2009 Knight News Challenge Finalists

The following projects were finalists in the 2009 Knight News Challenge. If you are a funder interested in supporting any of these projects, please contact Jose Zamora at zamora@knightfoundation.org.

GonzoWire

To help news organizations get the content they need by connecting them with freelance and citizen journalists through a web portal.

HelpMeInvestigate.com

To help the public get the information it needs by creating a web-based platform where citizens, journalists and news organizations can propose, organize and conduct investigative journalism.

Kinetic Vox

To foster citizen engagement with news by creating an iPhone application that allows the public to record and share their reactions to news reports.

Mesh News

To prepare the next generation of journalists by developing a news-gathering application on One Laptop per Child computers that teaches kids to share news with their community.

SwarmServe

To promote real-time engagement with news by creating a video streaming network that allows a witness to capture any event on a mobile phone and broadcast it live.

Report/Rebuild

To foment a watchdog culture in post-quake China by training citizen journalists to digitally cover the rebuilding of towns affected by the 2008 disaster.

CO Press

To help college publications create a dynamic multimedia presence through a student-run consulting service that offers resources, support and community.

Citizen Toolbox

To empower citizens and nonprofits to communicate with local officials, build community and distribute news through an online, open source “tool box.”

Vidstrib

To create a way to more easily distribute freelance news footage, and ultimately better inform the public, through a central video uploading site.

VWBeat

To shine a light on the underbelly of popular 3D virtual worlds by funding a full-time reporter to cover it.

Digital Precinct Initiative

To improve the transparency of elections in California by working with officials to standardize digital formats for election returns and voter registration data.

Green Map of Beijing

To promote environmental preservation in Beijing by creating an interactive map that uses citizens’ text-message reports to document pollution and raise consciousness.

Visualizing China News Project

To provide more context for key issues in China by mapping news reports and blog posts.

Ad Dashboard

To financially fortify local media organizations by creating a hyper-local ad marketplace.

OSTV

To improve hyper-local content in the San Franscisco area by creating a multimedia entity that embraces the full capabilities of the web, mobile phones, TV and radio.

FOIAAnywhere.com

To strengthen transparency of local governments by creating an interface where citizens can easily learn how to ask for public information, upload requests and post the public records obtained.

Massively Multi-contributer Online Reporting Platform

To boost the local flow of news and information by creating an online citizen news network in Charlotte, N.C., curated by the masses.

Trenton Open Records Project

To improve government transparency in New Jersey by creating tools that will make it easier to search for public records in the city of Trenton and the state.

NewsMine: NYC

To create an online marketplace where bloggers, journalists and news organizations can legally find, buy and sell the rights to use full-resolution multimedia news content.

San Diego MicroTimes

To enhance the delivery of local news in San Diego by creating a community-based micro-blogging platform.

State of the Union

To provide a visual understanding of these transformative times by documenting the current economic downturn through multimedia storytelling.

Local NewsTrust Sites

To promote quality local journalism by creating a news aggregation site that publishes stories based on ratings of their accuracy, fairness and context.

Our Fair City

To encourage civic engagement through an online game where participants map local activism and can get information on and measure progress of local issues.

News on the Go

To develop tools for mobile phones to expand and improve the distribution of news to communities in the Champaign-Urbana, Ill., region.

Mother Jones Investigative Reporting Map

To help bring news from developing countries to the forefront by creating a platform where citizen journalists worldwide can file stories via text, e-mail or phone camera.

New York Stories

To create a video portrait of New York City through an online site that aggregates professional and citizen news videos.

Informed Citizens, Accountable Congress

To foster transparency in Peru by following rural legislators in Congress via a wiki and news reports using emerging technology.

Wikileaks

To improve the reach, use and impact of a platform that allows whistle-blowers and journalists to anonymously post source material.

The Media Independent News Model

To provide a simple and powerful platform for publishing news and information simultaneously on print, web and mobile devices.<

Newistic

To make it easier to find information on the web by creating a news aggregator that sorts articles by location, topic and people cited, among other areas of interest.

Amazon Geojournalism Deforestation Monitor

To help protect the Amazon basin by creating a real-time, web-based monitor of deforestation that will help the public report and respond to urgent and hidden environmental crises.

Crunchberry Project II: News Engagement through Social Networks

To engage young adults in conversation around local news and information by creating a web site model that integrates Facebook to offer new ways of commenting.

MangoWorld Mobile Location-Based Media Aggregator

To enhance mobile phone users’ awareness of local issues by sending articles about their current location to their phones.

Luvfoo Mobile Support

To expand an open-source platform for niche online communities in order to support the use of mobile devices.

Slug News

To make it easier to manage citizen journalism content by creating a web platform that local news organizations can adopt and use.

More Signals, Less Noise

To improve the quality of new media publications by creating a management system for niche publications that use Web 2.0 tools.

USGov2.0

To help citizens explore the inner workings of the federal government by launching a game centering on a virtual Washington, D.C.

Buncombe Data Mine

To help citizens digest complicated data by amassing public documents from a North Carolina town and creating maps, charts, graphics and other engaging data visualizations.

The Local Wire

To help improve the quality of citizen journalism by creating a plug-in for bloggers that provides high-quality feeds of local content.

Stroome

To advance visual journalism by expanding a site that allows the public to edit videos collaboratively and distribute them.

Blogging in Neighborhoods: Community Oriented Revenue Sharing

To encourage the creation of community news web sites by creating a content management system that makes the sites easy to maintain and employs revenue sharing.

Investigative Journalism as Civic Service

To foster investigative journalism in Maine by creating a group of young journalists, modeled on Teach for America, to cover the state capital on multiple platforms.

Solutions for Citizen Journalism

To boost the craft of citizen journalists by providing a place where they can upload and share source documents that would be rated by users.

Connectifyed

To launch a web site where professional and citizen journalists can map out connections between people and organizations in their city, in order to find often-hidden relationships and, ultimately, news.

News.glin.net

To increase awareness of the issues surrounding the Great Lakes by creating Web 2.0 tools for journalists and a regional news series at the information site glin.net.

Central Times

To experiment with a new business model for a community news operation in Charlotte, N.C., that would share content with similar sites in neighboring communities.

Newswire21

To launch a community-based newswire that creates and distributes vetted citizen journalism reports.

My Issue Communities

To foster community engagement by allowing residents to create “issue communities” online that reflect their neighborhood concerns.

Reporting the Environment

To bridge the digital divide in Cape Town, South Africa, by creating a training program for young multimedia journalists to report on environmental concerns in poor communities.

My Local Foodshed

To encourage debate about the U.S. food supply through a game that invites players to address key barriers to a sustainable food system.

Town Hall Online

To engage more New Yorkers in the key issues affecting their neighborhoods by hosting 25 interactive online discussions during the 2009 election season.

Mississippi Digital Destination News Initiative

To promote digital and news literacy by sending a mobile journalism lab to teach multimedia skills to low-performing Mississippi high schools.

StoryCafe

To collect and distribute the stories of a bilingual South Florida city through a mobile recording and listen station set up to look like a Cuban cafe.

Chicago Neighborhood News Bureau

To increase the volume and quality of reports on underserved Chicago neighborhoods by creating a news bureau that trains journalists and provides content on various platforms.

Go Green NYC

To raise awareness about environmental justice and public health issues in New York through a bilingual web portal.

Virtual Newsstands

To expand readership for youth news by attaching news stories to places where people congregate using geotags and smart phones.

Terradax

To deepen residents’ knowledge of local news by creating a web site that organizes blog entries, photos and videos by neighborhood.

Windy Citizen

To create a new “front page” for a city by aggregating news and information and letting the crowd choose the order of headlines.

The Friends of My Friends Are My Friends

To deepen knowledge of Colombia’s political leadership by creating a social network site that displays their biographies, related news and connections to other people and groups.

Front Porch Forum

To attract communities into conversations about local news by creating networks of online neighborhood forums.