workforce" by Anusha Alikhan on KnightBlog What does “social contract” mean to you? On the research side of the spectrum, one team advocated stepping back to an elemental starting point: an extensive study to understand how today’s Americans view the social contract. While “social contract” traditionally means the relationship between the state and the governed, the discussion that surrounded the proposal showed how different 21st century America is from Rousseau’s 18th century France. Citizenship, participants noted, is potentially defined in relationship to neighbors, organizations, corporations, local government and more, not just the central government. “That’s why we need to do the research,” said one of the group members, in response to the complexity.  “We keep saying we should meet people where they are, but we don’t know where they are.” The group suggested the research could be a foundation for the construction of a long-term “civic infrastructure” that could counter the effects of demographic tensions over time. Why engage? Another group concentrated on defining the “why” and “how” of robust civic engagement, to create a scaffolding that anyone – from individuals to neighborhoods to cities – could use to enter the arena and measure results. They concluded that civic engagement should: ·      Enable people to participate in decisions that affect them ·      Mediate uncertainty ·      Put more eyes on the street and draw on the wisdom of crowds ·      Generate trust and cooperation ·      Address historic inequality ·      Strengthen individual agency and collective efficacy In terms of “how,” they saw a civically engaged person as going through a cycle of becoming aware, accepting, acting and advocating – and starting over again. The first step, they stressed, is identifying the goal of the engagement.