Knight News Challenge Open - A $5 Million Contest

The Knight News Challenge 2008, a worldwide contest, reopened again for a new round. There is $5 million in funding available for digital media experiments to innovate news and communication - including mobile! The deadline is November 1, 2008. 

The contest is open to community-minded innovators worldwide, from software designers to journalists to citizens and students of any age. Winning entries must have three elements:

• Use or create digital, open-source technology as the code base
• Serve the public interest
• Benefit one or more specific geographic communities

Entries must be open-source and share the software and knowledge created.

Last year's winner in the MobileActive community are Kubatana's Brenda Burrell and Guy Berger from South Africa - both of which are developing innovative mobile news and information systems. incidentally, both will be speaking and presenting at MobileActive08. The Knight Foundation is a supporter of MobileActive08. 

For the Challenge, Knight has also created a new incubator — the News Challenge Garage — where prospective applicants can receive peer reviews and mentoring from screeners and awardees from previous years.  A diverse group of developers, online journalists, nonprofit evangelists, video bloggers and social media experts are on hand to coach applicants.