• Article

    27 civic innovators to visit Copenhagen, Denmark, on Knight study tour

    Published July 31, 2015 by

    Photo: Leaders from Knight communities touring Copenhagen last year. Knight Foundation’s Community and National Initiatives Program returns to Copenhagen, Denmark, this September with civic innovators from 13 Knight communities. Knight grantee 8 80 Cities will take 27 civic innovators to “one of the happiest cities on earth” for five days. Tour participants will experience Copenhagen’s excellent bike and pedestrian infrastructure and learn how various city agencies, nonprofits and the private sector have worked together to cultivate the city’s robust public life. This year’s participants represent Akron, Ohio; Charlotte, N.C.; Columbus, Ga.; Detroit; Grand Forks, N.D.; Gulfport, Miss.; Lexington, Ky.; Long Beach and San Jose, Calif.; Macon, Ga.; and Miami, Tallahassee and West Palm Beach, Fla. They represent local government, the private sector, nonprofits and local foundations. Invitees include: Akron ·      Andy Davis, active transportation coordinator, The University of Akron ·      Jason Segedy, director, Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study ·      Scott Scarborough, president, The University of Akron  Charlotte ·      Jordan Moore, bike program manager, Sustain Charlotte ·      Tony Lathrop, chair, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission Columbus ·      Isaiah Hugley, city manager
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    10 basics today’s journalists need

    Published July 31, 2015 by

    One week into college, my journalism professor gave a lecture on what journalists need to know—except he didn’t really explain anything. He just complained about the fact that journalists were expected to know too much. I panicked. That week, I changed my major three times, looking for something that encompassed every skill needed in the media industry. I’ll save prospective students the trouble: It doesn’t exist. That’s because the industry changes too quickly for any curriculum to keep up. I realized that I needed to figure it out for myself. As a journalism student, I’ve been searching for a definitive answer for the past three years. I’ve consulted media professionals to gather the building blocks of a journalism career in the digital age. I’m talking about more than just bread-and-butter reporting. One conclusion surprised me: We don’t need to be well versed in every single app and every line of code. But we do need to understand the bigger picture. Here’s what I believe today’s journalism students need to know (in no particular order): 1. Learn basic coding: A little code goes a long way. In a phone interview, Ted Spiker, the journalism department chair at the University of Florida where I am a student, said it is debatable if full-blown coding is for everyone, but I think it brings considerable advantages. If you understand what’s under the hood of technology, you can be more effective and efficient. Knight Foundation’s Eric Newton said, “Basic coding is the grammar of the 21st century.” Those fundamentals include some ability to hack your way through basic HTML, to understand embed codes and to be able to navigate a content-management system. Start here.
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    Urban Land Institute initiative  to help build better communities

    Published July 30, 2015 by

    Photo: Cadillac Square in Detroit. Credit: Michigan Municipal League on Flickr.com Patrick L. Phillips is the global chief executive officer of the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit education and research institute that provides leadership in the responsible use of land and in sustaining and creating thriving communities worldwide. Downtown Detroit photo courtesy Urban Land Institute. Communities across the nation are moving away from the tendency to design and build for cars (so 20th century) to an approach that puts the needs and desires of people first. At the Urban Land Institute, we’re excited about the notion that as cities become more livable, they are more resilient to economic cycles and even natural disasters. The social cohesion that comes with a high quality of life is a powerful catalyst for the investment needed to grow during good times and recover during the bad ones.   This community-building trend holds much promise, provided that what is being done to enhance livability is available to all residents. Recent research from the Urban Land Institute suggests, however, that this is not the case. “America in 2015,” released in May, finds that many Americans face significant community design-related barriers to enjoying a healthy, high quality of life. A large number of people, particularly minorities and millennials, report living in areas that lack easy access to safe places for outdoor physical activity, and active transportation systems such as bike lanes, and healthy food options.   
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    Learning to be an angel (investor)

    Published July 30, 2015 by

    An entrepreneurial ecosystem is more than the serendipitous sum of its parts. For South Florida, having a good number of enterprising bright minds, low labor costs, strong universities and a privileged location is a good start. But somewhere between skepticism and hype, funding and educated investors remain essential in developing an entrepreneurial community — especially one focusing on disruptive technologies. That education was the subject of the recently completed Angel Education Series, a cycle of six workshops focusing on training the South Florida investment community in the ins and outs of angel investing.  It addressed topics such as “Valuations,” “Portfolio Strategy,” “Post-investment Relationship,” “Legalities of Angel Investing” and “Picking Winners.” The series was organized by Accelerated Growth Partners, a Miami-based angel investor network funded by Knight Foundation, Greenberg Traurig and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. According to the presenters, more than 400 people attended, 80 percent of whom were potential investors; the rest were entrepreneurs and service providers such as attorneys and accountants. For the organizers, the series was the result of their own learning experiences.
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    Public-interest news website integrates radio, podcasts, Web streams

    Published July 30, 2015 by

    Photo by Patrick Breitenbach on Flickr. Paul Bass is executive director of the Online Journalism Project, a not-for-profit that promotes and publishes public-interest news websites. Ten years ago I stumbled across a blog called Baristanet, and believed I may have seen the future of local news reporting. Ten years later I stumbled across podcasts called “Reply All,” “The Read,” “States of the Re:Union” and “Dear Sugar”… and wondered if I had seen the next model for local news reporting. Those podcasts have nothing to do with New Haven, Conn., the city of 130,000 people where I have worked as a reporter for 35 years. They don't do local journalism. But like the Baristanet blog—where readers in New Jersey were helping to develop in real time a story on a bomb scare, then analyzing it in the context of a changing community’s demographics and values—the podcasts suggested a new approach for reporting or interacting with “the people formerly known as the audience,” to borrow a phrase from media guru Jay Rosen. They suggested a way of reviving an endangered journalistic species—thoughtful radio reporting and conversation with a targeted listenership—with new tech and distribution tools. Maybe, I thought, that model can inspire us to try something new in keeping quality local Web journalism thriving in New Haven. We tried something new in 2005. We launched an online-only, not-for-profit news site called the New Haven Independent. It combined old-fashioned reporting—of neglected zoning and school boards, neighborhoods, ward-level elections, criminal-justice issues—with multimedia tools that enabled us to tell stories and develop an ongoing, high-impact civic conversation in new ways—at a fraction of the previous cost of doing business. It felt like a model for local news reporting 2.0. Ten years later we’re still here. (Hallelujah!) We publish editions in New Haven, the lower Naugatuck Valley and Branford. We break a lot of stories and interact with a diverse readership. We feel that what we do every do matters. And we have a lot of fun. (Plus we can pay health insurance and salaries competitive with other local media.) Readers in New Haven need to read both the legacy monopoly daily print newspaper and us—not just one or the other—to stay informed and get involved.
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    New Tow Center Research Fellows to explore digital journalism in depth

    Published July 30, 2015 by

    Photo: Tow Center held an orientation last week for the new Research Fellows. Photo courtesy Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Claire Wardle is research director for the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. In January Knight Foundation announced $3 million in new support for Tow to fund innovative research and news experiments that explore the changing relationship of journalism and technology, while helping newsrooms and educators meet the information needs of communities. Today is a very exciting day for us, as we’re announcing a new group of 31 Research Fellows.  The fellows are based around the world and will be researching a wide-range of projects at the cutting-edge of digital journalism. The projects will be in four main research areas: Computation, Algorithms and Automated Journalism; Data, Impact and Metrics; Audiences and Engagement; and Experimental Journalism, Models and Practice. We were recently awarded $3 million from Knight Foundation as part of a major initiative to expand innovation in newsrooms. This has allowed us to recruit for the first time a cohort of fellows who will undertake their research simultaneously. An open call in April resulted in a high number of quality research proposals, and now we’re excited about what this new cohort is going to produce as the fellows work alongside each other, either in the space we share with the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at the Columbia Journalism School, or virtually in our Slack channel. One fellow, Meredith Broussard, an assistant professor at New York University, will be researching new ways to use artificial intelligence for investigative reporting, focusing on campaign finance data. Another fellow, Ph.D. candidate Alexandre Gonçalves, will be working to create a Web dashboard that allows journalists to analyze, visualize and interact with contractor data from the U.S. Department of Defense. In addition a group of five practitioners, artists and developers based in New York will create an independent wireless distribution platform for sharing locally focused media and journalism. In addition to the more in-depth projects, six projects will be published as shorter guides to new methods and trends in journalism, including Automated Journalism, Crowdsourcing, Chatapps, Design and Journalism, Newsroom Encryption, Podcasting Business Models.
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    Soofa benches signal steps toward smart cities

    Published July 29, 2015 by

    Photo courtesy of Soofa. Most ordinary benches just sit in parks or alongside city streets, providing a space for people to rest and watch the world pass by. But what if those benches had a more profound purpose: to connect the people who use them to the surrounding environment. Soofa, a Knight Enterprise Fund portfolio company, has developed a smart, solar-powered bench with a plan to revolutionize how people, cities and businesses understand and interact with urban spaces. “The vision really is that you get easy access to city information, so you don’t have to look on your computer,” said Sandra Richter, the CEO of Soofa. “It is almost like a digital layer of the city. When you go online, you have cookies; the Internet is tailored to you. The city really is not. We want to make the city better on a personal level, but also on a governmental and global level in terms of impact.” In 2014, Richter and co-founders Nan Zhao and Jutta Friedrichs started working on Soofa at the MIT Media Lab, a Knight Foundation grantee. The founders discovered an opportunity to innovate based on their conversations with companies such as IBM and Cisco. “The reason why we started building the Soofa bench is because everybody kept talking and talking about smart cities, but no one was coming up with interventions that would lead to a smart city that we, as the mobile generation, can feel,” Richter said. “We basically want to create a whole line of connected products for the urban environment”  
  • Article

    Local foundations help fulfill Knight’s mission in nonresident communities

    Published July 29, 2015 by

    Bradenton, Fla. by Lilly Weinberg. And it’s begun. I’ve been working at Knight Foundation for several years, but I recently became our program director for community foundations. I’m traveling to all 18 of Knight Foundation’s nonresident communities to learn more about them and the people who make them successful cities.  These communities are all places where the Knight brothers once operated newspapers; they span from coast to coast across the United States. My job is to work with the community foundations in each place to invest in ideas that promote “informed and engaged” communities. Specifically, under the strategy of our Community and National Initiatives Program, we invest in civic innovators who help cities attract and retain talented people, expand economic opportunity and create a culture of civic engagement. Vibrant places in our communities are essential to those goals. I started my travels by visiting four amazing communities: Bradenton, Fla.; Gary, Ind.; Lexington, Ky.; and Long Beach, Calif. At first glance, these communities seem so different, but there are many threads that tie them together. For example, all four have more than one university in their community and are actively working on how to keep that talent after students graduate.  And all four understand how place plays a critical role in this. I want to thank the leadership at each community foundation. I was able to see and do so much because of all of you: Marilyn Howard from the Manatee Community Foundation (Bradenton), Carolyn Saxton from Legacy Foundation (Gary), Lisa Adkins from Blue Grass Community Foundation (Lexington) and Marcelle Epley from Long Beach Community Foundation.
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    Lone storyteller recreates spooky scenes from the Appalachian Trail

    Published July 29, 2015 by

    Wandering Aesthetics may have the most intriguing show title at the moment: “Boogers, Witches and Haints.” The performance itself also was extremely well-received when Kyle Josza did his one-man storytelling event at the Standing Rock Cultural Arts facility in Kent, Ohio. Two more performances are scheduled for this coming weekend. The show's subtitle, “Spooky Stories from Appalachia,” says it all. It was developed when Josza and Benjamin Rexroad, co-founders and directors of Wandering Aesthetics, hiked along nearly 2,200 miles of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail.    
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    Chameleon Village Theatre Company in Macon, Ga., brings site-specific theater to The 567

    Published July 28, 2015 by

    The recently formed Chameleon Village Theatre Company won’t be presenting plays on traditional stages in Macon, Ga. The company borrows its name from the color-changing lizard family because it has a stated mission to “adapt to [different] performance spaces and new artistic challenges” through site-specific theater. The site of its first artistic challenge will be The 567 Center for Renewal. Chameleon Village and the Knight Foundation grantee have partnered on the company's premiere performance, “Cope,” which will be presented in The 567 gallery on First Friday.
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    Portland State study: Seniors much more likely to cast ballots than young votes

    Published July 28, 2015 by

    Photo credit: Tim Evanson on Flickr.com Phil Keisling is director of the Center for Public Service at Portland State University in Oregon, which recently conducted research on who votes in mayoral elections with Knight Foundation support.   The last 10 to 20 years have been times of revitalization and progress for many of America’s big cities. While there are certainly exceptions, many major city downtowns have been revitalized, often with the money and energy of younger entrepreneurs. Committed and often well-educated “young creatives” have helped turn many urban cores into desirable places to live, work, and raise families. But as much as younger residents have often played a catalyzing role in major cities’ economic and cultural lives, they’ve essentially abdicated to their grandparents’ generation when it comes to that most basic of civic indicators: voting. This is the unmistakable conclusion of a recent pilot study of four of these urban communities, financed by Knight Foundation and conducted by Portland State University’s Population Research Center and Center for Public Service, that asked the basic question of “Who Votes for Mayor?” Voter turnout for mayor elections in these four cities –  Portland, Ore., and the Knight communities of Charlotte, N.C., Detroit and St. Paul, Minn. – ranged from a low of just 7 percent (Charlotte’s primary) to a high of 72 percent (Portland’s general election, one of the few in the U.S. held coincident with the November 2012 presidential election). The other contests clustered around 20 to 35 percent turnout of registered voters – fairly typical of most big-city mayor contests. But even these paltry numbers are deceptively high, since many eligible citizens don’t even register to vote. (In St. Paul, for example, this appears true of 30 to 35 percent of eligible 18- to 34-year-olds).
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    Wyncode Academy scholarships open doors to underserved Miami-Dade residents

    Published July 28, 2015 by

    Wyncode pitch winners. Photo by Jenna Buehler. Juha Mikkola is co-founder of Wyncode Academy. It’s been written about many times, in many places—Miami is the next tech hub—and over the last few years many of the pieces needed to make that statement true have fallen into place. We’ve seen Wynwood evolve into a center for the tech and creative community, an influx of investment dollars from across the country and around the world has flowed in, and, most importantly, we’ve been able to develop talent here and keep it local.  Development talent is the backbone of any tech ecosystem, and in Miami it has been one of the biggest question marks and, for many local companies, their greatest need. Can we train a community of developers and then keep them from jetting off to New York or San Francisco? Are the pieces in place to make sure our best and brightest become the future of our tech ecosystem?  The answer is a resounding yes and it is the core reason why we founded Wyncode. In less than two years, we have built a program, and a community, dedicated to teaching anyone the skills and tools needed to have a career in coding and to ensure that the future of the Miami tech ecosystem is built on the strengths of those who call the Magic City, and all of South Florida, home.  Nearly 100 people have completed our nine-week, intensive coding boot camp with 92 percent placement within three months—and most of it with local companies. Eight startups have originated out of our program. Twelve companies have hired more than one Wyncoder, 61 total companies have hired at least one, and our network of hiring partners is up to 107. Local startup success stories Kipu Systems and MDLIVE lead the pack with five Wyncoders each. What we have seen time and again is that the background of Wyncoders does not determine their success. The hard work, dedication and hustle they put into the program is what sets them apart. While Wyncode has opened the doors for many to join tech companies or start their own, the cost of the program has kept many great candidates that possess the qualities we value from being able to participate. Now, thanks to the support of Knight Foundation, Wyncode will provide Future Leaders of Tech scholarships to a total of nine low-income, underrepresented Miami-Dade County residents over the next five cohorts. Recipients of the Future Leaders of Tech scholarships will be enrolled in our nine-week Wyncode Academy cohort at our Miami campus located within The LAB Miami’s entrepreneurial environment.
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    ‘Street Life’ events enliven San Jose to entice more people downtown

    Published July 28, 2015 by

    Photo credit: Scott Knies / SJDA. Scott Knies is the executive director of the San Jose Downtown Association. We keep asking people who live and work in Silicon Valley what they want to experience in the valley’s largest urban center: downtown San Jose. It turns out they want to see more of each other on the streets and sidewalks and cafes, strolling about and enjoying places – both public and private and sometimes in-between – that are interesting, authentic and compelling. In 2014, downtown property owners looking to invigorate the center city with more pedestrian activity completed a Downtown Street Life Plan. The plan offers a diverse range of improvement projects from temporary installations of shade structures and modular seating; to interim projects such as pocket gardens, dog runs and mural corners; to longer-term investments in parklets, medians, lighting and building re-use.  Thanks to Knight Foundation support last year, we completed a couple of prototype Street Life projects and launched others into planning stages with community members, permitting agencies and potential sponsors.  With just a taste of Street Life momentum underway, employees, residents, visitors (and city officials) are clamoring for more whimsical events such as The Big Lunch and bright additions to the urban landscape such as the art crosswalks – and wonder what’s next? With just one year gone and five to go, Knight Foundation’s investment in downtown San Jose Street Life has already changed approaches towards implementation and participation: 1)    Forging new paths for the community: Our Street Life manager is completely dedicated to seeing new ideas and innovative projects from start to finish. For the new art crosswalks, for example, the project manager coordinated with the city to ensure the design worked for both public art advocates and transportation officials. From now on, the push through bureaucracy will go more smoothly, and we can expect more art crosswalks throughout the downtown.
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    Gutsy work by Cristin Richard at Playground Detroit

    Published July 28, 2015 by

    There are a number of ways to make art that is visceral and gripping. In a new body of work being presented at Playground Detroit, Cristin Richard takes a direct approach; she uses literal viscera as her starting point. Working with animal casings—translucent skins that are used to make sausages, dried to a thin, wax paper-like texture—she has generated an installation that is at turns delicate and disturbing.
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    ‘Curious City’ inspires scalable model for engagement journalism that answers people’s questions

    Published July 27, 2015 by

    Photos by WBEZ Chicago. When Chicagoans were curious earlier this year what it might be like to live directly adjacent to the city’s elevated train tracks, public radio station WBEZ answered the question with an in-depth story and podcast. The reporters went through public records to find complaints and interviewed homeowners and renters. Turns out: You just get used to the noise and the shaking when the train goes by. WBEZ (Chicago Public Media) produced this feature story as a result of an audience-submitted question on its Curious City website. Curious City is a community-driven platform that allows anyone to submit and vote on questions pertaining to the area that the station will then report on and answer in a podcast and multimedia story. The project received support from the Knight Prototype Fund during 2013, an initiative that helps take early-stage information ideas from concept to demo. But what began as an experiment at this Chicago radio station has grown into a regular source of stories for a number of public media outlets – as well as spinning off into a media startup. Curious City founder Jennifer Brandel is expanding the technology behind the platform to other stations around the country with her new startup Hearken. Hearken recently emerged from Matter, a San Francisco media accelerator that Knight Foundation has invested in. The idea is premised on a win-win situation: The community gets their burning questions answered and the news organization sees higher engagement with these stories. KUOW in Seattle found six of its top 10 stories of 2014 were from user-generated ideas. In its “Bay Curious” series, KQED in San Francisco has answered questions such as why towing is so expensive and the backstory behind the city’s iconic “eyesore,” Sutro Tower.