British entries shortlisted for Knight journalism grants

Posted by Martin Stabe on 1 April 2008 at 09:14
Tags: Journalism, Online

Birmingham City University journalism lecturer Paul Bradshaw and former BBC journalist Nick Booth are among the finalists in the the Knight News Challenge, an annual competition run by Knight Foundation to fund innovation in online journalism with grants of up to $5 million (£2.5m).

Bradshaw, author of the Online Journalism Blog and occasional contributor to Press Gazette, is the only British entrant to have reached the final stage — and the only finalist with two separate projects up for consideration.

In one of his entries, Bradshaw and Booth are seeking $200,000 (£100,000) to fund Citizen Investigation, a website that will allow users to assign and pursue investigative journalism projects with the support of professional journalists.

In their other shortlisted entry, they are seeking $250,000 (£125,000) to fund “The conversation toolkit“, a series of plugins for websites to allow online news publishers to implement social networking, mapping and other functionality outlined by Bradshaw in a much-cited blog post, “The News Diamond“, and “Five W’s and a H“, which advocates a new way of producing about news stories online.

The winners of the grants will be announced on 14 May at the Editor & Publisher Interactive Media Conference in Las Vegas.

Tags: Journalism, Online