Post in Knight Foundation Competition Will Award Millions To Innovative Community News Experiments

2006 Dec 20 19:12 UTC

Have folks taken a look at the Knight Foundation's 21st Century News Challenge
site?

 http://www.newschallenge.org

The deadline is Dec. 31 for letters of inquiry.

What I am trying to sort out is what "news" really means to them and how the
kinds of citizen-based interactive "conversations" that E-Democracy.Org hosts
might fit.

In short does "news" have to the be the central starting point or as Eric
Newton in his audio message says can we be focused first on "smart new ways to
help communities talk to each other, understand each other, in the words of
Jack Knight, be able to act in their own true interests" and come at this from
the community perspective toward the "news" world.

Any thoughts? Any contacts who can help?

Cheers,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org

P.S. I've drafted up a list of over 20 *potential* letter of inquiry topics
that. What do folks think would be most interesting and "newsy" enough:

http://www.e-democracy.org/wiki/Knight_Foundation_Grants

# 3 Leadership - Issues Forum Expansion
# 4 Leadership - Sharing Online Facilitation Strategies with Citizen Media
Efforts
# 5 Leadership - Citizen Media Online Community of Practice via Democracies
Online
# 6 Leadership - Evolving from FOI to IDR Laws - Information Dissemination
Requirements
# 7 Leadership - MyBallot.Net - Open Source for Local Ballot, Polling Place
Look-up, Add Talking Ballot Feature
# 8 Leadership - Local E-Debate Platform and Guide
# 9 Field Test - Local Democracy Tune-Up
# 10 Pilot - Citizen Survey
# 11 Pilot - Local Mashup
# 12 Pilot - Multilingual Neighborhood Forum
# 13 Pilot - Adapting Open Source E-mail Contact Management for Citizen Media
Efforts
# 14 Pilot - Community Knowledge Sharing - Cross Community Q and A
# 15 Trial - Glocalising Online Participation
# 16 Trial - Democaster - Democracy Webcasting and Media Partners
# 17 Trial - Online Townhall Event
# 18 Trial - Neighborhood News Tools for Neighborhood "Life" Forums
# 19 Prototype - Local Solutions Exchange on Public Priorities
# 20 Prototype - Public Meeting Notifier
# 21 Prototype - Local Politics Content Monitor
# 22 Open - Online U.S. Presidential E-Debate
# 23 Open - Open Source GroupServer Enhancements for Developing Democracies
# 24 Open - The Virtual Shopping Mall? The Impact of Ownership and Governance
on Public Perpections and Use of Local Interactive Media
# 25 Open - Media and E-Democracy Index - Media Responsiveness Online