The recipients ranged from MIT, awarded $5 million to fund a Centre for Future Civic Media to experiment with technologies to empower community news, to individual bloggers who received $15,000 to maintain blogs on various topics.

Some of the other winners included Adrian Holovaty, a journalist and web developer, who received $1.1 million to create websites for public records and hyperlocal information for various cities; VillageSoup received $885,000 to develop an open-source community platform for news, which would allow communities to develop their own news sites; and, MTV was awarded $700,000 to establish a Knight “MyJos,” or Mobile Youth Journalists for each of the 50 states, and the District of Columbia to report weekly using cell phone; and other media.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has funded the contest with $25 million over five years to help lead journalism into its digital future. The first challenge seems to have been very successful: “I am delighted with the results, as you might infer from the fact that we announced $12million in grants (some multi-year).  That's well over our initial goal of $5 million.  The winners turned out to be a brilliant and really wonderful group of people,” said Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation’s President and CEO.

This challenge emphasizes two important trends taking place: more attention to local news and the use of digital media in journalism. The latter was illustrated by the award given to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, which received $639,000 for nine journalism scholarships for students with undergraduate degrees in computer science.

Based on the success of the first challenge, evidenced by the CEO’s reactions and the quality of the ideas, and the fact that the Knight Foundation is planning more of these challenges - the next round begins July 1st with another $5 million - this initiative is poised to give a huge boost to local journalism and help change the field of journalism for the better.

Eric Newton, Vice President, Journalism Program, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, USA, will present the first-year winners of the Knight News Challenge at the 14th annual World Editors Forum in Captetown.

For more information or to register for the annual forum, please go to http://www.capetown2007.co.za/home.php

Source: Boston Globe and Miami Herald