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. The first round of 2013, which opens in February, will invite innovators from all disciplines to focus on tools for open government. In 2012, three challenge rounds, each focused on an emerging trend, drew more than 2,500 entries.
Challenge 1 - on NETWORKS: Winners were announced June 18.
Challenge 2 - on DATA: Winners were announced Sept. 20.
Challenge 3 – on MOBILE: Winners were announced Jan. 17.
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.
Junior Mojos (mobile journalists) is a mobile platform to enable children to participate in local news gathering and learn about their environments, with the aid of mobile devices.
The Junior Mojo platform will make use of tablets, phones and iPod music players (initially Android and iOS-based devices) as information aggregators to enable school children as young as Kindergarten through 12th grade to collect information about the world around them with photos, video and written content. Using the mobile app, they will construct cohesive stories, automatically submit them to the JuniorMojos.org website, and have them displayed on mobile devices, the website and through TV set top boxes such as GoogleTV streamers and the Roku Player.
Children will use use the platform (and adults/teachers will supervise public content) because it empowers them to have their stories listened to and will provide an elegant and polished way to tell those stories.
1. Through publicity within school districts and educational meetings
2. Through educational blogs and media
3. By word of mouth
The project will enlist advisers from K-12 establishments to develop the news categories as well as the input and output formats that the platform uses.
The website domains and associated project handles have been acquired; development work has not yet been initiated.
There are two clear success metrics for the project: The first will be a flourishing website of news content developed by school children, the second will be the use of the modern mobile device by those children for something other than playing games.
The project will require one experienced FTE for 24 months (~$250k) and a more junior programmer (~$160k) for for the same period. The project will also require a co-hosted server, suitable to sustain (initially) about 1000 concurrent web users, together with funds to attend several major teaching conventions with a booth presence and to create associated publicity materials.
Additional details:
Please list who is on your team: Myself, and another developer TBD
Expected number of months to complete project: 24
Estimated Project Cost: $500,000
Name: Junior Mojos
Twitter:#juniormojos
Email address: juniormojos@gmail.com
Organization [if applicable]:
City: San Diego
Country: USA
How did you learn about the contest? Word of mouth from my colleague at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
