By: E&P Staff DocumentCloud, a joint project of journalists from The New York Times and the nonprofit investigative group ProPublica, won the biggest share of the $5.1 million distributed in the 2009 Knight News Challenge, the Knight Foundation announced Wednesday.
The Knight money for DocumentCloud will fund creation of an online database managed as an independent nonprofit where the media, watchdog groups and the public can find, share and analyze source documents.
DocumentCloud was one of nine projects funded this year through the Knight News Challenge, an international contest to "fund digital news experiments that transform community life."
The projects use crowdsourcing, mobile technology and digital investigative journalism to bring news and information to communities in new ways, the Knight Foundation said.
One project helps citizens around the world use cell phones to report and distribute news, with the aim of accelerating investigative reporting and breaking news reports.
Knight will fund the development of a mobile media toolkit from which professional news organizations and citizen journalists worldwide can download mobile applications to create and broadcast local news.
Another will launch "a digital space where the public can report errors in media reports and track the ensuing dialogue and possible results," Knight said.
"The future of news is being tested, strengthened and advanced everyday by News Challenge experiments and the innovators behind them," Knight Foundation president and CEO Alberto Ibarguen said in the announcement.
This is the third round in the five-year, $25 million News Challenge. The competition this year is funding $5.1 million in projects, including 17 winners from the 2007 and 2008 contests who continue to receive funding.
The winning projects were announced at the Future of News and Civic Media Conference at MIT in Boston.
Knight noted that several ongoing projects are about to launch open-source software and are working with other media to launch widespread versions. These include Everyblock.com and Village.Soup.com.
"With now more than 45 projects launched, Knight News Challenge winners aren't just individuals with a prize, but a community of innovators working together on improving news and information for communities around the world," said Gary Kebbel, Knight Foundation journalism program director.
Knight News Challenge will accept applications again beginning Sept. 1.
A complete list of winners is at the Knight News Challenge Web site, www.newschallenge.org.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here