Following on the heels of last week’s announcement of eight new international fellows, the Knight Fellowships program at Stanford has revealed the 12 winners of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships for the 2014-15 academic year.
The program is an attempt to help decipher the future of news — and as you can see from the innovators who were selected this time around, those who are selected to participate bring a bevy of digital skills and forward-thinking ideas to the mix. Read more below on how they plan to work to reshape news while participating in the program.
meet the fellows
Zena Barakat, senior producer, video, The New York Times, New York
Journalism Challenge: A desktop dashboard and mobile application that can search across social media platforms to help journalists find and verify sources during breaking news.
Charla Bear, reporter/anchor, KQED radio, San Francisco
Journalism Challenge: Free, interactive massive online training modules (MOOCs) to help journalists become better multiplatform storytellers.
Donna Borak, Federal Reserve reporter, American Banker, Washington, D.C.
Journalism Challenge: Tools to increase reader concentration and improve engagement with online news stories.
Lope Gutiérrez-Ruiz, co-editor and co-founder, Gopher Magazine/in-House Int’l, Austin, Texas
Journalism Challenge: An open platform to collect, process and distribute performance data about cities.
Louis Hansen, tablet reporter, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Virginia
Journalism Challenge: A model for newspapers to produce engaging, profitable afternoon tablet publications with exclusive content.
Jeremy Hay, staff writer, The Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, California
Journalism Challenge: A digital dashboard that will facilitate data-based poverty reporting, making it more intuitive and driving increased coverage.
Anne Kornblut, deputy AME for national news, The Washington Post
Journalism Challenge: Strategies for transforming newsrooms with print roots into digital-first operations, and growing online audiences.
Yvonne Leow, senior associate, North Base Media, New York
Journalism Challenge: A tool that visualizes a newspaper’s historical data to help journalists better cover their communities.
Michael Morisy, editor, Beta Boston for The Boston Globe; founder, MuckRock
Journalism Challenge: Refining and documenting sustainable models for crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and discrete news tools that delight users.
Beatrice Motamedi, freelance journalist, Oakland, California
Journalism Challenge: A collaborative digital platform and open-source, cross-cultural journalism toolkit for a student-run global news wire.
Akoto Ofori-Atta, senior editor, Essencefestival.com, Brooklyn, New York
Journalism Challenge: A model for creating an online news publication rooted in African American experiences, dedicated to shareability and free from the task of uplifting the black community.
Christina Passariello, senior reporter, Wall Street Journal, Paris, France
Journalism Challenge: A crowd-sourced website mapping the global garment industry to connect readers to the factory floor.
They’ll be joining the eight international journalists who were awarded John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships last week.
the international fellows
Najia Ashar, senior anchor/producer, Geo News Television Network, Karachi, Pakistan (Yahoo! International Fellow).
Journalism challenge: A multimodal platform to reduce the dangers of journalism and promote safer working environments for journalists in Pakistan.
Carolina Guerrero, executive director, Radio Ambulante, San Francisco, California (Knight Foundation Latin American Fellow).
Journalism challenge: A comprehensive Spanish-language online toolkit for independent radio producers in Latin America.
Cordelia Hebblethwaite, lead writer, BBC Trending, London, United Kingdom.
Journalism challenge: Tools and techniques for journalists to predict news trends in social media.
Jiang Jing, senior editor and journalist, Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, China (Enlight Foundation Fellow).
Journalism challenge: A science journalism course, with best practices guides and best reporting samples, to improve science journalism in China.
Izabela Moi, editor and project coordinator, Blog Mural, São Paulo, Brazil (Knight Foundation Latin American Fellow)
Journalism challenge: A nonprofit, sustainable model for a news agency on the outskirts of large urban cities.
Dickens Olewe, website coordinator, The Star Publications, Nairobi, Kenya (Lyle and Corrine Nelson International Fellow).
Journalism challenge: An African drone journalism corps, with newsroom-based teams using unmanned aerial vehicles across the continent to improve real-time reportage.
Mariana Santos, interactive journalist and motion designer, International Center for Journalists, London, United Kingdom.
Journalism challenge: A training and support program to increase the number of women in Latin American newsrooms with strong technology, data journalism and entrepreneurial skills.
Anh Hoà Truong, science, technology and ecology editor, Courrier International, Fontenay Sous Bois, France.
Journalism challenge: An easy-to-use platform that will allow news organizations to integrate newsgames into their workflow.
A number of former Knight fellows have gone on to create projects that have won grants from the Knight News Challenge. You can read about their projects here on Idea Lab. We also at times feature posts written by current Knight Fellows and originally posted to the blog for the Knight Fellowships at Stanford. You can read more of those here.
Desiree Everts is the associate editor for Idea Lab and PBS MediaShift. She’s dabbled in digital media for the past decade including stints at CNET News and Wired magazine.