Knight News Challenge

We’ve closed the Knight News Challenge on strengthening the Internet. Here’s what happens next:

• From now until April 17, we’ll be in the “feedback” phase where we review the submissions. We invite anyone and everyone to join us in looking through the ideas, asking questions and giving feedback.
  • Our staff reads every application we get, but we’ve also asked 15 people to join us as (paid) readers; they’ll go through every application and help us select a group of semifinalists. You can identify them on the newschallenge.org site by the “reader” tags  on their profile photos.
  • When someone has a comment or a question about your submission, they’ll ask it on the site and you’ll receive an email notification.
  • (Note: The readers cannot answer logistical questions about the News Challenge; if you have any of those please, direct them to us, [email protected] or [email protected] or on Twitter @cksopher or @jsb.)
• Through the end of the feedback phase at 5 p.m. ET on April 17, applicants can edit their entries. We recommend that you respond to questions and feedback given in the comments section and, if necessary, incorporate any changes or clarifications into your entry.
• On April 18, we’ll send notices to the submissions we select as semifinalists, with an additional set of questions about each project due by April 28.
• On May 8-9, we’ll gather a set of outside advisers to help us select a small group of finalists, whom we’ll interview in person. We will notify that group on May 12.
• On June 9 Knight staff will recommend a group of News Challenge winners to the foundation’s trustees.  We will announce those winners June 23 at the MIT-Knight Civic Media conference.

Thank you to everyone who applied, and to those of you who are contributing your comments and thoughts to the challenge. We also want to thank our partners, Ford Foundation and Mozilla.

Here’s the list of folks you’ll see reading your applications:

• Elana Berkowitz
• Hannah Eaves
• Hilary Hoeber
• Joanna Kao
• Priya Kumar
• Raina Kumra
• Rebecca Lai
• Jayson Manship
• Josh Meyer
• Rebekah Monson
• Djordje Padejski
• Francesca Rodriquez
• Kristen Titus
• David Robinson
• Merici Vintont

By John Bracken, director of journalism and media innovation at Knight Foundation, and Chris Sopher, journalism program associate at Knight Foundation.