Knight-Batten Awards – Christopher Wink

knight-newschallenge

With an Oct. 15 deadline looming, I’ve had my hand in two submissions requesting funds from the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge program.

One I wrote in conjunction with Shannon McDonald, requesting $40,000 to launch a Neighborhood Correspondents program for NEast Philly, a hyperlocal news site for Northeast Philadelphia.

The second was a proposal from the three of us behind Technically Philly, seeking $250,000 to help establish a sales, marketing and business services company to help grow and unite niche news sites in Philadelphia.

Of course, we were knocked from contention for a $10,000 Knight-Batten grant by the New York Times, but we think we have a good pitch on another day. Who knows what could happen?

Give both a look, comment, rate and spread the word. We won’t find out until November if we’re in the running and not until 2010 if we’d get any money. Still, a kid can dream, right?

See briefs of the two pitches below.

Continue reading Knight News Challenge grant proposals: Technically Philly and NEast Philly

Update: We lost.

Grant money in journalism is flowing freely in a tightened economy and a historic juncture in print media.

Seems like an opportunity.

So, my two partners and I, who founded Technically Philly, applied for the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, a $10,000 grant to support new ideas in news. See our submission here.

We thought bringing together two niches — the geography of Philadelphia and the industry of technology and innovation — and diversifying revenue streams — going beyond advertising — was a new enough model that it might catch the eye of a judge or two.

We walked into a meaningful business, social and startup community in a major metro region’s creative economies and began reporting, relying on our interests in social media, community reporting and professional and ethical journalism.

We recently introduced advertising — a small first step in monetization –and feel that a grant for $10,000 could afford the three of us an opportunity to work full time for perhaps as much two months or more. Considering how pleased we are with our traffic growth and the response from the community, we’re thrilled by even the chance at the opportunity to give full time to a project none of us have been able to offer even part time thus far.

Unfortunately and entirely unsurprisingly, there is some stiff competition from the nearly 100 submissions that were entered. Below I share some of the more interesting submissions I saw and my thoughts on our viability.

Continue reading Technically Philly vies for Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism