Knight Foundation awards over $200,000 to Drupal-related projects

Congratulations - Benjamin, Lisa, Bryght and Drupal Community.

This is great news.

--
Roshan Shah

How the heck does someone get funded for something like this, let alone money mostly to write about it?

Despite the apparent lack of originality, I'm convinced that this idea falls into the vast category of ideas that may be good, or obvious, or otherwise ordinary that simply haven't been put into practice yet.

Just to clarify, the Related Items module will try to let reader-users quickly and easily connect any piece of content (news, idea, group, event, action) to any other content they consider related– pulling together a variety of ways for Drupal to suggest nodes that might be related (recently visited, in your favorites, in your personal queue, by content or taxonomy term) but the is ultimately user-made connections.

As to getting funded: applying and luck. But also finding the specific things you care about, and if you're lucky some group with lots of money also cares about, and thinking about how Drupal, with some slight enhancement, can transform that field. In Knight's case of caring about better journalism, local community, and digital technology, the fit with Drupal is natural:

Journalism has power. We've all seen it move people to action. Unfortunately, we see it most often for trivial matters– news outlets usually connect readers, listeners, or viewers to actions related to stories only about adopting puppies or similarly tame topics. In these cases, especially during a crisis like a hurricane, news outlets may even take an active organizing role.

Related items will enable news outlets, at least online, to maintain current norms of objectivity while giving readers the power to connect fact to idea, helping people take action about things that affect their community.

Reader-submitted pictures of the vacant lots and ruined buildings along 36th Street in Knight's hometown of Miami, for instance, could be connected to articles and letters to the editor on and information on housing and affordable action and mortgage foreclosures, which could both be connected to people supporting or taking actions similar to the take back the land "to build housing for our own community. No government permission or money" village in Liberty City, Miami.

~ben

People Who Give a Damn :: http://pwgd.org/ :: Building the infrastructure of a network for everyone
Agaric Design Collective :: http://AgaricDesign.com/ :: Open Source Web Development

From my experience , relevant related links generally increase pageviews by at 2 - 5 pages per user.

Excellent great news indeed.

Marcel
Sponsored Themes
Blog Posts For Sale

congrats! Good news.

On a "related" note. There once was a related items module. Looong ago, and never properly released, but rather advanced in its way of relating entries (trough keywords, taxonomy, tags and other metrics). http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/contributions/sandbox/ber/related/

Hope this is re.used somhow :)

Bèr
---
Professional | Personal

Round Two of Funding starts on July 1st, 2007.

The overall project has to involve local journalism around geography, and use digital media.

All it takes is a good idea and some developers, and I'm sure that Drupal can provide much more infrastructure for other projects to be funded.

More details here:
"In 2007, Knight Foundation will again award $5 million in grants to individuals, organizations or businesses with ideas and projects that will transform community news. Anybody, anywhere in the world is eligible for funding — if the project meets all of the following criteria:
1. Use digital media.
2. Involve new forms of news in the public interest.
3. Focus on specific geographic community."

Congratulations,Keep the good work guys!Thanks for all your work.

Congratulations to all! :)