knight news challenge years 1 & 2 assessment

A Contest to Accelerate Innovation

The Knight News Challenge was launched to

advance the future of news by supporting new

ways to digitally inform communities.

Knight News Challenge2007–08Let’s take a moment to remind ourselves

what the media landscape actually looked like

when the Challenge began.

Knight News Challenge2007–08

Pushing the Envelope

We asked all applicants to stick to three simple rules:

1. Use digital, open source technology

2. Distribute news in the public interest

3. Test the project in a local geographic community

“When you don’t know what the future looks like, you have to engage in intense experimentation and stay open to new trends and ideas.”

– Alberto Ibargüen, President, Knight Foundation


Ideas by the ThousandsThe contest changed the way we operated –

it lowered the barriers to entry, inviting in

thousands of applicants over the past 4 years.


By the Numbers


Winners Circle*

This slide and the review that

follows do not include grants

made to individuals to blog.

*


What EmergedTaking a closer look at the early winners


Experimentation & LearningFunding innovation requires being open to

experimentation and a commitment to learn from

the experience. We reviewed the early winners to

better understand their impact and influence as

they’ve progressed.*

* The findings that follow are based on an independent assessment

conducted by LFA Group and commissioned by Knight Foundation.


Where are they now?

The list does not include grants that were made to individuals to blog about their projects and ideas.

*


Scaling & Spreading

One of the contest’s aspirations was that winners might

catalyze broader change through the adoption, replication

and expansion of their ideas.


Creating codeThe contest supported open

source product development

to encourage widespread

adoption of funded ideas.


A Capital Idea19 of the 31 winners secured additional funds beyond

their News Challenge grant, sometimes tapping into

multiple sources, to continue or expand their projects.


Project Status

Knight News Challenge2007–08 The Evolution of an Idea: Freedom Fone (2008 winner)

2009 2010 2011

A project to create a DIY platform for two-way, phone-based information services,

using interactive audio voice menus, voice messages, SMS and polls.


Key Insights

Learning from the early winners


Patterns, Platforms & ProductsTo surface key lessons, we

grouped winners together in

terms of their platform type and

approach. We didn’t start with

these categories in the contest,

but found the winners clustered

together in these ways.

News Games

Local News Aggregators

Field-Building for Media Innovation

Mobile News Platforms

Digital Tools forPublic Media

Citizen Media

Innovative Tools & Practices


Hand-held news

• Knowing Your Niche: By actively listening to users

and adapting to new opportunities, winners found

unexpected successes.

• Setting Expectations: Early community partners

need to be comfortable deploying platforms still

under development.

• Versatility Matters: Ensuring users could access

content, regardless of which mobile network they

belonged to, helped support more seamless pilot

testing.

Mobile News Platforms


• Retrofitting Challenges: To successfully use

digital tools, organizations need to adopt new

work processes vastly different from traditional

broadcast media.

• Using Local Assets: Connecting digital content

to local, physical events helped increased levels of

interactivity and engagement.

• Think Modular: Building specific modules that

allow users to customize may generate greater

adoption than developing a universal platform.

Going Public

Digital Tools for Public Media


• Training Inspires: Training was a powerful tool

for providing users with the necessary skills to

produce content and building overall commitment

to the project.

• Trust and Identity: A consistent presence in

communities and strong relationships with local

partners were critical to ensuring ongoing project

success.

• Scope and Skills: Projects that stumbled often

overestimated the reporting skills of individuals and

underestimated the challenges of keeping people

engaged.

Re-sourcing the news

Citizen Media


• Marketing and Outreach: Investing time and

resources in effective marketing was critical for

gaining widespread adoption.

• Transparency Rules: Crowdfunding models require

journalists to be highly entrepreneurial and

comfortable with transparent approaches to pitching

and producing stories.

• Data Potential: Efforts to improve authenticity and

accuracy by surfacing the metadata in stories might

also help create a richer media environment.

Transforming the News

Innovative Tools & Practices


• The Pros: Building a compelling gaming experience

requires a rare combination of design skills, technical

skills and expertise in interaction design.

• Feeding the Beast: Producing high quality games

involves heavy content development requirements,

which winners often found to be overwhelming.

• Development Difficulties: Open source

requirements created a unique challenge for news

games, impacting their implementation.

What’s the Score?

News Games


• Built for Me: Personalisation of the product helped

build audience traction and engagement over time.

• Network Power: Project leaders with a rich

network of contacts and strong online reputations

were able to translate these assets into early traffic

and media attention for their projects.

• Team Assembly: Identifying, building and

structuring strong technical teams took time, but

helped prevent unnecessary development problems

down the line.

Knowing Your Town

Local News Aggregators


Field-Building for Media InnovationBehind the Scenes

• Innovation Hurdles: Finding the right set of faculty

and students to participate in interdisciplinary programs

focused on innovation, technology and media is challenging.

• Constant Adaptation: Teaching innovation requires an

effective process for revising curricula on a much more rapid

and frequent basis than traditional academic programs.

• Alumni Prowess: Leveraging alumni and their success

is a powerful asset for marketing programs, recruiting new

students and securing new funding.

The Hacker Journalist

Loosely based on the life of Brian (Boyer), a programmer bored with creating e-solutions for insurance companies,

who got jazzed about journalism and received one of the Digital News Academics (News Challenge Winner 2007)

scholarships to attend Northwestern. He now runs the Chicago Tribune’s news application team that’s built tools

to help parents compare school performance, used data to contribute to nursing home reforms and supported

other investigations.

Many of the field-building projects are focused on creating graduates with a new hybrid set of skills required to advance

the future of news and information.*

*


What we learned

How we can improve our efforts to support media innovation



Room for ImprovementSpeed of a Contest: The 8 months cycle between the

receipt of applications and announcement of winners is

inconsistent with the rapid pace of innovation and affects

applicants’ ability to respond to market opportunities.

We need to move faster.

Open Source: Open source licenses can be a powerful way

for ensuring greater adoption of funded software

development, but it often requires documentation, training

and technical assistance to support user adoption.

We need to be mindful of the time and resources it takes

to build a developer community.

•

•


• Building Budgets: Many winners experienced difficulties

in accurately budgeting for project costs and

technology and marketing expenses. Upfront assistance

in both business development and programming

prowess can help address some of these issues.

Tapping into Talent: Many winners faced challenges in

assembling a team that possessed the necessary mix of

skills to be effective on the web: content development,

user experience, and technical programming.

We need to explore ways to help winners connect

to other resources.

Room for Improvement

•

Continuing to Experiment & LearnThis review is part of an ongoing assessment of the

News Challenge. We continue to track the progress of

2009, 2010 and (tba) 2011 winners. Findings from this

will be shared on a regular basis as insights are

gathered.

knight news challenge years 1 & 2 assessment

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