Ka-Ching! I, Reporter Wins News Challenge

I, Reporter co-founders Adam Glenn and Amy Gahran explain how they felt when they heard they'd won a Knight News Challenge grant. (Watch video)

We've got great news to share – an I, Reporter project last week was awarded one of the prestigious new Knight News Challenge Grants!

The whole citJ community has been abuzz since last year about this unusual news contest, in which the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promised a pot of gold (up to $5 million) to anyone who could come up with the big ideas to use digital news and information to transform real communities. 

Not to miss out on the fun, my I, Reporter partner Amy Gahran and I decided to put our already frequent brainstorming to work by pitching a series of proposals for the contest. We figured at least one would have a chance to stick – and it turned out we were right.

Knight ultimately received an amazing 1,650 proposals. Only two dozen were ultimately selected. Our $90,000 winner? A plan to launch a one-year citizen journalism web effort to cover a unique global warming initiative in Boulder, Colo., called BoulderCarbonTax.org. You can find out more about this Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker project here.

Amy and I traveled to Miami, where Knight announced the award winners on May 23 as part of the Editor & Publisher/Mediaweek Interactive Media Conference and Trade Show taking place there. It was a real high, with all the winners paraded before the conference opening session, crowded with several hundred conference attendees. We all did videotape interviews (ours is midway through this clip, and were feted at a Tuesday night dinner by Knight.

One of the best parts of the whole process was getting to meet, or in many cases renew contact with, the other winners, whose own ideas are a fascinating blend of approaches to bringing digital media. Here’s a full list of winners, plus a Knight press release.

You’ll be hearing much more about all of this, not only on IReporter.org and BoulderCarbonTax.org, but through a Knight-sponsored blog we'll participate in on Mark Glaser’s MediaShift. There’s also much more on BoulderCarbonTax.org about our great news here. And for fun, here’s a video link sharing winner’s reactions when they were told the news, including our own "Ka-Ching! (high five).

By the way, Knight is getting ready to generously open its coffers for year two of the contest. Come up with your own proposals, or let us know if you want to partner with I, Reporter! You can be sure we’re already thinking about our next winner.

Here’s some more coverage of the contest at Miami Herald, Boston Globe, Editor&Publisher, The Editors Weblog and Chronicle of Philathropy.