Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation

The free PDF version of the book Journalism 2.0 passed the 100,000 download mark today.

 

The book was written by Mark Briggs, assistant managing editor for interactive news at The News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington.

Journalism 2.0 is a great resource. It is a useful guide that helps professional and amateur news producers understand and implement digital tools to enhance their reporting.

Journalism 2.0 can be downloaded as a PDF at J-Lab's Knight Citizen News Network. The Spanish and Portuguese versions can be downloaded at the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. Around 20,000 additional copies have been downloaded in these two other languages.

Have you downloaded your copy yet?

Gary Kebbel is the Journalism Program Director at Knight Foundation.

During a panel at last week's Interactive Media Conference, I realized that many of the projects funded by the Knight News Challenge have the potential to work with one another to create a project that none of us has yet imagined.

For instance, Tish Grier was explaining how people can use Placeblogger.com, a site that organizes the blogs about place, to learn more about their own communities or ones they wish to visit. And David Cohn was talking about how his Spot.us project used microfunding and crowd-sourcing to pay for local investigative reports. (So far, in 24 weeks of operation, 23 reports have been funded.) Dan Pacheco demonstrated how easy it is to create a "Printcast," or personalized niche publication, at printcasting.com. (About 10 minutes from creation to printout.)

But while they were talking, the thought occurred to me: How cool would it be if a blogger indexed in Placeblogger.com submits a proposal to Spot.us that gets funded, and then he or she prints and distributes it via Printcasting?

On June 17 Knight Foundation will announce the 2009 winners of the Knight News Challenge. Each year, as more winners are announced, we increase the chances of a new project emerging from the discussion and cooperation of all the winning projects. Knight Foundation hopes that a project none of us has imagined will ultimately be the result of the ones we have funded.

Until Friday, May 8, 2009 at 11:59 p.m. EDT, you can let the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy (KnightComm.org) know your information needs on the public input site.

Together with PBS Engage, the Knight Commission has created a place for you to answer five questions about your information needs, ask Google's Marissa Mayer (Co-chair of the Commission) questions, and comment on the draft version of the Commission's report.

The public input pages will be live until the deadline tomorrow night, and you can also follow the conversation through the #publicinput hashtag on Twitter.

Tell us your information needs and please help us spread the word--
You can also share their thoughts with the Commission by calling (202) 721-5599 or writing to: Knight Commission at The Aspen Institute, One Dupont Circle, NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20036.