Knight News Challenge is now closed but will open for applications again in September.

Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation

This year flew by, didn't it? The Knight News Challenge deadline is only 22 hours away. The deadline is today at midnight Eastern Standard Time (EST).

We are looking forward to receiving your application, but please avoid waiting until the last minute to submit.

We are experiencing heavy traffic to the site since early yesterday morning. If you are trying to submit please be patient. The web site will probably be performing at a slower pace. If you experience any problems or error messages, please send us an e-mail to: newschallenge@knightfoundation.org.

We will do whatever it takes to help you submit your application.

Below is the answer to a recurrent question we have been receiving in the last two days:

If you applied under the open category you will be able to upload up to five attachments to the online application form. If you submitted under the closed category you can send up to five supporting documents to newschallenge@knightfoundation.org. Please include the project title and tracking number in the subject field, along with the words: "supporting documents" and your name and the e-mail address you used to submit your application in the body of the e-mail.

Thank you very much for your interest in the Knight News Challenge and good luck!

Cross-posted from Drupal.org

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 4th annual Knight News Challenge, www.newschallenge.org , sponsored by the Knight Foundation, awards up to $5 million a year for innovative uses of digital technology that will help 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 digital, open source technology to distribute news and information in the public interest in a defined geographic community. Past winners include:

•Radio Engage (Radio Drupal), using Drupal, this winner created a turnkey web site for radio news organizations.

•Benjamin Melançon, Co-founder of Agaric Design Collective, and a Google Summer of Code student for Drupal won for the development of a "Related Items" module for Drupal.

•Lisa Williams, for Placeblogger which was developed using Drupal's built in aggregation ability.

•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.

In addition, the Knight Drupal Initiative was created out of the Knight News Challenge, awarding over $485,000 to six new Drupal projects that will make it easier for people to join the digital conversation by lowering barriers to online publishing. Those winners included:

•Addison Berry (Documentation Team lead) will create concise, up-to-date instructions for Drupal software packages so that tech novices can use the tools.

•funnymonkey.com will create a free publishing system to make it easier for several geographic communities to share local news with each other.

•Dave Cohen will create a system that allows anyone, anywhere to easily create a Drupal online news site whose content can be published on Facebook in order to reach an extended social network.

•Instant Syndicating Standards will 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 will add a micro-blogging function to Drupal that will allow users to transmit brief text updates on their Web sites.

•Development Seed will 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 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.

As you can see, members of the Drupal community have a long history winning Knight News Challenge awards. This year there is an even better opportunity with the extended deadline of December 15th.

Want to put words and thoughts on paper for the masses? Printcasting, a Knight News Challenge winner, lets anybody put content into a magazine format in minutes, with space for local advertising. In this video, founder Dan Pacheco talks about his project.

Princasting Blog from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

Jessica Mayberry explains how Video Volunteers aims to create "video literacy” in the villages and towns of the developing world, enabling people to communicate globally and improve their local communities.

Video Volunteers Blog from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

In a post on his blog and on Planet Mozilla, Mark Surman asked the Mozilla community if they could help reinvent local news. We, at Knight Foundation, believe Mozillians share our values and are sure they have the vision and know-how that when applied to news and information can benefit local communities. We hope to receive their applications.

Cross-posted from Mark Surman's Blog

Recently, I noticed Knight Foundation and Sunlight Labs blogging together. The topic: rallying Sunlight developers to join the Knight’s efforts to reinvent local news for the internet era. And, in particular, to join the Knight News Challenge.

By collaborating with Sunlight, Knight is reaching out to developers and designers who are using internet thinking to change how government works. If these people are good at coming up with ways to internet-ize government, why not see if they can do the same for local news? Smart.

This got me to thinking: could Mozilla or Mozillians play a role in Knight’s efforts to create sustainable, inspiring local news that looks and feels like the internet? Certainly, the Knight Challenge criteria align well with Mozilla’s values:

The Knight News Challenge projects meet three criteria: 1) use digital, open-source technology to 2) distribute news and information in the public interest 3) to a local, geographic community.

Open source. Public benefit. Community. And, there a number of people who’ve participated in the past feel more ‘Mozilla’ than ‘local news’:

Past Knight News Challenge winners include leading innovators at the intersection of technology and information – folks like Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and a 2008 Knight News Challenge winner, and Adrian Holovaty, co-creator of the Django programming framework and originator of one of the first Google Maps mashups, which evolved into his 2007 Knight News Challenge award.

While I’ve only just glanced at all the Knight and Sunlight stuff quickly, it does feel like there could be some useful connections here. Maybe simply by developers or others from the Mozilla community proposing ideas to Knight? Or maybe, at some point, through a more joint initiative through Drumbeat? I’m going to think on it a little and possibly post again. In the mean time, I’d welcome comments / brainstorms / proposals from any Mozilla people reading this post.

PS. The current Knight News Challenge deadline is December 15. If you have an idea, enter. It’s a really simple, short process. The web site is: www.newschallenge.org

The following web chat took place Monday Nov. 9 from 1 to 2 p.m.

Another batch of video pitches has been posted to YouTube to highlight News Challenge apps:

1,000 Flipcams in Newark:

African kids as creators of new media:

Now that we've got two live chats, a couple months of blog comments, and a full inbox under our belts, we've decided to add some questions to our FAQ. If you've asked us a question in the past few months, our answer's probably in here somewhere.

Many of the questions we've gotten most often throughout this application cycle have been variations on the five questions below, or the questions Jose Zamora answers in the video above. If you don't feel the need to read through the full FAQ, you might find all the answers you seek here:

What sorts of ideas are you looking for?

In many of our discussions about the Challenge, you'll hear us repeat this phrase over and over, like a mantra: We're looking to fund ideas that 1) use digital, open-source technology to 2) distribute news in the public interest to 3) a specific, local, geographic community. There's no hidden agenda beyond those three criteria. Your idea will stand out if it is:

• Digital – Your idea uses digital open-source technology (computers, the Internet, cell phones, that sort of thing).
• Innovative – Your idea is new and original. It’s different from what people have done before. You are, in some way, breaking new ground.
• News/information – Your idea is about giving people access to what they want to know.
• Limited geographic area – Your idea affects people in a specific local area, which could be as big as a state or province, or as small as a city block. (If your idea is national or worldwide in scope, it must work at a regional level.)
• Open Source – The inner workings of what you create will be visible to the world, so that others can take it and improve upon it.

How do I make the judges like my idea?

You can't. But you can certainly help yourself by submitting a concise application that clearly explains your idea and why it's so great. Some more tips:

• State the essence of your idea within the first two or three sentences.
• Ask someone who is not familiar with your project to proof-read your application for clarity.
• Make sure your applications meets the requirements laid out in the previous question.

What do you mean by "local community"?

A specific, defined, geographic community, anywhere in the world. A local community.

The community can be as small as a city block or as big as a state or province. If your idea is national in scope, it must work on a local level. (For example, MTV won two years ago with the idea of putting Knight Mobile Youth Journalists all over the country, but each one operated within his or her own state.) Even if it's intended to scale to a large area, it should work - and be tested - in a distinct, local community.

A region with undefined borders - such as the "Mississippi Delta area" or the "Southwest" - wouldn't meet our qualifications. However the "Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area" - a distinct area composed of specific counties in Minnesota and Wisconsin - would.

Here’s our thinking behind this:

Online communities don’t need our help. Virtual communities spring up every day. But using digital news and information to enhance physical communities — that’s something we think does need our help.

The reason we’re focusing on physical communities is that our democracy is organized by geography. We want to help improve the lives of people where they live, work and vote.

Could you be more specific about _____ ?

We probably could. And if you're confused about something, please don't hesitate to ask. But after you've decided your idea meets our criteria, the absolute best way to tell whether it's appropriate for the Challenge is to ... apply for the Challenge. We don't want to get so specific with our guidelines that we prevent you from submitting the next great idea. So if you think the idea fits, send it in.

Would you fund a project that [detailed description of project]?

We might! Send in your application!

Crossposted from Sunlight Labs.

The reason why we extended the Knight News Challenge deadline is because we want to invite and partner with organizations that share our mission, values and goals, and that have networks of software developers and entrepreneurs. Our first partner is the Sunlight Foundation and its Sunlight Labs.

You're part of a community doing amazing work on some hugely important issues of government transparency, especially at the state and national level. We're partnering with the Sunlight Foundation and Sunlight Labs in hopes of engaging you in a complementary challenge: bringing your great ideas to cities and other local communities.

The Knight News Challenge is an annual $5-million contest to fund the best ideas for reinventing local news. The contest deadline for 2010 was originally set for October 15, but we extended it to December 15 in large part because we saw an opportunity to partner with more folks like you all. The Knight News Challenge projects meet three criteria: 1) use digital, open-source technology to 2) distribute news and information in the public interest to 3) to a local, geographic community.

In past years, we've already funded projects that are terrific complements to the work done by Sunlight Foundation and Sunlight Labs. For example, take a look at one of our 2009 winners, DocumentCloud (which recently announced a partnership with the Sunlight Foundation). DocumentCloud will allow some of the most robust investigative journalism outfits in the country - organizations like the New York Times, ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity, the ACLU, and Talking Points Memo - to share, publicize, collaborate on, and crowdsource the documents they're uncovering every day in Freedom of Information Act battles. Or check out the Transparency Initiative we funded in 2008, creating a microformat - hNews - to mark up news stories with metadata about sourcing, geo-location, and more.

Becoming a Knight News Challenge grantee would put you in the company of some of the leading innovators at the intersection of technology and information - folks like Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and a 2008 Knight News Challenge winner, and Adrian Holovaty, co-creator of the Django programming framework and originator of one of the first Google Maps mashups, which evolved into his 2007 Knight News Challenge award.

We've got the money and the mission. You've got the ideas we'd like to fund. If you're interested, check out our website (the FAQ is a great place to start), and feel free to send any questions to newschallenge@knightfoundation.org.

Three more video pitches have been posted on YouTube to highlight Knight News Challenge applications.

Journami:

Nation of Neighbors:

Downtown Brooklyn Public Newsroom:

We know our announcement to extend the Knight News Challenge deadline this week was something of a surprise.

A lot of folks are asking questions about the hidden motivations that might underpin such a move. Did we not like the quality of the applications? Did we not receive enough of them?

Happily, the answer to both questions is no. In fact, applications this year are on track to reach record levels. We extended our Challenge because we think the contest will benefit from additional outreach to communities of entrepreneurs and software developers.

Behind the scenes, we make a ton of efforts to promote the Challenge to a wide variety of audiences. It's vital to us that the applicant pool reflect a diverse range of participants. That's why you'll find us talking not just to the Online News Association conference, but to college students in communities around the country (including HBCUs), to international and ethnic media organizations, to the technophiles who read Lifehacker and to folks who've never heard of Lifehacker.

As always, thanks for your interest in the Knight News Challenge. And please spread the word about the extension and get your ideas in by December 15!