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.

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

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.

Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation

For a century, daily newspapers were the civic glue holding many American communities together. But today new technologies are rapidly changing the way we connect with each other.

First it was the rise of television. Now, it’s the internet. Most of us use cell phones and other gadgets to find out what we want to know. Though technology connects us with the world, it can leave us disconnected from those right in our own backyards.

Knight Foundation wanted to help people use the new digital tools to find out what they need to know to run their lives and their communities.

Our founders, John S. and James L. Knight, served their communities with their newspapers. News and information that helped citizens in communities understand their common interests and opportunities. Knight Foundation wanted to know what, in the 21st century, will do what the Knight brothers used to do with ink on paper alone.

To reach this goal, Knight Foundation created the Knight News Challenge: A five-year, $25 million contest designed to spur media innovation.

We didn’t want to limit the ideas by setting up too many rules, and that is how the contest was born, a worldwide open contest with very few questions and requirements. Worldwide because you never know where innovation will come from.

The deadline for year four of the contest is Oct. 15, 2009. Don’t miss the opportunity to win part of the $5 million that will be awarded on this round.