NEWS CHALLEGE DEADLINE

October 15 is the deadline to apply for the Knight Foundation's second annual News Challenge, a contest encouraging the innovative use of digital technology in community journalism. The contest is open to applicants worldwide and aims to foster community-building through contestants' effective use of digital tools to distribute news and information in separate geographic areas.

The News Challenge attracts a diverse pool of applicants. Last year's $5 million prize winner was MIT Media Lab/Comparative Media Studies for their project, the Center for Future Civic Media. Other prize winners also included academic institutions, such as Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism (to create the Digital News Academic Program) and Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (to establish ASU's Knight-Kauffman Center), as well as community journalists and even bloggers.

The Knight Foundation intends to invest $25 million in the News Challenge over the next five years with the goal of attracting the best and brightest in digital news. As Knight Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen states, "It is vital that we discover how digital technologies can serve the information needs of physical communities in a democracy."

McCormick Tribune Foundation is also deeply committed to innovation in digital journalism. The Journalism Program recently approved a $100,000 grant to the City University of New York to support a graduate-level Entrepreneurial Journalism course and a $125,000 grant to the University of Maryland's J-Lab for support of the McCormick Tribune Initiative for New Media Women Entrepreneurs.