A version of this post originally appeared on the Knight Foundation blog. Knight Foundation’s John Bracken, director of journalism/media innovation, contributed to this post.
Now that 2012 has come to an end, we want to give you an update on the Knight News Challenge.
For 2013, we’re planning two News Challenges. The first will focus on tools for open government and will open in February. The second will open in the fall, on a topic we’ll announce in early 2013.
We ran three contests last year, on Networks, Data and Mobile. We’ll be unveiling the third set of winners Jan. 17 at the Cronkite School at Arizona State University.
kudos to our winners
Here are updates on what some recent News Challenge winners have been up to over the last month:
- Anu Sridharan, founder NextDrop, was recently named on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List. (Here’s Sridharan at TEDxGateway in Mumbai.)
- TEDxWomen highlighted the work of Recovers.org.
- Watchup, the startup iPad video news app, announced it had raised additional $500,000 in funding. Its founder, Adriano Farano, gave an Ignite Talk on lasagna design at NewsFoo.
- Waldo Jaquith, founder of the State Decoded, ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to “Liberate Virginia’s Legislative Video.”
- Poderopedia launched the beta version of its power relationship map, based on Chile.
In the first half of this year, we’ll also be releasing an assessment of the 2010 Knight News Challenge winners (following reviews of 2009 and 2007-2008 winners.)
We’ll have more details on the 2013 challenges soon. To stay in the loop, follow @knightfdn.
Christopher Sopher joined Knight Foundation in March 2012. He previously worked as a project contractor on media policy issues and election grants. Prior to Knight, he researched digital media and public policy at the Emerging Media Research Council, and helped mentoring nonprofit Strive for College expand in North Carolina and scale nationally. He has written and spoken internationally about young people’s engagement with news media and civic life. Sopher earned a bachelor’s in public policy analysis and political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a Morehead-Cain and Truman Scholar.