Knight Foundation and MTV Digital Media Partnership

Marc Fest, over at "Knight Foundation":http://www.knightfdn.org, pinged me about a new digital media partnership that they have launched with "MTV":http://www.mtv.com/thinkmtv/. I've been "impressed":http://www.zerodivide.org/tags/knight_foundation with the way the Knight Foundation is catalyzing innovation and entrepreneurial thinking through their philanthropy. It's called the "Young Creators Award":http://www.mtv.com/thinkmtv/features/young_creators/: bq. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and MTV announced today the Knight News Challenge "Young Creators Award," a new digital journalism grant program for young people age 25 and under anywhere in the world. The contest will award up to $500,000 to young creators with compelling ideas for using digitally delivered news and information to enhance physical communities ? improving the lives of people where they live, work and vote. The new award is a component of the "Knight News Challenge":http://www.newschallenge.org, an annual competition awarding $5 million for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news. bq. The Young Creators Award is open to young community-minded innovators worldwide with big ideas such as: anything that informs and inspires community using bits and bytes; new ways to deliver news on emerging platforms, such as cell phone documentaries; new types of operating software for news collectors; and journalism games. All entries require three elements: 1) use of a digital media; 2) delivery of news or information on a shared basis to 3) a geographically defined community. Although there is a category for commercial applications, most entries are "open-source" and must share the software and knowledge created. The number of grants awarded will be based on the size of the ideas; no idea is too large or too small.