Who’s building the hottest news media technologies in the world? Every year, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation takes on the challenge of judging from hundreds of entrants in the Knight News Challenge and selecting a small number of them to fund with up to $5 million in total backing.
This year, 16 winners from 4 countries were selected, and they are very consistent with cutting edge trends in the tech industry at large. They range from government accountability tracking systems to a tool that sends an SMS to people in water deprived areas when water is available. John S. Bracken runs the Foundation’s grant-making in digital media and wrote today on the Knight blog that this year’s winners seemed to touch on three common themes: the rise of the hacker/data journalist, a broad interpretation of “news” and the need to make better sense of the stream.
Below we offer our small contribution to the discussion, with a list of winners and their descriptions embedded in a world map and a Twitter list that will let you follow all the winners all year long.
It is important to note that there may be even more exciting news technologies being built around the world that didn’t fit the Knight criteria, which includes some open source technology requirements and an extensive application process. Nonetheless – this is a pretty inspiring group and a good place to look to get some ideas about how the Web and world will change in the next few years.
Knight News Challenge 2011 Winners Around the World
View Knight Foundation 2011 Winners in a larger map
Below, a Twitter list. To subscribe to all 16 of the winners on Twitter, click the words “join the conversation” in the widget below, then click “follow this list.”
Congratulations to all the winners – now please go forth and change the way we learn about the world each day!
