For the second year in a row, the Knight News Challenge asked the public for ideas to transform community news through digital innovation, and 17 projects were chosen for funding. The projects will be announced on May 14, 2008, at the E&P Interactive Media Conference in Las Vegas.

The top finalists are projects that have the potential to "inform, empower and engage citizens and help them participate in the decision-making process of their neighborhoods, their communities and their countries," according to the Knight News.

Some projects are:

"Doing Away with Dewey ~ Unifying Digital and Physical Collections and Knowledge with a new open organization of knowledge (B3OK)" by Bonnie Pierce: By hyperlinking the materials within libraries with an open global digital knowledge network, all physical library collections, informative materials, media, and books, cultural objects, and specific physical locations will be connected.

"Louretta" by Matthew Waite: An open-source, socially networked, host for small-town weeklies and twice-weekles, which would improve and expand small-town journalism online.  People would participate in and contribute to those social networks, and have mechanisms for following their institutions of government, schools and local sports through databases of public records, newspaper-created information or data entered by the users themselves.

"Flash Storytelling Templates" by Russell Chun: An online site for Flash storytelling templates that is "free, open-source, specific to the needs of the multimedia journalist, and based on community participation and collaboration." Journalists will not need to know Flash to use these templates but will download source files to manipulate and use directly. The community can comment on existing templates, suggest new ones, contribute their own templates, and showcase work that was created with the templates. The site will be available nationally but will be used in to "bring to life those "smaller" stories."

For the complete list, please visit the Knights News site.

Source: Newschallenge.com