Get Money for Your Killer News Idea

Since my blog is read by a lot of people who work in digital news, I would like to invite everyone to submit good ideas to this year's Knight News Challenge. All entries must be in by 11:59 p.m. on November 1, 2008, which means there are only 24 days left. You can submit your application at http://newschallenge.org/

The Knight News Challenge is an annual contest that awards $5 million for innovative ideas that develop platforms, tools and services to inform and transform community news, conversations, and information distribution and visualization. The criteria are:

• Digital – Your idea uses digital technology (computers, the internet, cell phones, that sort of thing).

• Innovative – Your idea is new and original. It’s different from what people have done before. You are, in some way, breaking new ground.

• News/information – Your idea is about giving people access to what they want to know.

• Timely – Your idea delivers news or information while it’s still fresh.

• Community-building – Your idea helps create a sense of community among some group of individuals.

• Limited geographic area – Your idea affects people in a specific area, which could be as big as a state or province, or as small as a city block. (If your idea is national or worldwide in scope, it must work at a regional level.)

• Open Source – The inner workings of what you create will be visible to the world, so that others can take it and improve upon it.

ALL CRITERIA are applied to EVERY application, so if you have an idea I suggest you read it over once for every rule above and make sure that your idea and application fit within the scope of the contest -- especially the "limited geographic area" requirement. You would be surprised at how many people don't do this.

Think the odds are stacked against you? The bar is very high (last year there were 3,000 entries and 16 winners), but if you have a killer idea you stand a chance.

I can speak from experience here. A year ago, I entered this contest along with my colleagues -- Mary Lou Fulton and Justinian Hatfield -- from The Bakersfield Californian. We had an idea for making it possible for anyone to be a local print publisher without any money, design skills or even content. To our surprise and delight, that idea, Printcasting, was one of the 16 winners, and we're on track to launching phase 1 next March.

Now for a few caveats. I'm a screener for this year's entries, which means that if I know you I will need to recuse myself from reviewing your application. I also may not be the one to screen your app, as they're assigned randomly.

Finally, if you have a good idea and want feedback from me, as a screener I'm not allowed to provide any. However, everyone is encouraged to post their ideas first at the News Challenge Garage (http://garage.newschallenge.org/). You can request a mentor who will review your application and help you make it better. When you feel it's ready, post it at http://newschallenge.org. Note that you only have once chance at that point, so make it count!

Good luck!

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knight news challenge, news

What the Knight News Challenge is about

Gary Kebbel of the Knight Foundation recently talked at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society about what the Knight Foundation is trying to accomplish with the Knight News Challenge. This is a $25 million contest with awards that will be given over 5 years. It's into its second year now, and winners will be declared in early 2008.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm involved in two entries, one directly and one indirectly. That's not why I'm passing this on, and I don't want anyone to think that I'm trying to stack votes.

Regardless of who wins in the next round, I'm genuinely inspired by the objectives of this initiative and others like it. I want to see the best ideas get funded that have the most potential to sustain the practice and values of journalism in the future. If that wasn't my goal, given my background and connections, there are plenty of other things I could be doing today that would be easier paths to money than working for an independently owned local newspaper. I do what I do today because I care deeply about journalism, its values and its benefits to society. That's totally independent of the outcome of this particular contest.

What Gary outlined at the Berkman Center is what all journalists should strive for in the digital era. And truthfully, in the long run we shouldn't need to rely on awards and grants to make this happen (although that is one great way to jump-start innovation without relying on traditional venture capital, which has its own price).

Here's the quote from Gary that struck me:

"We really hope that the people who are inventing the latest digital information technologies care about things like ethics, and principles, and freedom of speech and press, and fairness, and separation of advertising from news, and news from opinion. These are vital to journalists.

And if journalists aren't involved in the creation of tools that everyone is using, and instead the tools are being created by technology companies that frankly don't understand, don't know about or perhaps don't care about those things, that gives us pause. So we're hoping that we can lead the news industry into the digital revolution to help them gather new audiences, keep new audiences, and keep not only their perspective, but their important position.

If newspapers die, that's one thing. If the news and information function in a community dies, that's a horribly different thing. And that's something I think that we should ... work to make sure does not happen."

Yes! That's why I work in journalism, and came back to it after 6 years at a pure tech company. I hope there are more and more of us in that boat over time and that together we create a flotilla, and then a proud armada, that collectively preserves democracy and free speech around the world.

I know there are people with similar aims at non-news companies. Call me quaint, but I just feel like an industry that has consistently upheld these values for two centuries is best equipped to carry them into the digital world. But we can't assume that this will happen on its own. If you're reading this blog and others like it, it's your responsibility as well as mine to make sure that happens.

You can view the Gary Kebbel's entire speech on the Berkman Center's web site.

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