Knight Awards Nonprofit Media Grants

January 29, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute

Twenty-one projects designed to help residents stay informed about local news have received $5-million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, in Miami.

The grants — the first round of the foundation’s five-year, $24-million Knight Community Information Challenge — went to projects supported by local community foundations. The foundation received 170 applications.

Winners include:

Minnesota Community Foundation, which received $500,000 for IdeaMN.org, a Web site that will hold statewide competitions to generate ideas to solve local problems.
The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, in Connecticut, which received $500,000 for the Valley Independent Sentinel, an online news service for five towns in the Lower Naugatuck Valley that have lost their local newspaper and radio station in recent years.
San Antonio Area Foundation, which received $488,500 for 11 communication centers at organizations across the city that will produce video stories for Internet broadcasts.

“In a democracy, information is essential for a community to function properly,” says Trabian Shorters, a vice president at the Knight foundation. “Information is actually a core need.”

For more information: Go to http://www.informationneeds.org.

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About the Author

NICOLE WALLACE

Features Editor

Nicole Wallace is features editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. She has written about innovation in the nonprofit world, charities’ use of data to improve their work and to boost fundraising, advanced technologies for social good, and hybrid efforts at the intersection of the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, such as social enterprise and impact investing.Nicole spearheaded the Chronicle’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast and reported from India on the role of philanthropy in rebuilding after the South Asian tsunami. She started at the Chronicle in 1996 as an editorial assistant compiling The Nonprofit Handbook.Before joining the Chronicle, Nicole worked at the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs and served in the inaugural class of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.A native of Columbia, Pa., she holds a bachelor’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University.