Knight Blog

The blog of the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation

Five things you need to know about the Knight Community Information Challenge

May 21, 2013, 10:08 a.m., Posted by Susan Patterson and Bahia Ramos – 0 Comments

2013 Knight Community Information Challenge from Knight Foundation

With just 11 days left apply to the Knight Community Information Challenge, we wanted to share the answers to a few questions we’ve been getting from potential applicants.

Here are five essential things to know about the challenge, which offers matching funding to community and place-based foundations supporting news and information projects:

1) The challenge continues to be an open call for all types of news and information ideas: We firmly believe that community foundations know their local information needs best, and should propose their own answers to help fill the gaps. This year, we are encouraging foundations to explore Open Government projects, which will be given priority in the judging. However, all types of media projects are eligible for challenge funding.

2) Our definition of Open Government is broad: We are looking for projects that help improve the relationship between people and their governments. That encompases a range of projects, from those that make government data more understandable and actionable to ways to use technology to increase participation in local issues. A few examples: A data project by the Chicago Community Trust uses data to help parents understand school closings. And in the past, Knight has funded a tool that uses text messaging to gather input on public issues, and another that makes it easy for communities to gather survey data on local issues. The goal is to get people informed and engaged in local issues.

3) Community and place-based foundations must be the applicant for challenge funds: Partnerships

Hundreds of thousands of TV news broadcasts on one website

May 21, 2013, 9:01 a.m., Posted by Roger Macdonald and Brewster Kahle – 1 Comment

The following blog post is written by Roger Macdonald, director, Television Archive; Brewster Kahle, digital librarian, Internet Archive. Photo credit: IceNineJon

We are seeing more and more public benefits arising from applying digital search and analysis to news from our most pervasive and persuasive medium— television. That’s why, we are thrilled to announce that the Internet Archive, one of the world’s largest public digital libraries, is expanding our television news research library to make readily available hundreds of thousands of hours of U.S. television news programs for users to search, quote and borrow.

The expansion plan is being supported by $1 million in funding from Knight Foundation. With this support, we will grow our TV News Search & Borrow service, which currently includes more than 400,000 broadcasts dating back to June 2009, to add hundreds of thousands of new broadcasts. This means helping inform and engage communities by strengthening the work of journalists, scholars, teachers, librarians, documentarians, civic organizations and others dedicated to public benefit.

ArtPlaces announces new funding to 44 U.S. communities

May 20, 2013, 11:40 a.m., Posted by Dennis Scholl – 1 Comment

Above: Miami's O Cinema.

Today, ArtPlace America, a nationwide initiative that puts the arts at the heart of community revitalization, announced $15.2 million in funding for new projects in 44 communities across the United States. We're excited to see that arts leaders in seven of the communities where Knight invests - Miami, Philadelphia, St. Paul, San Jose, Macon, Detroit and Charlotte - are receiving support for their ideas.

Knight Foundation is a founding funder of ArtPlace, which is a collaboration of 13 leading foundations and six of the nations largest banks.

Our goal at Knight is to make the arts a part of people’s everyday lives and create the kind of collective experiences that attach people to place. Through our work in the Knight communities, we have seen that artists can be major players in revitalization efforts that contribute to more vibrant, open places. We believe in the power of art to transform and engage communities. And each of the projects chosen from amongst 1,200 submissions, are driven by teams that are doing just that. We are thrilled to announce this round of funding with ArtPlace and look forward to seeing the work of placemaking leaders unfold— to the benefit of so many communities.

ArtsPlace has highlighted all of these important projects on their website, including those in seven of the Knight communities:

Charlotte, S.C.: