Thank you for your interest in the Knight News Challenge. The contest is now closed.

If you applied and received an e-mail confirming receipt of your application we received it and it is in the process of being reviewed. If you did not receive a confirmation e-mail, please check your spam folder. If you do not find anything there, please send us an e-mail to: newschallenge@knightfoundation.org.

We are in the middle of the reviewing process. We are working as fast as we can to read all received full proposals.

Please be sure the address newschallenge@knightfoundation.org is listed in your address book and is not blocked by a spam filter. If you have not already done so, please sign up here to get updates and alerts

From our FAQ:

When will I receive a response?

IMPORTANT NOTE: PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT THE DATES BELOW ARE GUIDELINES. THEIR INTENTION IS ONLY TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF THE TIMEFRAME OF THE PROCESS.

• Dec. 15 application deadline.
• January Knight reviews, accepts and declines applications.
• Jan. 31 full proposal deadline.
• Jan 20 to Feb. 25 we review/recommend and decline full proposals, narrowing them down to a group we call the Top 50 full proposals.
• Feb. 25 we send the top 50 to the final review group.
• Feb. 25 to March 31 the final reviewers / review and narrow down the top 50.
• March 31 we have the final review session in Miami with all screeners and reviewers. We discuss the top 50 and select the recommended winners.
• April 1 we start preparing the grant write-ups to present to the June Board.
• In early June we present the recommended winners to the Board. Board approves or disapproves funding the recommended winners. If they approve they become the winners. We contact them to tell them the good news.
• Sometime in mid-June 2010, we make the formal announcement.

All the dates above are subject to changes based on the time it takes the review panel to evaluate all projects.

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.

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.