• Article

    Health news service goes mobile, increasing availability of information

    Published February 8, 2012 by

    As economic troubles continue, nearly half of people surveyed say they are scrimping on health care, according to the Consumer Reports National Research Center. Good information is key to making choices about where to save. In order to increase the availability of that information, the Center for Advancing Health is taking its news service mobile. With $150,000 in support from Knight Foundation, the center’s Health Behavior News Service will digitize its news for mobile access and revamp its website. The health news service creates news stories on the latest findings from peer-reviewed research journals and disseminates them worldwide to subscribed journalists.
  • Article

    MOCAD’s Joshua White and Gary Panter’s Light Show

    Published February 8, 2012 by

    By Kelli Kavanaugh, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit MOCAD’s winter exhibition is going to be outta-sight! Joshua White and Gary Panter’s Light Show is a new exhibition organized especially for the Museum by two great pioneers of multimedia art, and it opens this Friday, February 10. White and Panter have...
  • Article

    Margarita Cabrera’s “Space In Between”

    Published February 7, 2012 by

    By Susan Jedrzejewski, McColl Center for Visual Art As one of McColl Center for Visual Art’s Knight Artists-in-Residence, Margarita Cabrera is currently conducting her community outreach project entitled Space In Between. In conjunction with FLORESCA, a corporation founded by the artist in 2010, she has invited members of the Charlotte-based...
  • Article

    A first look at University Musical Society’s ‘Renegade’ series

    Published February 7, 2012 by

    By Anna Prushinskaya, University Musical Society This winter, University Musical Society (UMS), an arts presenting organization based in southeastern Michigan, is presenting a 10-week, 10-event ‘Renegade’ series, focusing on thought-leaders and game-changers in the performing arts. The series will be bookended by two highly prestigious events, both bringing national attention...
  • Article

    Black Vulture Gallery gets loud

    Published February 7, 2012 by

    The Black Vulture Gallery in Fishtown is a three-in-one location that offers up all sorts of fare. It operates variously as a tattoo and piercing shop, an art gallery and a music venue. On First Friday, the gallery had an opening for three artists: Donnie Green, Eric Richardson and Sean...
  • Article

    Announcing OpenNews: The Knight Mozilla Partnership Pivots

    Published February 7, 2012 by

    This morning, our Mozilla partners announced the “retooling” of the Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership under a new name, OpenNews. We began talking with Mozilla in 2010 and launched the project a year ago to advance media innovation and the open web. As Project Lead Dan Sinker says in his post today, “two years is an eternity on the internet.” Here at Knight Foundation, some of my colleagues have begun to make fun of me for my frequent use of the term “pivot.” I probably have been over-using the word - but I’ve been using it emphasize the need for us (the foundation, our partners - all of us working in the field, really) to adjust what we’re doing based on what we learn. At the orientation for the 2011 Knight News Challenge winners, I urged them not to hesitate to come to us with proposed re-directions of their projects. I’m less concerned by projects that come to us proposing tweaks and re-directions than I am by those that stay the course from proposal to completion.  And this need for flexibility and retooling applies to our own work: later this week, we’ll announce our own “pivot” of the Knight News Challenge.
  • Article

    A new model for fostering entrepreneurship

    Published February 7, 2012 by

    Photo Credit: JumpStart, by Laura Webb. Several years ago, an entrepreneur licensed NASA technology from to start an Ohio company that converts industrial smokestack waste into electricity.  JumpStart, a non-profit accelerating the success of entrepreneurs, helped the owner find investors, contributed $400,000 to launch the company and negotiated a $20 million venture capital investment. Since then, Echogen Power Systems has grown from 2 to 34 employees and forecasts revenues of over $100 million by 2014. It’s just one example of how new job growth and economic development stems from high growth entrepreneurial companies. That’s in part why today Knight Foundation is announcing a $1 million grant to support an effort to bring a new model for engaging residents for fostering entrepreneurship to 20 cities across the country. Knight’s support for the JumpStart America Initiative, a project of JumpStart, is a way to involve new leaders in their community’s economic future.
  • Article

    Local news partnernship eligible for Community Information Challenge

    Published February 6, 2012 by

    Only place-based foundations can apply for the Knight Community Information Challenge. If you are an innovator in local news, you may be able to approach local foundations about participating in the challenge to fund your idea. The Knight Community Information Challenge is part of Knight’s Media Innovation Initiative, which seeks to help communities meet their information needs in a democracy. Knight believes that community or other place-based foundations are set up to address core community problems – including news and information. In the Information Challenge, Knight is looking for projects that help fill community information needs, foster community engagement and help residents participate in the creation and sharing of news and information.