Wednesday, June 22, 2011

From crowdfunding to data-driven journalism, four ways the Knight News Challenge is shaping the future

Poynter reporting:

As the Knight News Challenge prepares to announce its fifth group of winners today, we looked back at the previous four years, in which 63 projects received nearly $22 million.
The Knight Foundation has spread that money around, including academic research, software tools, urban hyperlocal reporting and basic information needs in developing countries.
In reviewing the winners, we identified four areas of now-rapid innovation in which News Challenge projects have pushed new approaches for journalism: Crowdfunding, the hacker-journalist, data as news and citizen journalism.
“Our goal is to be important; our goal is to have impact and to make a difference,” Eric Newton, senior adviser to the president for the Knight Foundation, told me.
Of course, when you make dozens of bets on startups, some won’t pay off. Sometimes ideas aren’t as good as they sounded.
And sometimes good ideas — like conveying information through interactive games — are just harder to execute than anticipated. The News Challenge funded five gamification-of-news projects with almost $1 million. There was some success, but a lot of struggle, Newton said.
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/136589/from-crowdfunding-to-data-driven-journalism-four-ways-the-knight-news-challenge-is-shaping-the-news

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