The International Center for Journalists'celebrated 25 years of advancing quality journalism worldwide -- through the'training of more than 60,000 journalists --' at its'Awards Dinner last week in Washington, DC.

Highlights:

The New York Times' David Rohde spoke of the Taliban's strongholds'in Pakistan and Afghanistan and what this means for U.S. policy.'

Knight International Journalism Award recipient Chouchou Namegabe said sexual violence against women in the Congo is getting worse and called for action.

Founders Award winner Seymour Hersh discussed why it is more important than ever to do investigative reporting.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton congratulated ICFJ on its 25th Anniversary in a video address.

Find out how the world's most promising media projects are taken on by Knight International Journalism Fellows

-- Eric Newton is the Knight Foundation's vice president/journalism program.

Yesterday morning, Sir Tim Berners-Lee sent out a tweet from the speaker's podium at the annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum announcing the official operational launch of the World Wide Web Foundation.

Funded by a five-year, $5 million grant from the Knight Foundation, the Web Foundation is devoted to advancing the Web to empower people across the world.' In his speech to the IGF, Berners-Lee explains the significance of the organization this way:

We need to think about society, the people who are less privileged, the people who they may be poor, they may be in disconnected rural areas or they may be poor in urban areas. They may be wealthy but they may suffer from disabilities. They may be illiterate and, while connected, they're connected to a Web which is very text-based. So the conclusion -- our conclusion was that we should create a World Wide Web Foundation to think about these things. ...

 

We look at the Web now as humanity connected. Humanity connected by technology. We want it to empower people, we want it to do the very best for humanity, so ladies and gentlemen ... I present to you the worldwide foundation and I hope that together we can work together and achieve great things.

Along with launching its global operations, the Web Foundation also launched a new Web site at the time of the announcement. There, you'll find more information about the organization's mission, programs, staff and history. You can also view Tim Berners-Lee's entire speech to the IGF here (or read the transcript, beginning on page 13).

 

Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation Local media is the focus of the journalism conference circuit. Estimates claim $100 billion in local-ad revenue could support local news and information projects, if it could only be successfully tapped. This follows the Knight Commission for the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy recommendation for innovation: its report says journalism does not need saving so much as it needs creating.

So what's an entrepreneur to do? First, you need a business model. Looking for just such a holy grail, the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism created the New Business Models for News Project. The project researched the best practices in the business of online journalism and released four business models that can be used by anyone in any community.

The four business models were presented and discussed last Wednesday at the New Business Models for (Local) News Conference and Hypercamp at CUNY. You can download the models at newsinnovation.com.

Ideas and experiments are springing up weekly. If you are interested in learning more about new business models for news you might also want to take a loot at:

Ideas for Micropayments Journalism Online, LLC.

Village Soup.com an internet-age business model to transform the traditional community newspaper business.

Printcasting, a new revenue model for "people-powered magazines."

Spot.us,' a new crowd-funding model for paying for investigative reporting.

Minnpost, is a new hybrid non-profit model' that is supported by ads, memberships and foundation support. You can also look at the Voice of San Diego.

Other non-profit experiments include St. Louis Beacon and Gotham Gazette (in NY).

News 21 and the Chauncey Bailey project pioneered public-private experiments in investigative reporting.

Other university-based news models include the investigative reporting projects at Boston University, UC Berkeley, Brandeis and Northeastern.

Other nonprofits that are doing well include Pro Publica in NY, Center for Investigative Reporting in SF, Center for Public Integrity in DC.

These are only a few of the'models that individuals, organizations and universities have been using to figure out a new way to sustain journalism.

If you think none of these projects are the right digital innovations to provide quality news and information to communities, come up with one of your own, and enter the Knight News Challenge at newschallenge.org