The Knight News Challenge accelerates media innovation by funding breakthrough ideas in news and information. Winners receive a share of $5 million in funding and support from Knight’s network of influential peers and advisors to help advance their ideas.
Throughout 2012, innovators from all industries and countries are invited to participate in three challenge rounds, each with focused topics on emerging trends.
Round 1 - on networks - is closed, and the winners will be announced June 18.
Round 2 - on data - will be open May 31 - June 21. We’re looking for new ways of collecting, understanding, visualizing and helping the public use the large amounts of information generated each day. Winners will be announced in late September.
Details on Round 3 will available later this year.
Anyone, anywhere can apply for the challenge - whether for-profit start-ups or non-profit ventures. For more information on a variety of topics - from guidelines for for-profits, on intellectual property licensing, open source software and more - visit our FAQ.
Implement a grassroots marketing campaign for our iWitness Pollution Map, a crowd-sourcing tool launched during the 2010 BP Oil Disaster, to report pollution and associated health impacts.
The iWitness Pollution Map is the first use of crisis mapping for a U.S. humanitarian disaster. Our work empowers impacted communities with tools that attract media attention and instigate enforcement action against polluters.
To market the map we build on our existing networks: 1) Fenceline Neighbors Network of community groups adjacent to hazardous industry across Louisiana, 3) Responders like the U.S. EPA, U.S. Coast Guard, 4) 12 years of local, regional, national media contacts, 5) Other collaborative partnerships with like-minded organizations including SkyTruth.
It will work because we have been doing this work on the ground in collaboration with communities for the last 12 years. It will work because we had the largest presence (majority volunteers) on the ground of any NGO responding to the BP disaster. It will work because we are head of the Community Outreach subcommittee for the US Coast Guard’s Oil and Hazardous Substance Contingency Planning Committee. It will work because we are already funneling reports on the map straight to the media as well as local, state and federal enforcement and emergency response officials and getting results.
Louisiana Bucket Brigade staff, 1500+ dues paying members and volunteer base creatively engage impacted communities.
LABB’s Fenceline Neighbors Network are taking air samples and sending in reports documenting the pollution problems in their neighborhoods.
Tulane’s Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy provides server space and SkyTruth provides an RSS feed of National Response Center reports for the map.
US Coast Guard and US EPA use the map to locate hot spots of pollution and potential environmental crimes.
The team leader, LABB Program Manager Anna Hrybyk, has expertise from around the world in community based disaster preparedness, including the 2004 Asian Tsunami.
Since 2010, the iWitness Pollution Map has been in use with over 5,000 reports currently posted. The map crowd sources chemical accidents, impacts from the BP Oil Spill and National Response Center reports. We already have partnerships with community groups in 10 parishes through our Fenceline Neighbors Network. We already have solid working relationships with EPA and Coast Guard enforcement officials who have called our work “sophisticated advocacy.” We need a grassroots marketing campaign so that we can reach out to areas where we do not currently have a network. The tool is in place, the responders are paying attention and now we need more residents to report.
We have sustained the map since 2010 and need support to jumpstart a cutting edge, artistic, grassroots marketing campaign. An injection of capital from Knight would provide solid evidence to other funders of the map’s efficacy. Marketing for the map would be integrated into all grant proposals.
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