By josezamora on

You Invent it. We fund it.

The Knight News Challenge recently extended its online submission deadline to December 15th to attract a broader applicant pool, particularly targeting software developers and entrepreneurs. The fourth annual Knight News Challenge (www.newschallenge.org), sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, awards up to $5 million a year for innovative uses of digital technology aimed at helping to transform news and information sharing. The competition is currently accepting applications and previous winners have included several members of the Drupal community.

The Challenge seeks ideas that will change how community news and information gets distributed. The competition asks applicants to submit their ideas for use of open source digital technology to distribute news and information in the public interest in a defined geographic community. Past winners from the Drupal community include:

  • Radio Engage (Radio Drupal). Using Drupal, this winner created a turnkey web site for radio news organizations.
  • Benjamin Melançon of Agaric Design Collective and a Google Summer of Code student won for the development of a "Related Items" module for Drupal.
  • Lisa Williams won for Placeblogger, which was developed using Drupal's built in aggregation ability.
  • Tony Shawcross won for The Open Media Project to develop and implement open-source tools designed to free the staff of public access stations and community technology centers from many repetitive tasks.

In addition to these Knight News Challenge winners, the Knight Drupal Initiative awarded over $485,000 to six Drupal projects that that make it easier for people to join the digital conversation by lowering barriers to online publishing. Those winners included:

  • Addison Berry (Documentation Team lead), to create concise, up-to-date instructions for Drupal software packages so that tech novices can use the tools.
  • funnymonkey.com, to create a free publishing system to make it easier for several geographic communities to share local news with each other.
  • Dave Cohen, to create a system that allows anyone anywhere to easily create an online news site in Drupal whose content can be published on Facebook to reach extended social networks.
  • Instant Syndicating Standards, to develop software that allows people to create and share a personalized stream of information within their social network, helping them to filter and recommend articles to others interested in the same issues.
  • Rob Loach, to add a micro-blogging function to Drupal that will allow users to transmit brief text updates on their Web sites.
  • Development Seed, to create a tool that will help residents better communicate and understand information about their community by allowing them to geo-tag (or add a geographical identification) to news stories so they can be displayed on a map.

While Knight News Challenge-winning ideas are diverse, they have a common element: they gather and disperse information in a particular geographic area or community. The Foundation requires all submissions to meet that requirement. The competition has no requirements on participants' age or location and invites teams to enter as well. Applicants are invited to apply either in the "open" category, in which the public will be able to review, rate and comment on their idea, or the "closed" category, in which only Knight staff and a panel of digital media experts will review their proposal.

This year's extended deadline of December 15th offers members of the Drupal community even more opportunities to continue their long history of winning Knight News Challenge awards. If you have a great idea that could help change the way communities share news and information, go to www.newschallenge.org and submit your News Challenge entry today!

Comments

kreynen’s picture

kreynen commented

Ouch... the Open Media Project didn't make your list of NewsChallenge funded projects using Drupal?

It's also worth noting that the $10,000 the Drupal Association matched to get Packaged Install Profiles implemented on D.O. came from Quiddities and the Open Media Foundation (formerly Deproduction and Civic Pixel). While this effort was directly tied to our need to release and maintain install profiles as part of our NewsChallenge projects, investing some of our Knight grants so directly in Drupal will obviously benefit the entire community.

I really hope future grantees make reinvesting part of their NewsChallenge grants in improvements to Drupal's core or infrastructure a tradition!

josezamora’s picture

josezamora commented

•Tony Shawcross, for The Open Media Project. To develop and implement open-source tools designed to free the staff of public access stations and community technology centers from many repetitive tasks.

dahacouk’s picture

dahacouk commented

I've just resubmitted Kendra Hub - http://cli.gs/6qsJN9 - to the competition. It would be great to get some feedback from the Drupal community with any refinements you think I could make.

We previously submitted a fuller proposal to the Knight Drupal Initiative - http://groups.drupal.org/node/18936.

Thanks!

Cheers Daniel

Bojhan’s picture

Bojhan commented

To give some community acitivty, the UX-Team and Internationalization team is putting in a proposal.

schock’s picture

schock commented

I'm working on pulling together a proposal for Drupal MoJo (Drupal for Mobile Journalism).

Building on the work of the VozMob project (http://vozmob.net), the Drupal MoJo team will create a set of universal Mobile Journalism tools (modules, a theme, install profile) that make it simple for any Drupal based news site to become fully mobile enabled: let people send, receive, comment, and rate news stories, as well as register, subscribe, and otherwise participate in a place-based mobile journalism community, directly from their phone, without installing anything and regardless of the phone or plan.

patchak’s picture

patchak commented

This is a great contest and definately something that the Drupal community members should consider, as Drupal as a platform is really powerful and helps in itself to empower the people! I proposed a project, www.faveeo.com, that is build with Drupal, and hopefully this project could get considered by the News Challenge, also for all the good stuff that would come back to the Drupal community!

Check out my proposal about faveeo.com : web squared application build using Drupal!
http://bit.ly/4mLkOh

Steve Hanson’s picture

Steve Hanson commented

I just added my own submission to the Knight News Challenge for a Drupal-based software-as-a-service to provide web sites for township governments. The content from the sites would be provided via RSS and RDF so that it can be re-purposed by news organizations, residents of the townships, and others.

Please read and comment on the proposal at http://generalapp.newschallenge.org/SNC/ViewItem.aspx?pguid=6aee8166-fb7...

Steve Hanson
Principal Consultant Cruiskeen Consulting LLC
http://www.cruiskeenconsulting.com
http://www.cms-farm.com

spelzmann’s picture

spelzmann commented

Good luck dude

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

how is this innovating?

PC Pro Schools’s picture

PC Pro Schools commented

I have to agree with morning time, I'm not really seeing the innovation with your site. I'm not trying to be rude, I simply don't see it. Sorry bro.

R.J. Steinert’s picture

R.J. Steinert commented

CleanTown.org, a platform for open sourcing environmentally sustainable projects in communities built on Open Atrium, has submitted a grant application in the News Challenge's open category. A more legible version with formatting is available on CleanTown.org. Check it out :-).

Be well,
R.J. Steinert III
RjSteinert.com

"Happiness is the process not the place."
-Diener

schock’s picture

schock commented

Hi all, I worked hard over the last couple of weeks to pull together two Drupal based KNN proposals. Please check them out, provide feedback, and rate them!

Transmission Drupal Distribution: To create a D7 distro/installation profile customized for video journalists. With new functionality in aggregation, subtitling, and mapping, as well as documentation and support for transmission partners: http://bit.ly/tx-drupal-knight

VozMob (Voces Móviles / Mobile Voices): Drupal for Mobile Journalism by Immigrants in Los Angeles. http://bit.ly/vozmob-drupal-knight

Thanks
schock

ahagen’s picture

ahagen commented

The challenge is over I think, but I didnt find any results at www.newschallenge.org, who are the winners?

gdemet’s picture

gdemet
he/him
Primary language English
Location Chicago, USA
commented

It will be several months at least before any winners are announced; the Knight Foundation is currently in the process of reviewing the several thousand entries that were received for this year's News Challenge and deciding which ones will go on to the next round of consideration. The top 50 should be determined by March 1, and the final winners will be announced sometime in June.

R.J. Steinert’s picture

R.J. Steinert commented

CleanTown.org is being built on the Open Atrium Profile using the OG Location feature I built to geocode all content and provide a way to view activity by location. The idea is that this is a useful platform for spreading environmentally sustainable practices around the world. Today I got my rejection letter and some of the statements in the letter has left me concerned with the Knights Foundation's opinion of Drupal. Particularly:

"[CleanTown.org] does not meet the specific requirement of using the latest innovations in technique to inform communities."

"...we are able to choose only the most innovative ideas. These are new kinds of technologies or techniques, usually things we have never heard of before."

Any other Drupal projects get dropped as well?

Be well,
R.J. Steinert III
RjSteinert.com

"Happiness is the process not the place."
-Diener

schock’s picture

schock commented

Hi all, although the vozmob proposal was rejected, the TXDD (Transmission Drupal Distribution) proposal made it to the next round. Please visit http://tinyurl.com/txknightdrupal to rate and comment on the proposal! We would add video aggregation, browser based subtitle tools, and mapping to a video focused drupal 7 distribution profile for video journalism orgs. Thanks.

lambart.dennis12’s picture

lambart.dennis12 commented

There are three rules to follow to apply to the 2010 Knight News Challenge: 1. Use digital, open-source technology. 2. Distribute news in the public interest. 3. Test your project in a local community.